Loading ...
Sirius-C ...
Other
Idiot Guides
29
1
Try Now
Log In
Pricing
PIERRE F. WALTER THE IDIOT GUIDE TO CONSCIOUSNESS Awareness Guide / Selfhelp Textbook Public Domain Edition https://ipublicachannel.wordpress.com Contact Information Pierre F. Walter pierrefwalter@gmail.com Quotation Suggestion Pierre F. Walter, The Idiot Guide to Consciousness: An Awareness Guide, 2010 About the Author Pierre F. Walter is an author, international lawyer, researcher, corporate trainer, and lec- turer. After finalizing studies in German Law, International Law and European integration with diplomas obtained in 1981 through 1983, he graduated in December 1987 at the Law Facul- ty of the University of Geneva as Docteur en Droit in international law. The doctorate was funded by scholarships from the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law, Lausanne, and from the University of Geneva, as well as a Fulbright Travel Grant for an assistantship with Professor Louis B. Sohn at UGA Law School Department of International Law, Athens, Georgia, USA, in 1985. Pierre F. Walter also served as a research assistant to Freshfields, Bruckhaus, De- ringer, Cologne, Germany in 1983 and to Lalive Lawyers, Geneva, in 1987. Pierre F. Walter writes and lectures in English, German and French languages; he has written more than ten thousand pages embracing all literary genres, including novels, short stories, film scripts, essays, selfhelp books, monographs and extended book reviews. Also a pianist and composer, he has realized 40 CDs with jazz, newage and relaxation music. Pierre F. Walter’s professional publications span the domains International Law, Criminal Law, Holistic Science, Psychology, Edu- cation, Shamanism, Ecology, Spirituality, Quantum Physics, Sys- tems Theory, Natural Healing, Peace Research, Personal Growth, Selfhelp and Consciousness Research. 110 Book Reviews, thirty– eight audio books and more than hundred video lectures were real- ized in the years 2005–2010. Besides, Pierre F. Walter is author and editor of Great Minds Series, which features scientists, artists and authors of genius from Leonardo to Fritjof Capra. Pierre F. Walter publishes via his Delaware firm Sirius–C Media Galaxy LLC and the imprints IPUBLICA and Sirius–C Media (SCM). To All True Seekers of Truth Contents | 5 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 22 What is Consciousness? 22 What is Consciousness? 23 Patterns of Perception 25 Overview 32 CHAPTER ONE 35 Krishnamurti’s Concept of Conscious- ness 35 Introduction 36 The Way of Fear 42 The Content of Consciousness 46 Split Consciousness 50 The Individual and Collective Unconscious 53 Example One Example Two The Role of Emotions 57 Emptying Consciousness of its Content? 58 Points to Ponder 66 CHAPTER TWO 69 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Liv- ing 69 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 6 Introduction 70 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living 76 1) Autonomy 2) Ecstasy 3) Energy 4) Language 5) Love 6) Pleasure 7) Self–Regulation 8) Touch The Autonomy Pattern 82 The Ecstasy Pattern 88 The Energy Pattern 97 The Language Pattern 101 The Love Pattern 109 Culture and Pleasure Pleasure–Denial and Violence Compulsory Sex Morality Anthropological Evidence Love Osmosis Love versus Morality Rebuilding Trust The Pleasure Pattern 121 The Self–Regulation Pattern 138 The Touch Pattern 150 Points to Ponder 159 CHAPTER THREE 164 Contents | 7 Consciousness and Shaman- ism 164 Introduction 165 What is Ayahuasca? 167 An Ayahuasca Experience 172 Hypothesis 184 The Consciousness Theory 192 1) The Ayahuasca Preparation 2) The Lasting Trance 3) The Shamanic Treatments 4) Focus and Intent 5) The Strange Reception 6) The Hypnotic View 7) Hypnosis and Natural Healing 8) Medical Hypnosis Summary 210 The Cognitive Experience 214 Alien Noise and Pulsation The Five Depth Levels Calling Me in Touch Freeing from Conditioning Love, Life and Relationships Literature Review 223 Points to Ponder 231 CHAPTER FOUR 235 The Spiritual Laws of Matri- archy 235 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 8 Introduction 236 The Lunar Bull 241 Historical Turn 249 Murder of the Goddess 252 The Murder Culture 265 The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy 269 Bull and Serpent 273 Points to Ponder 280 CHAPTER FIVE 282 Processed Reali- ty 282 Introduction 283 Processing Reality 285 Pitfalls of Perception 291 The Memory Matrix Processed Reality Self–Fulfilling Prophecies Unconscious Repetition Urges Spiritual Pitfalls 302 Churches Sects Gurus Saviors Ideological Pitfalls 308 Emotional Pitfalls 312 The Myths of Worldwide Democracy 315 Contents | 9 The Myth of Child Protection The Myth of Civilization The Myth of Control The Myth of Culture The Myth of Education The Myth of Morality The Myth of Normalcy The Myth of Poverty The Myths of Religion The Myth of Science Creating Reality 332 Points to Ponder 341 CHAPTER SIX 344 The Webolu- tion 344 The Fruit of Frustration 345 Self–Publishing 347 Unity.com 352 The Old Paradigm The New Paradigm Economy, Trade and World Peace A Cultural Revolution 364 Points to Ponder 368 CHAPTER SEVEN 371 A New Conscious- ness | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 10 371 On Consciousness 372 §1 §2 §3 §4 §5 §6 §7 §8 §9 §10 §11 §12 §13 §14 §15 §16 §17 On Love 377 §1 §2 §3 §4 §5 §6 §7 §8 §9 Contents | 11 §10 §11 §12 §13 §14 On Power 382 §1 §2 §3 §4 On Science 384 §1 §2 On Health 386 §1 §2 §3 §4 §5 §6 §7 §8 §9 §10 On Emotions 390 §1 §2 §3 §4 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 12 §5 On Peace 393 §1 §2 §3 §4 §5 Points to Ponder 396 WORK SHEETS 398 Doing the Work Your Ultimate Decision 399 Your Ultimate Decision and Contract Your Needs 401 Your Needs Statement Your Expectations 403 Your Expectations Statement Raising Your General Awareness Level 405 Your General Awareness Statement Raising Your Erotic Awareness Level 406 Your Erotic Awareness Statement Raising Your Socioeconomic Awareness Level 407 Your Socioeconomic Awareness Statement Raising Your Sociopolitical Awareness Level 408 Your Sociopolitical Awareness Statement Raising Your Body Awareness Level 409 Your Body Awareness Statement Raising Your Emotional Self–Awareness 410 Your Emotional Self–Awareness Statement Raising Your Group Awareness Level 411 Your Group Awareness Statement Contents | 13 RESEARCH FAQ 412 Frequently Asked Ques- tions 412 Part One 413 Child Sexuality and Child Abuse Q–01. Do you endorse or defend child abuse? 413 Q–02. What is your motivation for researching about sexual abuse? 413 Q–03. What is your solution? 414 Q–04. What do you think about political solutions? 414 Q–05. Why do some people feel uncomfortable about child sexuality? 415 Q–06. Why do adult–child sexual interactions have to be socially coded? 417 Q–07. Is your sociopolitical agenda different from that of pedophile groups? 418 Q–08. What are the main points where you differ in terms of strategy? 419 Q–09. Is there any message you would want to give to childlovers? 421 Q–10. Why are you against child protection? 423 Q–11. Do you opt for modernizing laws of consent or for abolishing them? 429 Q–12. It is often argued sex was dangerous for children. Do you agree? 430 Q–13. How then to cope responsibly with children’s sexual life? 432 Part Two 434 Myths and Reality About Adult–Child Erotic Attraction Myth One 434 Reali- ty 434 Myth Two 435 Reali- ty 435 Myth Three 436 Reali- ty 436 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 14 Myth Four 437 Reali- ty 437 Myth Five 438 Reali- ty 438 Myth Six 440 Reali- ty 440 Myth Sev- en 441 Reali- ty 441 Myth Eight 443 Reali- ty 443 Myth Nine 443 Reali- ty 443 Part Three 445 Selfhelp and Life Authoring Q–01. What is the basic technique of Life Authoring? 445 Q–02. What are the main benefits of Life Authoring? 445 Q–03. Can Life Authoring change evolutionary or karmic patterns? 446 Q–04. How does Life Authoring handle asocial emotions or urges? 446 Q–05. Does Life Authoring alter consciousness? 446 Q–06. Does Life Authoring impact positively on our emotions? 447 Q–07. Is Life Authoring a subtle form of brainwashing? 447 Q–08. How to reach the deeper levels of the mind? 447 Q–09. How do I get in touch with my inner voices? 448 Contents | 15 Q–10. What are the dangers of Life Authoring or its side–effects? 448 Q–11. What is the minimum amount of Life Authoring work to get results? 448 Q–12. Does Life Authoring enhance creativity? 449 Q–13. How long should Life Authoring be done? 449 Q–14. Is Life Authoring a psychological treatment or a therapy? 449 Q–15. Is there is difference between self–improvement and Life Authoring? 449 Q–16. Does Life Authoring enhance flexibility? 451 ANNEX 1 452 Life Authoring Sam- ples 452 Life Authoring FAQ 453 Q–01. What is the basic technique of Life Authoring? 453 Q–02. What are the main benefits of Life Authoring? 453 Q–03. Can Life Authoring change evolutionary or karmic patterns? 453 Q–04. How does Life Authoring handle asocial emotions or urges? 454 Q–05. Does Life Authoring alter consciousness? 454 Q–06. Does Life Authoring impact positively on our emotions? 455 Q–07. Is Life Authoring a subtle form of brainwashing? 455 Q–08. How to reach the deeper levels of the mind? 455 Q–09. How do I get in touch with my inner voices? 456 Q–10. What are the dangers of Life Authoring or its side–effects? 456 Q–11. What is the minimum amount of Life Authoring work to get results? 456 Q–12. Does Life Authoring enhance creativity? 457 Q–13. How long should Life Authoring be done? 457 Q–14. Is Life Authoring a psychological treatment or a therapy? 457 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 16 Q–15. Is there is difference between self–improvement and Life Authoring? 457 Q–16. Does Life Authoring enhance flexibility? 459 Inner Dialogue Samples 460 Spontaneous Artwork Samples 469 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 Spontaneous Composing Samples 472 ANNEX 2 473 The Personal Coach 473 The Yelloway Guide 474 General Instructions How Can I Be More Useful? How Can I Lose Weight? How Can I Stop Smoking? How Can I Be Happy Sexually? How Can I Lead A Life of Fulfillment? How Can I Solve Financial Problems? How Can I Become Independent? How Can I Become and Remain Healthy? The Two Powers 484 Contents | 17 Breathing and Eat- ing 484 Power One Breath- ing 485 The Essential Philosophy of Ch’i Gung My Personal Experience 1) Ch’i Gung 1 2) Orhiba 3) Ch’i Gung 2 4) Ch’i Gung 3 5) Ch’i Gung 4 6) Ch’i Gung 5 7) Tao Yoga Power Two Eat- ing 496 Author Your Life Support 500 Session One : Accept Yourself Session Two : Develop Vision Session Three : Be Different | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 18 Session Four : Communicate Session Five : Program Yourself Session Six : Forgive Session Seven : Assume Power CombiRel for Managers 505 Relaxation or Meditation? Benefits of Combirel Worn out? Handle Your Brain The Brain Gym Method Cross Crawl Cross–Crawl Crunch Focusing 510 1/6 Claim a Space 2/6 Feel & Sense 3/6 Put a Handle 4/6 Get Feedback 5/6 Ask Question 6/6 Receive Answer Some Truths About Life 517 Growth is Nonlinear Living Systems are Self–Regulatory Intelligence is Self–Organizing Emotions are Intelligent Coaching Objective 519 My Coaching Soup Emosexcoaching What is Emosexcoaching? Is Emosexcoaching only for Pedophiles? Contents | 19 Self–Coaching Rules Building Trust Our ‘Musical’ Self BIBLIOGRAPHY 529 General Bibliogra- phy 529 FROM THE SAME AUTHOR 613 A Bibliogra- phy 613 SYNOPSIS 615 12 Guides–Audio–Video 615 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living, Audio Book, 2010 Consciousness and Shamanism, Audio Book, 2010 The Lunar Bull, Audio Book, 2010 Processed Reality, Audio Book, 2010 The Webolution, Audio Book, 2010 Notes on Consciousness, Audio Book, 2010 Potentiel et créativité, Livre Audio, 2010 The Star Script, Audio Book, 2010 Emotional Flow, Audio Book, 2010 Emonics, Audio Book, 2010 Child Play, Audio Book, 2010 Le Jardin infâme, Livre Audio, 2010 The I Ching’s Perennial Pro–Life Code, Audio Book, 2010 Minotaur Unveiled, Audio Book, 2010 Oedipal Hero, Audio Book, 2010 The Hero Culture, Audio Book, 2010 Sane Child vs. Insane Society, Audio Book, 2010 Une Éducation amoureuse, Livre Audio, 2010 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 20 Reich’s Greatest Discoveries, Audio Book, 2010 Orgonomy and Schizophrenia, Audio Book, 2010 Creative Prayer, Audio Book, 2010 Soul Jazz, Audio Book, 2010 Power or Depression?, Audio Book, 2010 The Drug Trap, Audio Book, 2010 The Aquarius Age, Audio Book, 2010 Love and Morality, Audio Book, 2010 Love or Laws?, Audio Book, 2010 The Legal Split in Child Protection, Audio Book, 2010 Fusion und Individuation, Audiobuch, 2010 Relations sans fusion, Livre Audio, 2010 Macht oder Ohnmacht, Audiobuch, 2010 Das Kaleidoskop der Emotionen, Audiobuch, 2010 Die Ödipale Kultur, Audiobuch, 2010 Die ödipale Kultur, Audiobuch, 2010 Notes 679 Annota- tions 679 Analysis brings no curative powers in its train; it merely makes us con- scious of the existence of an evil, which, oddly enough, is conscious- ness. – HENRY MILLER INTRODUCTION What is Consciousness? What is Consciousness? | 23 What is Consciousness? The question was raised not long ago in the popular movie What the Bleep Do We Know?! It was answered hesitantly, by most scientists. Some 1 even seemed to be puzzled about the straightforwardness of the question. It’s similar to asking somebody ‘What is the sun’? There is much uncer- tainty, to be true, about what consciousness really is. The only thing we know for sure is that human consciousness is self–reflective, that it mirrors itself as it were, that it can ask itself in question, and that it can thereby effect and further its own evolution. This is a smart thing to happen, and it’s perhaps what most distinguishes human consciousness from any other consciousness on the planet, and in the universe. The second thing that today is assumed with certainty is that while plants and animals and even inanimate matter do have consciousness, that kind of consciousness does not have the quality of self–reflectiveness. While consciousness is much older than humanity, self–reflective con- sciousness grew with human evolution. However, we do not precisely know when in time and space we can say that the human being was con- scious. What we know about it is that it embraces our perception appara- tus, the whole sensory input mechanism, which is a highly complex net- work of neuronal connections linked to our sensory organs. This is how we perceive the world; but our perception cannot be neutral. It is part of cognition and emotional cognition in a way that the one cannot be sepa- rated from the other. The result is that all our beliefs, thoughts, and emo- tions have an immediate impact upon our perception. Hence, the question is if perception can ever be objective and imme- diate, bypassing this whole process of cognition? My research on this matter showed me that indeed, within native populations, certain excep- tional persons called shamans have the capacity of direct perception; they See Pierre F. Walter, Do You Love Einstein?, Monograph (2010), Chapter Six, where I pro 1 - vide a detailed analysis and critique of the movie. | Introduction 24 perceive reality without the usual filters, in a direct immediate way that bypasses the thought interface. 2 See Pierre F. Walter, The Science of Shamanism, Monograph (2010). 2 What is Consciousness? | 25 Patterns of Perception Perception is a topic scarcely discussed in modern science. And yet it is a primary research topic. At the same time, it is one of the foremost sub- jects of true spirituality, the spirituality that is truth–seeking, not the one that is dogmatic and salvational. Traditionally, this kind of spirituality was rather bound to the East, especially India, while the Occident was rather addicted to the salvation- al, dogmatic and moralizing kind of religion. And these trends are still valid today. The Vedas, while written in a poetic language, are scientific in nature and proceed scientifically. Hinduism deals extensively with per- ception. Even such a modern spiritual teacher as Krishnamurti devoted a great part of his teaching to the modes of perception and the factors that influence and manipulate perception. Krishnamurti’s teaching, despite its apparently revolutionary charac- ter, is based upon tradition. In fact, his teaching is a logical continuation of the teaching of the Buddha, and a psychological application of Vedanta. And Buddha’s teaching, how can it be otherwise, of course dealt with perception! In the West, the obvious absence of any scientific in–depth study of the holistic process of perception has various reasons, one of them being the general focus of modern science upon mere information processing. It is self–evident that mechanistic science can only look at the causal effects be- tween the information that is stored in the memory surface, and the im- pact this knowledge has on our mind. Only holistic science can go beyond that limitation and see all the non–causal factors involved in perception, for example the complexity with how our human memory surface processes and integrates new information. Contrary to common belief, holistic science is not Utopia, nor rele- gated to a future society. It is part of perennial philosophy and has existed before Aristotle depleted it in the West, and Confucius in the East. This holistic science was part of the greatest culture on earth that ever existed, Minoan Civilization. This holistic knowledge about life and living was based | Introduction 26 upon direct perception. What is direct perception? Direct perception is our natural and most intelligent mode of perception. New research has fully corroborated the teaching of the old sages who said that learning must be holistic and whole brain in order to be truly effective. We can only wonder when we learn that generally we use only be- tween about five to eight percent of our brain or of our creativity re- sources. Why are we so unproductive, so utterly ineffective in our creativi- ty, in our performance, in our schools and universities, in our collective achievements, despite the process called civilization, despite the introduc- tion of school systems more than five hundred years ago, despite the printing press, Gutenberg and all the rest of it? It seems that after all we have remained in a truly primitive state of evolution or that our evolution was once thwarted. In fact, there was a historical shift around two millennia ago that led to a trend away from direct perception and toward information processing, archiving or mere in- formation reproduction. The answer is clear: because we have based this nonsensical patriar- chal civilization upon information processing instead of founding it on the laws of direct perception. A child does really not need Gutenberg to learn their first language because it is picked up in a process of direct perception, by chunks, by patterns, by passive awareness. And not by conscious infor- mation reception, by instilled tidbits of grammar, by incoherent single elements that the human brain cannot readily perceive as it perceives what is coded in holistic patterns. Direct perception is patterned percep- tion. The purpose of this guide is to identify the causes of this tremendous waste of opportunity, and to show you how you can take action here and now to begin changing this state of affairs on an individual human level. Changing collective consciousness comes about through multiple and repeated individual changes of consciousness. Once a sufficient number of individuals have lifted their consciousness on a higher evolutionary level, there will be a major paradigm shift in the whole system that makes that group or collective consciousness will reproduce this shift on a collective What is Consciousness? | 27 or group level, a national or international level. This is how true civiliza- tion comes about, through changes and transformations of consciousness that occurred in single individuals and that gradually became collective. All begins in the cell and then expands to bigger patterns. Nature is programmed in a system of patterns that are holistically related to each other and where the information of the whole is contained in every single element of the pattern. The pattern structure is typical for the information the brain receives and stores. New information is added–on to existing information. Without such connections that in neurology are called preferred pathways, memory as we know it is not thinkable. The better the brain can manage to as- sociate new input with existing patterns of information, the better the information storage will be, and thus the higher will be the memorization result. Another fact about preferred pathways is that the information flow is dependent on the number of preferred pathways in the neuronet of the brain. These neuronal connections are built during the very first years of life and later can only be changed and expanded under very high intel- lectual effort. Hence the importance of effective, intelligent and whole– brain learning in early childhood. This insight naturally coincides with biographical genius research that evidently shows the fact that, first, all geniuses are very astute learners during their first years of life, and sec- ond, they are lucky enough to grow in the environment and emotional climate supportive for the growth of their genius. Our brain processes all intake of information automatically, passively, without a need for us to set a decision about it. So we are all naturally high–speed learners! This is tremendously important for understanding how our brain functions. There is namely a positive and a negative side about it. Positively, the passively organizing perception of our brain insures that we continuously receive and store information; continuously means without interruption, at any time of the day and the night. Also during sleep and even in deep coma all the information from the five senses is | Introduction 28 perceived and stored in the subconscious memory, or low self, that is al- ways awake, always active. So the apparently passive functioning of the brain is actually a dy- namically active process. The important point about it is that the organiz- er of the information is inside and not outside of the system. To make this more clear, let us take two groups of children. The first group is raised freely so that they can pick up any information freely from their environment and grow, from the information they get, into what they are destined for. The second group, however, is strictly regulated, protected and warded off from any unprocessed information. Which group, would you think, will be more intelligent and more creative, the first or the sec- ond one? Of course the first one. Simply because in their case their freely organizing and unhindered perception combined with the free flow of information, combined with high input made that their brains were working on high gear whereas in the second group creative learning pro- cesses have for the most part been impeded, blocked or even mutilated. In the first group the organizer of the information is inside, within the children in form of their higher intelligence and wisdom that directs them to receive all the information they need, shutting out all other in- formation; in the second group it is the adults who raise these children, their parents and teachers for the most part. We can also put it that way: in the first group it is divine intelligence that cares for those children’s evolution, in the second case however, it is limited and short–sighted hu- man willfulness. This simple example also shows which high impact the early envi- ronment has on the development of our intelligence and our later use of the potential we’ve got. I believe we all have got high or genial potential but only very few of us were exposed to the right combination of envi- ronmental support and have, in addition, developed the necessary cre- ative will for freeing themselves from the blindfolding trap of condition- ing. And we need both those factors working in a positive sense if we are to fully develop our talents and creational power. What is Consciousness? | 29 I am sure that people like Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso or Svjatoslav Richter, were they scored for the use of their cre- ative resources, would probably reach up to eighty or even more percent of usage, while for the common individual the four to eight percent might be realistic. One of the greatest errors of humanity consists in the 3 assumption that this state of affairs could not be changed and was pro- grammed into nature. Darwinism has contributed to create a kind of gigantic madness by building a huge evolutionary theory on this fundamental error, which is one of the most destructive and absurd lies about the human nature that have ever been thought of; and the hero cult has built it into the belief sys- tem of millions forming part and parcel of the modern and postmodern industrial culture. What is true is that every single human being has got this incredible power that enables us to every possible achievement, if only we set our minds to it and develop tremendous focus on realizing our creative will. In the past, perception was taught as a part of high–level spiritual teaching. This was certainly so in theosophy, but theosophy was in this point inspired by the oldest of spiritual traditions in India, as reflected in the Vedas. Typically, qualified gurus in India, when you talk to them, come very quickly to talk about perception and the pitfalls of perception, and for good reason. Without clear perception and a deliberate purifica- tion of the many projections that the untrained mind is suffering from, we cannot get an adequate picture of reality. What we get is smoke, said Krishnamurti. I would say we get a distorted picture of reality and in addition take this distorted picture, because of our natural observer bias as the reality. And we do this without seeing the relativity of our personal reality and the fact that all reality perceived by a human being is personal reality. Many mediums today transmit messages of similar content. The richest to be found here is perhaps what Jane Roberts transcribed from See also Pierre F. Walter, Do You Love Einstein? Creative Insights on Perennial Wisdom, Human 3 Genius and the Quantum Field, Monograph (2010). | Introduction 30 the SETH spirit in her books The Nature of Personal Reality (1974/1994) and The Nature of the Psyche (1979/1996). 4 Today, the importance of perception, and consciousness about the observer bias form more and more part of an expanded and holistic sci- ence paradigm. The paradigm shift in consciousness research has come about mainly through quantum physics, which shows that the observer is always entangled in the process of observation and cannot, as Newtonian science believed, be isolated from it. This has been made very clear also in a recent popular film entitled What the Bleep Do We Know!? When we 5 begin to understand that on the level of consciousness, which also has been called the quantum level, all is connected, we cannot seriously contin- ue to give our children a highly fragmented education, but we have to take the learning of geniuses and genius children as examples of how to structure new learning curricula. It will then become obvious that we have to form links between all matters to be learnt by associative networks rather than presenting the learn- ing stuff in a linear and logical, or hierarchical manner. This will natural- ly imply and strengthen the right brain hemisphere in children that in traditional education is badly neglected if not outright shunned by the obsessional focus upon left–brain deductive logic and isolated topic– based memorization. Memorization, then, that is in accordance with the natural learning capabilities of our brain, will be based on a better understanding of pre- ferred pathways, neuronal connections and their intelligence, the insight in the non–hierarchical nature of life and all knowledge about life, a systems See also Wendy Munro, Journey into a New Millennium (Transmissions from Sirius): A Cosmic 4 Account of the Millennial Transformation for Humanity and Planet Earth (1997) and Pierre F. Wal- ter, Wendy Munro and the New Millennium, Book Review (2010). See also Dean Radin, Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality (2006) 5 and Pierre F. Walter, Dean Radin and Psychic Research, Book Reviews (2010). What is Consciousness? | 31 view of life and last not least, the ultimate insight that all true intelligence is patterned intelligence. 