Tone Scale Reference

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A scale is a series of steps or levels that are arranged in a sequence.

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Tone means the emotional state of a person.

This can be over a very short or a very long period of time.

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Emotional means having to do with emotion, the feelings a person has that he usually shows by the
expression on his face or the way his body behaves. Some examples of emotion include cheerfulness,
boredom and fear.

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The Emotional Tone Scale shows all the emotions a person can experience at any time in his life.

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The Tone Scale also tells you how a person can be expected to behave at any time. When a person is at a
certain level on the Tone Scale, he behaves in a certain way. Therefore, by knowing what each level of
the Tone Scale is, you can then predict how a person will behave.

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There are only a few basic emotions on the Tone Scale. At the top, there is the emotion of enthusiasm.
Enthusiasm means a feeling of excitement about something and eagerness to be involved in it. And just
below that, you have a person who is just happy about whatever he is doing.

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And then, just below that, you have an emotion where a person is holding himself back from being
openly happy. You get the feeling when you observe this emotion that the person is just a little bit afraid
to reach toward something.

Fuente: glosario del libro La Ciencia de la Supervivencia, pág. 628

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This level on the Tone Scale is called conservatism. Below conservatism, we find the tone level of
contented. Contented means the person is sort of quietly happy. He is satisfied.
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Below this level we get boredom. Boredom is where nothing is wrong, but nothing is happening. The
person feels that the things he wants to do are just a little bit too hard for him to do and so he isn’t
actually doing them.

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There is nothing dangerous present, but there is nothing exciting either. He is not running from
anything, and he is not going toward anything—he is just sort of sitting there in one spot not really doing
anything. That’s boredom.

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When you try to get a person who is bored to do something, he will be just a little unfriendly and
irritated toward you. He goes a little bit down on the Tone Scale. So the next one below boredom is
antagonism.

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Antagonism is a feeling of annoyance and irritation someone has, caused by other people moving closer
to or communicating to him.

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Below antagonism, the person’s emotion will turn into anger. A person who is angry can be threatened
so much that he shows fear.

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Fear—threatened or pushed too much—will become grief. Grief is the inability to escape from fear, a
fearful object or the idea of losing something very important to you.

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Grief, pushed or threatened too hard, becomes apathy—a complete lack of interest in or feeling for
things in general, with the result that a person feels no emotion and has no energy.

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Angry men do certain things. You can expect an angry man to break things. You can expect him to be
dishonest. You can expect him to try to control people around him by shouting at them, ordering them,
threatening to punish them or verbally abusing them. You know the pattern of an angry person.

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You also know the pattern of a person who is afraid, such as a person who is afraid to tell the truth or a
person who is afraid to face the real facts about what is happening or what he has done. Such a person
will change facts instead of facing them.
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To someone living in fear, people or other living things in his area are dangerous to him to such a point
that he is always afraid and has a definite way of behaving. He doesn’t dare make a direct attack on
anything or anybody. He could never walk up to someone and tell the person that he did something
wrong.

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The person who is in grief can only be handled with the emotion of sympathy. Therefore, he gets others
around him to feel sorry for him and help him. He has to depend on them, one way or the other, for his
own survival. He feels that he cannot survive unless he is in grief or sick.

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The way a person in apathy behaves is to just pretend that he is dead. For example, a soldier goes into
battle, bullets start flying everywhere. He can’t take it. He won’t fight and cannot run away, so he goes
into apathy, and he falls flat on his face and lies there stiff.

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The illustrated Tone Scale shows you some of the most important tone levels that you will find in
people. It goes from the emotional tone of serenity (a calm, peaceful state we can also call Happiness) at
the very top down through Enthusiasm, Boredom, Antagonism, Anger, Fear, Grief and Apathy.

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The tones of the Emotional Tone Scale are very exact. Every person on Earth is somewhere on the
Emotional Tone Scale and he moves up and down the scale following its exact pattern. People always
come up or go down through these tones, one after the other.

