Chapter Six

AFFINITY, REALITY AND
COMMUNICATION

     There are three factors in Scientology which are of the utmost importance in handling life. These three factors answer the questions, How should I talk to people? - How can I sell people things? - How can I give new ideas to people? - How can I find what people are thinking about? - How can I handle my work better?

     We call these three factors in Scientology the A-R-C triangle. It is called a triangle because it has three related points. The first of these points is Affinity. The second of these points is Reality. The third of these points and the most important is Communication.

     By Affinity we mean emotional response. We mean the feeling of affection or lack of it, of emotion or mis-emotion connected with life. By Reality we mean the solid objects, the real things of life. By Communication we mean an interchange of ideas between two terminals. Without affinity there is no reality or communication. Without reality there is no affinity or communication. Without communication there is neither affinity nor reality. Now these are sweeping statements but are nevertheless very valuable and are true.

     Have you ever tried to talk to an angry man? An angry man's communication is at a level of misemotion which repels all terminals from him. Therefore his communication factor is very low, even though very loud. He is attempting to destroy something or some other terminal, therefore his reality is very poor. Very likely what he is being angry about apparently is not what has made him mad. An angry man is not truthful. Thus it could be said that his reality, even on the subject he is attempting to voice, is poor.

     There must be good affinity (which is to say affection) between two people before they are very real to each other (and reality must here be used as a gradient, with things being more real than other things). There must be good affinity between two people before they can talk together with any truth or confidence. Before two people can be real to each other there must be some communication between them. They must at least see each other, which is in itself a form of communication. Before two people can feel any affinity for each other they must, to some degree, be real.

     These three terms are interdependent one upon the other, and when one drops the other two drop also. When one rises the other two rise also. It is only necessary to improve one corner of this very valuable triangle in Scientology in order to improve the remaining two comers. It is only necessary to improve, two corners of the triangle to improve the third.

     To give you some idea of a practical application of this, there is the case of the young girl who had run away from home and whose parents would no longer talk to her. The girl, as a clerk in an office, was quite despondent and was doing very bad work. A Scientologist whose attention had been directed to her by the office manager, gave her an Interview and discovered that her parents were intensely angry with her and would no longer communicate with her at all. They had been so upset at her refusal (actually her inability) to follow a career as a concert pianist for which they had her studying at great expense that they had "washed their hands of her", and the unpleasantness had forced her to run away to a distant point. Since that time they had not communicated with her but had spoken to people she had known in her home neighborhood in very bitter terms concerning her. In such a state of mind, since she was intimately involved with her parents and wished to be on the best possible terms with them, she could not work. Her failure to perform her work was jamming communication lines in her own office. In other words, her affinity was very low and her reality on things was quite low since she might be said to have been elsewhere most of the time, and thus the communication lines which passed through her hands were equally low and successfully jammed other communication lines in the office, at which time this matter became of intense interest to the office manager. Now ordinarily in the work-a.day world the office manager would have dismissed her and found another girl. But employment was critical at the time and this office manager knew the modern thing to do. He sent for a Scientologist.

     The Scientologist knowing well this A-R-C triangle did a very ordinary thing - to a Scientologist - which apparently worked magic as far as the girl was concerned. He told the girl that she must write to her parents - regardless of whether they replied or not she must write - and she did so. Naturally there was no reply. Why was there no reply from the parents? Well, the girl, having disobeyed them and having moved out from underneath their control, was apparently no longer in contact with them. These parents did not consider her as real. She did not actually exist as far as they were concerned. They had actually said this to themselves. They had actually tried to wipe her out of their lives since she was such a disappointment. Therefore they had no emotion about her whatsoever except perhaps a sort of apathy. They had been unable to control her and so they were apathetic about her since they had failed to control her. At this stage the parents were glumly apathetic about the girl and she was not very real to them at all. As a matter of fact, as they had started her on a career she could not complete, the girl could not have been very real to them in the first place since the career was undoubtedly beyond the girl's capabilities. So the Scientologist had her write a letter. This letter was, as we say in Scientology, entirely "good roads and good weather". The girl said that she was working in this other city, that the weather was good, that she was getting along well, and hoped that they were both well and sent them her love. The letter carefully did not take up any of the problems or activities immediately behind her leaving home. The A of the letter, the affinity, was quite high; the C was present. What the Scientologist was trying to do was establish R, reality: the reality of the situation of the girl's being in another city and the actual reality of her existence in the world. He knew that she was sufficiently involved with her parents that if they did not consider her real, she was not even real to herself. Of course the parents did not answer this first letter but the Scientologist had the girl write again.