6 Fritjof Capra is one of the leading science authors who has presented and elaborated 6 the systems view of life in his books, referencing many more specialized authors. See Pierre F. Walter, Fritjof Capra and the Systems View of Life, Book Reviews (2010). | Introduction 32 Overview In Chapter One, Krishnamurti’s Concept of Consciousness, I show that J. Krishnamurti was professing his capacity to access reality not through thought but through the space in–between thoughts, in moments when ‘the other’ spontaneously manifests. Krishnamurti thought that for this to happen we had to ‘empty consciousness of its content’, a somewhat mis- leading formulation the validity of which I am going to discuss in some detail. In Chapter Two, Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living, I present and out- line in detail my research on the eight dynamic patterns of living. I found these patterns in the lifestyle of most tribal peoples around the world. These eight patterns, which are autonomy, ecstasy, energy, language, love, plea- sure, self–regulation and touch, have never been recognized as positive values in most dominator cultures, including our postmodern international con- sumer culture. I am saying that it is precisely because we do do not inte- grate the eight patterns as basic regulators of life that we are at the border of mass destruction, insanity and ecological disaster. In Chapter Three, entitled Consciousness and Shamanism, I explain the role of shamanism and shamanic techniques of ecstasy for opening our perception to non–judgmental direct access to reality, through the intake of psychedelic compounds within the right set and setting. It is important to note the extraordinary awareness–boosting quality of entheogens and their capacity to decondition us, rendering us sensible to the powerful intuitions from inside. I namely consider this capacity as our true emotional intelligence. In Chapter Four, entitled The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy, I venture into a detailed analysis of the mythological content of reality, as it is an element of our collective unconscious. I am asking if our cultural condi- tioning has precluded us from experiencing direct undistorted perception; if yes, I am asking further if that means as a result that we necessarily see reality through the patriarchal dominator overlay of our modern consumer culture? The alternative namely is to activate through consciousness the What is Consciousness? | 33 pre–patriarchal cultural conditioning, which is commonly called matriarchy, and that is according to Joseph Campbell still available and accessible in our psyche as a counterplayer. I show in this chapter also what I have more ex- tensively exposed in my monograph Natural Order (2010), that patriarchy was a relatively short–termed madness in a total universal order of cosmic in- telligence far superior to the highly limited mechanistic stupidity of patri- archal machismo as it still today governs our political agendas worldwide. In Chapter Five, entitled Processed Reality, I tackle the same problem with another set of questions. The first question I am asking is if human conscious perception can be ‘pure’ in the sense that it can perceive reality ‘as is’, in an objective manner, or if our perception is rather a ‘condi- tioned device’ that once metered, will respond only in the way we expect it to respond, filtering out any content we do not wish to see. From this point of departure, I question current sociopolitical assumptions around the topic of Worldwide Democracy as a political slogan. This is not to answer if we need democracy or not, but serves the cognitive perception of what democracy really implies, and what it does not imply. I namely unveil a number of myths around that theme of ‘worldwide democracy’, which are each a blind spot in our perception interface, because conceptions and slogans impact upon our belief system, thereby distorting our innate and as it were innocent perception of sociopolitical realities. In Chapter Six, entitled The Webolution, I retrace the development of the Internet as a self–publishing forum. I focus more specifically on the consciousness–enhancing effects of this entirely new and daring way of self–expression ‘for everybody’. I show that the Internet is a real publish- ing alternative, except perhaps academic publishing in the traditional sense, and that, besides, the Internet can be compared with the United Nations, representing a new international ‘organization’ that was created ‘from the bottom up’, while all former world unification efforts were cre- ated ‘from the top down’, and this is especially so in the case of the Unit- ed Nations. There is a certain probability that through a later supranational politi- cal will and cooperation, this steadily growing united Internet community could form the basis for a united world that operates without national borders, and under a world | Introduction 34 government, then to be established as a natural regulatory force that is agreed upon by all. In so far, I come to the conclusion that the Internet is truly revolu- tionary in what it has brought about, and can be of great service to the further evolution of humanity into a true global brotherhood. In Chapter Seven, entitled A New Consciousness, I present some intu- itive insights on consciousness, peace, love, science and other topics that rose up in my mind in a state of relaxation, when I was receptive to my inner voices and insights. The 10 Worksheets help you recapitulate all seven chapters includ- ing three introductory work sheets that serve for consciousness–opening, motivation–building and insight in personal needs. The Bibliography is shared for all my publications, and contains all my research references. From The Same Author is a short reference to my literary produc- tion, including my audio books. video channels and podcasting episodes. The Guides–Audio–Video Synopsis shows the relationship be- tween audio books, videos and their published text, for all the twelve guides. CHAPTER ONE Krishnamurti’s Concept of Consciousness | Chapter One 36 Introduction The influence of Krishnamurti’s unique teaching on my life and my whole thinking and acting cannot be underestimated. It is neither a whimsy turn of intellectual curiosity nor does it result from a need to fill my life with so–called spirituality. In the contrary was I one of those who insisted, during the two years I was a member of a Krishnamurti circle in Switzerland, on the practical applicability of his teaching. And while I was not very apt to make my point as a newcomer to this illustrious soci- ety of nobles, writers, educators, artists and high–rank industrials, my point was strong enough to divide the group in two camps: those who, like me, wanted to emphasize and show to others the practical value of K’s teaching, and those who venerated K like a saint and were frequently engaged with spiritual trips to other saints, gurus and psychic healers. 7 It was in autumn 1984 when, after a nervous breakdown I suffered because of the difficulties of my international law doctorate in Geneva, my life began to change. I was going through a personal renaissance that was gradually encompassing all realms of my life. The disaster of my marriage was making room to new feelings and new desires, and a deci- sion to divorce, my doctorate was taking a new creative turn, and my pro- fessional life was enriched through a definite orientation toward educa- tion that was going to become the basis for my later career as a coach, lecturer and inspirational speaker. I was attending conferences and uni- versity classes in psychology and child psychology and began to work with children in schools, kindergartens and families. In addition, I gradu- ated in Early Child Care during my international law studies in the United States. Shortly before I left Switzerland for my journey to the United States in 1985, I met Raffaela Ida Sangiorgi, Princess of Liechtenstein, the wife of Prince Alfred of Liechtenstein, a long–term member of the group. I was pre- For more details, see Pierre F. Walter, Krishnamurti, Vedanta and the Denial of Pleasure, Schol 7 - arly Article (2010). Krishnamurti’s Concept of Consciousness | 37 sented to her one afternoon, during a Krishnamurti study session in the splendid villa of entrepreneur Friedrich Grohe in Morges at the Lake Gene- va, where we met two times per month for our exchanges on K’s unique teaching. There was a spontaneous sympathy and even enchantment on both sides and we separated from the group soon and had some more intimate discussions in another room where we were undisturbed. I was highly intrigued by the fact that the Princess and her husband had known K for long years and hosted him often times in their premises. And instead of talking about him as a venerated saint and guru, she spoke about K affectionately, and told me little anecdotes about his life. For example, she told me that once she discovered that one of her pre- cious diamonds was not shining anymore, and had become blind and dull. And K suggested in his habitual simple style she should leave the diamond ring with him for a few days and then see the result. K put the ring and returned it after three days, she explained, and the diamond had become so brilliant and was glowing with such tremendous luminosity that it seemed to be a higher grade of stone than it actually was. Yet the Princess, who spoke a very pure German, counted this little anecdote in rather factual terms and without the glare that others in the circle made up about the great sage. And after our little conversation we summarized our position. We wanted to imprint a rather practical or pragmatic stance upon the group, so as to become more effective in our studies of K’s teaching. After that interesting exchange, the Princess invited me for dinner to her spacious Geneva apartment, and on that occasion I learnt not only more details about K’s life and teaching, but also about the Princess’ journeys in spiritual and psychotherapeutic realms. She had been a long– standing client of Karlfried Graf Dürckheim, the famous German psychoan- alyst, and she possessed intimate knowledge of the spiritual teaching of theosophy, as well as the writings and life stories of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Annie Besant and Reverend Charles W. Leadbeater. A huge weaving loom centered the space of her elegant living room. She told me she was | Chapter One 38 doing weaving on the loom regularly as a therapeutic technique, as this was a central element in Dürckheim’s psychotherapy. I had told the Princess about my interest in education and she was enthusiastic about the idea to realize what she called ‘her dream’, a Kr- ishnamurti school in Switzerland. This was in fact the main project of the circle and I can only say with deep sadness that I regret that these peo- ple’s enthusiasm for the project was hitting granite; the school was never established, for the mere fact that a competent director for the school that everybody could agree upon, could not be found. This was really tragic as there was such a strong common desire to do something for reforming education as most members of the circle be- longed to the older generation and had children on their own, and even grandchildren. Yet they were not satisfied with the school system and found it truly damaging for developing the child’s unique soul values and intrinsic personal gifts and talent. We also agreed that the general school system was detrimental to children’s natural sensitiveness and their nat- ural direct perception of reality. On two occasions, teachers from Brockwood Park School in England and from the Krishnamurti Schools in Madras and Bangalore, India, were invited, and we had vivid discussions about the meaning and practice of educating children in accordance with K’s teaching. And we found that in practice things were turning out very differently compared to the theo- ry and that success was also a factor of the culture and the individual strengths and character of the teachers. In general, I was impressed by the teachers from India as they had encountered much greater opposition initially to setting up their unique concept than this was the case with Brockwood in England. Not to forget, England has a Summerhill School that initiated, when it was setup by Alexander S. Neill, a true revolution in education. India 8 never has had anything comparable. But the teachers agreed that both cultures were and are extremely repressive as to helping children to han- See Alexander S. Neill, Summerhill (1984), Summerhill School (1995). 8 Krishnamurti’s Concept of Consciousness | 39 dle, channel and express their emotions, as this was a strong cultural taboo both in England and in India. Krishnamurti’s teaching was critical in my life in the sense that, as we had discussed it in the circle in several sessions, I was facing the same self–criticism that I have seen in others who block themselves by the ar- gument of time, for example in the following terms: – Well, once I have solved my personal problems, I will be a good teacher and caretaker. When I voiced this statement, I was facing strong opposition in the circle and it was said that I had understood nothing of Krishnamurti’s teaching. Surprised and unsettled, I asked why? Then the Princess and an elder friend of her who had been a teacher for decades told me this: – If you want to wait until you have solved all your problems, you can wait until you die, and you will never even start to teach and to share! And they said that K repeated this simply truth often times. I had to acknowledge that I ignored it. And they put one of K’s talks in the video player, a tape I had not seen thus far, and all was becoming clear to me in minutes. I had blocked my educational creativity by this kind of destruc- tive self–talk. I had put up a time factor in self–development, something that other sages, including Zen sages, have held for highly destructive. Later I encountered the teaching of Ramana Maharshi that says something like: – Where are you now? Where you are now is what counts, and not where you are in some distant future. You can only grow from where you are now, not from what you wish to be in the future. The teaching of eternal presence is still more powerfully present with Zen masters, and two years later I was learning Zen meditation and saw the many parallels it has with the teaching of the great sages from India. 9 To finalize this introduction, let me shortly explain why I have writ- ten the present study about the teaching of Krishnamurti. There have been discussions in our study circle that left us stuck in controversy, de- See also Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (2004). 9 | Chapter One 40 spite of the goodwill and the personal contributions each of us tried to make for the common benefit of the group and, generally, for our various social and humanitarian endeavors. One of the points we debated upon was Krishnamurti’s understand- ing of what he called ‘emptying consciousness of its content’. As it is known in Krishnamurti circles even today, and as I have mentioned it already above, this part of K’s teaching is generally understood and in- terpreted as the insight in the total absence of time in any form of spiri- tual development. In this context, K used to say: J. Krishnamurti You can get there in a second, but not from your willpower, not from your conscious ego, but it comes, when it comes, spontaneously. I do not say that it comes for you, but time is surely not in play when this happens. Because when time is involved, thought is involved and thus the past. And then it’s all circular and you cannot experience novelty. For the un- known to unfold, you need to develop total attention for the present, without rejecting thought, because when you reject thought, you strengthen its power. So, when you look deeply into this, you see that time has no place in this kind of trans- formation, in this kind of psychological revolution. 10 Here is where the discussions started. Some of the members of the circle said they had known K from his youth and followed his teaching for thirty or more years, always trying to implement his philosophy in practice and yet, it had never happened as he said, in their own lives. Others opposed them saying it had been their own fault because they were stuck in this or that pattern, had run to a number of other gurus, had engaged in endless therapies with famous psychiatrists and wasted a lot of money for self–transformation and yet were unable to change even the faintest of their daily habits. Others again, younger ones, used to object something more general against K, saying that he had been ‘a privileged person’, and that, while he was an extraordinary human being and perhaps even more than a This is a summary, quoted from memory. 10 Krishnamurti’s Concept of Consciousness | 41 human being, his teaching was ‘not transmittable to others’ and for this reason was bound to Krishnamurti’s own extraordinary lucidity and spir- itual strength. I myself tried to see what was common in their positions so as to make sure our group would not get torn up by personal jealousies and differences but that we stayed committed to finding truth, each of us for himself or herself. And one day I came up, spontaneously, with the idea that emptying consciousness of its content as K put it literally, was an impossibility. And suddenly everybody was silent and you could virtually feel the air vibrate of tension. Somehow what I was saying resonated deep down with them, and they stopped debating and discussing, and we left each other in a differ- ent mood that one time, in a pensive and humble mood rather than self– assured in our petty little personal positions. What we were seeing sud- denly was that we all had been tricked by a simple misunderstanding about the meaning of that intriguing sentence. I will try to elucidate this point, after providing some more introduc- tion about Krishnamurti’s unique spiritual teaching. | Chapter One 42 The Way of Fear This chapter first of all elucidates K’s unique idea of psychological fear. There is no doubt that fear leaves a deep trace, or mold, in our uncon- scious. It sets up unnatural neuronal connections that usually manifest in the form of unconscious repetition urges in the psyche of people who are affected by fear. In most cases, this process starts already in the womb, when the fears of the mother are transmitted to the baby by streams of adrenaline in the blood. The way of fear then continues in childhood; it translates into the fear of the baby to be let alone, abandoned, forgotten. Then fear is fur- ther increased through education and the school system, which tradition- ally was based upon subduing individuals through instilling fear and awe of the sovereign, the spiritual representatives, the community leaders, the parents and teachers, and the divinity that was worshipped. Little has changed in this respect since the olden days; only the words have received a polish. Today the sovereign is the state, the spiritual authority is the psychiatric establishment and the divinity is the dollar. In the meantime the child has developed a defense system against fear. The mechanism that served the insecure and constantly aggressed child to survive in a hostile and child–hating world later turns against the person as the muscular and characterological armor will be suffocating her deepest emotions and strangle her inner child into catalepsy. The way of fear culminates in adulthood with the adaptation to the mainstream value system, social obligations and responsibilities. Aggres- sion, violence, intolerance and stupidity are the results of fear. Fear was nurtured carefully while all have forgotten about nurturing love. Fear makes love impossible and eats life up in chunks of paranoia. Instead of changing this course of events by changing child–rearing practices and schooling, humanity came up with theories such as ‘fear is part of man because of our inner animal that constantly lives in fear’ – and similar nonsense. All these theories served and serve to justify the present para- noid culture that is based upon fear and repression and that has killed life Krishnamurti’s Concept of Consciousness | 43 because it gradually strangled the joy of living by destroying the natural continuum of life. Present–day man is caught in psychological fear that is anchored in the collective subconscious. This fear has nothing to do with the animal realm; it is completely unknown in the animal realm. It exists only in the human race and the collective subconscious of humanity where it was pent up, like a collective abuse pattern since the beginnings of patriarchy, and thus since about five thousand years. However, not all human beings are subjected to the fear. The more our individual consciousness is devel- oped, the more we are free from the imprint by collective archetypes. People who have developed their creative potential in whichever field, who are individualized and walk their own ways instead of trotting the paths of the herd are immune against the fear. J. Krishnamurti has pioneered to closely examine the mechanism of man’s psychological fear. The result of his analysis is that psychological fear is a pattern stored in our memory surface and becomes reactivated over and over again through thought, through memory and the capacity of the human brain to create ideal virtual worlds. Consequently, these thought–created ‘best of all worlds’ enter in ob- vious contradiction with the visible reality man has created outwardly. From the split between ideal and reality rise up strife, despair and still more fear. This reasoning, as convincing as it seems, is confusing on first sight because the thought processes in the brains of free and creative people are basically the same as in the brains of unfree, fearful people. However, K found that while the thought process as such is the same in all people, the thought content is rather different. Following tightly Krishnamurti’s teaching, one gradually understands the fact that individuals who think and act holistically have more often than not gone through a transforma- tion that triggered their developing the capacities of total attention and sensitivity. We are thus left with the intriguing question of how such a transfor- mation of thought can be brought about? Or, to put it in precise terms: | Chapter One 44 how can the content of consciousness be altered so that a transformation of thought is brought about? Let me explore a bit deeper. The content of consciousness seems to be different for all of us because we all have gone through different life experiences so that our ways to feel and act are basically different. Krish- namurti however asserted the contrary, saying that the content of con- sciousness was basically the same in all human beings. He must well have meant collective consciousness or what Carl Jung called the collective uncon- scious, for it is obvious that our individual consciousness content is very different from one person to the other. What is needed for transformation, K said, is to empty consciousness of its content. It is rather awkward to imagine how such emptying of consciousness could be like in practice? Where to begin? All past experi- ences, nice and traumatic ones alike, are eternally imprinted upon uni- versal memory of which our individual memory storage forms part. Oth- er parts of this memory are inherited patterns as well as memory patterns belonging, as already mentioned, to the collective unconscious. Until this point we can conclude that the way of fear is always an individual way. It is every individual’s own life path. Inherited or collec- tive parts of consciousness have only a subordinate or minor influence upon the formation of individual consciousness. The main factor is our individual life experience, the way we have been conditioned to perceive reality. The next step is to define the frame of references of a revolution of consciousness through individual transformation. Part of this frame of references are: ‣ our individual life experiences; ‣ our family milieu; ‣ our environment; ‣ the value system in which we grew up; Krishnamurti’s Concept of Consciousness | 45 ‣ the education we have been subjected to. Krishnamurti has time and again stressed the point that transforma- tion is inextricably linked to transforming relationships, first of all with ourselves, then with others, with earth, nature and the universe. In fact, transformation cannot be brought about by living in an ivory tower, in ascetic solitude, but is the result of active exchange with life as a whole. Therefore true religion, K said, requires a great deal of energy and seri- ous commitment to finding truth through building vivid intelligence and full awareness. From identifying the patterns of one’s own consciousness, the functioning of one’s thought processes and from recognizing the de- structiveness of ideals and so–called moral convictions, the transformation starts out. Especially important in this work on the inner mind, is to put an end to the inner fight that is created through the contradiction between what is (reality) and what should be (ideal). It will then become apparent – ‣ that traditional education represents an immediate threat to world peace ‣ that ideologies and so–called political actions and convictions lead to disaster ‣ that humanity has devoluted since about the beginning of patriarchy This awakening, in turn, leads to immediate action, an action which however is different in quality than any action before the transformation because this new action will not be fragmented, but whole. It will not flow from an ideal nor from thought, nor motivation, but from pure intelli- gence, total awareness and compassion. When we reject violence, terror- ism, revolt and anarchy as well as bloody revolutions, which have never brought true progress to mankind, we are again at the very beginning: how to deal with fear and how to get free from it? This is, then, the ques- tion to start our inquiry with. | Chapter One 46 The Content of Consciousness What did K mean with the term Content of Consciousness? The content of consciousness consists of all past events that have affected our mind, body or soul and that are by automatism of the lower self imprinted upon our memory surface. This memory surface, which is located in the etheric body of the lower self, contains such elements of the individual and collective subconscious that are not subject to direct and voluntary recall. Sigmund Freud has shown the fundamental split between conscious and subconscious mind and the subtle communication between the two realms of perception through dreams, mistakes, accidents, somatizations and other ways of subtle communication that the subconscious mind, or lower self, uses in order to communicate with the middle self, or conscious mind. One of the most essential findings of Freud in this context was the repression effect of the brain. Repression of the memory in our subcon- scious mind assures survival namely in the case that remembering the experience would be so overbearing, disgusting, revolting or anxiety–cre- ating that the individual would become suicidal or mentally ill. It is logi- cal that this protection mechanism of the brain, also called childhood amne- sia, is especially important for small children because of their high vul- nerability and dependence upon their environment. It is for this reason, Freud found, that most people cannot remember short or large periods of their childhood, because those times were trau- matic in character. Considering the life–denying and child–hating pat- terns in all so–called civilized cultures of the world , with all their gross 11 or subtle mutilations of children’s freedom and innocence, it is no wonder that the content of today’s consciousness is rather small. Unfortunately, Freud did not realize that the split in consciousness, as Krishnamurti ex- plained, is created by culture, not by nature. Spiritual man, contrary to See, for example, Alice Miller, For Your Own Good (1983). 11 Krishnamurti’s Concept of Consciousness | 47 civilized man possesses a unified, whole and non–fragmented conscious- ness in which the split between conscious and subconscious has never existed or has ceased to exist. The result of our distorted idea of civiliza- tion, which is in fact nothing but a cultural restriction of consciousness, is the widespread fragmentation of modern man’s mindset, a scattered feel- ing about life, or even a total lack of experiences of the holistic or intu- itive kind. Furthermore, and as a direct consequence of this lack of total awareness, wrong decisions on a worldwide level have brought humanity at the border of annihilation. On the other hand, Krishnamurti’s own path of life shows that child trauma does not necessarily engender a general negative make–up of one’s personality. Krishnamurti was himself strongly marked by mis- treatments in childhood, yet said later that these events never had affect- ed him. In his Journal, K wrote: J. Krishnamurti He doesn’t remember his childhood, the schools and the can- ing. He was told years later by the very teacher who hurt him that he used to cane him practically every day; he would cry and be put out on the verandah until the school closed and the teacher would come out and ask him to go home, otherwise he would still be on the verandah, lost. He was caned, this man said, because he couldn’t study or remember anything he had read or been told. Later the teacher couldn’t believe that the boy was the man who had given the talk he had heard. He was greatly surprised and unnecessarily respectful. All those years passed without leaving scars, memories, on his mind; his friendships, his affections, even those years with those who had ill–treated him – somehow none of these events, friendly or brutal, have left marks on him. 12 Mary Lutyens writes in her biography Krishnamurti, The Years of Ful- fillment: See J. Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti’s Journal (1987), pp. 26, 27. 12 | Chapter One 48 Mary Lutyens Leadbeater removed Krishna and his brother Nitya from the school where Krishna was being beaten every day for stupidity. 13 An impression of K’s relationship to his parents, particularly his fa- ther (the mother died when K was still a boy) is given by the following notebook entry: J. Krishnamurti The two brothers were driven in a car to a village nearby to see their father whom they had not seen for nearly fifteen years or more. They had to walk a little distance on an ill–kept road. ... Beyond the water, just behind some other houses, was the house where the father lived. He came out as the two brothers approached and they greeted him by prostrating fully, touching his feet. They were shy and waited for him to speak, as was the custom. Before he said anything he went inside to wash his feet, as the boys had touched them. He was a very orthodox Brahmanah, and his two sons had been polluted by mixing with others who were not of his class and had eaten food cooked by non–Brahmanahs. So he washed his feet and sat down on the ground, not too close to his polluted sons. They talked for some time and the hour when food is eaten ap- proached. He sent them away for he could not eat with them; they were no longer Brahmanahs. He must have had affection for them, for after all they were his sons whom he had not seen for so many years. If their mother were alive she might have given them food but she would certainly not have eaten with her sons. They must have had a deep affection for their chil- dren but orthodoxy and tradition forbade any physical contact with them. Tradition is very strong, stronger than love. 14 There are many indications that K belonged to the few who were born with the superconsciousness and never knew any fragmentation. All the educational tortures he was subjected to did not make him accept to take in fragmented knowledge. It is brought to our knowledge by K’s var- ious biographers that the little boy persistently refused to learn anything Mary Lutyens, Krishnamurti (1983), p. 2. 