Spiritual concepts
Emotion
It may be helpful here to refer to the Model of the Mind
Emotions are feelings and the function of Emotion produces Emotions – feelings.
Analogously this is again ‘software’, but we have little idea how that ‘software’ works, and if you were to ask a programmer to write a program for ‘envy’, for example, he obviously wouldn’t have a clue, but functions they are.
We all behave in a similar way when we experience these emotions thus there is likely to be a standard set of functions governing all emotion.
All emotions are based on the concept of Contrast. For any one emotion such as love, there is a contrasting emotion - thus hate.
It is not quite this simple, however, there are not just two functions but a graded scale of emotion based on Intensity.
In reality, two contrasting emotions are all part of the same function with different levels of Intensity determining the degree of emotion and hence our name for the emotion being experienced.
Extremely high level of emotion
High level of emotion
Moderately high level of emotion
No emotion
Moderately high level of contrasting emotion
High level of contrasting emotion
Extremely high level of contrasting emotion
You can look at the following sub-sections for some examples of the degrees of intensity and their names.
Commonality
Emotion functions are common to all humans, but we will certainly find that they are common to many other species as well – it is just that the expression of these emotions physically differs between species.
Emotions feed the biological systems we have and can cause physical changes. Anger may cause my face to redden, sadness causes tears to flow. If I am happy I may smile or laugh. Again these are not conscious Will based functions.
My little dog can experience fear, anger, sadness and happiness, just as we can, but he tends to bark uncontrollably when afraid. He grins and wags his tail when he is happy.
The package
It is important to emphasise the fact that we have every emotion – every emotion both positive and negative. Our Personalities may differ but we all get every emotional function that is applicable to us as humans – both ‘positive’ [no one or thing gets hurt] and ‘negative’ [someone or something gets hurt].
But, although we all get the same package of emotions, some of them may lie latent and unused. However, it only takes one trigger, and an emotion can emerge from the archive and work perfectly. This is why some people find hidden depths of courage they had no idea they had or of kindness or of generosity or compassion or anger or jealousy or lust or passion. It just needs a trigger.
Emotion and the Will
As you can see from the model, I do not think that the function of emotion is entirely controllable by the Will, I think emotion is driven by Perceptions [Threats and Opportunities] and by the Memories produced by Memory recall – extracts from our database of Memory. The Will may control the extraction process, but from then on emotion takes over and it can proceed on Perceptions alone if it wants to.
It is partly related to our Goals and objectives, but it needs the Will to give it this information. And because Spiritual input is recorded as a Perception, then spiritual input also drives emotion.
Behaviour – the role of learnt function
The function of emotion certainly plays a large part in determining the course that the Will takes. The responses the Will can make are very often behavioural ones – Learnt function [behaviour] that attempts to control the more destructive of emotions.
But I think we have here a function that is largely autonomous - perhaps its only driver is our Personality [I have not shown that on the model].
So emotions are not consciously controlled.
Observations
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- Al-Ghazzali - The Alchemy of Happiness - 03 Knowledge of the Self
- Alexander, Dr Eben - has to go back
- Aristotle - De Anima - Perceptions and the soul
- Aristotle - Ethics - Precis by David Furley
- Aristotle - History of Animals - Tree of Life
- Asvaghosha - The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana - The ego
- Balzac, Honoré de - Louis Lambert - 05 Emotions
- Bergson, Henri - Time and Free Will - Emotion and the 5 senses
- Bergson, Henri - Time and Free Will - Emotional Intensity
- Bergson, Henri - Time and Free Will - Emotional states
- Bergson, Henri - Time and Free Will - On pity
- Beuys, Joseph - Honey Pump 03
- Beuys, Joseph - Honey Pump 05