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The emotional tones are also called the tones of affinity. Affinity means love or liking, and it is used here
as the idea of how much you like or dislike someone or something. You can easily see this if you take
someone who is at the top of the scale. Someone in happiness has a lot of love or liking for other
people. But a man in anger does not have much love or liking for anyone.

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Going from the top to the bottom of the Tone Scale, a person moves through the following levels:

SERENITY

ENTHUSIASM

BOREDOM

ANTAGONISM

ANGER

FEAR
GRIEF

APATHY

BODY DEATH

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There are many small stops between these tones, but anyone knowing anything about people should
definitely know these emotions.

When a person in apathy improves his tone, he feels grief.

When a person in grief improves his tone, he feels fear.

When a person in fear improves his tone, he feels anger.

When a person in anger improves his tone, he feels antagonism.

When a person in antagonism improves his tone, he feels boredom.

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There are many small stops between these tones, but anyone knowing anything about people should
definitely know these emotions.

When a person in boredom improves his tone, he feels enthusiasm.

When a person in enthusiasm improves his tone, he feels serenity—or happiness.

People can be in any tone continuously over a long period of time—grief, fear, anger, antagonism,
boredom or even enthusiasm.

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Just as we have the Tone Scale covering the subject of affinity, we also have one for communication. On
the level of each of the emotions, we have a communication factor.

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Naturally, when a person is “stuck” on any of the bands of the Tone Scale—apathy, grief, fear, anger,
antagonism, boredom, enthusiasm or happiness—he voices communications with that emotional tone.

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A person who is always angry about something is stuck in anger. Such a person is not as bad off as
somebody below apathy, but he is still rather dangerous to have around since he will make trouble.
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And a person who is angry does not control things well. The communication of people at these various
levels on the Tone Scale is quite fascinating. They say things and handle communication in a specific and
recognizable way for each level of the Tone Scale.

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Just as in affinity and communication, there is a level of reality for each of the tone levels. Reality has to
do with solids. In other words, the solidity of things and the emotional tone of people have a definite
connection.

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People low on the Tone Scale cannot tolerate anything solid. They cannot tolerate a solid object. The
thing is not real to them. It is thin or lacking in weight.

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As they come up the Tone Scale, the same object becomes more and more solid, and they can finally see
how solid it really is. Things are bright to them or very, very dull, depending on where they are on the
Tone Scale.

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If you looked through the eyes of an angry man, you would see a world which was “dangerously” solid,
where all the solids appeared as a “violent threat” toward him.

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A person at the level of happiness on the Tone Scale can see solids as they are, as bright as they are and
likes to have solid things about him. In other words, as a person goes up the Tone Scale from the lowest
level to the highest, things can get more and more solid and more and more real.

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Affinity is most closely related to space. In fact, affinity could be defined as the idea of distance, since
people who are far apart or close together have different levels of affinity. If you have a lot of affinity for
someone, you like sharing your space with that person. Someone in happiness likes to have people
share his space.

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But as a person goes down the Tone Scale, the amount of affinity drops and he cannot have other
people sharing his space. Take, for example, a person at the tone level of anger. He does not want
anyone in his space.

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Reality, as we have seen, has to do with solids.

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Communication consists of the flow of ideas or particles across space between solids or between two or
more people.

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Affinity, Reality and Communication all add up to UNDERSTANDING. To have understanding with
anyone, you must have all three of its parts—Affinity, Reality and Communication. Let’s see how this
works when dealing with other people and also using the Tone Scale.

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Men who can do things are very high on affinity, very high in terms of reality and are very capable in
terms of communication. They are easily understood.

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So how would you talk to a man?

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Your ability to talk to someone has to do with your emotional response to him. Everyone has different
emotional responses to different people around them.

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To successfully communicate with someone, you must first have some affinity for him. If you do not care
about the other person at all, you will have a great deal of difficulty talking to him—that is certain.

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The way to talk to someone, then, would be to find something to like about him and to discuss
something he can agree with you about. This is the downfall of most communication—a person does not
discuss subjects that the other person has any point of agreement with at all.

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That with which we agree tends to be more real than that with which we do not agree. There is a
definite relationship between agreement and reality. Those things are real which we agree are real.