13 J. Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti’s Journal (1987), pp. 36, 37. 14 Krishnamurti’s Concept of Consciousness | 49 he was supposed to learn in school. Krishnamurti, the child, intuitively refused every form of fragmentation of his holistic worldview. To under- stand this point, we have to realize that every intake of knowledge, if such knowledge is abstract and without connection to our direct percep- tion of life, will fragment us and thus lead to confusion. It is possible that the Biblical story of Adam and Eve who were told not to eat the fruits of the tree of knowledge relates to this truth. This protection, so to say, however is only needed for ordinary humans. When human intelligence is more highly developed and able to truly integrate thought, knowledge will no more have a fragmenting effect on human consciousness. Part of individual consciousness is collective consciousness, the entire archaic and constantly growing body of archetypes, symbols, myths and rituals that humanity shares since times immemorial. Occultists always referred to this part of consciousness as universal memory. Carl Jung has accomplished the unique task of raising our awareness to the existence of this treasure, although in initiated circles this knowledge existed already in antiquity and probably even before. Krishnamurti formulated this fact with the simple expression, You are humanity!, explaining that the entire past of humanity is contained in our individual consciousness. He thus said that we represent, as individuals, the whole of humanity. This is certainly true with regard to the collective subconscious. But can we also derive from this statement that all human beings have the same individual content of consciousness? | Chapter One 50 Split Consciousness Krishnamurti’s teaching was not very clear about dreams. In many talks K said the split between conscious and subconscious mind was arti- ficial, a theory made up by Western psychology. He also questioned that dreams are necessary for the functioning of the brain. K asserted to nev- er have experienced dreams, but this seems unlikely, as modern dream research concludes that dreams are a psychological necessity. However, it seems logical that dreams, in case there is no split between wake and sleep consciousness, would be deprived of their mediator function be- tween conscious and subconscious mind. In this case, they would most probably cease to come up, but we do not know for sure. Dreams are messengers from the unconscious and other realms of existence. If all realms are unified within a large cosmic consciousness, messengers are no more necessary. However, as long as we have not reached such a broad unified field of consciousness, we must accept the existence of dreams since otherwise we would cut ourselves off from the larger part of existence. Research has shown that dreaming is absolutely essential for mental health. Repressing dreams or dreaming for long peri- ods of time, for example through alcohol abuse, undoubtedly leads to mental and subsequent physical illness. Individual consciousness may be unified to a point that the split be- tween wake consciousness and subtle or higher consciousness may be bridged over. This naturally occurs when fragmentation has come to an end. There are techniques, such as for example intelligent introspection, meditation or Zen that help achieve this almost super–human task. The Oriental sage and the Western mystic both come close to the archetype that incarnates holistic superconsciousness. Freud’s theory is that our subconscious resembles a clutter drawer in which all is thrown that consciousness has no use for. When for example a child is told by the parents or early caretakers that all that has to do with body pleasure and sex is dirty, disgusting and forbidden, this person will Krishnamurti’s Concept of Consciousness | 51 live sexuality for the most part as an unconscious drive and not a con- scious and integrated activity. The result will be that sex is more or less lived via fantasies, dreams, dirty jokes, pornography or wet dreams in- stead of various open and conscious sexual relations. It is logical that in this case the whole repressed area of consciousness will remain for the individual a source of uneasiness, shame, guilt, or at most a marital obligation. In general, we can say that a strongly repressive–punitive edu- cation with many taboos and physical violence which perverts humans into citizens, goes along with a very limited consciousness. In addition, human beings with such kind of mindset are easily controllable. Advertising and what is commonly called politics consciously exploit this immaturity of the masses for profit reasons. On the other hand, these human beings themselves – undoubtedly the overwhelming majority of today’s world population – hardly are aware of their fundamental un- easiness. For there are so many ways to escape this awareness building, for example through sport, entertainment, alcohol, television or movies that most of us never really listen to the hints destiny gives us for personal growth and the development of our unique soul consciousness. It is obvi- ous that the conscious content of consciousness of conditioned human beings, the part of consciousness thus that is subject to willful control, or middle self in the terminology of the Kahunas, largely differs from one person to the other, and this depending on our early childhood experi- ences. Now, applying Krishnamurti’s teaching, we have to consider humans to be conditioned independently of their upbringing. This is true since every education brings about a certain amount of conditioning. However, the question cannot be to eliminate every kind of conditioning from edu- cation – because this would be a utopian quest – but to distinguish be- tween destructive and constructive or harmless conditioning. It cannot be denied that a Chinese is conditioned to eat Chinese food whereas an Italian is condi- tioned to eat Italian food. There is, it seems, nothing bad in this. The fact that we are conditioned to eat certain kinds of food and not certain others | Chapter One 52 does not suggest that there should be a uniform international cuisine. The very idea seems absurd. Let me thus give an example to show my point. If we compare two people and how they have led their lives – Adolf Hitler and Pablo Picasso – and have a look at their childhoods, we quickly understand. These two men were certainly different in that they received a different conditioning regarding food, but this kind of conditioning was surely of minor influ- ence for the way they behaved and lived. Nobody would pretend that eating Austrian food leads more easily to hating Jews than eating Spanish food. In much the same way hardly anybody would assume that eating a paella once a week raises chances to paint one day like Picasso. While millions of people suffered from one of the greatest tragedies of humanity so that the cruelly abused boy Adolf could act out his re- pressed hatred, we were given an immense potential of consciousness, beauty and creativity by Picasso who grew up in an environment of re- spect and love. Picasso certainly also went through miseries in his child- hood but he certainly reacted differently to that than Hitler. Why? Alice Miller researched many years on this intriguing question. She contributed to free the truth of the Nazi regime from the realm of mythic beliefs. These beliefs namely tend to suggest that at the end nobody was responsible for the holocaust. It is obvious, however, that such responsibil- ity cannot be denied. What we have to understand, then, is that this re- sponsibility is or was not only on the shoulders of one individual with the name of Hitler, but that we face here a form of responsibility that is col- lective, one in which we all share to a certain extent. The evidence that Alice Miller put forward is so strikingly convincing that there can be no doubt that we all are responsible for these and similar horrors in the world. Insofar Alice Miller argues, perhaps without knowing, on the line of Krishnamurti’s teaching. Krishnamurti’s Concept of Consciousness | 53 The Individual and Collective Unconscious The specific characteristic of the collective subconscious is that we all can access it and thus share in its content. Its existence is independent from our individual path of life. To get back to our example, it is obvious that both men, Hitler and Picasso, were strongly attracted by themes or archetypes of the collective subconscious. The Swastika, the Hakenkreuz of the Nazi ideology that Hitler chose as a symbol for his ideas as well as the Minotaur that is a recurring theme in Picasso’s art, and which is a mythic being, half ani- mal, half human, that likes to rape innocent girls are examples for this fact. The swastika is an old magic symbol that has a firm place in the In- dian and Balinese religious traditions. The Minotaur belongs to the old Greek mythology. Both cultures have had their impact upon Occidental culture – and thus formed our cultural setup. The difference in the lives of Hitler, on one hand, and Picasso, on the other, is again to be seen in how they used the content of collective thought. Hitler used it for persecuting others, for killing and destruction. Picasso, although he was attracted to highly aggressive symbols of collec- tive thought, used them for artistic purposes and thus sublimated their content into creative force and beauty. Or, with other words, Hitler worked for destroying culture and building chaos whereas Picasso worked for building culture and warding off chaos. If we put individual and collective thought content on one and the same level, we disregard the differences in the thought content of indi- viduals, as the example has eloquently shown. It is obviously the way our consciousness is structured individually that determines how and for what purpose we use archetypes and symbols from the collective consciousness. The basic difference namely is to know if our individual consciousness functions in a manner to integrate collective consciousness content, or to disintegrate it. How can it happen, then, that the thought content of some individuals is basically integrative and that of others basically disin- tegrative? | Chapter One 54 Let us first look at two examples that show how different people grow up into adulthood. Example One The child was not wanted and the mother’s hostility went literally under his skin through blood and hormone exchange; at birth the mother was stiff and unprepared and giving birth was very painful for her; her vagina was tight and inflexible so that the child strongly feared to suffo- cate during birth. Already blue in the face, the baby was eventually re- covered. To bring him to life again, he was beaten and put upside down several times. Now the little boy really thought he was going to be killed since the treatment he got was rough and violent. The neon light in the clinic pierced his eyes and almost blinded him. The harsh noises of the metallic instruments and the loud insensitive voices of the doctors and nurses hurt his very sharp ears to a point to be deaf for life. The boy wondered over and over why this new life was like a pun- ishment from the first moment he was conceived, what he had done to be treated without any respect, why he had chosen a mother that despised him from the first thought she had had for him? Later the boy saw that he was not wrong in his first negative opinion since he was often left alone, going through all the possible fears and traumas of abandonment and more and more often was beaten and mistreated by his mother until finally, when he reached the age of eighteen he was celebrated to be a member of the adult community. He then got a job and said he had made it. His childhood he had forgotten and children around him he did not see. Soon he married and had children himself. He found them a bother altogether and punished them harshly when they made the slightest mistake. He held his mother in high esteem and said she had taught him manners and without man- ners one could not survive. His mother soon died of cancer. Only when she was dead he realized that he did not miss her at all. He then began to reflect about his childhood and began to get glimpses of memory. How- ever, these memories were so painful that he soon drowned them in alco- Krishnamurti’s Concept of Consciousness | 55 hol and the next TV show. Definitely, he had set his life to be a happy one and did not let those silly memories disturb his tranquility. That is why he never woke up to reality, to his reality and led a life of mediocrity, imita- tion and low achievement. Example Two A child born with a couple that had vividly desired him as a compan- ion and friend. His parents had been very conscious about the great chal- lenge to give birth to a soul during the times of transition we presently live through. And they were decided to do the very best to give this child his unique place in the world. From the start, the little boy felt enveloped by overwhelming and protecting love. He also felt they were not overly concerned about their own problems, but about his well–being and his unique character first of all. They innocently wanted to know him; they were open and willing to learn. They were friendly. They devoted lots of time thinking of him and even getting in touch with him telepathically, before he even was conceived. They sent him wonderful thoughts, and light, and acceptance, long before he was born. They created a place of welcome for him and prepared his arrival as if he were a king. They had so much attention for him and they were so sensitive! They cared for him to be born at home, far from any hospital, in a safe and homey place, with dimmed light and a candle burning in the silent chamber. They let come a good friend who was an expert in what they called birth without violence. He was leaving the protective cavern easily, without effort, and there was only love, all around him, from the first moment in this new world. He felt accepted, totally and unconditionally. There are hundreds of combinations between these somewhat ex- treme examples. The law of life is that we give what we have received. It is almost impossible to give what we never received. Before we learn to act, we re–act. And our reaction always reflects our primal scene. Who lived through trauma is likely to inflict trauma, who was bathed in love is likely to give love in return. Pavlov’s law of the conditioned reflex is not a conundrum. | Chapter One 56 At this point Krishnamurti strongly contradicts the teachings of all religions. While religions namely tend to repress our emotions by impos- ing discipline, Krishnamurti stresses the importance of a vivid emotional life. Krishnamurti’s Concept of Consciousness | 57 The Role of Emotions Krishnamurti understood emotions as being part of thought and therefore part of the ego. This view estranges because emotions certainly do not belong to thinking or thought; they rather live a life on their own and are in close relation with the body. The Huna teaching says that emotions are seated in the lower self ’s etheric body, and only there. 15 While it is true that thought is always in the past, emotions belong to the present. They are here and now. However, we often think of past emo- tions whereby we disintegrate them from present reality. Living in the present therefore means that our present emotions and feelings are not overshadowed by thought that contains past emotions and feelings. A continuous process of reintegrating past emotions voids them of stuck psychic energy. Without this energy they continue to be part of consciousness, but they do not interfere with present reality. Kr- ishnamurti repeatedly pointed out that it is not wise nor spiritual to re- press our emotions, but that responsible living asks for understanding and integrating them. This is the point of departure of Krishnamurti’s educa- tional approach. In his book For the Young he talks to young people and tells them that they already have the responsibility to live their emotions fully and constructively. 16 See Max Freedom Long, The Secret Science at Work (1995), p. 15. 15 J. Krishnamurti, For the Young (1987), pp. 120, 121: 16 That is why you should have very strong feelings – feelings of passion, anger – and watch them, play with them, find out the truth of them; for if you merely suppress them, if you say, I must not get angry, I must not feel passionate, because it is wrong, you will find that your mind is gradually being encased in an idea and thereby be- comes very shallow. You may be immensely clever, you may have encyclopedic knowledge, but if there is not the vitality of strong and deep feeling, your compre- hension is like a flower that has no perfume. | Chapter One 58 Emptying Consciousness of its Content? What did Krishnamurti mean when he said that for transforming thought we had to empty consciousness of its content? This can only mean that we should accomplish detachment from the memory of both hurts and frustrations, and positive and rewarding emotional experiences. Memory, K explains, forms something like an overlay pattern over present thought processes so that thinking gets confused and messed up with the past. Krishnamurti explained that thought belongs always to the past and that thinking thus is inadequate to cope with our present–day problems. Only in a state of passive awareness in which thought is ab- sent, and that K called passive watchfulness or total attention, reality can be comprehended. However, this state of awareness cannot be brought about voluntarily but comes to existence spontaneously. This is so be- cause every intention to bring about this state of bliss is motivated by some kind of purpose – and purpose is created by thought. Our attitude must therefore be one without purpose. I am asking the question how detachment from past memories can be brought about? Certainly not by the mere wish to forget about our past, nor by repressing thought processes. For this would have exactly the op- posite effect: we would be submerged by past memories to a point that they would begin controlling us. And this would not even be conscious. We would not be aware that we are controlled by our past and repeat past events endlessly. This is known, in psychology, as the unconscious repetition urge. Somebody for example pretends he is free of fear and, regarding sexuality, free of guilt whereas in reality he has set up his life in a way that situations where fear or guilt could possibly show up are as good as ex- cluded. The person for example pretends that sexuality was per se a product of fear and that, as a result, fearless human beings ‘do not need sexuality anymore’. Or someone says that sexuality was a form of vio- lence and that people who had developed true affection do ‘not need this form of violence anymore’. Krishnamurti’s Concept of Consciousness | 59 I do not speak about theory. I did not invent these examples. Partici- pants from the Krishnamurti circle I frequented for about two years for- warded these absurd allegations, or delusions, about themselves. The problem is much deeper. Only outwardly this is a problem of sexuality. In reality we are still dealing with the question of how to handle emotions. Krishnamurti repeated over and over that it’s not the point to be pro or con sexuality. In his book Education and the Significance of Life, K explains 17 that sex had such importance in our culture merely because it was the only form of spontaneous creativity that was left in a completely mechan- ical life. Sex, he explained, is in our culture often a means for an end, the end namely to get away from our hypertrophied egos, and be it only for a short moment of orgasmic let go. The problem is not sex, but the vi 18 - cious circle created by a blown–up intellect that represses the emotional– intuitive side of our wholeness, and fragments us. Sex then assumes the highly important role of a momentary holistic experience. It is obvious that we cannot just give up thinking. Thought is a func- tional process that is essential for living. The question therefore can only be how to transform thought so that its content changes, so that it is no more dominated by past conditioning and comprehends present life intel- ligently. Now I would like to describe some typical events that characterize immediate and intelligent action that is not conditioned by the past but directly dealing with the present. K himself has given one example over and over: the situation where someone suddenly faces a lethal snake. Not only in moments of immediate danger our thought processes suddenly stop and give way to a direct mode of perception. It also hap- pens when we love. Love is an experience that brings about a perception See for example: J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living (1986), p. 56, ‘Chastity’. 17 J. Krishnamurti, Education and the Significance of Life (1978), p. 118: 18 Caught and held from all sides, naturally sex becomes our only outlet, an experience to be sought again and again because it momentarily offers that state of happiness which comes when there is absence of self. It is not sex that constitutes a problem, but the desire to recapture, to gain and maintain pleasure, whether sexual or any other. | Chapter One 60 that is totally in the present. Suddenly, we feel all our worries fade away. How much beauty is in this state of bliss! All our great poets wrote about it and remind us that love truly has the touch of the gods, a foretaste of the eternal bliss we are coming from and going to. Time has no kingdom over love. From this fact comes the expression eternal love. However, this expression is often misunderstood. It namely does not mean that loving another person lasts eternally. Love belongs to the eternal but love that is incarnated in our dimension is time–bound. Nonetheless, the experience of love gives us an idea of eternal bliss and it is therefore uniquely enrich- ing. Spirituality that is lived in a dry ivory tower and cut off from experi- encing love will never comprehend the true dimension of life – which is love. To get back to our initial question: how can we spontaneously end the bondage of time, the rulership of the past over the present, the at- tachment to thought? To formulate it even more precisely: how can thought that is repeti- tive and conditioned by our past, come to an end, so that immediate, spontaneous action can take place? My answer is, by integrating the past into the present content of consciousness. What does that mean? As K repeatedly said, the main reason of violence and destruction and the im- possibility of universal love is our fragmentation. We are split, disinte- grated. K’s analysis is not new; since times immemorial fragmentation has been assessed by hermetic knowledge as evil and the good was associ- ated with a state of wholeness – holiness. On the archetypal level, Sallie Nichols writes in her study Jung and Tarot, the Devil in the Tarot was al- ways represented as a very unholy figure in that it was puzzled together with limbs that do not seem to belong to each other. This is how the Tarot artists visually depicted the fragmentation that the Devil archetype stands for. The two words whole and holy namely go back to the same etymo- logical root in Germanic languages. In languages that trace back to Latin, holy means sanctus (in French saint); whole, in Latin, means totus (in French total or entier). There is a pair of words in French, too, which Krishnamurti’s Concept of Consciousness | 61 expresses this truth: sain (healthy) and saint (holy). Both words differ only by a t and express that holy can be only what is healthy, not sick, not fragmented, not disintegrated. When you are familiar with the old myths, Jungian psychoanalysis or the Tarot, you know that the incarnation of evil is always unholy in the sense of unhealthy, divided, fragmented, composed of parts that do not belong together. The mythic mixtures of man and animal belong to these incarnations, the monsters, dragons, hydras and – the devil. In the Tarot de Marseille, the Devil is represented by the 13th Arcane, a being that is in every respect un–whole, disintegrated, fragmented and therefore un–holy. No limb of the figure seems to fit to another limb. Its nature is androgy- nous and represents an absurd accumulation of heterogeneous parts. It bears the antlers of a red dear, the talons of a bird of prey, and the wings of a bat. It appears to be a man but bears the breasts of a woman, or rather wears them, since they seem to be grafted on its body. In mytholo- gy, the devil is said to be a fallen angel, one that once was sitting at the side of God. Its original wholeness (holiness) and goodness is therefore beyond doubt. 19 As this archetypal figure of the Devil symbolizes it, we also disinte- grate parts of us daily, we are chased from paradise daily and we trans- form daily good intentions into bad ones – and so on. The state of inte- gration is flexible, unstable, and subject to constant change. Only through perfect watchfulness about the disintegrative tendencies in us, we can maintain a positive balance and a state of wholeness over longer periods of time. Thought cannot help us in this endeavor. In the contrary, thought is bound to fragment us, to split off what was once whole and undivided. Thought always tends to dissect, to disassemble, to cut off wholeness. This is its way to comprehend reality. It abstracts images from reality and divides them into a puzzle, storing neatly into memory the various puzzle See for example: Sallie Nichols, Jung And Tarot (1986). 19 | Chapter One 62 stones, while forgetting the original picture that those puzzle stones once composed. This fragmenting tendency of thought can be acted counter only through a conscious process of reintegrating all disintegrated feelings, thoughts, desires, longings and experiences. Which techniques we apply in order to effect this, is subject to personal taste. Some try it with Zen, others with Yoga, others again use psychotherapeutic techniques such as Gestalt or Transactional Analysis, others consult Tarot or I Ching, others again work with dreams, and others use astrology or numerology. Every technique that results in a Know Thyself ! could be cited here. All these 20 techniques are but forms of meditation, and it is meditation in the broadest sense of the word that leads to inner and outer unity. Many know this state of bliss from short moments of abandonment during skiing, riding, driving, flying or walks in nature. Everyone who has read Goethe or other authors of the German romantic tradition knows what I am trying to convey here. Goethe’s pantheism was his personal vintage of a holistic worldview, although it was formerly arrogantly wiped off by scientists as some erudite form of animism. In the divinatory sciences, such as for example the Tarot, the chain of time is but the succession of cause and effect. Life is understood as a chain of causality, the present a direct outflow of the past, the future the result of the present projected upon the universal time line that is under- lying all living. Therefore, looking into the future is no magic. What psy- chics do when they foretell the future is but screening the present content of consciousness, which is unconscious in most people, including its roots in the past, and project it on the time line. This reveals tendencies or probabilities of future action, today also called quantum probabilities. It is the same in astrology. Here, too, we deal with tendencies, poten- tialities that may or may not condense into future tangible reality. How- ever, while quantum reality becomes visible through astrological consulta- tion, this doesn’t mean that tangible reality can really be predicted, as it Text of a stone carving at the Apollo temple in Delphi. 20 Krishnamurti’s Concept of Consciousness | 63 depends on how the consciousness of the person develops over time, the time span namely from the consultation to the actual realization of the event or events that were seen to unfold in the chart. ‘The stars incline but they do not determine’, said Thomas Aquinas who was not only a famous theologian at his time, but also a fine astrologer. Which technique we use is not important since they all lead to the same goal: the revelation of the unconscious content of consciousness of the individual that asks for divinatory advice. To conclude my observation, let me summarize so far that ‘emptying consciousness of its content’ cannot be taken literally. Krishnamurti’s terminology was misleading in this point. The process of integration of unconscious content of consciousness proceeds through the revelation of such content so that it can be consciously comprehended. Human memory is not a tape that could simply be erased or replaced. If this happens, acci- dentally, for example through cerebral damage resulting from an acci- dent, the person has not gained anything on a spiritual level. In the con- trary will the person have to regain their entire memory surface before they will be able to proceed in the evolution of her consciousness. What can well be done, however, is to give a different meaning to events of the past, thereby changing the way memory affects us. This, then, changes the quality of the memory as such and therefore can be used as a thera- peutic technique, as a point it out in other publications. The term ‘emptying the content of consciousness’, as Krishnamurti used it, could mislead people into concluding that it is enough to simply forget their past and repress it from conscious memory. However, this would be the absolute opposite of what Krishnamurti was teaching. That my interpretation of the teaching of Krishnamurti is in accordance with what K wanted to say becomes obvious in the following quote from Krish- namurti’s Notebook (June 1961 – January 1962): | Chapter One 64 J. Krishnamurti Total attention includes the superficial and the hidden, the past and its influence on the present, moving into the future. 