     After four letters, all of which said more or less the same things and entirely ignored the idea that there had been no reply, there was a sudden letter from the mother to the girl which was angry, not with the girl but with one of her old playmates. The girl, coached, was held in line by the Scientologist and was not permitted to explode back through the communication line but was coaxed into writing a surprised, pleasant letter expressing her happiness at having heard from her mother. After this two letters came, one from the father and one from the mother, both of them were very affectionate and hoped the girl was doing well. The girl of course replied to these very joyously but would have been completely propitiative if the Scientologist had permitted her to do so. Instead, a happy letter went back to each of them, and in return two more letters came, both of them very congratulatory to the girl at having found a job and found something that she was interested in doing in life, with requests as to where her clothes should be sent and actually a small draft of money to help her along in the city. The parents had already begun to plan the new career of the girl which was in exact line with what the girl could do in life - stenographic work.

     Of course the Scientologist knew exactly what was going to happen. He knew that their affinity and reality would come up and the girl's reality, affinity and communication in the office itself would rise as soon as this situation was remedied. He remedied with communication, expressing affinity from the girl and this of course, as it always does, produced reaction. The girl's work came up to par, the girl began to progress and now that her feeling of reality was sufficiently high actually became a very valuable office worker.

     Probably the reason why the A-R-C triangle went so long undiscovered was the fact that a person in apathy rises through various tones. These tones are quite uniform; one follows the next and people always come up through these tones one after the other. These are the tones of affinity, and the Tone Scale of Dianetics and Scientology is probably the best possible way of predicting what is going to happen next or what a person actually will do.

     The Tone Scale starts well below apathy. In other words, a person is feeling no emotion about a subject at all. An example of this was the American attitude concerning the atomic bomb; something about which they should have been very concerned was so far beyond their ability to control and so likely to end their existence that they were below apathy about it. They actually did not even feel that it was very much of a problem. Americans processed on this particular subject had to be worked with for some little time until they began to feel apathetic about the atomic bomb. This was really an advance over the feeling of no emotion whatsoever on a subject which should have intimately concerned them. In other words, on many subjects and problems people are actually well below apathy. There the Tone Scale starts, on utter, dead null far below death itself. Going up into improved tones one encounters the level of body death, apathy, grief, fear, anger, antagonism, boredom, enthusiasm and serenity, in that order. There are many small stops between these tones, but one knowing anything about human beings should definitely know these particular emotions. A person who is in apathy, when his tone is improved, feels grief. A person in grief, when his tone improves, feels fear. A person in fear, when his tone improves feels anger. A person in anger, when his tone improves feels antagonism. A person in antagonism, when his tone improves feels boredom. When a person in boredom improves his tone, he is enthusiastic. When an enthusiastic person improves his tone, he feels serenity. Actually the below apathy level is so low as to constitute a no-affinity, no-emotion, no-problem, no-consequence state of mind on things which are actually tremendously important.

     The area below apathy is an area without pain, interest, beingness or anything else that matters to anyone, but it is an area of great danger since one is below the level of being able to respond to anything and may accordingly lose everything without apparently noticing it. A workman who is in very bad condition and who is actually a liability to the organization may not be capable of experiencing pain or any emotion on any subject. He is below apathy. We have seen workmen who would hurt their hand and think nothing of it and go right on working even though their hand was very badly injured. People in dispensaries working in industrial areas are quite amazed sometimes to discover how little attention some workmen pay to their own injuries. It is an ugly fact that people who pay no attention to their own injuries and who are not even feeling pain from those injuries are not and never will be, without some attention from a Scientologist, efficient people. They are liabilities to have around. They do not respond properly. If such a person is working a crane and the crane suddenly goes out of control to dump its load on a group of men, that sub-apathy crane operator will simply let the crane drop its load. In other words, he is a potential murderer. He cannot stop anything, he cannot change anything and he cannot start anything and yet, on some automatic response basis, he manages some of the time to hold down a job, but the moment a real emergency confronts him he is not likely to respond properly and accidents result. Where there are accidents in industry they stem from these people in the sub-apathy tone range. Where bad mistakes are made in offices which cost firms a great deal of money, lost time and cause other personnel difficulties, such mistakes are found rather uniformly to stem from these sub-apathy people. So do not think that one of these states of being unable to feel anything, of being dumb. of being incapable of pain or joy is any use to anyone. It is not. A person who is in this condition cannot control things and in actuality is not there sufficiently to be controlled by anyone else and does strange and unpredictable things.

