Emotional tone scale

In Scientology, the tone scale or emotional tone scale is a characterization of human behavior. It is based on the idea that some people appear to be more lively and alive than other people; this increased liveliness is orderly. Author L. Ron Hubbard spelled the idea out saying, "just draw a horizontal line on the page. Put the people who are less alive on the bottom and the people who are more alive on the top."

In his 1951 book Science of Survival, Hubbard expanded the idea into many increments. The idea states that a "tone" has many manifestations including appearance, chronic emotion, the way the person handles other people, how well the person can pass on a communication given to them, and other characteristics.

Hubbard devised the "Tone Scale" in 1951 as a tool for auditors in Scientology. Scientologists believe it intends to classify people in a range or scale according to how spiritually alive and how dead a person is, both personally and in their relationships to others. It prescribes auditing procedures to use with a person depending where they are on the scale.

Hubbard expanded on the idea and created 81 increments which he numbered from -40 (total failure) to +40 (serenity of beingness). Hubbard's full scale appears on the right. According to Scientologists a person chronically focused on death and destruction is at the low end of the tone scale, while a person focused on creativity is at the high end of the scale.

A noteworthy mechanism of the scale involves a person as they approach and react to pain. As a person approaches pain, they allegedly become more antagonistic and less cheerful. It is purported that after receiving pain, they will be angry about it, and then, if the pain persists, can become more overwhelmed by it, progressing down through fear, grief, apathy, into failure, etc. Auditing allegedly reverses this path. Scientologists aim to be at the higher levels of the tone scale and believe that Scientology auditing will move them to a higher average level of the tone scale.

While a person can rationally be any place on the tone scale due to circumstances, Scientologists argue that one should not, under normal circumstances, be stuck any particular place on the scale. Also, in Scientology one can be at various places on the tone scale in different areas of life, such as being chronically 'high on' oneself and chronically 'down on' people or one's partner. Such discrepancy is allegedly an indication of a problem.

The ultimate goal of Scientology is claimed to be "a free being". By Scientology's definition, a free being can be and does not have to be any place on the scale. A free being does not have to avoid certain areas of the scale, although one could as a matter of choice or taste.

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