21 In Commentaries on Living, Second Series, there is a passage that concerns dreams. From this quote it becomes evident that Krishnamurti’s position regarding dreams was not as dogmatic as it was often said to be. The questioner, a teacher, had lost all interest in his work and consults Krish- namurti for advise. K tells him the following: J. Krishnamurti If the intention to find out is there, you will find out, not by constant inquiry, but by being dear and ardent in your inten- tion. Then you will see that during the waking hours there is an alert watchfulness in which you are picking up every inti- mation of that latent interest, and that dreams also play a part. 22 The idea that a psychological revolution of human consciousness is needed to bring about a new way of thinking and a higher level of com- passion will be a natural result of working on the content of our con- sciousness. For all of us who are on this soul quest, the usual gossip in the media, the daily political absurdities, the infamous betrayal of the masses, the witch hunts and the massacres that happen all over the globe are but signals that this revolution is at the very footstep of our door. It will be clear, then, that it is not through accumulating knowledge, through following the news, reading newspapers or even spiritual books that we can access truth, and information that reveals truth. In the con- trary, we will become more and more immune against all this pseudo– information and gossip that betrays the spiritual flame in man and vio- lates human dignity. True spirituality, true religion means we are seeking truth by ourselves, on an entirely individual level, and I would say on an intimate basis, and this without guru and without holy books. Krishna- J. Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti’s Notebook (1986), p. 105. 21 J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living (1986), pp. 44, 45. 22 Krishnamurti’s Concept of Consciousness | 65 murti’s teaching makes sense when we integrate it in the truth that we, individually, grasp by intuition, and not by aligning it with tradition. Whoever is able to carry this out will discover that life becomes a pas- sionate endeavor, a discovery and truly intelligent journey. | Chapter One 66 Points to Ponder ‣ In Chapter One, we have tried to ask and answer the question what consciousness is and if consciousness has a content, and if yes, how we handle that content of con- sciousness? ‣ When we look at the question of con- sciousness negatively, we see the factors that are preventing us from acting with full awareness, and thus make for reacting. We can identify fear, not rational fear, but irrational or psychological fear, or fear of life as one of the factors that are in the way for total awareness to unfold. The life stories of people who are fearful and others who are largely fearless show that the person who experiences fear, reacts, while the person who is free of fear, acts, because there is an inner space that allows instantaneous conscious decision–making. ‣ The mechanism of conditioning impacts upon our perception of life, of reality. However, not all conditioning is harmful, but well condi- tioning that inhibits our spiritual freedom. ‣ Freud erected the theory that consciousness is split in several layers, such as wake consciousness, daydreaming, trance or dream con- sciousness. Krishnamurti took quite the opposite position, saying that our Occidental ‘split consciousness’ concept is the result of condition- ing and that originally, consciousness is not split, but whole, unifying, healing and bringing into synchrony our whole being. When we look at Freud’s theories with a critical eye, we see that the tenets of psy- choanalysis cannot be declared universal and are limited by their cultural belonging and embeddedness. ‣ We can look at the individual and collective unconscious, and see that the content of consciousness here is not the same; to cope with our content of consciousness, we are free explorers. It’s up to us, not fate or destiny, what we do with this content, with the archetypes that we discover there, and the energy contained in those archetypes. We can namely use them either for evil and for beneficial purposes, and it all depends on our base intention what we actually are going to do with this information. Krishnamurti’s Concept of Consciousness | 67 ‣ As we are responsible for the content of our consciousness, so we are for our emotions; the right way to handle them is to not repress them, but fully recognize and embrace them, not control them, but be pas- sively aware of them and their kaleidoscopic nature, and constant change. ‣ In Krishnamurti’s teaching, the question of time plays a decisive role. K asked if there is time in self–transformation? K answered that question very clearly, saying that time is a notion made up by thought, and that thought is time–bound, and thus links us with the past; as a result, we saw that K assumed that in self–transformation, there is no time, or if there is time, it was not real transformation, but self– delusion. ‣ K stressed the fact that to advance our evolution, our spiritual quest, and raise our awareness level, we need to experience timelessness, short moments of contemplation, of total attention. Contrary to other spiritual teachers, K held that total attention can come about in ordi- nary life situations, not necessarily during meditation, and that it is most of the time a spontaneous experience, not a state of being trig- gered by will and effort. ‣ When we are totally attentive, there is no thought interfering, and we act in synchrony with our greater spiritual wholeness; in that case, our action will be right and it will be immediate. There will be an instantaneous action, not a reaction. ‣ We must investigate what Krishnamurti meant when he said that to raise our consciousness, we need to ‘empty consciousness of its con- tent’. If we take this statement literally, we cannot actually follow it because we cannot free ourselves from our neuronet, we cannot erase our memory surface, or if we do, we are in the madhouse, and not spiritually enlightened in any way. ‣ As a result of this insight, we see that what K meant by ‘emptying consciousness of its content’ is the gradual or not so gradual process of transforming our thought interface in a way that it is no more obtrusive, and that it doesn’t interfere with our higher intentions. There is noth- ing we can do to deliberately stop thought; any voluntary interference in the thought process makes the situation more convoluted, and thought even more difficult to handle. So we need to accept and pas- sively observe our thoughts, which are emanations of our egoic struc- ture. This also means to observe our emotions, our desires, and the contradictions in our desires, and longings. It is this passive watchful- ness that K termed total attention and that he considered as the way to | Chapter One 68 achieving inner peace and enlightenment without effort – and really spontaneously. CHAPTER TWO Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | Chapter Two 70 Introduction This chapter serves to explain certain truths about living, our uni- verse, and human interaction that are either hardly known or seen from an ideologically conditioned point of view. Traditional Western science had no idea of the living, and of systems, it had no idea of patterns, it had no understanding of motion, of flow, of self–organization, of total inter- active communication, and of the energy that is behind all this: the cosmic life energy. It was a club of adult schoolboys who secretly masturbate on public toilets and who hide behind their social masks and their doctor titles, men whose fundamental worldview is flawed by shame and denial, by sadism and the cynical and cruel attacks on the true scientists, men like Galileo, Leonardo, Bruno, Paracelsus, Goethe, Kepler, Mesmer, and Reich – and many others. This task would be impossible without considering the uni- versal laws that can be known and understood by the study of, and div- ination with, the I Ching. Studying the I Ching or the Tarot was not for me a form of l’art pour l’art, but it had a practical purpose: I wanted to understand the underly- ing patterns of living, and the roots of human behavior. And indeed, my understanding of life and living was greatly enhanced through not only the knowledge about divination, but through actually practicing divina- tion on a daily basis since now about twenty years. These years of not only theoretical but also eminently practical learning and daily experi- ence with coaching highly problematic people rooted me in my new pro- fession as a coach, and with that decision, my former career as an in- ternational lawyer clearly found an end. My motivation for changing my professional career was the outcome of a deep reflection about the sense of life, and my mission. I understood I am interested in human beings, and in their paths of life. The law pro- fession, while it interested me in some way, was not satisfying my desire to help people grow, to facilitate their relationships, to help them lead happier lives. The I Ching supported me on my way to find my true mission. Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 71 Understanding ourselves and others is impossible without compre- hending the underlying cosmic patterns of living. Human beings do not func- tion differently than the rest of life on earth. Besides that, they are rooted in a universal scheme of cosmic interactions that is little known or totally unknown to psychologists today. I have stressed in all my publications the importance of understanding the nature of our universe as a basically patterned universe, focusing on patterned intelligence, or patterned organi- zation when we observe nature. What are patterns? I began identifying the perennial pro–life patterns in living by firstly invalidating the fake principles that mainstream Western science declares to be the founding concepts of our universe. To put it more precisely, there was actually nothing to invalidate; I found that these alleged principles were but intellectual assumptions, and thus simply invalid as founding principles of life. At the same time, the diligent study of the I Ching and the almost daily use of it for divination distilled in me an intuitive understanding of the real and valid patterns that are inherent in all living. I therefore simply call them patterns of living. Let me first of all explain why I use the term patterns, deciding to dis- continue the use of the term life principles. I indeed think that here we 23 are facing a key point that marks the essential difference between death science and life science. A pattern is a set of things, a certain arrangement I can make out in the complex scheme of reality, and the main characteristic of this arrangement is that it forms a relationship of elements with each other. It is something I can observe. A pattern can be fix or it can be changeable. It can be static or dynamic. By contrast, a principle typically is the start of a down–hierarchy. It’s a top–something in a kind of up–to–down order. It is not something I can observe. Its reality is merely intellectual: the outcome of a conclusion I draw in my rational mind after observing nature. A principle thus contains my observer point or my judgment about reality. In fact, the first title of this paper had been The Eight Principles of Living. 23 | Chapter Two 72 Death science looks at life through the glasses of principles it has set before it was going to observe. It is essentially blind and proceeds by im- posing characteristics upon nature. Western science traditionally has been death science; it gained its conclusions about life by vivisecting cadavers, not by observing the moving changes of living. It is, and remained, a ca- daver science that is far removed from the changing patterns of reality. Life science looks at life without any set principles or assumptions and observes the dynamic patterns or changes in the texture of life. It is a sci- ence that since its start in China, around five thousand years ago, was interested in life, and thus drew conclusions from life, and not from death. Traditional Chinese science together with most other ancient sci- ence traditions of the East is a life science, one branch of this very large body of science and philosophy being Feng Shui. The I Ching is based upon life science, and is perhaps the highest condensation of it. Needless to add that, as such, it is non–judgmental and thus bears no moralistic judgments about human behavior. It looks at human behavior in exactly the same way it looks at all life patterns, and sees the changing nature of it before all. Fritjof Capra in his book The Web of Life (1996/1997) explains the importance of pattern when he ex- plores the meaning of self–organization, which is a major characteristic pat- tern of living systems: Fritjof Capra To understand the phenomenon of self–organization, we first need to understand the importance of pattern. The idea of a pattern of organization – a configuration of relationships characteristic of a particular system – became the explicit fo- cus of systems thinking in cybernetics and has been a crucial concept ever since. From the systems point of view, the under- standing of life begins with the understanding of pattern. 24 In order to scientifically explore the nature of pattern we need to alter our basic setup of scientific investigation. Capra explains: Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life (1996/1997), p. 80. 24 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 73 Fritjof Capra In the study of structure we measure and weigh things. Pat- terns, however, cannot be measured or weighed; they must be mapped. To understand a pattern we must map a configura- tion of relationships. In other words, structure involves quanti- ties, while pattern involves qualities. 25 This really involves a radical change in our scientific thinking because traditionally Cartesian science was quantity–based and measure–orient- ed, while systemic science is quality–based and relationship–oriented, a truth that Capra exemplifies when looking at the properties of pattern: Fritjof Capra Systemic properties are properties of pattern. What is de- stroyed when a living organism is dissected is its pattern. The components are still there, but the configuration of relation- ships among them – the pattern – is destroyed, and thus the organism dies. 26 The next important point to understand how nature thinks is the cell’s metabolism, the network that serves recycling. Capra succinctly elabo- rates in his book The Hidden Connections (2002): Fritjof Capra When we take a closer look at the processes of metabolism, we notice that they form a chemical network. This is another fun- damental feature of life. As ecosystems are understood in terms of food webs (networks of organisms), so organisms are viewed as networks of cells, organs and organ systems, and cells as networks of molecules. One of the key insights of the systems approach has been the realization that the network is a pattern that is common to all life. Wherever we see life, we see networks. (…) The metabolic network of a cell involves very special dynamics that differ strikingly from the cell’s nonliving environment. Taking in nutrients from the outside world, the cell sustains itself by means of a network of chemical reactions Id., p. 81. 25 Id. 26 | Chapter Two 74 that take place inside the boundary and produce all of the cell’s components, including those of the boundary itself. 27 But the most revolutionary outcome of the systems view is that our usual habit of dissecting parts of a whole for further scrutiny and scientif- ic investigation does not work with living systems. Why is this so? Capra pursues in The Web of Life (1996/1997): Fritjof Capra Ultimately – as quantum physics showed so dramatically – there are no parts at all. What we call a part if merely a pat- tern in an inseparable web of relationships. Therefore the shift from the parts to the whole can also be seen as a shift from objects to relationships. 28 My hypothesis is that Western culture has never until now applied the Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living and that it therefore is at the border of chaos, destruction or another kind of worldwide catastrophe; I allege that this culture is suffering from a schizoid mindset, the perversion of love into sadistic hate, rampant violence, the impudent slaughtering of ethnic and cultural minorities, famines that could easily be avoided, and generally a total lack of genuine spirituality which, by itself, already makes for a large part of depression and psychosomatic disorders. What I say is that the Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living have been re- spected and applied by all major tribal cultures including the North American Indians, and that therefore they have lived peacefully. With peacefully I do not mean an artificial Western peace concept which is complete nonsense as it is stuck and rigid, but a dynamic peace continuum that includes little fights and small wars as required by the dynamics of yin and yang, but that is so balanced that it will never trigger a major and global destruction. Fritjof Capra, The Hidden Connections (2002), p. 9. 27 See Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life (1996/1997), p. 37. 28 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 75 The fact that Western culture has triggered this destruction in all pos- sible ways, economically, socially, health–wise, militarily and ecologically shows that the continuum balance that the Eight Patterns give is completely lacking in Western philosophy, science, military policy, diplomacy, politics and strategy. Western culture has brought about what Wilhelm Reich called the emotional plague, symbolized by the atomic bomb’s mushroom. The Eight Patterns of Living could be taken as a guide concept for be- ing implemented in a new kind of lifestyle to be worked out as part of our presently evolving postindustrial global culture. That is the basic idea. Besides, I think that the Eight Patterns of Living are tremendously useful as a base layer for establishing the ground principles of a new peaceful soci- ety, instead of beginning with Adam and Eve and go time and again through all anthropological material. I have actually done this and found that there is no novelty any more in this. The Eight Patterns cover all spheres of life and living. | Chapter Two 76 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living I shall first give an overview over the eight patterns, as little para- graphs, and then discuss each of the patterns in the next chapters. This overview is of course incomplete; it is destined to give you an approxima- tion of what each pattern is about. 1) Autonomy All peaceful tribal societies have in common that they grant their children an utmost of autonomy. In dominator cultures, that today represent the bulk of large and typically industrialized societies worldwide, the lacking autonomy of the consumer child is a truly pathological phe- nomenon that often takes the form of co–dependence, which I call sym- biotoholism or emotional abuse and in general the unhealthy fusionary clinging of members of the family, or as collective fusion through the identification with groups, organizations and ideologies. In fact, observ- ing the growth processes in nature, we can see that autonomy is some- thing built in all living, and as such takes part in all growth. In order to realize our personal identity and become whole human beings, we have to be able, still in childhood, to form an original personal identity. This is however impossible if we are reared by narcissistic parents, those namely that are indifferent to the unique person of the child they have brought to life. 2) Ecstasy All peaceful tribal societies have in common that they have a strong ecstasy pattern built in their lifestyle which makes them once in a while en- joy group events where the usual rules of conduct are more or less set aside. Usually, these events are characterized by magic rituals, the con- sumption of mind–altering entheogens, that is, psychedelics, and the partial or total disregard for the incest taboo or other sexual taboos. Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 77 This principle was wide–spread even among major civilizations; still some decades ago, during the Carnival in Rio, it was not uncommon that sexual incest was practiced between parents and children. It is also quite probable that intergenerational sex, while practiced in very few aborigi- nal cultures, is allowed on a larger scale also in less permissive cultures during ritual events that serve to liberate and cultivate individual and group ecstasy. 29 3) Energy Life is energy! This is recognized as a vital life pattern in all non– Western societies, and thus the overwhelming part of the world. Oriental cultures were historically the most wistful in recognizing and applying energy patterns for healing, good fortune and positive relationships. The Chinese science of Feng Shui is perhaps the oldest distillation of this holistic knowledge into something we today call a science while tradi- tionally Orientals tend to speak rather of philosophy or of religion when they talk about the perennial science of the bioenergy. However, even in the West, alternative scientists from Paracelsus to Reich have acknowl- edged the existence of the bioenergetic functionality not only of the human organism, but also of the weather, the atmosphere and the cosmos as a whole. While in substance these researchers observed basically the same phenomena, the way they termed the cosmic life energy varied. Paracel- sus spoke of vis vitalis, Swedenborg of spirit energy, Mesmer of animal mag- netism and Reich of orgone. And since millennia this same energy was called ch’i by the Chinese, ki by the Japanese, prana in India and mana with the Kahunas from Hawaii and the Cherokee natives of North America. Furthermore, parapsychologists universally agree that the motor of all psychic phenomena is to be found in our bioplasmatic and egg– shaped aura, an energy body of lesser density that we carry around our Interestingly, neither Bronislaw Malinowski nor Margaret Mead found sexual paraphil 29 - ias present in Melanesia’s Trobriand culture where children enjoy utmost emotional and sexual freedom. | Chapter Two 78 physical body and which can be seen as an extension of our bioplasmatic energy, as it is composed of the same bioenergetic charge that we find in the bioplasm. Emotions are energetic, streaming currents that are a direct outflow of the cell’s bioplasma. I speak about emotional flow or, within my Emonics research, of emonic currents. These streamings have their seat not in the brain, as modern psychology wrongly believes, but in the bioplasm and in the aura. 4) Language Psychoanalysis has revealed the importance of language as a condi- tion for the sublimation of instincts. Furthermore, peace researchers found that a lack of language and thus of communication is at the basis of all forms of violence, inner and outer. This insight has not only psy- chological but also political consequences. For it clearly indicates that only free speech and democracy, both within the family and the nation, can ensure maintaining peace and regulate our natural instincts and de- sires, so that they do not become asocial and violent through denial. To everyone who says that we have democracy and yet are a violent society, I reply that we do not have true democracy and never had. For violence only comes up when verbal communication is impaired, and the one major reason why communication is impaired about vital issues is shame. When we feel ashamed about certain vital events in life, such as sexuality, we do not freely communicate about these issues, because we are blocked or inhibited by the nagging feeling of shame that comes up every time we tackle the subject. Lack of communication straight leads to violence; where the mouth is defended to talk, the body takes over the role of the mouth – and the fist talks! We all know this from history and from private experience, and yet there is little general conscience in our society about the almost holy importance of dialogue, of communication, not only outside, in relation- ships with others, but first of all inside, in the relationship with ourselves. Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 79 Our large civilizations do very little to integrate the wisdom of lan- guage because they are hardly conscious of the power of the word. Trib- al cultures, however, are wistful in this respect and generally dispose of an array of rituals that serve exactly the purpose of what in our civilizations we do within a psychotherapy, putting words on things, events and feel- ings. 5) Love All peaceful tribal societies have in common that they follow the love pattern and not, as most of the larger nations, the morality principle. The present state of violence within and between our larger civilizations, es- pecially those with high morality is in my view the result of despising the love principle and the widespread use, also and especially in politics, of moralism. With other words, it is the disregard of one of nature’s highest principles, the principle of biogenic self–regulation, that brought about the present state of violence and the lack of love and true care among most of the peoples of the earth. It is the hypocrite manner of preaching peace and democracy by our false and opportunistic leaders while they treat natural love like the Biblical serpent. Wilhelm Reich, in his extensive work on the psychological roots of fascism found that it is the repression of our natural emotions, first of all by prohibiting our young generations the natural acting–out of their love desires that brought us at the border of the present abyss of fundamentalism, perse- cution, slaughter, genocide, war, civil war and worldwide terrorism. 30 6) Pleasure All peaceful tribal societies have in common that they acknowledge the pleasure pattern, for example in the way they educate their children. In planning the child’s future, what counts is not the father’s job, that is the typical dominator position, but the natural inclination and interest of the child for their later profession. By doing this, instead of projecting upon Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933). 30 | Chapter Two 80 children their parents’ wishes and desires, education ensures that every generation does in most of their time what they really are gifted for. The result is both a high level of skill and motivation for profession and ca- reer. It is not surprising that now also in modern nations the pleasure func- tion begins to be seen as the main motivating factor for a person’s ad- vancement in life. Suffices to read the biographies of great and successful men and women to see that all achievement is a result of desire and per- sistent acting upon desire and that there is no better catalyzing agent than biological self–regulation that is based upon pleasure. 7) Self–Regulation All peaceful tribal societies have in common that they follow patterns of self–regulation or permissiveness in the education of their small children, and consequently restrain from inflicting violence in form of physical punishment upon them. The most peaceful of those tribal nations, the Trobriands of Papua New Guinea are completely permissive as to chil- dren’s sex play and free mating games. 8) Touch All peaceful tribal societies have in common that they are conscious about the touch pattern and care for maintaining free body touch among family members, nudity, and abundant tactile nutrition for infants and small children in the form of baby massage, carrying the baby on the body, and sleeping naked with children. In dominator cultures, life–deny- ing pediatricians were turning down parents’ desire for fondling their children and co–sleeping naked with them. Now we slowly begin to see the macabre results of the deprivation of tactile stimulation in infants. Psycho- somatic medicine more and more reveals that our immunity against viruses depends on touch and that lacking touch, especially in childhood, leads to more or less acute immune deficiency and as a result to higher vul- nerability for certain lifestyle diseases. Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 81 Furthermore, cross–cultural research has clearly shown that early tac- tile deprivation is one of the major inducing factors for the plague of per- sonal, domestic and structural violence in any given society. | Chapter Two 82 The Autonomy Pattern Autonomy is fundamental for every being–in–growth. Without auton- omy, there is fusion, symbiosis and dependence. While for certain organ- isms, such as the human newborn, symbiosis for a certain time is a bio- logical necessity, this symbiosis is time–bound and should gradually give rise to autonomy. While the natural symbiosis is needed for the first eighteen months of the newborn, it should gradually come to an end after that period. Un- fortunately, postmodern international culture is more or less completely dysfunctional regarding this primal movement from fusion to autonomy that should take place, dynamically, in the growth process of the human baby. What happens is that the necessary biological symbiosis with the mother, eighteen months from birth, is neglected for various reasons; babies suffer from a more or less stringent tactile deprivation that will leave scars for their whole lives. In order to compensate for the lack of care bestowed upon the infant, as a guilt–reaction and for various other reasons, the post–symbiosis condition is not better for the child: instead of growing into autonomy most children in postmodern international culture grow into co–dependence with their parents and caretakers; instead of build- ing a gradually larger extent of autonomy, parents tend to gradually en- tangle their children in a tight net of stiffening dependencies; this form of emotional vampirism is so rampant especially in modern Western societies that I have called it emotional incest. I further argue that the present defamation and persecution of affec- tionate and nurturing erotic love between children and adults and its con- fusion with child–endangering sexual sadism have their origin in shame and guilt Western society is suffering from because of its deprivatory and dysfunctional childrearing paradigm that endorses and purports emo- tional and, in a hidden way, sexual incest by holding children dependent, helpless and infantile as long as possible so as to compensate for the crippled emonic structure of their parents and caretakers. Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 83 This is how an ever new generation of emotional and sexual cripples will raise an ever next generation of dysfunctional water–headed babies that are going to live with a perverted bioenergetic base structure. Such a situation is shameful for a society based upon egalitarian principles and that pretends to respect the person of the child; however, this reality is veiled, be- cause shame tends to bring about defensive and projective reactions. The projections are clearly to be seen in the fact that most mainstream profes- sionals, psychologists, psychiatrists, physicians, psychoanalysts or psy- chohistorians, without further information pretend that pedophilia was something like a metaphorically incestuous behavior, and that it therefore was offending society’s written or unwritten behavior code. This concern, that has been voiced with particular stress by Lloyd deMause, founder of Psychohistory, appears to be rather of an ideological nature and fails to stand against the very principles it is founded upon. 31 Psychohistory is not a morality codex, but a science that regards world history under psychoanalytical perspective, applying to historical events and human motivation the psychoanalytical method as it was developed mainly by Sigmund Freud. Yet Lloyd DeMause steps out of scientific 32 objectiveness when he associates pedophile sexuality with incest, conclud- ing that pedophilia was after all a prolongation of incest beyond the borders of the family. I hold against this argument that it is in itself incestuous. In order to demonstrate what is right and what is wrong here, I have to dig a little deeper and get back to the foundations, not of psychohisto- ry, but of psychoanalysis. In fact, Freudian psychoanalysis affirms the sexuality of the child, and newer research has shown that even the fetus is sexual in an auto–erotic manner. While it is true that Freud took a distance to his student and collabo- rator Wilhelm Reich because the latter began to fight politically for chil- dren’s sexual freedom, Freud rejected Reich not because of a divergence in scientific perspective. Their split was a mere cultural controversy, or, as See Lloyd DeMause, Foundations of Psychohistory (1982). 31 See Lloyd DeMause, The Psychohistory Journal (Periodical). 32 | Chapter Two 84 we would say today, a matter of political correctness. Freud was convinced of the child’s abundant sexual life, but he thought, as he literally replied to Reich, that culture primes and that we had to respect Western society’s fun- damental denial of children’s sexual freedom. As a result, Freud, and after him the overwhelming part of psycho- analysts, simply blinded out from their professional regard any sexual activity of the child outside of the family. In fact, when you read psycho- analytic writings, you are quickly overwhelmed by the extreme focus of these people upon incestuous wishes of the child or both the child and the parents. The Socratic error here is to assume that this view was scientific in any way, while it is truly the consequence of a cultural, and in addition a professional bias. The cultural bias is the fact that in patriarchal societies, natural sexuality is forbidden for children with the result that unnatural sex- uality is brought about, mainly in the form of rape–centered pornogra- phy, sadomasochism and violent child rape, abduction and murder. The professional bias is the fact that psychoanalysts typically deal with neurot- ic, and not with sane people. The final and quite far–reaching results of this fundamental position of mainstream psychoanalysis are the following. The regard upon sexual- ity is distorted in that incest and incestuous wishes are viewed upon with an exaggerated and unnatural focus that veils the fact that the human being, if raised freely, naturally projects sexual wishes outside of the fami- ly. The factual oedipal touch of the modern nuclear family and the really widespread problem of incestuous wishes, and factual emotional and sexual incest, is the result of patriarchy’s denial of child–child sex outside of the family; anthropological research within tribal cultures that give their children full emotional and sexual freedom for copulating with other children corroborates that in these societies incest is absolutely non–exis- tent; interestingly enough, what also is practically non–existent in these cultures is violent crime and sexual dysfunctions, as well as homosexuali- ty. As modern society says violence is good, and sex is bad, it by the same token says incest is the rule for the child, while sex outside of the Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 85 family is the exception as it is invariably considered as criminal and al- legedly damages and traumatizes the child. This is how patriarchy has put nature upside down: it focuses upon the sick and dysfunctional and disregards the plain, healthy and natural. Lloyd deMause and many of his colleagues in faith seem to suffer from a blind spot as they virtually project incest outside of the family, not seeing that they confuse the rule with the exception. Suffices to read, for example, Françoise Dolto, who was a mainstream Freudian psychoanalyst with an outspoken Christian orientation. Dolto was in France and later in life internationally renowned as child therapist, and she expressed in her books the view that the healthy child naturally wishes to find love mates of same or different age outside of the family. Dolto when asked if she did not agree with Freud that every child had incestuous wishes toward his or her parents, replied this to young psychoanalysts during one of her workshops on child psychoanalysis: Françoise Dolto You as psychoanalysts have to deal, in your daily practice, with neurotic children. Of course, neurotic children are incestuous- ly fixated, because the very etiology of neurosis, as we know since Freud, is sexual. So, with this bias in your mind, you wrongly assume that the same was true for the healthy child. 33 What is true for sexuality is equally true for autonomy. A naturally sex- ual child is typically more independent and more autonomous than a neurotic and incestuously fixated child. The frequently observed clinging behavior of modern city children, their helpless, infantile and irresponsible behavior, even as late as when approaching puberty, their immaturity in handling sharp or fragile objects such as knives or glasses show well their incestuous fixation, their neurotic blockage and co–dependent entan- glement with their parents, and the early psychosexual damage a life– denying and pleasure–hostile education inflicted upon them. Françoise Dolto, Séminaire de Psychanalyse d’Enfants, Tome 2, (1985), p. 21 (translation 33 mine). | Chapter Two 86 There is a natural striving for autonomy built into every growing life. A child of three years of age needs more autonomy than a child of fif- teen months of age. A toddler of eighteen months needs more autonomy than a baby of five months. Many parents ignore that babies, toddlers and pre–schoolers, already before reaching the age of primary school, need to develop autonomy. Many adults believe that children grew through magic shifts, like the one from babyhood to childhood, from childhood to youth and from youth to adulthood. The first shift is be- lieved to take place around seven years of age, the next one around twelve years of age and the final one around eighteen years of age. Sorry, but this is really speaking about myths. These shifts don’t exist in real life as all growth is gradual and smooth. This is why all education should be gradual and smooth. While it is a good thing to have certain initiation rites or ceremonies that mark important steps in the growth of children, these rites are what they are: mark stones that border an other- wise seamless road. I arrive at a mark stone, I see the mark stone, I touch the mark stone, I pass the mark stone, I remember the mark stone. My passing the mark stone is gradual, and smooth in time, and the mark stone itself is of lesser importance than my passing it. What is important is that I constantly grow, that I remain moving. We learn the basic movement into autonomy during our first year of life, and not later on during adoles- cence or when we allegedly turn into that magic world of adulthood. I do not want to belittle the important changes that take place in the life of adolescents, and their sometimes passionate focus upon getting more autonomy, nor do I belittle the marking shift from adolescence into final adulthood. But often we observe that especially those adolescents who have rather repressive and possessive parents get onto the obnoxious track and really push it through for every millimeter of increased auton- omy. There is a logic in every behavior and adolescents who put high stress on autonomy have a reason to do so. The reason is rooted in much earlier years, in the years of babyhood. There is no alternative to autonomy. To make down or belittle children’s need for autonomy is to open the door to emotional and power abuse, Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 87 and large scale. This form of child–abuse is not perpetrated by the prover- bial stranger, but by mothers, first of all mothers, and more and more also by professionals who are working for, affiliated with, or sponsored by the international child protection industry. | Chapter Two 88 The Ecstasy Pattern What is ecstasy – is it merely a pleasure boost? If it was that, this pat- tern would have to be annexed to Pattern Six: Pleasure and a separate pat- tern would not be needed. To avoid a lifeless theoretical discussion on this point, let us proceed empirically and observe. Does a sex orgy bring about ecstasy? I have short- ly mentioned in the overview over the eight dynamic patterns above that in fact there were in the past taboo–free events in many cultures, usually one or two days per year where incest, even in direct line, was given a free license. It is historically documented that even in major cultures such as Italy and Brazil this custom reigned still in the Renaissance during the Carnival in Venice and the Carnival in Rio. Many tribal cultures have similar rites, but after deeper research into shamanism and having myself gone through a psychedelic experience, I came to the conclusion that ecstasy in the true sense cannot be triggered merely by fulfilling one’s sexual wishes, be it wishes that normally remain repressed in our culture. We still are with the pleasure function when we think of orgiastic events, intimately or in public, in group sex orgies, we still have a simple sexual satisfaction, an orgasm, at the end. It may be enhanced through the exotic nature of sex, with children or even one’s own children, for example, or even in front of others who do the same, but still, ecstasy as I have found it present in, for example, the Andine Shuar culture in Ecuador, is something entirely different than high sexual fulfillment. While I admit that sexual fulfillment is very important for a healthy life and that we should have as little as possible sexual restrictions, this is not all there is when we look over the fence of mainstream condi- tioning. Ecstasy induced by psychedelics is not related to the pleasure func- tion, while in some trips there are actual sexual encounters and strong and satisfying sexual feelings, but this is rather the exception. What I found characterizes the truly ecstatic experience is religion, religion in its original and pure sense: a backlink established to our soul and our pro- Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 89 found holistic wisdom. It’s generally not really a pleasurable experience: it’s in most cases an awe–inspiring experience of deep wonder and bliss. And one goes out humbled and wistful as a small child. Sexual pleasure and orgiastic satisfaction, certainly important as such for our health cannot really be compared with the wonder and the ecsta- sy that are the result of a psychedelic experience where set and setting are correctly chosen. Ralph Metzner It is widely accepted in the field that set and setting are the most important determinants of experiences with psychedelics, while the drug plays the role of a catalyst or trigger. This is in contrast to the psychiatric or psychoactive drugs, including stimulants, depressants and narcotics, where the pharmacolog- ical action seems paramount, and set and setting play a minor role. 34 It seems that the opening of mind is a larger experience generally than the fulfillment of desire in the form of orgiastic pleasure. In many tribal cultures, in fact, both experiences are linked to each other during festivities, and perhaps there is something like one feedbacking upon the other and enhancing the other. Further research is needed here. All the literature I found relating to ecstasy was exclusively dealing with entheogen–induced ecstasy, or ecstasy as a religious, not a sexual, experience. Therefore, let me report this research more in detail instead of putting up assumptions about a greater vision of ecstasy that I cannot for the moment backup with scientific data. Terence McKenna, when asked by Jay Levin to define shamanism, replied: Terence McKenna Shamanism is use of the archaic techniques of ecstasy that were developed independent of any religious philosophy – the empirically validated, experientially operable techniques that produce ecstasy. Ecstasy is the contemplation of wholeness. That’s why when you experience ecstasy – when you contem- See Ralph Metzner in Ralph Metzner (Ed.), Ayahuasca (1999), p. 24. 34 | Chapter Two 90 plate wholeness – you come down remade in terms of the po- litical and social arena because you have seen the larger pic- ture. 35 This is why I engaged my shamanism and entheogens research in the first place: it was for elucidating the Ecstasy Pattern within the research project for the present production. But what is ecstasy, then? Terence McKenna, in his book Archaic Revival, explains: Terence McKenna Ecstatic is a word unnecessary to define except operationally: an ecstatic experience is one that one wishes to have over and over again. 36 McKenna is right in not complicating what anyway can hardly be verbalized. Ecstatic joy is different from sensual satisfaction because it is a learning experience. We learn each time about ourselves and the universe. That is why ecstatic experiences are often also called mind–opening experi- ences. But there is more. When you remember your childhood you may recall a form of ex- citement that was not related to sexuality, but to some form of wonder, a joy that you could not explain where it was coming from and what it was induced by. I have called it in one of my consciousness guides feeling good without reason. You may remember that as a child at times you felt like flying right to heaven, so happy and excited you were, and most of the time without any apparent reason. Well, I succeeded in reawakening this basic innocence in myself and thus I do experience moments of full and unhampered happiness and ecstasy when they come; and they come spontaneously, without being asked for and without being triggered by any drug. But I know that not many adults have kept their childhood innocence or have achieved reawakening it during adulthood. Terence McKenna, The Archaic Revival (1992), p. 13. 35 Id., p. 144. 36 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 91 Now, let me address a very fundamental argument that most people come up with more or less spontaneously regarding psychedelic experi- ence: they tend to argue that drugs will render you addictive. This is true for certain drugs, but not for all drugs. It is true for alcohol, for coffee, for tobacco, for most tranquilizers, for some medical drugs, for some of the hard core drugs such as heroin, but it is not true for Cannabis and what we call psychedelics or entheogens. Shamanism researchers like Michael Harner, Adam Gottlieb, Ralph Metzner or the McKenna brothers have repeated often in their publica- tions that psychedelics do not render addictive; regarding synthetic drugs, we should remember that once LSD was a scientific substance, used in psychotherapy, and that the one who discovered it, the Swiss chemist Al- bert Hofmann, asserted that LSD was not rendering addictive in any way. Why the drug ultimately was put on the index of forbidden drugs has nothing to do with a dependency problem, but simply and clearly has political reasons. Terence McKenna explains: Terence McKenna The solution of much of modern malaise, including chemical dependencies and repressed psychoses and neuroses, is direct exposure to the authentic dimensions of risk represented by the experience of psychedelic plants. The pro–psychedelic plant position is clearly an anti–drug position. Drug depen- dencies are the result of habitual, unexamined, and obsessive behavior; these are precisely the tendencies in our psychologi- cal makeup that the psychedelics mitigate. The plant hallu- cinogens dissolve habits and hold motivations up to inspection by a wider, less egocentric, and more grounded point of view within the individual. 37 Most experts on shamanism agree with Mircea Eliade who says that the role of the shaman in shamanistic cultures is to be a manipulator of the sacred, whose main function is to induce ecstasy in a society where ecstasy is the prime religious experience. The subtitle of Mircea Eliade’s study Shamanism: Archa 38 - Id., p. 219. 37 Dennis McKenna & Terence McKenna, The Invisible Landscape (1993). 38 | Chapter Two 92 ic Techniques of Ecstasy, which is the classic of all classics on shamanism clearly suggests that shamanism is primarily a system of techniques destined to bring about and maintain ecstasy, individually and collectively, as a repeated experience so vital for the tribe and tribal life, and for peaceful social to- getherness within the tribe and between tribes, that its importance cannot be overestimated. 39 Why should ecstasy, then, be so important for peaceful living, for so- cial relations, for peace, for a wistful attitude in living? What is so special in ecstasy, and what is different in ecstasy compared with the satisfaction of desire, or sensual and sexual pleasure? Terence McKenna has an- swered this question when he said, as I quoted it above, that ecstasy is the contemplation of wholeness. Thus, in simple terms, when we talk about ecstasy, we talk about reli- gion, not religion in its perverted function as a system of indoctrination or morality catalogue, but religion in its original sense as a gnosis, a gain of knowledge about life, an instantaneous holistic revelation about the deeper meaning of our lives, a regard that implies the gain of direct intuitive knowledge about the sense of living, the meaning of our lives, and the es- sential nature of all–that–is. In this sense, there is a synchronistic link between shamanism and the experience of ecstasy as the contemplation of wholeness, on one hand, and paranormal realities such as the fairy world, the religious visions and miracles experienced by sages and saints, and generally, the discovery of soul in our daily life, on the other. 40 Thomas Moore, in his bestselling book Care of the Soul, gives practical guidelines about how to bring about authentic ecstasy within our non– shamanic Western culture; as such the book is of unprecedented value, a precious gift that goes beyond all research reports about shamanism be- cause it gives us, within our own culture, ways of bringing about ecstasy Mircea Eliade, Shamanism (1989). 39 See, for example, W.Y. Evans–Wentz, The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries (1911). 40 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 93 in daily life and in our multiple relationships with self, other and the whole universe. 41 A similarly precious guide for realizing the authenticity of our own soul reality, while coming from a quite different point of departure, is Karen Kingston’s book Creating Sacred Space With Feng Shui. Karen 42 Kingston’s unique talent is an inborn and absolutely stunning natural sense for the higher dimensions of existence, for all that is invisible to our physical eyes and undetectable by our senses. The novice reader may be astonished about the authority that this text reveals and the power of the author’s approach to Feng Shui that is the pragmatic and direct approach of an experienced practitioner. This book is not simply one of those poet- ic writings that elaborate a magic view of life. It is that also, but it is much more. Behind the beautiful appearance and the refined language is hid- den a hard core manual that is truly scientific – in the sense of a higher and holistic form of science. Of course, the representatives of reductionist modern science would question most of Karen Kingston’s scientific concepts. But this argument is true for almost all publications about Feng Shui, which is not a collec- tion of ancient myths, or superstition, but a real science. What Karen 43 Kingston does is exactly to go beyond the limits of a Cartesian science that is based upon today admitted wrong premises about life. To call Karen Kingston’s approach to life animistic, an argument that has been put forth also against most of Goethe’s scientific writings of, and first of all against his Color Theory , would disregard the deep and intu 44 - itive truth that is at the basis of this holistic life philosophy. Karen Kingston who is married with a Balinese and lives several months every Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul (1994). 41 Karen Kingston, Creating Sacred Space With Feng Shui (1997). 42 See Pierre F. Walter, The Idiot Guide to Science, Awareness Guide (2010). 43 See Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Theory of Colors (1970), and Frederick Burwick, 44 The Damnation of Newton (1986). | Chapter Two 94 year in Bali, gives pertinent information in her book about the ways that Balinese use Feng Shui or Space Clearing. There are in Bali actually two levels of handling spiritual wisdom, a professional level – if I may say so – and a popular or intuitive level. The professional level is since many generations in the hands of the first caste, and especially the Pedandas. Here, we encounter a highly sophisticated and informed way of handling spiritual information that is so complex and so deep that most Westerners would only shake their heads when they heard about it. On the other hand there are the people in the street who, in Bali, it seems, are also wiser as anywhere else in the world. For they, too, have this knowledge, only in a more intuitive and less literary form. Having lived and worked Bali for several years, I understand her natural affinity with Bali and the Balinese. I could not imagine where else somebody like her could live. It all sounds like a miracle but I am con- vinced that we will fully understand it once we know more about the complex influences that sound and vibrations have on our aura, on all our seven bodies. From what we learn from such an experience, it appears that neither intellectual brilliance nor extraordinary talent or knowledge, nor else a specific sense for paranormal realities, but simply total surrender is needed to experience the transformation entheogens bring about. McKenna states in his book Food of the Gods: Terence McKenna Shamanic ecstasy is an act of surrender that authenticates both the individual self and that which is surrendered to, the mystery of being. Because our maps of reality are determined by our present circumstances, we tend to lose awareness of the larger patterns of time and space. 45 That the ecstasy pattern has never been integrated in patriarchal civi- lizations is kind of logical. This denial is the inevitable outcome of the power structures in Oedipal Culture as I call the patriarchal shift that hap- Terence McKenna, Food of the Gods (1992), p. 7. 45 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 95 pened around five thousand years ago. The knowledge taboo is inherent in patriarchal or dominator society and it finds its explanation simply in the fact that a fundamentally undemocratic oligarchy always focuses upon manipulation, not information, indoctrination, not natural knowl- edge to keep the masses at stake and itself at power. It has been established since the beginnings of the 20th century, fore- most by the Bulgarian researcher Edmond Bordeaux–Szekely, and his discovery, in the Vatican library, of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the original gnosis of the Essenes, in which sordid ways the Church falsified the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth and the whole of the text of the Bible. Do we need further proof for the fact that, as a culture, we have gone astray from the original and immediate knowledge that direct perception conveys? Direct perception is the original mode of knowledge gathering used by most tribal cultures that live in accordance with the wisdom of nature. Among these cultures, most use use entheogens such as Ayahuasca to get in touch with the perennial wisdom of plants and mushrooms, be- ings by far older than our human race. Of course, in our dominator soci- eties, this knowledge has been largely forgotten because of the knowledge repression terror of the Church’s Inquisition for more than one millenni- um. 46 Yet, direct perception is the angular stone of K’s unique teaching that revived this ancient knowledge for our times, and it has been found by famous think tanks such as Edward de Bono and learning innovators such as Dr. Georgi Lozanov, originator of Superlearning, that direct percep- tion is the primary mode of functioning of our brain; it was also asserted that it is our original, unspoiled, and highly effective mode of learning. 47 After the analysis, let us have a look at how we can integrate our lost Gaia knowledge if we want to. The late Terence McKenna, eminent ex- Schultes, Hofmann and Rätsch report that mushrooms are among the most archaic 46 forms of living on earth and have therefore assimilated an infinite amount of knowledge about evolution on earth that is not per se accessible to a human being without access to entheogenic substances. See Richard Evans Schultes, Albert Hofmann, Christian Rätsch, Plants of the Gods (1992). See Sheila Ostrander & Lynn Schroeder, Superlearning 2000 (1994). 47 | Chapter Two 96 pert on the matter, was rather skeptical because access to entheogens has become tiresome and difficult with modern society’s strict taboo on mind–altering substances: Terence McKenna The impact of hallucinogens in the diet has been more than psychological; hallucinogenic plants may have been the cata- lysts for everything about us that distinguishes us from other higher primates, for all the mental functions that we associate with humanness. Our society more than others will find this theory difficult to accept, because we have made pharmaco- logically obtained ecstasy a taboo. Like sexuality, altered states of consciousness are taboo because they are consciously or unconsciously sensed to be entwined with the mysteries of our origin – with where we came from and how we got to be the way we are. Such experiences dissolve boundaries and threaten the order of the reigning patriarchy and the domination of society by the unreflecting expression of ego. 48 On the other hand, international culture has transformed the world into a village and we can travel to cultures with a still largely shamanic world view, at least in their more remote parts, such as, for example Ecuador. In fact, in 2004, invited by a Polish businessman married with a Shuar native, I went to Misahualli, Ecuador for experiencing the ritual ceremony of taking the Ayahuasca brew, in a context where set and set- ting were carefully chosen and not left to hazard or tourism–friendly am- ateurism. After this experience with Ayahuasca, that I am going to report fur- ther down in this guide, I am convinced that we can directly access na- ture’s original wisdom and receive guidance from its universal intelli- gence, as well as benefit from a power of deconditioning that has no par- allel in human history and experience. Terence McKenna, Food of the Gods (1992), p. 52. 