     Just as a person can be chronically in sub-apathy, so a person can be in apathy. This is dangerous enough but is at least expressed. Only when we get up into apathy itself do we have the A.R-C triangle beginning to manifest itself and become visible. Communication from the person himself, not from some circuit or training pattern is to be expected. People can be chronically in grief, chronically in fear, chronically in anger, or in antagonism, or boredom, or actually can be "stuck in enthusiasm". A person who is truly able is normally fairly serene about things. He can, however, express other emotions. It is a mistake to believe that a total serenity is of any real value. When a situation which demands tears cannot be cried about one is not in serenity as a chronic tone. This sub-apathy can be mistaken rather easily for serenity, but of course only by a very untrained observer. One glance at the physical condition of the person is enough to differentiate. People who are in sub-apathy are normally quite ill.

     Just as we have a range of the Tone Scale thus covering the subject of affinity., so do we have one for communication. On the level of each of the emotions we have a communication factor. In sub-apathy an individual is not really communicating at all. Some social response or training pattern or, as we say, "circuit" is communicating. The person himself does not seem to be there and isn't really talking. Therefore his communications are sometimes strange to say the least. He does the wrong things at the wrong time. He says the wrong things at the wrong time. Naturally when a person is stuck on any of the bands of the Tone Scale, sub-apathy, apathy, grief, fear, anger, antagonism, boredom, enthusiasm, or serenity, he voices communications with that emotional tone. A person who is always angry about something is stuck in anger. Such a person is not as bad off as somebody in sub-apathy, but he is still rather dangerous to have around since he will make trouble, and a person who is angry does not control things well. The communication characteristics of people at these various levels on the Tone Scale are quite fascinating. They say things and handle communication each in a distinct characteristic fashion for each level of the Tone Scale.

     Just as in affinity and communication, there is a level of reality for each of the affinity levels. Reality is an intensely interesting subject since it has to do in the main with relative solids. In other words, the solidity of things and the emotional tone of people have a definite connection. People low on the Tone Scale cannot tolerate solids. They cannot tolerate a solid object. The thing is not real to them; it is thin or lacking weight. As they come upscale, the same object becomes more and more solid and they can finally see it in its true level of solidity. In other words, these people have a definite reaction to mass at various points on the scale. Things are bright to them or very, very dull. If you could look through the eyes of the person in sub-apathy you would see a very watery, thin, dreamy, misty, unreal world indeed. If you looked through the eyes of an angry man you would see a world which was menacingly solid, where all the solids posed a brutality toward him, but they still would not be sufficiently solid or sufficiently real or visible for a person in good condition. A person in serenity can see solids as they are, as bright as they are, and can tolerate an enormous heaviness or solidity without reacting to it. In other words, as we go up the Tone Scale from the lowest to the highest, things can get more and more solid and more and more real.

     Affinity is most closely related to space. In fact affinity could be defined as the "consideration of distance" since terminals which are far apart or close together have different affinity reactions one to another. Reality, as we have seen, is most intimately connected with solids. Communication consists of the flow of ideas or particles across space between solids.

     While these definitions may seem very elementary and would not at all satisfy an M.I.T. professor, they actually outreach and encompass an M.I.T. professor's whole field of activity. Truths do not have to be complicated.

     There are, as described at considerable length and studied with considerable depth in Scientology, many interrelations of spaces and solids, and ideas or particles, since these are the most intimate things to livingness itself and comprise the universe around us. But the most basic thing we should know about A-R-C is simply emotional tone which is affinity, the actuality of things which is reality, and the relative communication ability concerning them.

