Normally, you would see an ad here. Maybe you are using an ad blocker. I respect that, but this site relies on revenue from ads to continue. Maybe as an alternative you would consider making a donation on the Contribute page.
Normally, you would see an ad here. Maybe you are using an ad blocker. I respect that, but this site relies on revenue from ads to continue. Maybe as an alternative you would consider making a donation on the Contribute page.
Copyright © Sirius Publishing 2006-2019
The Emotional Level
When we talk about the emotional level, there is nothing esoteric about this. We all know what emotions are. We experience them every day, and the emotional level is just that, it's the level of our experience where emotions occur. The term ‘level’ implies no position in space or that the emotional level is above the physical level except in our model.
But a couple of points need to be made: firstly that emotions are not feelings, and secondly that emotions are a way of summing up a number of physical experiences so that they are easier to understand.
So, we can say that I feel happy or I feel sad, these are obviously emotions that we can all relate to. But we also say I feel hungry or I feel tired. These are not emotions but physical feelings. Again, we might say 'I fancy that person' and if we have been out on the town for the night and have got our beer goggles on then this can be purely a physical response.
Of course under other circumstances, when we are not drunk, and have had time to get to know the person, we may have various emotions such as ‘feeling’ empathy or understanding which means that when we say 'I fancy that person' we mean that we like that person and that we have an emotional connection to them.
Secondly, emotions helped to speed up our reactions to situations by summing up a number of physical experiences. Supposing you have Greek food and you think that it is too oily, then again you eat Greek food and you think it is too salty, and again you have Greek food and it upsets your stomach, you might then form an emotional reaction that says I don't like Greek food.
This speeds up your actions because the next time you are out with friends and someone says shall we do Greek, you can respond with some certainty I don't like Greek food. You don't have to recall all the separate times that you have eaten Greek because you have formed an emotional impression that says this is not for me.
Another example might be that you meet a dog. It comes up and it licks you and you stoke it’s head. So far you can say I like dogs. You meet another dog and it is equally friendly, but then a third dog comes up and barks at you and maybe even tries to bite you. You then form an emotional impression which says I don't like dogs.
So, the next time that you see a dog on the street you walk over to the other side of the road to avoid it, because emotionally you say I don't like dogs. This may or may not be an accurate representation of all dogs. Probably 95% of dogs are nice, but your emotional response nevertheless saves time because you do not need to think about each individual dog that you have met, you just avoid them.
I hope that this is kind of intuitively obvious, that emotions can sum up a number of different physical impressions. However, what we are going to say is that this is a principle which holds when we deal with other levels of awareness.
This is a consequence of employing the Principle of Ubiquity and Unification.
So when we move on to the intellectual level please bear in mind the simple idea that concepts can sum up a number of different emotions.