48 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 97 The Energy Pattern All native cultures have an innate sense for the energy–nature of life, all life, not only human life. This fact has long been veiled because of 49 the metaphoric language used by most tribal cultures. For example the amazing knowledge that the Dogon in Mali have about the cosmos and even details about certain stars, such as Sirius, knowledge that in our cul- ture only astronomers have, is all coded in a beautiful metaphoric lan- guage. The same has been observed by Terence McKenna regarding 50 the terminology used by tribal peoples to describe phenomena pertaining to the human energy field. In Archaic Revival, and with regard to the bioenergetic charge contained in plant substances used for religious pur- poses, McKenna writes: Terence McKenna They are the true phenomenologists of this world; they know plant chemistry, yet they call these energy fields spirits. 51 It has often been objected to the amazing knowledge of tribal popu- lations that shamanic reality was a pre–psychotic or primitive worldview that only peoples with an archaic mindset could uphold, but that, by con- trast, the Western citizen had a far higher developed consciousness. This kind of ignorant judgments that used to be uttered by anthropologists and psychologists suffering from the usual Christian and colonial condi- tioning, fortunately have largely been silenced by advanced and unbiased research on shamanism and parallel realities; what strongly corroborates the evidence of plants being universal radios of life–related knowledge is My study of the age–old Chinese science of Feng Shui from 1998 has revealed me 49 clearly that already as a child I had the faculty of directly sensing the bioenergetic charge emanating from people and being present in certain locations. I still have this faculty to- day. See, for example, Robert Temple, The Sirius Mystery (1998), Part One, pp. 53 ff. 50 Terence McKenna, The Archaic Revival, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1992, p. 45. 51 | Chapter Two 98 the fact that, contrary to prejudice, Western people who have had exposure to plant teachers react to this experience in much the same way as natives do, and report pretty much the same phenomena as natives report and re- ported over millennia. What namely recurs in these visions or insightful journeys, or contempla- tions of wholeness or however one may want to name these explorations in the plant realm, is the fact that nature is basically coded in energy patterns, these patterns being observable, recognizable and subject to conscious manipulation for beneficial or for detrimental purposes. Black magic, sorcery, is explainable as a conscious manipulation of energy patterns for the sake of hurting others, and from this point of view and after scrutiny it becomes evident that sorcery is a powerful school of wisdom, as has been shown, inter alia, by Carlos Castaneda’s explorative journeys with a Yaqui sorcerer from Mexico. I will now 52 quote three references from Ralph Metzner’s sampler Ayahuasca. Kate 53 S., a woman artist in her forties, reports: Kate S. I had the thought that the reason certain cultural or ethnic art forms appear is because of the planetary energy in the location of the origin of that form, and that the music and the art were intricately connected and reflective of the energy of the plane- tary location of their origin and the energies which exist there. 54 I.M. Lovetree, an educator in his fifties, states: I.M. Lovetree After the ayahuasca sessions, I feel cleansed within, throughout and all about. I have a sense of having been healed at all lev- els, especially the physical. The ayahuasca medicine seems to Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan (1985), Journey to Ixtlan (1991), Tales of Pow 52 - er (1991), The Second Ring of Power (1991). Ralph Metzner (Ed.), Ayahuasca (1999). 53 Id., p. 72 (emphasis mine). 54 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 99 have a special affinity for the gastrointestinal system: it snakes its way through the body, seeking out and eliminating obstruc- tions to life energy flow. I sometimes think of it as a form of kundalini, a Liquid Plum’r for the soul. For cleansing and heal- ing, for reconnecting with the vegetable kingdom, ayahuasca is definitely my medicine of choice. 55 Ralph Metzner, in concluding the reader, summarizes: Ralph Metzner The fundamental reality of the universe is a continuum, a uni- tive field or fabric, of both energy and consciousness, that is beyond time, space and all forms, and yet somehow mysteriously with- in them, simultaneously transcendent and immanent. In tradi- tional Asian religions, this unitive field is variously referred to as Tao, or Atman–Brahman or Tantra (the ‘web’ or ‘fabric’ or the ‘jewelled net of Indra’). Some Native North Americans refer to it as Wakan–Tanka, the all–pervading Creator Spirit. In the traditional Anglo–Saxon religions of the British isles it was called the wyrd, an invisible network of magical forces. In theistic religions like Christianity, this oneness corresponds to what is called the Godhead, i.e., beyond the personal deity. In the systems language of post–modern science it is seen as an infinitely complex system of interrelationships, or ‘web of life’. At the level of the planet Earth, this integrated whole is re- ferred to as Gaia – the name of the ancient Greek Earth God- dess that has become the name of the whole Earth considered as a purposive intelligent living super–organism. 56 Since we are part of the unified system of interdependence, just like every other being, we can never actually be outside of it, as a detached, objective observer. But since the unified field is energy, we are energetically connected to every other form and being in the universe. And since the field is also consciousness, this enables us, as human beings, to attune with, identify with, and com- municate with any and every other life–form, object or being in the universe, from the macrocosmic to the microscopic. 57 Id., p. 123 (emphasis mine). 55 Id., p. 282 (emphasis mine). 56 Id., p. 283 (emphasis mine). 57 | Chapter Two 100 William A. Carey, a medical doctor who did an amazing research on psychedelic substances to find the missing link between psyche and soma, 58 equally states that the human body, according to Edgar Cayce’s prophetic visions, basically reveals to be an energy structure: William A. Carey Cayce said, for instance, that this body we find ourselves in the moment is an energy structure and will respond positively or neg- atively to other energies; that the atoms and cells that make up the body are pure energy and have consciousness of their own. 59 William A. McCarey M.D., In Search for Healing (1996). 58 Id., p. 4. 59 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 101 The Language Pattern In my own experience with Ayahuasca, as I reported it in Consciousness and Shamanism, I made an amazing discovery about language: And the intelligence seemed to tell me telepathically that I was locked in language, that all my experiencing of life was conditioned upon language, and that I hardly ever perceived life directly, spontaneously, as an immediate connection. I knew that this intelligence was connected to all, was connecting all and was all. It simply was, and it gently invited me to enter this connec- tion, this all–encompassing love that it irradiated. The intelligence seemed to wanting to free me from the condi- tioning I had received through language, and through using language for describing reality. What this extraordinary experience taught me was that language is indeed, as Freudian psychoanalysis strongly emphasizes, a part of culture, so that we can say that there cannot be culture without language. How- ever, what this intelligence conveyed to me was, so to say, the other side of the medal. Language is part of culture, but not forcibly part of na- ture’s original setup. I might express it metaphorically the way that na- ture’s language rather sounds like when, before the symphony starts, the musicians test and tune their instruments by playing the A unison. Cul- ture’s language, it goes without saying, is the symphony itself, a written score, well defined, well put in print, well black on white – while the tuning of the instruments sounds like a form of chaotic improvisation and is volatile, and up to the moment, not fixated, not written down, not put in print. Language serves social conditioning, or the other way round: condi- tioning is in our mainstream civilization done by language, by verbal lan- guage first of all, and by emphasizing the early acquisition of language skills by the young child. I certainly was conditioned that way, perhaps more than others; my mother told me that I already began to speak at the | Chapter Two 102 age of seven months and by the age of twelve months my verbal lan- guage capacities were as good as complete. My mother had been a radio speaker and her language training was very astute – which is a great ad- vantage for me today as a writer. But it also has strongly conditioned my perception of reality. I seem to perceive reality more than most others through language, and less through visual input, which is however the way most people function in our terribly visual culture. I found that nature–abiding cultures have a much more general and encompassing notion of language. Language is understood primarily not as verbal language in the sense we use it in Western culture but as a no- tion that encompasses the telepathic interchange with other language realms such as the animal and the plant realms. Language, in this sense, is communication in every possible way, be it by sound, be it by thought, be it by gestures or movements. It is clear that such a holistic notion of language as it seems to be common to most tribal cultures leads to a more subtle understanding of nature because it is cross–lingual, so to say. When I dispose only of human language, and spoke I twelve lan- guages, I will still not be able to communicate with an animal, or with a plant. The native may also want to master the languages of other natives tribes, but he will for that reason not neglect to master what I may call the universal language which is a form of sensitivity that includes telepathy and that is founded upon a deep interest in other realms of living. Thus, I must ask, what does culture in fact mean, if it is only a system of restrictions, if it seems to be a stupidity–factor in human development, when I compare it to the much deeper wisdom of nature? Culture that defines itself as distinct from nature will use a distorted language. This kind of culture, which is ours, is created by perverted language, condi- tioned language and restricted language. In native cultures, which are true cultures in the sense that they integrate nature, I observe, the taboo is a restriction of action, but not a restriction of language. When I see that, I understand that taboos that prohibit language are not only impeding communication, but destroy culture. The prohibition of talk creates human beings that are mute, people who have to use other Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 103 forms of communication than verbal expression. They use violence. This is the status quo of modern international consumer culture where worldwide terrorism had to come up in order to show even the most ig- norant members of society what degree of collective violence we have attained. And we have attained it not by talking but by being and remain- ing mute. Tribal cultures, in their natural wisdom, know all this and care for the importance of language and the fact to put words on things. Within native cultures, taboos such as the incest taboo, as well as taboos that concern the world of the spirits are do–taboos. They are not talk–taboos. What is prohibited by the taboo is the deed, not the verbal expression of the tabooed behavior. Furthermore, in those cultures there are special festivities that are focused upon humanizing the taboo through its verbal- ization. Language humanizes the taboo and integrates it into the individ- ual and the collective unconscious. The spirituality of man is in first line its capability to humanize aso- cial behavior through verbalization and, doing this, to create culture. However, a taboo that represents a mere non–dit will not preserve culture, but destroy it, for the tabooed behavior cannot be comprehended as long as it is not humanized by language. Any possibility to communicate it is cut–off by the talk–taboo. Talk–taboos are the result of hypocrisy and undermine the taboo since what is not talked about is done secretly while it is denunciated publicly. Talk–taboos are thus against democracy since democracy implies free speech. It is for this reason that language education and the support of the young to express their emotions and all what can be said, is so over- whelmingly important for the formation and preservation of culture. This was historically the case in humanistic education which was based on the study of the old languages and the Hellenic tradition. These an- tique cultures namely had less talk taboos than our today's mass cultures. After the end of the Hellenic era and the beginning of the moralistic epoch of mankind, namely under the influence of post–platonic and Christian thought, language was more and more tabooed and the possibility of complete dialog more and more narrowed. | Chapter Two 104 With good reason, psychotherapist Robert M. Stein calls Judeo– Christian tradition primitive in the right sense of the word, because it’s undeveloped on a level of what I might call ‘cultural cognition’: Robert M. Stein Creative psychological development, individuation, is depen- dent on spiritual freedom. When we say, for example, a man has a free spirit, do we mean that he freely or necessarily transgresses the imposed manners, mores and taboos of his culture? I think not. But it does mean the freedom to do any- thing or go any place he desires in the imaginal realm. He is a man who has clearly distinguished the sacral, timeless world from the secular, historical world. He knows he can move with unashamed dignity among the gods and demons which belong to the mundane world. Such freedom cannot occur with a primitive form of consciousness in which inner and outer reali- ty are governed by the same laws and values. In this sense, our Judeo–Christian tradition is primitive in that our thoughts and desires are subject to the same dogma, the same regulation, as our deeds. Spiritual freedom requires a break with biblical tradition and the development of a new form of consciousness – a consciousness which promotes the cultivation of imaginal freedom. 60 Cultures that prohibit language, such as ours, are in truth no cultures as they are in their very root against freedom and against culture. They are Barbarian, authoritarian and tyrannical. Their well–sounding demo- cratic setups and constitutions do not alter this fact and contribute rather to veil this truth. The way to personal freedom and creativity, to autonomy and the detachment from collective categories is only possible through individual- ly building a culture of language, the civilization of personal expression. Only on this very personal and individual basis culture can be created for the community, for language is every kind of expression, everything a creative mind may come up with, not only speech and writing, but also every form of art, of expression that leads to communication. Robert M. Stein, Redeeming the Inner Child in Marriage and Therapy (1990), 261 ff. 60 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 105 Our asocial instincts, and our perversions, can only be humanized through language; there is no other way. Without language the process that Freud called sublimation of the instincts is impossible. In case that a giv- en society lacks language to express asocial behavior, repression takes place. What is not integrated, is disintegrated, repressed and projected. All collective tragedies of mankind were and are accompanied by collec- tive psychosis, a process that breaks through the fragile balance of repres- sion and brings to the surface the primary archaic patterns of behavior. It is the same on the individual level. An ego without language is a psychot- ic ego and to create collective muteness means to prepare individual and collective psychosis. The Tao of psychic health, then, not only for the individual, but also for entire cultures is the way of language, of communication and the ac- tive use of speech and writing. To realize this, it is not enough to write well–sounding guarantees in national constitutions and otherwise shut up as a politically correct citizen. An eminent expert on the importance of ob- serving the formation of language in the human baby was the late Françoise Dolto, the famous child therapist from Paris, France, whom I have known personally. I visited her Maison Verte in Paris in 1985 and 61 interviewed Dolto after the visit in her apartment. An interesting corre- spondence followed up to our meeting. Dolto was a pioneer of child psychoanalysis, made unique discoveries in this science and was known for her remarkable if not miraculous heal- ing successes with psychotic children. In my observation, her success was due to a unique and almost shamanic understanding of language, which of course includes the direct telepathic language of our subconscious mind when it bonds in dialog with another human’s subconscious. In the daily practice of the Maison Verte, a center for parents and children, the differ- ence it marks regarding conventional parent counseling becomes obvious when, for example, the child is greeted first when s/he arrives with their parents. Literally: green house. 61 | Chapter Two 106 Children bring their parents! Dolto used to say. The fact that the parents remain anonymous has been a very important detail in the good func- tioning of the place. They are identified as Jacques’ mom or Helene’s dad which was a very elegant way to protect the parents’ anonymity while creating a language system that is child oriented. Without anonymity most parents would not have come to the group in order to discuss family problems. Dolto’s insistence upon language and truthful communication may sound strange in the ears of people who have never heard about psycho- analysis. To remedy this lack of knowledge, there is no better way than to read Dolto’s extensive publications and to learn from her extraordinary penetration of the matter and her wealth of experience. 62 In the Maison Verte it is first of all the child that is spoken to, however not in the usual way people speak to children, but as one would speak to an adult. Babies are addressed as Monsieur X or Madame Y while they are shown around the facilities when they come for the first time. Françoise Dolto revived an old tradition from the European aristocracy. In fact, more than two hundred years ago it was common in aristocratic families to address even small children with the same forms of politeness one ad- dressed adults. Consequently children are not kissed or fondled or found cute when greeted by the receptionists. Tenderness, such is the philoso- phy, has its place only in relations between parents and child. The verbal communication with children is painstakingly truthful and serious, and no lies are told to children. When a child, for example, says it had no fa- ther, because the father left the mother, the center assistant would insist: – But of course you have a father, although you do not know him. Both your parents have created you in their loving em- brace, your mother and your father. Your father has participat- ed in your procreation with his body. You see that you certainly have a father. See, for example, Françoise Dolto, La Cause des Enfants (1985), La Cause des Adolescents 62 (1988). Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 107 There are no truths of life that are hidden in front of children. By the same token, assistants are specially trained to avoid allusions that are unclear and subject to misunderstandings. Facts of life are named and explicated. Even though parents are discussing intimate things, children are not complimented out of the room if they want to stay with their parents. Nothing that concerns the child is discussed behind his or her back. In many cases nothing but the respectful, rational, pragmatic and fearless way of handling relationships in the Maison Verte leads to solutions in behavioral problems with parents and/or children; fixed roles are thus easily dissolved and more flexible and creative forms of behavior can be learned. The press often spoke of miraculous changes with people who attended the house. One of the main goals of the Maison Verte was to prepare toddlers and small children for day care. Françoise Dolto, before she opened the center, had come to the insight that an immense number of children are traumatized by prematurely entering day care. Not only the child needs to be prepared, Dolto found, but also the mother. The sudden separation from the mother four long hours of day care can represent a great shocks for a small child. Contrary to most day care institutions where the transition of the child into day care is facilitated by a gradual extension of the time span the child passes in care, the Maison Verte practices a different approach. Not the adaptation for separation is the decisive factor, but the maturity of mother and child for the separation. Often, Dolto found, the children were ready for it, but the mothers not. The result was that the mothers gave to their children highly contradictory messages which were triggering emo- tional disturbances. For example a mother would affirm to the child that day care and consequently a separation was needed, but telepathically suggest to the child that she herself was not ready to stand the separation without im- mense emotional suffering. On the other hand children were found to be | Chapter Two 108 not mature yet for the separation when the mother had firmly decided to give them in daycare. The Maison Verte insures that both, mother and child, are ready for the separation. This is of special importance within the current nuclear family structure where children are almost exclusively fixated upon their parents. Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 109 The Love Pattern Culture and Pleasure The present state of violence came about through wrong relation- ships, the sacrifice of love and the upsurge of morality and collectively regulated sexual behavior , and first of all by a deficient or totally lack 63 - ing relationship of the inner parts of the psyche to each other. 64 We do not just have violence. The problem is that violence multiplies because there are multiple causes that trigger violence, and they are adding up to each other. Succinctly speaking, if our problems were origi- nating just from one single source, we would have since long solved them. As a race, humans are presently learning that most effects have more than one cause; the idea of a straight line linking one particular cause to one particular effect is infantile. Yet mainstream science establishment is today still based upon this myopic view. Only training our systemic and whole–brain thinking capacities can help us further. Pleasure–Denial and Violence Violence is the result of a power vacuum that comes about through an inner fixation or complex within the lower self that acts as a compensa- tion to suffering early in life. People who are in touch with their inner truth and who are liberated of culturally created fear blockages are able to realize constructive personal and collective happiness and they tend to build meaningful relationships. Our love choices depend not on what our crime laws stipulate but what is ethically sound and viable. More and more, it will be possible to make responsible love choices for relations that are unusual or even tabooed by former moral laws that belonged to the cultural heritage of the Pisces era. In that era of our collective past, happiness was smashed See, for example, Wilhelm Reich, The Invasion of Compulsory Sex–Morality (1971). 63 See, for example, Stone & Stone, Embracing Our Selves (1989). 64 | Chapter Two 110 by multiple nonsensical ideological doctrines. It is these doctrines and their fierce dogmatism that have created the almost chaotic state of vio- lence that we face today in the world. One of the main objectives that flow from this insight is the urgent need to redefine as natural all erotic longings and sexuality for all ages through information and social reform. Part of this endeavor is to publish the well–hidden facts about the roots of violence and the current subtle manipulation of the credulous masses into a hyper–violence paradigm that will result in a more gigantic destruction that was ever seen before on the globe. Compulsory Sex Morality Among the main reasons for violence being the repression of natural body pleasure and free love between people of all ages in general, and the child’s free sexual life in particular, my task was to retrace the wrong turn that humanity has taken since prehistory and to embed this truth in a cross–cultural perspective that is focused upon the importance of love as a major factor of human evolution. Compulsory morality or moralism has been the major killer app for love during all ages and it is moralism that brought about most of the current violence and destruction all over the globe. The pioneering work that Wilhelm Reich has done in this field of research is of paramount importance. The essential truth gained from years of research on the functional processes of life is that all parts of the psyche must be given a voice so that a constructive inner dialog can be set up. Abuse is ill–defined in our culture. It only considers the victim and not the abuser. However, the abuser is a victim in as much as the person he has victimized. In fact, any other than non–violent and consenting love and sex interaction between two people, regardless of their age, sim- ply is a lack of information and still more a lack of physical love experi- ence. In addition, it is true that nobody can be victimized who has not previously chosen to act as a victim in a given situation. The abuser is trapped by the victim’s paradigm in as much as the victim is trapped by Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 111 the abuser’s power problem. Both attract each other and there is no abuse without mutual implicit consent about acting out the two sides of abuse, the active and the passive one. Fighting against abuse is therefore not a moral cause but must start from a rational and two–sided view of the problem as an entanglement situation that is karmic and inherent in both parties’ life matrixes. Moral wars, by contrast, only lead to more confusion, more destruc- tion and more abuse. For they do not tackle the roots of abuse that are the same roots as the roots of violence, but only are concerned with the reflections that such shortcomings produce on the surface of society. They are for that reason entirely ineffective and superficial. A true remedy can only come from tedious study and observation of all the factors involved in abuse and those factors are for the most part unconscious elements of consciousness, entanglements that are hidden in the psyches of both abusers and abused, energetic blockages that have cut off the stream of life in one or the other way so that parasitic patterns came about. There is thus an urgent need to change the reigning paradigm re- garding love and abuse so as to reduce violence and to bring about posi- tive change for constructive new relationships that are based upon the golden rule of conduct as it is taught by sages since times immemorial. It is to be seen in what horrendous way both clerical and politically fascist movements and leaders have since centuries tried to veil this essential truth and thus spread the emotional plague all over the globe. After extensive research on mythology, particularly the writings of Joseph Campbell , I saw how the present love–killing paradigm has 65 come about from ancient times and how it was possible that the former love–based world order was overthrown and violently eradicated by a world order that replaced love by morality and natural care by obligatory and institutionalized forms of family relations. Historically, the transi 66 - See, for example, Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces (1973), Occidental 65 Mythology (1973), and The Power of Myth (1988). See Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade (1995), Sacred Pleasure (1996). 66 | Chapter Two 112 tion in human prehistory from peaceful and life–affirming matriarchal fishing–farming cultures to violent and life–denying hunting–killing pa- triarchal cultures is of particular importance for the understanding of the present macho and hero paradigm with its strong Puritanism and all its life–denying and sex–repressing dimension. There are important humanitarian consequences of this insight. Special care must be bestowed upon children who can be reformed and healed from biopathic deformations and character armors. There are millions of orphans in state institutions all over the world. If only a small percentage could be taken care of in collaborating with responsible insti- tutions that understand the importance of the love paradigm, humanity would be served as a whole and true evolution would be possible. The spiritual or religious impact of this project is obvious. It would lead us back to our divine origins, through reconnecting to our higher self. This is true for all involved, the children, the educators and all those who help building this new worldwide educational system. There were a great number of publications appearing in those years of the hippie generation that reported about experiments with freely raised children. What now seems highly disturbing in the New Age of Fascism that we are presently entering is the fact that those children were astonishingly mature and ready to assume appropriate responsibilities, highly flexible and adaptable to sudden changes in their life milieu, intelligent and inde- pendent. 