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To establish reality, you must find something with which you both agree. Then you attempt to maintain
as high an affinity level as possible by finding something you like about the other person. You will then
be able to talk with him.

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If you do not have the first two points (something you can agree on and something you like about him),
it is fairly certain that the third point—communication—will not be present (which is to say, you will not
be able to talk to him easily).
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If one really communicates and communicates well to people—listens to what they have to say and lets
them know they’ve been heard 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 his ability to work with and coordinate the actions
of people immediately surrounding him.

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Observation is the action of noticing or looking closely at things. It’s something you do every day, but
just because your eyes look at something does not mean you’ve actually observed it. Observation
includes the closest possible study of what you are observing, and when looking to find a person’s
emotional tone, observation is all you need to accurately know where he is on the Emotional Tone Scale.

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The Tone Scale is very easy to apply when the person is loud or obvious about his emotional state.

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But how about the tone level of a person over a long period of time. This is not the usual good manners
and responses a person learns, such as responding with “I’m fine” when he is asked how he is doing.
That is called a social tone.

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Social, in this use, means the way people in groups behave and act when they are together. A person’s
social tone depends on his education and the behavior he has learned from his friends or family that he
uses to present himself to others.

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On the other hand, behind the person’s social tone is his actual tone level—the one he is at in his day-to-
day life. With practice, you can see through a social tone and observe the actual tone level of the
person.

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Tone means the emotional state of a person.

This can be over a very short or a very long period of time.

Chronic Lasting a long time or recurring often.

*Chronic meaning source: Dianetic, Science of Survival glossary, page 589

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Of course, as good news and bad, happy days and sad ones, strike a person, there are momentary raises
and lowerings on this Tone Scale. But, as mentioned, there is a chronic level, an average behavior for
each individual.

Source: The emotional tone scale, from Scientology Handbook page 18

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The individual’s chronic mood or attitude toward existence declines in

direct ratio to the way he regards the physical universe and organisms about him.

Source: The emotional tone scale, from Scientology Handbook page 18

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Probably the most accurate way to determine a person’s position on the Tone Scale is speech.

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Unless a person talks openly and listens easily, he cannot be considered very high on the Tone Scale.

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An observation of how a person both listens and talks will give an accurate measure of his position on
the Tone Scale.

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With this understanding, you can do what we call a Two-minute Tone Scale Test on someone.

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In this test, you are measuring the communication level of the person. The way to do a Two-minute
Tone Scale Test is to simply start talking to someone at the highest possible tone level, creatively and
constructively, and then gradually drop the tone of your conversation down to the point where it gets a
response from the person.

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A person best responds to his own tone level. In doing this type of test, you should not carry any
particular tone level of conversation too long (not more than a sentence or two) because if you talk to
the person for longer, you will bring him up the Tone Scale and spoil the accuracy of the test.

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Two-minute testing, then, is done first by announcing something creative and constructive to the person
to see whether he responds with something creative and constructive. For example, tell the person
about some great new discovery or a new development project that is going to help thousands of
people who are unemployed get work.
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If you don’t get an enthusiastic response back, then perhaps say something about sports and see if the
person responds to that.

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If you again get no response, try talking antagonistically about something which the person knows (but
not, of course, about the person himself) to see if he gives any response. For example, you could talk
about the prices of everything just going up and the cost of living going up and how much it costs just to
drive a car today.

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Then say a sentence or two at the tone level of anger against something that is happening that you feel
he will know something about.

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Next come up with some things to tell the person that communicate the tone level of hopelessness and
misery.

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Somewhere in this range, from the top to the bottom, the person will agree with the type of
conversation that you are offering him. That is, he will respond to it with the same tone level and start
talking back to you about that subject.

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PROBABLY THE MOST ACCURATE WAY TO DETERMINE A PERSON’S POSITION ON THE TONE SCALE IS
SPEECH.

UNLESS A PERSON TALKS OPENLY AND LISTENS EASILY, HE CANNOT BE CONSIDERED VERY HIGH ON THE
TONE SCALE.