Published in the Journal of Hypnotism

June 2004, Vol. 19, No. 2
 
 

 


Emotions, Ill Health and Disease

by

Dennis K. Chong & Jennifer K. Smith Chong ©

 

In this essay the male pronoun will apply to either gender.

The plural pronoun will apply to both authors.

The nominal pronoun will apply to the first author.
 
 

 

 

 

 


            What we write here, we pray and hope will stir, a little, the peace and tranquility of your disposition because we are desperate for your co-participation in the exploration of the unexplored country that we hope to open before you.

            We would like to begin by posing to you this question:

Who or what are you?

 

            When you answer this question, you suddenly realize that your answers are, in fact, opinions about yourself. These opinions are like layers of tablecloths over a table. A tablecloth is not the table. An opinion about you is not you.

            Let us say that we can all agree that whatever you may say about yourself, we agree with you when you say:

I am.

 

            Now, to say that “I am” presupposes that there is an “I,” first.

            This “I” is in turn an opinion. It is you asserting that “I am I.”

            To say “I” is, at some level, to know “I.” It is in the knowing of “I” that we implicitly know that it is in the process of “am-ing.” Therefore, we proceed to assert, “I am.” In saying this, we are again uttering an opinion, to wit, that this “I” is “am-ing.”

            This self-recursive evaluation is a derivative of a faculty that is able to do what it is doing, i.e. to perceive distinctions, even self-distinctions. These distinctions fall into such classes as:

                                             interpretations                  opinions

                                             judgements                       adjudications

                                             evaluations                       determinations

                                             insights                             perceptions     

                                             conclusions                      derivations

abstractions.

 

            Such distinctions are ABOUT itself, others, things and the reality in which it is in.

            In the Greek language, the ABOUT is called meta. We, therefore, call this faculty the meta function, m(f). It would seem that logically we are left to conclude that since every utterance about the self is an ABOUT of the self, then the source of all the abouts or metas must be the m(f) itself:

You are the m(f).

I am the m(f).

 

            In Psychology this faculty is known as the ability to abstract. The abstraction is the distinction. It is also known as the global function. We, in turn, as noted, call it the meta function, m(f).

            The operation of the m(f) is continual if not continuous:

            Whether one likes it or not, one must interpret other people, who in turn interpret other people (often) interpreting still other people, and so on. Interpreting of others interpreting still others are not a matter of choice or chance because one so frequently and spontaneously interprets other people in multiple embedded and iterated sequences of attitudes that one comes to think of explicit metathoughts in similar sequences.

Radu J. Bogdan: Minding Minds The MIT Press 2000 page 153.

 

            We have a pet, a Beagle. It is very obvious that he has a meta function because he can arrive at judgements, distinctions and conclusions. However, compared to us, he is limited in the degrees that he can go to and his distinctions are coarse grained. Human beings clearly can extend the use of this faculty to a very fine grain and to an infinite degree. It is this that marks us with the power to think. Human thinking is formally called metamentation.

            It is the m(f) that gives us the power to think. The faculty of the m(f) uses the mind as the engine to generate its thoughts.

            In this context, we now have a problem. This problem is in the assertion by René Descartes:

Cogito, ergo sum.

(I think therefore I am.)

 

            To say this is practically to say that because I have mind or mental thoughts, I am a human being.

            This position was serious questioned by Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek by his character, Data the android. In the series, it was and is very clear that he was deemed NOT to be human even though he could think better and faster than a human being. The bar that was set for him to be deemed human and which he could not meet was that he had to have feelings or emotions. This he could not do.

            In time, he was to acquire the emotion chip. The unanswered question now is:

With the emotion chip, was Data human?

(At the conclusion of this paper we will answer this question. Till then enjoy and have the fun to wonder what is the answer.)

 

            This leads us to an examination of feelings. What are feelings? To answer this we now propose you do an Einsteinian thought experiment. Think of the last time you were annoyed. Then think of time when you were happy.

From doing this you can conclude that

i.         to have a feeling is to have an ABOUT of either self, other, things or a life situation

ii.       since the feeling is an ABOUT, it must be deemed to be a thought

iii.      the faculty of the m(f)uses the body as the engine to generate such thoughts,

            which in this instance are feelings

iv.     the body is therefore the engine of analogical thinking

v.       just as we can have thoughts about thoughts we can have feelings about feelings.

 

            Feelings about feelings are called meta-states. One consequence of this, as

Michael Hall found is that as one ascends the meta scale, the final meta state escapes its

temporal co-ordinates. As a result when you ask the question, say, “What are you

depressed about?” the person can only reply, “I don’t know.”  

            Because Meta-States have references to other states of consciousness, an abstraction of thoughts-feelings about previous thoughts-feelings, it moves up the scale of conceptualization and into the world that we construct with our languaging – The Land of Nominalizations! Meta-States accordingly, have much more references to things inside our skin (“things” like ideas, concepts, etc). Korzybski would have called this an intensional state.

                As meta-states continue up the scale into more and more transcendental states, they become more atemporal in nature. This enables us to carry them across time in a way that we cannot carry primary states through time.

Michael Hall: META-STATES A DOMAIN OF LOGICAL LEVELS. SELF-REFLEXIVENESS IN HUMAN STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS. Empowerment Technologies 1996 page 88.