67 Political restoration has spread its jovial and patriarchal wings over good old science, wiping under the carpet what does not fit in the reign- ing restrictive and somewhat paranoid worldview. Sexual permissiveness, once a big word, was and is a myth in Western cultures! 68 Larry L. & Joan M. Constantine, Treasures of the Island (1976), Where are the Kids? (1977). 67 J. P. Alston & F. Tucker, The Myth of Sexual Permissiveness (1973). 68 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 113 Anthropological Evidence In his book The Invasion of Compulsory Sex Morality (1971), Wilhelm Reich referenced and discussed Malinowski’s field studies on the Tro- briand Islands in Northwest Melanesia, one of the few still existing ma- triarchal cultures. In fact, as early as in 1929, Malinowski published his 69 report on the sexual life of the Trobriands in which he draws the reader’s attention particularly to the sexual life of children and adolescents. Ma 70 - linowski found, not without surprise, a high sexual permissiveness toward chil- dren’s free sexual play. More generally, he noted the total absence of a morality that condemns sexuality in children. Instead, he observed, that 71 children engage in free sexual play from early age. Initiatory rites were absent with the Trobriands since children were initiated from about three years onwards, generally by older children, in all forms of sexual play. This play was non–violent and encompassed, with the older children, complete coitus. The most interesting finding for Malinowski was that in this culture violence was as good as non–existing and that there were as good as no sexual dysfunctions. Trobriands were found to be almost ideal marriage partners and divorce was a rare exception. Violent crimes were non–exis- tent and incest was strongly tabooed and inhibited by social norms. Other researchers found similar phenomena with the Muria tribe in South India where children stay until their maturity in so–called ghotuls where they live their sexuality freely and in utter promiscuity. Older chil- dren initiate younger ones progressively into sexual play. These re- searchers found that after a phase of promiscuity, the children, from the age of sexual maturity, formed strong bonds and partnerships which were based not on sex, but on love. They further found that these first steady See for a definition of what is understood under matriarchal culture the extensive stud 69 - ies of Johann Jakob Bachofen, in: Gesammelte Werke, Band II, Das Mutterrecht (1948). Bronislaw Malinowski, The Sexual Life of Savages in North West Melanesia (1929). 70 Bronislaw Malinowski, Sex and Repression in Savage Society (1927), p. 76. 71 | Chapter Two 114 relationships formed the basis for later marriages that, regularly, lasted life–long. 72 Some researchers and sociologists allege nowadays that these findings had no significant meaning for our culture since they could not be ex- trapolated from their original cultural setting. However, such arguments assume that man, depending on his cultural conditioning, was basically different from one culture to the other. This is questionable, for the biolog- ical foundations are with all human beings the same, regardless of cultural or social conditioning. If all anthropological or psychological insights were valid only in a given culture, how could psychoanalysis which was found- ed by Sigmund Freud in Austria be successfully applied in Italy or France, in the United States or even in India or South America? The truth is that those critics hide their own emotional blockages and blind spots behind pseudoscientific arguments. One cannot disregard the extensive field studies of experienced anthropologists such as Malinowski or Margaret Mead or wipe them under the carpet with half–truths and moralistic philippics as it now is the trend, especially in the United States. Histori- cally, the love pattern was integrated and lived by the majority of tribal cultures, but never was accepted by any of the larger dominator cultures that today form the core of our industrialized nations on the globe. My thesis is that the destructiveness of civilization is the result of the repression of the natural emotions of the child and the building of moralistic behavior structures that have gradually replaced the primary self–regulatory pro- cesses that nature has coded for the growth of all living. Love Osmosis Violence and destruction that characterize human history have their roots not in a biological or genetic error, nor otherwise in the human set- up, but generally in the failure of man to keep in touch with nature’s wis- dom, and in particular by replacing love with compulsive morality and perverting children into obedient robots that have repressed their feelings V. Elwin, The Muria and their Ghotul (1947), Richard L. Currier, Juvenile Sexuality in Global 72 Perspective (1981). Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 115 in order to survive and be accepted. Examples to the contrary, as already mentioned, are the pre–patriarchal high cultures of Antiquity, the Tro- briand and other rather remote island cultures, and some more well– known cultures such as the Balinese culture, where people are generally emotionally balanced, happy and productive, loyal and intelligent. 73 Crime rates in those cultures, if we take only the Balinese culture as an example, are extremely low. Violent crimes such as murder and rape, or the rape and killing of children, are as good as non–existing. Mar- riages are generally long–lasting and divorce rates are considerably lower than in modern society. These cultures are more matriarchal in character than the highly violent modern civilizations which are predominantly patriarchal. History reveals that already the first highly developed civiliza- tions, such as Sumer, Babylon or the Inca culture were early patriarchal systems. With patriarchy began the oppression of women and children and the reduction of sexuality toward certain acts that were allowed and certain others that were prohibited. With the increase of power for the patriarchal system, repression, denunciation, intolerance and violence began to reign where before freedom, peace and tolerance were bloom- ing. An important factor within this process that keeps worsening until today is the repression of the child’s emotional life. Love versus Morality As already mentioned, Bronislaw Malinowski, a renowned anthropolo- gist, found with his field research on the Trobriand Islands in Papua–New– Guinea that this tribal culture has created social institutions that support the free development of the child's sexuality. This is through maintaining special houses for children and adolescents. From age three, children stay I speak here about the pre–Hellenic cultures such the Minoan Civilization on the island 73 of Crete that was a highly developed civilization with a natural focus on the senses an on beauty, free sexuality and a matriarchal worldview, respecting the female and female chil- dren. It had a low crime rate, no slavery, no male god but venerating goddesses, and low degree of violence, a culture that however was virtually raped and eaten up by the patri- archal invader tribes. | Chapter Two 116 and sleep in these houses, together with other children, and live their child sexuality freely and in total promiscuity. The older children gradual- ly initiate the younger ones into sexual relations, until coitus. The Trobriands think that the child must live his or her inborn sexual drive in promiscuity in order to be able, after puberty, to form steady and stable relationships with a partner for marriage. Malinowski was aston 74 - ished to see that with the Trobriands marriages were indeed stable, the divorce rate being below five percent. Regarding violence and crime, it was virtually non–existing on Trobriand. The way back to love can only start from the destruction of any and every concept of morality, be it justified religiously, ethically, culturally or scientifically. If we are to regain psychosomatic health and sanity, we have to stop thinking negatively about nature and accept our humanness with- out flinching, and also without the senseless zeal to improve what is as it is. Without morality concept, we again have to face the crude reality of suchness in everyday life. Instead of escaping in our comfortable realms of artificial duality, we have to practice acceptance when we realize that nothing is per se black or white, bad or good, unless thought declares it so. Where there is morality, love cannot be. Moralism and love are mutually exclusive as violence and pleasure are mutually exclusive. Morality is associated with violence, love is associated with pleasure. Love and pleasure are the original ingredients of life, whereas morality and violence are decay products resulting from the sacrifice of love to the gods of respectability and materialism. The price that civilized humanity pays for the destruction of love is high, as high as the price of life. Life on earth depends on our turning back to the wholeness, humility and permissiveness of love, abandoning the fragmentation, arrogance and rigidity of morality–based thinking and acting. As all pertinent research shows, love brings about natural growth, prosperity and happiness without effort and without strife. Most if not all our current worldwide problems could be solved peacefully and Bronislaw Malinowski, The Sexual Life of Savages in North West Melanesia (1929), Sex and 74 Repression in Savage Society (1927). Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 117 without conflict if we abandoned moralistic attitudes in politics and based our strategies on love and cooperation. Instead of rigidly adhering to static concepts, we would understand the unendingly dynamic and flexible way by which nature acts and just like nature, we could bring about posi- tive and constructive changes in every moment. What I call Love Pattern is by no means an intellectual concept, nor is it an invention of mine. What I propose is looking at life with the eyes of life, instead of looking at it through the myopic glasses of morality. An- thropological evidence and cross–cultural research has clearly demon- strated that contrary to psychoanalytical doctrine, the Oedipal confusion is not a universal psychosexual necessity in the development of human sexuality, but the inevitable result of love–denial in early childhood and the unnatural erotic fixation of children upon their parents. What modern–day child protection does is advocating emotional incest, and thus what it gives to our children is entanglement, not freedom. Children who enjoy their sexuality by having sex play with other children and adult mates are not confused about their emotional attractions and sexual preferences. Much to the contrary, these children have a mindset that, compared with their virgin comrades, is based upon what Freud called reality principle. Under the definition of modern child psychology, they would have to be considered more adult than most of our current adults that are raised like infantile idiots. They are in fact more responsi- ble, more considerate, more socially minded and less selfish than the pro- totype of the castrated consumer child. In my discussions of this topic, I regularly get the question why, if this was so, society was so hard on admitting and accepting the existence of pedophilia as a natural counterpart to children’s own love wishes? My answer is that this society is so deeply ingrained in incest in every possible form that admitting children’s emotional and sexual freedom would jeop- ardize the expectation of most parents to be the foremost and exclusive love mates of their children. There are many people in our culture who think that allowing the child to be sexual would naturally encompass children having sex with their | Chapter Two 118 own parents. When I object that children, if let free to choose their sex partners would in most cases not opt for their parents but for peers or adults other than their parents, people seem to be puzzled in a really in- teresting way. I namely see in those moments that they are more puzzled and disturbed by the idea that children have sexual relations with strangers than with their own parents. They are in fact more sympathetic to the idea that children have in- cestuous relations rather than free choice relations outside of the family web! And this is, sorry, really a perverse idea and it shows the deeply per- verse base setup of our patriarchal society that considers children first of all as pleasure toys for their parents and extended family, and only after- wards as people like you and me who have the right to choose their part- ners instead of complying with the unwritten law to serve as kiss cuties for consoling sexually frustrated elders that happen to be their parents. After all, let us ask the pertinent question: Why should parenthood grant sexual privileges? My guess is that when one day we have enough discussed, publicized and mourned about rampant incest within the modern nuclear family, and all the cards are on the table, the taboo on pedophilia will be lifted, because it will be seen that it’s after all more natural to have children copulating with choice partners than to tie them as sex dummies to their parents. It is noteworthy to observe that people who reject children’s right to be sexual and to live choice relations rather than being night pillows for their neurotic parents are often sexual virgins and as such sexually as little experienced as most consumer children. In addition, by actively defend- ing incest, such individuals may unconsciously strengthen the repressive child–abuse paradigm of the majority and defend parental interests in con- trolling and manipulating children, instead of serving the true interests of children for autonomy and self–regulation in love and sexual matters. Abandoning morality and returning to love will not result in uphold- ing incest, except in the rare cases that the sexual interaction between parents and children is mutually agreed upon and shared as a conscious bonus in the parent–child relationship. In the regular case, incest serves Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 119 but the parental interest for affirming and re–affirming control and dom- inance, and leaves the child little space for yes–or–no decisions. Whatever one may think regarding this subject, nature has given us millions of po- tential love mates, and the moment we choose sex within the family instead of sex within the world, we show that family life has an undue dominance over us and that we have not made the step from the cradle into the world – which is a world of free choice and not a world of freedom with- in a lion’s cage. Interestingly, outside of the Western world, I never met a child who upon my question affirmed of wanting to engage in, or having engaged in any sexual affair with a parent or close relative. To most of these chil- dren, the very idea of incestuous sex is clearly negative or not even oc- curred in their mind because they were busy and satisfied with love and sex relations outside of the family. With prostitute children in Asia I found that these children clearly distinguish between the relationship they maintain with their father, on one hand, and that they wish to be platonic, and the erotic relationships they maintain with their male sex clients, on the other hand. Incest is nothing bad in my view, nor do I believe that it’s per se immoral. And yet it is not a viable option when millions of other love partners are available. The deep unhealthy co–dependent attachment that emotional incest typical- ly results in is clearly counter–productive to building autonomy and per- sonal strength in our youth. Instead of advocating more incest, we should advocate more erotic love options for our children outside of the family. Rebuilding Trust Abandoning morality and returning to love means that we begin to trust the dynamic self–regulatory processes that are built into all our life functions, and our natural biological relationships. As most Westerners have desperately lost their continuum and with it their innate trust in the goodness of nature and natural living, this is the crucial point for most of them. As I was just like most of them some two decades ago, I know what I am talking about. But I also know that this trust can be regained, even | Chapter Two 120 if we experienced a deeply negative and humiliating childhood and youth. Without trusting in nature, we do not know what it means to trust another human, and without this basic trust, love between humans is im- possible. It is as simple as that. All our senseless rhetoric about child abuse shows that we do not trust nature and therefore mistrust the natural self– regulatory wisdom of love. Despite abundant research showing us that one of the results of this mistrust is violence, we continue to put our trust in authority and the nonsense of tradition instead of trusting what is in front of our eyes. All our sages told us that draconian laws only show that the natural law of love has been lost, but we continue to put every year more people in jail than we liberate from our prisons thus discarding out a steadily growing part of our societies. How can we continue to declare more and more people socially inept while we as a society engage worldwide in wars and massacres that defy any of the atrocities that we blame our prisoners with? Building trust is the first step if we are serious to regain love as our foremost regulatory life principle. Here, our scientists and our poets for one time agree that this move is a good one and that nothing can defeat us if we put our trust in love. Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 121 The Pleasure Pattern An intelligent society tolerates to a certain extent, and socially codes, perverse behavior in the sense that it considers violence as the only true perver- sion, while it can comprehend that unnatural sex ultimately is human. That is why most of the ancient wistful civilizations that were not per- verted by the plague of moralism had social outlets for pedophile, inces- tuous and other marginal sexual longings. The human nature only knows one taboo, that is, doing harm to an- other. And violence is what most of the time causes harm, not perverse sex. This is simply so if present–day moralists and world puritans accept it or not. Culture is not always in accordance with nature; and the human being has the unique ability to forge culture that obeys to its own cultural laws instead of abiding by the laws of nature. I do not say that this should be so, and I do not judge what ought to be or not be in terms of human behavior. What I do is to observe and describe what I see; and what I see is that culture can well be different from nature’s wisdom. Our patriar- chal culture is against nature and yet it has survived until this day. But it will ultimately probably not survive because it’s not intelligent to build a culture that turns natural laws upside down. Yet I think that our admittedly flawed patriarchal culture, had it not a definite hangup with fundamentalism, and had it integrated the power of the female and tolerated sexual perversion as the little crime in its various forms as unnatural and incestuous sex that serves to defend the big crime, that is structural and domestic violence, could survive because of its abili- ty to flexibly adapt to new situations and environments. Françoise Dolto was noted to say that the fundamental difference between perversion and neurosis is that the former one day is dropped by satiation, as the energy in perverse behavior is to be naturally exhausted one day, so that the per- verse habit is be dropped, whereas neurosis only worsens over time if no therapy is engaged. This is so because in perverse behavior there is still a good portion of nature’s flexibility, which is why the behavior is not rigid and can change. The same is not true for neurotic behavior. The ultimate | Chapter Two 122 issue, then, with patriarchy is not that it’s perverse and against nature, but that it’s neurotic! In fact, there is a natural logic in every pleasure–seeking behavior. For example, men who seek complete love relations with little girls or boys, while mainstream society considers their sexual longings as per- verse, can one or the other day outgrow their immature sexual attractions and grow up sexually, and as a result turn to older partners. Or they may not, considering their admittedly childish sex as a form of poetic lifestyle. And it is. You cannot copulate with a 2–year old the same way you can copulate with a 20–year old. Your sexual behavior will thus be naturally restricted by the smaller size of the child’s genitals, and if you want to bear up with this restriction, you are either a fool or you accept this limi- tation for the charm that you derive from mating with sexually immature people. This is the reason why pedophilia, while its etiology may be known and understood, is generally not considered an abomination by conscious pedophiles themselves, while society well considers it that way. This is because the pedophile will not define his or her behavior with its sexual part only, or based on their sexual longings, but within the greater con- text of their emotional attraction to children, and the poetic world that they build around their relationships with children. And for good reason! Our society has namely destroyed much of this poetic world that not only pe- dophiles love and cherish, but generally sensitive men and women, and particularly our gifted poets, writers, musicians and geniuses who most love in life what is genuine, innocent, young and exuberant! Sexually engaging with a person who is under a certain age defined by the law is not a divergence from the behavior code that is so funda- mental that it should be demonized socially and considered criminal be- havior. Succinctly speaking, societies, like present–day international con- sumer culture that develop into a Barbarian horde of judgmental perse- cutory terminators will pay a high price for their lack of erotic intelligence; they will destroy themselves in the long run by breeding such a high level of structural and domestic violence that they will one day suffocate in it. Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 123 There is only one perverted form of pleasure: it’s violence. Violence is the only true perversion in the human setup, while all sexual longings, however they may be considered by a particular cultural setup, are still connected with the healthy base layer of living, because they are not vio- lent per se. These desires only become violent through their individual and societal repression because repression distorts and perverts the strong élan vital contained in these desires that, when unrepressed, is partially subli- mated into art and poetry. However, as I said already earlier, sublimation only works when consciousness allows the acceptance of the desire, and not when consciousness represses the longing by judging the particular behavior bad and socially destructive. To repeat it, pedophilia is not so- cially destructive but its very repression is. While pedophile desires in their sexualized form may not be the result of a healthy upbringing, and while they may be considered forms of pathological sexual wishes, this does not mean that they have to be criminalized, and that they have to be repressed. As long as they do not turn into violent rape desires and are not acted out as child abduction, rape and murder, they should be social- ly tolerated and coded as acceptable, while marginal forms of erotic so- cial conduct. Our society does not follow the precepts of erotic intelligence, that’s the problem here. I would say it creeps along the lines of emotional stu- pidity, and this especially since the last three hundred years of enlighten- ment, during which it has mechanized and robotized pretty much every- thing that was filled with soul and a certain poetic content – such as, for example, relationships with children. To be true, today these relations, in mainstream culture, are neurotic, standardized and idiotic, hypocrite through and through. And they are dominated by a denial of the body, by a denial of touch, and by a denial of truth, and of truthful language. This denial is based upon amnesia, the amnesia namely of our own childhood, with its insecurities, its dan- gers, and its secret erotic adventures. Most of us, in a deeply neurotic society, have forgotten that our bodies were the first and certainly the most natural source of pleasure. As a result, most adults in industrialized | Chapter Two 124 societies live lives that are not their own. Alienated from our bodies, we compensate for the lost paradise of Being through Having, possessing, con- suming, to paraphrase Erich Fromm. The things we are attached to give 75 us a fade ersatz of the joy we could have if we had kept true to what is freely given by nature. This dilemma begins in early childhood. The luxury of civilization costs a high price. We pay for it with our bodies that we gradually destroy. A body that is not connected to a soul is a dead body. If the soul is still in that body, death occurs while we live, in the form of alcoholism, drug addiction, heart disease, rheumatism, leukemia, cancer, hiv or other so–called civilization diseases. The process of alienation that leads to this gradual decay of the human body is an integral part of the conditioning for the consumer society. Consumption that makes the prosperity of this form of human social life, functions only if people actually consume. This is not a communist view or opinion, but a socio–economic and verifiable fact. Modern society is organized that way, if we personally agree or not. One of the most important conditioning devices are chil- dren’s toys. The toy industry sustains the entire structure of the consumer society. Without the early conditioning toward toys as a body pleasure ersatz people would not accept the later ersatz satisfactions that they re- ceive for the sacrifice of primary body pleasure. What is primary body pleasure? It is the pleasure that already the small child derives from playing with the body. This pleasure is an essen- tially sexual pleasure. The moral and societal prohibition of child sexuali- ty is the primary condition for the functioning of a civilization of ersatz satisfactions. This fact explains the research results that prove a direct cor- relation between the civilization standard of a given society and the severity of its child sex taboo. However, most scientists who have arrived at these conclusions have failed to see the impact of this insight upon human civilization and culture. Freud thought that man develops culture through sublimating primary body pleasure, and thus not through the See Erich Fromm, To Have or To Be (1976). 75 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 125 satisfaction of our innate desires; he assumed that culture was the out- come of a transformation of original libido energy into a form of cre- ative energy that serves cultural purposes. Is this thesis true? I think it is true, but not in the sense Freud thought it was. It is true insofar as the prohibition and transformation of instincts leads in fact to a form of cul- ture, an ersatz culture for the original culture that would have been created through living our original instincts. But it is not true in the sense that sublimation led to a true and original culture. After deeper analysis, we can observe that the denial of living our original desires leads to a denial of living our original creativity. The result is exactly the fake culture that today Western consumer culture represents. By contrast, if we look, for example, at Minoan Civilization that did not repress sexual pleasure, neither in children nor in adults, we see how high human civilization can grow on the basis of an originally permissive atti- tude toward our primary instincts. In many ways Cretan culture, which was not yet a patriarchal, but an egalitarian culture, was superior to our modern culture, more developed, more refined and, first of all, more peaceful and more sensitive toward our real human needs. 