Details of The Scale
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 80 increments which he numbered from -40 (total failure) to +40 (serenity of beingness). Hubbard's full scale appears above. 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.
Allegedly, the lower a person is on the scale, the more complex and solid their problems are and the more effort it takes to make even a little positive and real long-term gain for that person. Thus, spotting a person as low on the scale allows one to make a decision regarding how careful or involved one should become in dealing with that person.
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