     Men who can do things are very high on affinity, very high in terms of reality and are very capable in terms of communication. If you wish to measure their various capabilities you should study the subject much further. A whole book has been written about this triangle called Science of Survival.*

     Then how would you talk to a man? You cannot talk adequately to a man if you are in a sub-apathy condition. In fact you would not talk to him at all. You would have to have a little higher affinity than that to discuss things with anyone. Your ability to talk to any given man has to do with your emotional response to any given man. Anyone has different emotional responses to different people around him. In view of the fact that two terminals, or, that is to say, two people, are always involved in communication, one could see that someone else would have to be somewhat real. If one does not care about other people at all one will have a great deal of difficulty talking to them, that is certain. The way to talk to a man then would be to find something to like about him and to discuss something with which he can agree. This is the downfall of most new ideas. One does not discuss subjects with which the other person has any point of agreement at all and we come to a final factor with regard to reality.

     That with which we agree tends to be more real than that with which we do not agree. There is a definite co-ordination between agreement and reality. Those things are real which we agree are real. Those things are not real which we agree are not real. On those things upon which we disagree we have very little reality. An experiment based on this would be an even jocular discussion between two men of a third man who is present. The two men agree on something with which the third man cannot agree. The third man will drop in emotional tone and wilt actually become less real to the two who are discussing him.

     How do you talk to a man then? You establish reality by finding something with which you both agree. Then you attempt to maintain as high an affinity level as possible by knowing there is some thing you can like about him. And you are then able to talk with him. If you do not have the first two conditions it is fairly certain that the third condition will not be present, which is to say, you will not be able to talk to him easily.

     You should realize in using the A-R-C triangle that, once more, the emotional tones are progressed through as one begins to develop communication. In other words, somewhere up the line somebody who has been totally apathetic about us is liable to become angry at us. If one can simply persevere up through this anger, he reaches only antagonism, then boredom and finally enthusiasm and a perfect communication level of understanding. Marriages fall apart simply because of a failure of communication, because of a failure of reality and affinity. When communication starts failing the affinity starts dropping. People have secrets from each other and the affinity starts out the bottom.

     Similarly, in an office or a business it is perfectly easy to establish those people who are doing things which are not to the best interests of the firm, since these people go gradually and sometimes not so gradually out of communication with the firm. Their emotional tone towards their superiors and those around them starts dropping and finally goes out the bottom.

     As can be seen the A-R-C triangle is intimately bound up with an ability to control and an ability to leave uncontrolled. When an individual attempts to control something and fails to do so he then experiences an antipathy toward that thing. In other words, he has not been right, he has been wrong. His intention has failed. His intention has, you might say, backfired upon him. Thus as one attempts to control things and then fails to control them he is likely to drop down Tone Scale about those things. Thus an individual who has been betrayed by the tools of his own trade is apt to treat them with a lowering affinity level. He becomes bored with them, he becomes antagonistic toward them, he becomes angry with them (and at this stage the machinery begins to break up) and finally he becomes afraid of them, he becomes sad about them, he becomes apathetic about them and no longer cares about them at all. At this stage he certainly cannot use them at all. Actually from the level of boredom down the ability to use one's tools of the trade is consistently lowered.

     Now, how could one knowing this raise his ability to control the tools of tile trade without even going to a Scientologist? Naturally if a Scientologist took over in this situation the entirety of control of tools or an area or of life could be regained, but, lacking this, how could one simply handle the exact articles with which he is right now and immediately associated?

     By using A-R-C he could regain in some measure both his control of the tools and his enthusiasm for work. He would do this by communicating and discovering his willingness for these and the people around him to be real or solid. An individual could regain his ability over his immediate tools simply by touching them and letting them go. This might seem rather pointless and he is apt to reach the level of boredom and become bored with the process. Just above this level is the pay of becoming enthusiastic. It sounds very strange that if one simply touched his automobile and let go and touched it and let go and touched it and let go and touched it and let go, possibly for some hours, he would regain not only his enthusiasm for the automobile but a tremendous ability to control the car which he had never suspected in himself at all. Similarly with people, since these often object to being touched, one can communicate. If one really communicates and communicates well to these people, listens to what they have to say and acknowledges what they say and says what he has to say to them gently enough and often enough so that it is actually received by them, he will regain to a very marked degree his ability to associate and co-ordinate the actions of those people with whom he is immediately surrounded. Here we have A-R-C immediately adjusted to work. It sounds strange that if we made a bookkeeper pick up and lay down his pencil or pen for a couple of hours he would regain his ability to handle it and would improve in his ability to make figures; and that if we got him to touch and let go of his ledger for a considerable length of time he would be more capable of handling that ledger and would make far fewer mistakes with it. This sounds like magic. It is magic. It is Scientology.