How does one talk so that another person listens and understands? How does one listen? How does one know if he has been heard and understood?

These are all points about communication that have never before been analyzed or explained.

People have known that communication is an important part of life but until now no one has ever been able to tell anyone how to communicate.

Until Scientology, the subject of communication had received no emphasis or study. Any attention given to it was mechanical and the province of engineers. Yet all human endeavor depends utterly on a full knowledge of the real basics of communication.

To master communication, one must understand it.

In Scientology, communication has been defined – an accomplishment that has led to a much deeper understanding of life itself.

Communication, in essence, is the shift of a particle from one part of space to another part of space. A particle is the thing being communicated. It can be an object, a written message, a spoken word or an idea. In its crudest definition, this is communication.

This simple view of communication leads to the full definition:

Communication is the consideration and action of impelling an impulse or particle from source-point across a distance to receipt-point, with the intention of bringing into being at the receipt-point a duplication and understanding of that which emanated from the source-point.

Duplication is the act of reproducing something exactly. Emanated means “came forth.”

The formula of communication is cause, distance, effect, with intention, attention and duplication with understanding.

The definition and formula of communication open the door to understanding this subject. By dissecting communication into its component parts, we can view the function of each and thus more clearly understand the whole.

Any communication involves a particle which can be in one of four categories: an object. . .

. . . a written message. . .

. . . a spoken word. . .

. . . or an idea.

Any successful communication contains all the elements shown here. Any failure to communicate can be analyzed against these components to isolate what went wrong.