There is no short-cut to identifying emotions. It is a long and hard process of becoming more and more aware of the influences that are associated with important beliefs, attitudes and behaviours (minor beliefs, etc, do not carry much emotional weight and so will be exceedingly hard to examine). Insight / intuition is needed. And the development of insight / intuition is a slow process, requiring perseverance and single-mindedness. [²]

Empiricism

As an example of empiricism I give an analysis of the effects of two common food chemicals. I use caffeine to illustrate the influence that mood has on the ingestion of drugs, particularly mood-changing ones. Contrary to popular belief caffeine does not give energy ; caffeine just makes the person use up their reserves. By experiment I found that the effect of it on the nervous system depends upon the psychological mood of the person at the time of drinking the tea or coffee or cola.

• If the mood is one of shock: then caffeine is beneficial.
• If the subconscious mood is fear: then caffeine eases the fear, but drains the body of energy by inducing a low blood-sugar reaction, hypoglycaemia.
• If the subconscious mood is pride (mode of hate): then caffeine produces pain around the heart ; however, when the intensity of the pride is low, then no pain is felt.

The intensity of the reactions above depends upon the amount of caffeine that is drunk and the intensity of the person’s mood. For myself, when pride (mode of hate) is intense then two cups of moderately strong tea will often generate incipient heart pain.

The other food chemical that I experimented with was vitamin C. Many nutritionists consider that high level dosages (500 milligrammes or more) of vitamin C are harmless. This is not my view. During my 30s and 40s my gums were always a problem: they were in poor condition, receding, and bled easily, often swelling up. This was in part a sensitivity to acid fruits and to vitamin C tablets. What confused me for a long time was that vitamin C is often recommended as a treatment for bleeding gums – but the more vitamin C that I took the more gum trouble I had. I found that drinking acid fruit juice upset my stomach and furred up my tongue.

Apart from making my gums bleed, acid fruits and drinks and vitamin C (in excess of about 50 milligrammes) affected my biting pressure: chewing became painful. Once, on holiday, I breakfasted solely on a half litre of grapefruit juice ; when lunchtime arrived I almost cried with pain as I chewed my salad.

By experiment I finally resolved my gum difficulty. If I took too much vitamin C (100 milligrammes or more) the gums bled easily ; if my intake of vitamin C was insufficient then the gums became puffy and swollen, and my tongue became sensitive to the sharp edges of the teeth.

A tomato a day was usually sufficient to keep my gums healthy, except in winter when I had to supplement it with the occasional vitamin C tablet (50 milligrammes). Then once my gums improved I found that I could tolerate a higher level of vitamin C, up to 250 milligrammes.

Tomatoes remain the only citrus fruit that cause me no problem. Therefore, high levels of vitamin C are only beneficial to the gums if the gums are already healthy. The poorer the condition of the gums, the smaller the dosage of vitamin C that is tolerated without harmful effects.

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