- Bose, Sir Jagadis Chandra - from Autobiography of a Yogi - Paramahansa Yogananda 01
- Bose, Sir Jagadis Chandra - The correlation between stimuli, emotion and illness
- Bose, Sir Jagadis Chandra - All pain contains an element of pleasure, and that pleasure, if carried too far becomes pain
- Bose, Sir Jagadis Chandra - Plants and perceptions - emotions and pain
- Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad
- Bruno, Giordano – Cause, principle and unity - 14 The Fifth Dialogue
- Carl Gustav Jung - Quote 3
- Cartwright, Sir Fairfax Leighton - The Mystic Rose - The Gardeners
- Concealed Treasure of Dao; Thesis of Sitting Forgetfulness
- Croiset, Gerard - The drowning of the skipper from a ship on the Waal river, Waardenburg
- Custance, John - Wisdom, Madness and Folly - On the depressive phase
- Custance, John - Wisdom, Madness and Folly - The Positive and negative powers
- Damasio, Professor Antonio - Emotion and emotions
- Damasio, Professor Antonio - Reason and emotion
- Damasio, Professor Antonio - Emotion
- Damasio, Professor Antonio - Will and Command
- Dao scriptures
- Darwin, Charles - The Expression of the Emotions
- Descartes, Rene - Behavioural function
- Descartes, Rene - On appetites and emotions
- Fechner, Gustav Theodor - As described by Henri Bergson in Time and Free Will
- Ficino, Marsilio – Selected Letters - From a letter to Giovanni Nesi, the passions
- Hack Tuke, Daniel – Emotion - Emotions and emotional intensity [background]
- Hack Tuke, Daniel – Sickness - Summary: Disease is caused by extreme emotions
- Hegel – The organs of the body as a means of expressing emotion
- Hesiod - Theogony - 04 The emotions
- Homeopathy for Collective Diseases - AIDs, Malaria, Trauma, Vaccines and Toxins - The quest for a collective simillimum
- Hume, David - 6th sense versus the other senses
- Hume, David - Decision making and what influences the Will
- Hume, David - on empathy
- James, William - The Varieties of Religious Experience - Emotion and decision making
- James, William - The Varieties of Religious Experience - Fanaticism vs loyalty
- James, William - The Varieties of Religious Experience - The effects of high emotion
- James, William - The Varieties of Religious Experience - Willing vs wishing
- Kant, Immanuel - Quotes - Where is the soul?
- Khan, Hazrat Inayat - The Mysticism of Sound and Music - On 'vibrations'
- Koestler, Arthur - Misc. Quote - High emotion
- Leibniz - The Monadology - 03
- Lethbridge, T C - ESP Beyond Time and Distance – The Emotions
- Master Naong - Song of the Pure Land
- Monroe, Robert - Extreme emotion has physical bodily effects
- Monroe, Robert - Human M field energy
- Morrells, Luce and feeling the vibes of the crypt at Glastonbury
- Naglowska, Maria de - The Light of Sex - On Justice and Contrast
- Nick Polizzi - An ayahuasca experience
- Pauli, Wolfgang - The pendulum extremes from the thug to the hermit
- Plato - Timaeus - Reincarnation
- Plotinus - Eighth Tractate - On emotion and will
- Plotinus - The Enneads - On death
- Poimandres - Hermes Trismegistus
- Reid, Gall, Mill, Bain and Hack-Tuke – On the nature of the Will
- Research paper - Visual Awareness and the Detection of Fearful Faces
- Romano, Jacques - Communication with the dead
- Schelling, F W J - Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom – Contrast, including attraction and repulsion, and the passions
- Schopenhauer, Arthur - The World as Will and Idea - Memories and emotions
- Schopenhauer, Arthur - The World as Will and Idea - On motives
- Schrodinger, Erwin - Mind and Matter - Where is the Personality
- Shah, Idries - The Sufis - On Psychokinesis
- Spinoza, Baruch - Ethics - The nature of intellect
- Stockham, Alice Bunker - Karezza - On the spirit and the soul
- Swedenborg, Emanuel - The Infinite - Where is the intellect?
- The Cloud of unknowing
- The Cloud of unknowing
- The Heart of Prajñāpāramitā - 'Gone, gone, gone to the other shore, gone together to the other shore.
- The Kybalion - The Law of the Pendulum
- The Song of Great Dao - Gao, Lian - Ming Dynasty
- Thousands of Golden Important Prescriptions for Emergency; Scroll no 27, Temperament cultivation
- Tom Lethbridge and the Ghoul of Ladram beach
- William Collins - An Ode for Music
- Yeats, Georgie - A Vision - 2 Meditation
- Yeats, Georgie - A Vision - 3 Dreaming back
- Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - Book I - Sutras 01 to 51
- Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - Book III - Sutras 01 to 55
- Yuasa, Professor Yasuo - Emotions and health