 

            In this respect, we believe it is not inappropriate and certainly timely to observe that for Descartes to come up with his aphorism, leaves us to conclude that he was a man who was totally dissociated from his feelings. As such he never knew or felt his feelings. This is not the same as to have feelings but to put them on hold or to suppress them.

            Let us then remind ourselves what we have said. It is our body that generates analogical thoughts. Through the m(f) our body thinks. It does so by having emotions about itself, others, things and life situations.

            We can also have feelings through the mind. This happens because our mental thoughts have their analogical isomorphisms, i.e. feelings. You only need to think of a happy event and you will recapitulate the happy thoughts of those moments. You only have to think of the death of someone dear to you and feelings of grief will arise in you.

            Feelings can be well-formed or ill-formed. The critical distinction between a well-formed of ill-formed emotion is whether having it will entail harm to the person or not.

            One can have primary ill-formed feelings or one can have ill-formed meta-states. Primary feelings are not sustained over time. You can have a primary feeling of anger then it subsides, a.k.a. it blows over. Once it is over, it is done. It is not sustained on and on. However if it is a metastate, then, it will endure across all transits of time and all transepts of places.

            All emotions can vary in intensity. Thus:

 

            Here is another example:

 

            The atemporal property of a meta-state is by definition constant since we “carry them across time”. The result, except for special circumstances, is that we will be unaware of it. We are unaware because:

1.                  we live in the emotion of the meta-states and we are all blind to the obvious

2.                  our natural tendency is to forget

3.                  it is constant and we therefore habituate and accommodate to it.

4.                  we will not know what it is about

5.                  if it is ill-formed, one would not be aware of its deleterious consequences

6.                  we will not be aware of the things that we might do that flow from it; and since we live within and by the Aristotelian system of Cause and Effect, we automatically know that what we do is always “right.”

 

            There are other ill-formed states that we carry across time because they are functions of powerful beliefs. Let us consider a belief that comes from an identification. Thus recently we had a woman in utter misery, woe and tears because her conclusion about herself was:

I am no good.

 

            This was her belief. It was also a derivative of the m(f). It is also in the form of an identification. The identification and belief is in the category of a self-recursive opinion about herself. Until it was reversed she was trapped in its prism and her entire life was a continuous misery, woe, tears, pain, suffering, anxiety and fear.

            We now realize that an ill-formed emotion carries analog consequences and at critical thresholds, it can have potentially serious if not lethal consequences.

 

 

The critical question now becomes:

How does a person shift from feeling unwell or sick to actual disease?

 

            He will do the shift when:

1.                  there is junko logic in place

2.                  the emotion reaches a semantic threshold.

 

            The term junko logic was originally coined by Richard Bandler. It refers to the analogical mal-formed logic in the being of a person. They include examples such as:

                                                Nobody likes me.

                                                I am a sinner.

                                                I am no good.

                                                People will look down on me.

                                                Nobody is going to put me down.

 

            What is a semantic threshold of an internal state?

The semantic threshold of an emotion, feeling or internal state is the threshold when it is converts to its analog equivalent. Thus:

                              Emotion                                             Analog equivalent

                       a yen for someone                                                rape

                       anger                                                               hitting out

                       grief                                                  tears and wailing and screaming

                       anxiety                                                         hysterical panic

                       jealousy                                                             fighting

                       hunger                                                ravenous consuming of food

                       contempt                                                    urinating on another

 

This is what we found out about a woman who had a cancer of her throat and then a cancer of her breast because the cancer was the analogical equivalent of the semantic threshold of her emotion.

We applied the manouevre of the Quadrant Search to get the critical information. Essentially the manouevre is to place the eyes in the quadrants of the visual accessing cues. Holding the eye in the given position, the question is posed to the subject. The answer is the first thought that comes to the subject for that specific eye position.

            With the Quadrant Search you can retrieve critical information that is out of conscious awareness.

            This was the result of the Quadrant Searches from this patient who first developed a cancer of her left breast. When this was resolved she subsequently developed a cancer of her thyroid. This is the result of the Quadrant Search with reference to her breast cancer:

 

        

            We then applied the Quadrant Search regarding her thyroid cancer:

 

            These answers give you the clue to the junko logic that converts the emotion at its semantic threshold to its analog equivalent, its disease variant. In this instance it was to cancer her breast and then subsequently to cancer her thyroid gland.

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

            The point of this paper is to show you where the technology is at today in the awesome exploration of the incredible universe of human complexity. As we began, we are now saying that we cannot do this alone. We are asking for the community of our colleagues to co-research and co-explore with us.

We have to go beyond giving labels and opinions about conditions of ill health and disease. We have to stop assuming that these labels and opinions that we give are the ill health and disease themselves.

            Today we are able to find out what are the underlying sentient process that underpin the human condition that is the wonder that is man or the horror that he can. We are in a position to find out how one can rise to the heavens or fall into the abyss. The technology is here to reverse these conditions.

            In this endeavour, as have asserted, we are desperate for your hand in the exploration of the unexplored country that is before us all.

 

 

 

Now about that question and its answer:

With the emotion chip, was Data human?

 

The answer is NO! It is NO because, to be human is, finally and ultimately, to have the Light of God in a person. There is no emotion chip that can endow an android or thinking machine with such a distinction.