76 The sudden and brutal end of this immensely creative culture through the invasion of the patriarchal Phoenicians was one of the turn- ing points in human history. It was this turn into patriarchy and violence that put humanity on the track of pseudo–culture; it was from this time that the artificial and hypocrite, the stupid and doctrinaire, the false and arrogant, together with violence, war and destruction began to dominate the natural and naturally intelligent original cultures that preceded them. All our great religions have absolved and fueled this turn into a manipula- tive and undemocratic pseudo–culture that still represents present–day main- Riane Eisler suggests to abandon the Bachofen dichotomy of ‘matriarchal–patriarchal’ 76 replacing it by ‘egalitarian–dominator’, thus avoiding endless discussions if or not in ma- triarchal cultures males were oppressed by females. The question in fact is not who domi- nates whom, but if a culture in general runs on a dominator paradigm or on a sharing or egalitarian paradigm. It is now shared by the majority of scientists that what we formerly called matriarchal cultures were clearly more egalitarian than the subsequent patriarchal or dominator culture. Thus, a way back to love obviously will have to consider a sort of ar- chaic revival, to speak with Terence McKenna. | Chapter Two 126 stream culture. Religions played the role of a catalyzer in our condition- ing for war and destruction – although they generally preached for the contrary. It is significant that tribal cultures who put the human body and body sensitivity in the foreground of cultural, artistic and social life and where love is not faked, do not need to preach love, do not need to discuss love and do not need to heal love –simply because they practice love. Their reli- gion is not the integrity of pseudo–moralistic values, but the integrity of love. Religion, in these cultures, is not a power factor and does not feed on power nor does it exert power over individuals. Religions, in these cul- tures, do what they should do in accordance with the true sense of the word religio, that is they give guidance to those who are searching for the truth about coming and going, transcendence of suffering, care for the sick, the needy, the marginal and the dying. The North American Indi- ans, for example, have preserved forms of this original and most pure religion that was once universal for all human beings. Herbert James Campbell, an English neurologist, found in twenty– five years of research a universal principle which dominates our brain: the pleasure principle. This sounds like Freud, but it has little to do with psycho- analysis or psychology. What we are facing here are facts proven by nat- ural science, by neurology. Campbell’ book The Pleasure Areas (1973) which represents a summery of years of neurological research. Camp 77 - bell succeeded in demonstrating that our entire thinking and living is primarily motivated by pleasure, not only as tactile or, sexual or sensual pleasure, but also as intellectual or spiritual pleasure. With these findings, the old theoretical controversy if man was primarily a biological or a spiritual being, became obsolete. For it is in the first place our striving for pleasure that induces certain interests in us, that drives us to certain ac- tions and that lets us choose certain ways. During childhood and depending on the outside stimuli we are ex- posed to, certain preferred pathways are traced in our brain, which means H.J. Campbell, The Pleasure Areas (1973). 77 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 127 that specific neural connections are established that serve the information flow. The number of those connections is namely an indicator for intelli- gence. The more of those preferred pathways exist in the brain of a per- son, the more lively appears that person, the more interested she will be in different things, and the quicker she will achieve integrating new knowledge into existing memory. High memorization, Campbell found, is namely depending on how easily new information can be added–on to ex- isting pathways of information. Logically, the more of those pathways exist, the better! Many preferred pathways make for high flexibility and the capacity to adapt easily to new circumstances. Campbell’s research indicates that the repression of pleasure that is part of our Judeo–Christian culture, has negatively infringed upon hu- man evolution and impaired the integrity of our psychosomatic health. This is exactly what Wilhelm Reich found – without having had at his disposition Campbell’s later neurological findings. Not only neurologists such as Campbell have thought about the basic functions of life and living, but also people who were formerly active in totally different fields of science. The American scientists Ashley Mon- tagu and James W. Prescott came from different research positions and perspectives. Montagu wanted to know why in animal experiments small rhesus apes died when they were deprived from their mother while they survived when a simple felt mat was put in the cage as surrogate of motherly tactile affection. Prescott researched on the origins of violence. He did from the start not acknowledge the age–old pretension that man was per se a violent creature even though human history, or what historians saw of it, seemed to prove it. Both scientists basically came to the same result, that is tactile stimulation of the infant is a main source of early pleasure gratification and a condition for human health, for harmony, and for peace. Ashley Mon- tagu’s research developed a specific focus on the importance of the hu- man skin as a primary pleasure provider. | Chapter Two 128 Grant’s Method of Anatomy defines the skin as the most extended and the most varied of all our sensory organs. Ashley Montagu’s study 78 Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin was the final result of thirty years of skin research, not only Montagu’s, but of others whose research Montagu evaluates. Ashley Montagu’s research is interesting with re 79 - gard to tactile stimulation in early childhood. Montagu’s specific focus during his research was upon the mammal mothers’ licking the young. He found astonishing unity in zoologists’ opinions as to the importance of motherly licking for the survival of the offspring. He discovered that it was in the first place the perineal zone of the young that the mother preferably and repeatedly licked. Experiments in which mammal mothers were impeded from licking this bodily zone of the young resulted in func- tional disturbances or even chronic sickness of the genitourinary tract of the young animals. Montagu concluded from this research that the licking did not serve hygienic purposes only, but was intended to provide a tactile stimulation for the organs that were underlying the part of the skin that was licked. However, he fur 80 - ther concluded, licking hardly ever occurs in the mother–child relation- ship with primates or humans. With one exception: an Eskimo tribe, the 81 Ingalik, was found where the mother licks the face and hands of the baby in order to clean them, until the baby is old enough to sit on the bench. 82 Most researchers found that with progressing evolution, licking was grad- ually replaced by eye or skin contact between mother and child. The tac- tile needs of the small child seem to correspond to the desire of the par- ents to express love through tactile affection such as kissing or fondling, or Grant’s Method of Anatomy (1980), p. 61. 78 Ashley Montagu, Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin (1971). 79 Id., pp. 15 ff. 80 Id., p.18. 81 Id., p. 234. 82 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 129 pressing the child’s naked body against one’s own during sleep or rest, which is very common with Eskimos or Indian tribes. In the run of industrial civilization, however, this has changed fun- damentally. Modern pediatrics or child psychologists recommend parents to put their children in separate rooms and beds so that parents and chil- dren are physically separated. This is the main reason why the civilized child gets much less of tactile stimulation in early childhood than children from tribal cultures. A direct relationship was discovered between early tactile stimulation and the immune system of the child. This relationship was corroborated by France’s first and foremost obstetricians, Frederick Leboyer and Michel Odent. Michel Odent writes in his book La Santé 83 Primale: Michel Odent It is not yet completely understood that sensorial perceptions at the beginning of life can be a way to stimulate the ‘primary brain’, at a time when the ‘system of primary adaptation’ is not yet grown to maturity. More specifically, this signifies for example that, if one fondles a human baby or an animal baby, one also stimulates his immune system. 84 Montagu states that love was once defined as the harmony of two souls and the contact of two epidermises. In this sense the peau à peau that is nowadays is again recommended by pediatricians, is a primal condition for the healthy growth of children, the good functioning of their immune system and the early creation of preferred pathways in their brains. Skin thus can be said to promote high intelligence! This is really something our society has never until now understood, and that even most scientists do not acknowledge, despite the abundance of research that clearly corroborates this truth. If this was really under- stood, our need for tactile pleasure, shared nakedness and sex, however See for example Frederick Leboyer, Birth Without Violence (1975). 83 Michel Odent, La Santé Primale (1986), p. 24 (Translation mine). 84 | Chapter Two 130 sex is acted out and however it is like, could never be subject of criminal law! In his research with rhesus, Montagu reached astonishing findings. When he deprived the newborns of their mother and let them in the naked cage, they died. When he did the same, but put a kind of felt mat in the cage, they survived, although they carried away some brain damage from the deprivation of the mother. However, it was a fact that the felt mat assured their survival. How could that be? Montagu went one step further. He replaced the mother through a felt mother that was hung in the cage. Now the young did not only survive but they also had almost no more brain damage. It was especially that the young survived simply by a felt mat being put in the cage that intrigued Montagu. Further observations led him to realize that the young rhesus used the carpet to give to their bodies tactile stimulation, which obviously served as a compensate for the tactile stimulation they normally got from their mother in form of licking. The interesting fact about this experiment is that it was not the milk of the mother nor her care that was essential for the young’s survival, but exclusively some form of tactile plea- sure. The felt of the carpet was similar to the mother’s fur and therefore acceptable for the young as a mother surrogate. This research amply demonstrates how important tactile stimulation is with mammals, and so much the more with humans where primary symbiosis is even more prolonged. James W. Prescott’s research particu- larly focused on the consequences of early tactile deprivation. In his arti- cle Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence (1975) Prescott uses R.B. Tex- tor’s supra–cultural statistics in order to scientifically prove his collective 85 and political conclusions. Already in the 1930s, Wilhelm Reich disproved the very widespread misconception that sadistic and destructive tendencies were part of hu- man nature. Reich strongly opposed Freud and his theory of a death in- stinct, stating that those destructive instincts were but secondary drives, a R.B. Textor, A Cross–Cultural Summary (1967). 85 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 131 direct consequence of the cultural repression of the natural sexual instinct which had brought about a collective neurosis in the human animal. Reich’s find- ings, at the time violently opposed by the majority of his scientific col- leagues, are now confirmed by Prescott’s research which brings statistic evidence as to the malleability of the human individual through his early tactile experiences or the absence of such experiences: James W. Prescott Recent research supports the point of view that the depriva- tion of physical pleasure is a major ingredient in the expres- sion of physical violence. The common association of sex with violence provides a clue to understanding physical violence in terms of deprivation of physical pleasure. (…) Although physi- cal pleasure and physical violence seem worlds apart, there seems to be a subtle and intimate connection between the two. Until the relationship between pleasure and violence is under- stood, violence will continue to escalate. 86 It is interesting what Prescott wrote in the introduction to his study: James W. Prescott Unless the causes of violence are isolated and treated, we will continue to live in a world of fear and apprehension. Unfortu- nately, violence is often offered as a solution to violence. Many law enforcement officials advocate ‘get tough’ policies as the best method to reduce crime. Imprisoning people, our usual way of dealing with crime, will not solve the problem, because the causes of violence lie in our basic values and the way in which we bring up our children and youth. Physical punish- ment, violent films and TV programs teach our children that physical violence is normal. 87 Prescott thus fully confirms Reich’s research and corroborates his socio–economic and sex–economic findings. More specifically, James W. Prescott found a noteworthy relationship between pleasure and violence. Referring to laboratory experiments with animals, he could detect a sort Id., pp. 10, 11. 86 Id., p. 10. 87 | Chapter Two 132 of reciprocal relationship between pleasure and violence, that is the presence of pleasure inhibits violence – and vice versa. Prescott states: James W. Prescott A raging, violent animal will abruptly calm down when elec- trodes stimulate the pleasure centers of its brain. Likewise, stimulating the violence centers in the brain can terminate the animal's sensual pleasure and peaceful behavior. When the brain's pleasure circuits are ‘on,’ the violence circuits are ‘off,’ and vice versa. Among human beings, a pleasure–prone per- sonality rarely displays violence or aggressive behaviors, and a violent personality has little ability to tolerate, experience, or enjoy sensuously pleasing activities. As either violence or plea- sure goes up, the other goes down. 88 Further, Prescott found a direct relationship between the childrearing paradigm of a given culture, and the degree of violence that reigns in that culture. In detail, he found that societies that tend to rear children in a rather Spartan way, hostile to pleasure and with little or no tactile stimu- lation, cherish in their value system various forms of violence, do warfare, torture their enemies, practice slavery and progeny and concede to women and children a rather low social status; these societies also exhibit a high crime rate. 89 Another violence–indicating parameter in a society, Prescott found, is physical violence towards children in form of corporal punishment. Further, re 90 - pression or tolerance of children’s sexual life plays a decisive role in the assessment if a society has a high or low violence potential: James W. Prescott Thus, we seem to have a firmly based principle: Physically affectionate human societies are highly unlikely to be physical- ly violent. Accordingly, when physical affection and pleasure during adolescence as well as infancy are related to measures Id. 88 Id., p. 12. 89 Id. 90 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 133 of violence, we find direct evidence of a significant relation- ship between the punishment of premarital sex behaviors and various measures of crime and violence. 91 As a result of his research, Prescott advocates the abolishment of corporal punishment of children, a rise of the social status of women, the reinstitution of the extended family, the reintegration of the elder and a more active participation of men with child–rearing and the bestowal of physi- cal affection on children in their role as fathers or educators. 92 I discovered the writings of James W. Prescott, PhD in the 1980s, at a time when I was doing research on Ashley Montagu, Frederick Leboyer, Michel Odent, Alexander Lowen, Bronislaw Malinowski, and Margaret Mead. The two major articles written by James W. Prescott were coming to me like a revelation to a question I had asked since more than a decade: ‘What are the roots of violence?’ Knowing from anthropological, ethnological, and sociological studies as well as from neuropsychology and from spiritual work that violence is not the natural condition for humanity, but a sort of emotional and cul- tural perversion that results from deep hurts early in childhood, and probably also from scars that go back to former lives, I was grateful to have found at last conclusive research that not only analyzed our condi- tion, but also pointed to viable long–term solutions for creating a more peaceful society of the future. Prescott’s research also integrates findings by lesser known re- searchers as Dr. Harlow who have focused on the brain development of rhesus, and who found revealing evidence for the fact that among all the factors that make a mammal infant survive without the mother, the one single essential factor is the availability of a ‘touchable’ object that provides tactile stimulation. Id., p. 13. 91 See James W. Prescott, Deprivation of Physical Affection as a Primary Process in the Development 92 of Physical Violence (1979), pp. 77, 78. | Chapter Two 134 For example, in a widely documented experiment, two mother surro- gates were hung in the cage, one serving as a milk provider, the other be- ing a soft doll made from linen. The surprising thing was that all rhesus infants preferred the cloth mother over the milk–giving mother, thereby sig- naling that tactile stimulation was the most important in their parenting needs, not the secondary availability of mother milk. Today, this research has been corroborated by newer brain research, conducted by a variety of researchers starting with Herbert James Campbell in the 1970s, and with James W. Prescott as the expert who shows in a number of publica- tions that tacile stimulation of infants together with breastfeeding and baby–carrying are the most important factors for building nonviolent, socially positive and non–abusive behaviors. To repeat it, the solutions that James W. Prescott suggests are long– overdue changes in the process of childbirth and our educational system, permissive and nonviolent child–rearing together with greater social permissiveness for premarital sex and a definite legal prohibition of phys- ical punishment of children in both the home and school together with effective government collaboration for fighting domestic, educational and sexual violence. Regarding infant care, Prescott stresses the importance of the primary symbiosis between mother and infant during the first 18 months of the infant, abundant tactile stimulation of infants and babies, using techniques of child massage, as well as co–sleeping between parents and small children. Another important field of research that could be classified under the header of ‘ritual violence’ is both male circumcision and the widespread genital mutilation of female infants, girls and women, which is now discussed under the header of ‘female genital cutting’ or FGC. James W. Prescott advocates the complete abandonment of such practices that I heard about first in 1984, when doing a legal research on the matter for Edmond Kaiser, founder of Terre des Hommes in Lausanne, Switzerland. At the time I thought these violent practices were limited to some communities in Somalia, Sudan and other African countries, but fact is that it’s a worldwide problem. The American Academy of Pediatrics writes in their policy statement that it was estimated that ‘at least 100 mil- Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 135 lion women have undergone FGC and that between 4 and 5 million pro- cedures are performed annually on female infants and children, with the most severe types performed in Somalian and Sudanese populations.’ 93 In addition, what is lesser known is the fact, reported by the Ameri- can Academy of Pediatrics that these practices are not limited to Muslim populations but are known also from orthodox circles among Christians and Jews. 94 The perhaps most important research topic where James W. Prescott is widely recognized as an expert is violence prevention. He particularly stresses the importance of breastfeeding–bonding for 2.5 years or longer. He emphasizes that nonviolent behaviors develop as a result of cognitive affectional bonding between mother and infant. Together with a number of other researchers, he has recently documented and published scientific evidence that shows beyond doubt that the human brain develops differ- ently in humans who as infants have enjoyed prolonged breastfeeding, and in those who have not. It is interesting to note that the suggestions that James W. Prescott comes up with from his perspective as a peace re- searcher are very much in accordance with those suggested by Jean Liedloff, in her book The Continuum Concept, from her perspective of the lifestyle of native peoples. Also, there is a striking similarity of solutions offered for the same questions by Ashley Montagu, as a result of skin re- search, and by the French obstetricians Michel Odent and Frederick Leboyer who have looked beyond the fence of obstetrics and into what Odent called Primal Health, which is a holistic concept of health and well– being. In my perspective and the overview I had over Prescott’s research, it seems to me that the central focus is the preparation of far–reaching pol- icy changes for the political agenda that are backed up by hard scientific data. In so far, I consider Prescott as a researcher more important than many others who are perhaps more published and more famous than American Academy of Pediatrics, Policy Statement – Ritual Genital Cutting of Female Minors, 93 http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/125/5/1088 Id. 94 | Chapter Two 136 him. In fact, the importance of his research can hardly be underestimat- ed. We are living wrongly as a society and the violence we face is not hazard, nor a ‘biological mistake’ but the precise result of our living against the wisdom of nature. Research in neuroscience delivers the clear–cut evidence that touch is paramount for the development of nonviolent and socially positive be- haviors. Dr. Prescott shows that sensory deprivation results in behavioral abnormalities such as depression, impulse dyscontrol, violence, substance abuse, and in impaired immunological functioning in mother deprived infants. He demonstrated through a research with 49 native cultures that there are precise correlations between low affectionate cultures, insufficient mother–infant bonding, patrilinearity, polygeny, warfare, slavery, torture of enemies, sexual repression, child abuse, violence and monotheism, on the one hand, and high affectionate cultures, nurturant mother–infant bonding, matrilinearity, low polygeny rate, absence of warfare, no slavery and no torture, sexual permissiveness, high infant indulgence, peaceful coexistence and polytheism. To summarize, Prescott’s research sees the primary problem in the etiology of violence in failed bonding in the mother–infant relationship and so–called somatosensory affectional deprivation (S–SAD), as such deprivation causes developmental brain abnormalities. The brain that results from this abnormal upbringing is the NeuroDissociative Brain. It is related to pain, theistic religions, gender inequality, sexual puritanism, ad- dictive synthetic drugs, authoritarian control, depression, violence, warfare, a biomedical health model, and politics of betrayal. The healthy brain, which develops when affectional cognitive bonding between mother and infant was nurturant and adequate, is able to experience pleasure. It is related to earth religions, is matrilineal and favors gender equality, sexual liberty, natural botanical drugs, egali- tarian freedom, a biobehavioral health model and politics of trust. It is important to realize that we have not one single factor here, but a whole pattern of factors that belong as it were together.This is exactly what I emphasized in my own research on the Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living where I show that most native cultures that are allowing to build the limbic–subcortical emotional brain through adequate parenting are Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 137 favoring eight patterns of living in their overall lifestyle, which are auton- omy, ecstasy, energy, language, love, pleasure, self–regulation and touch. 95 See Pierre F. Walter, Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living, Audio Book (2010). 95 | Chapter Two 138 The Self–Regulation Pattern Oedipus, in Sophocles’ famous tragedy, killed his father and married his mother. He didn’t do this consciously but was led by the invisible threads of fate or destiny. The whole tragedy was triggered by an oracle that told Oedipus’ father he would die through the hand of his own son. Wanting to escape the impending fate, the father, after his wife gave birth to a baby boy, let bind the infant, pierce his feet, and told a slave to aban- don him on top of a mountain. The slave, however, did not follow the order and, being moved by the suffering of the baby, took the child home from where, through a chain of coincidences, the baby eventually was being taken to by the King of Corinth and his wife, who formally adopt- ed the child and called him Oedipus, a name that means swollen foot. When Oedipus was grown up, he left in order to find out about his destiny, as some people had made remarks that he did not for the least resemble his parents. Without however knowing the true story about his origins, as his adoptive parents never had revealed it to him, Oedipus traveled to Delphi to ask the oracle and god Apollo warned him he would kill his father and marry his mother. Oedipus thought he could easily escape the prediction simply by not returning to Corinth, to his supposed parents. Yet his escape was illusory; it was through Oedipus’ solving the Sphinx’s riddle that he was going to marry his own mother. The marriage as well as the patricide that preced- ed it were acts that Oedipus committed innocently, not knowing the truth. He was thus not aware of what he was doing. Or, to put it in other words, he was completely blind regarding the truth of his fate, of his life. However, as the story continues, it becomes clear that, despite his inno- cence, Oedipus was not considered free of guilt. This strange story became the basis of Freud’s theory of the Oedipus Complex which is an angular point of his theory of infantile sexuality. Fur- thermore, anthropological studies have shown that the Oedipal problem is universal in all cultures that repress the free sexuality of the child, but only in those. Needless to mention that on Trobriand there is no Oedipal Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 139 problem or complex to be found in the psychosexual development of children. Equally universal are the taboos of incest and patricide/matri- cide. However, cultures differ in the social mechanisms that regulate child care and the emotional and sexual development of children. Cultures, as the before–mentioned matriarchal ones, tend to raise the child within the child’s own natural continuum whereas all other cultures tend to condition the child to certain cultural or ideological values and a rigid morality codex. This is primarily done through indoctrination and, second- ly, through gradually alienating children from their bodies. The most ef- fective way to indoctrinate children with a certain culture is to implant in their mind a deeply rooted doubt about who they are. This doubt which creates a vacuum will then be filled with magic formulas such as Be not what you are! The next step is to force the child to play roles in order to please their parents. The main role in this drama which is the Drama of the Gifted Child, as Alice Miller called it, is the role of the child parenting his own parents. This education that I call rearing narcissistic comedians, is very 96 common in modern consumer culture, which, for this reason, I came to call Oedipal culture. This is why narcissism is rampant in Western nations, especially in the United States. However, there are few researchers who see that the main etiology for narcissism is to be found in our child rearing paradigm. Those who do, such as Alice Miller or Alexander Lowen are not repre- senting mainstream psychology, despite the brilliance of their work. They have, inter alia, found that education that typically leads to narcissism is rich in inventing and executing several other magic formulas that are giv- en to the child in the form of hypnotic injunctions. Some of these are: 97 ‣ Be adaptable and flexible until self–alienation; ‣ Never be yourself in front of your parents; Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child: In Search for the True Self (1996). 96 Alice Miller, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware (1998), and Alexander Lowen, Narcissism (1997). 97 | Chapter Two 140 ‣ Be not child–like, but adult–like; ‣ Be mature in immaturity; ‣ Understand what your parents don't understand; ‣ Be logical and uncomplicated; ‣ Respect your parents while disrespecting yourself; ‣ Mistrust your intuition; ‣ Follow authority without questioning. Many parents who believe they are modern and generous to their children are in reality tyrants because they consume–train their children and mold them into co–dependent ersatz partners. In most cases such parents are not conscious about the fact that they act as the long arm of political systems and ideologies subtly hypnotizing their children with the concepts they have themselves been fed with. It is for this reason still con- sidered as revolutionary, if not some sort of subversive activity, to rear children in truth and autonomy, for such kind of education is not com- patible with the oedipal–paranoid worldview that mainstream industrial culture is founded upon. To raise children responsibly does not mean to charge them with a burden of premature responsibility. However, to infantilize children and deny them by law any even slight responsibility is surely worse, and the latter practice is the strategy of Oedipal education which arrogantly calls itself child–protective. The Oedipal confusion brings about over–adapted and deeply disloyal citizens! Oedipal culture is a community of secret anarchists that obediently say their credo, but silently sabotage the very content of it. Education toward autonomy is based upon the unique truth of every single child, also and especially if this individual truth is contradicting the reigning socio–political ideology. It is especially disturbing for the indus- trial culture that the child be a complete sexual being from birth, and Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 141 that, as a result, children have a birthright to have their emotions and sexual feelings respected. Françoise Dolto, in her book La Cause des Enfants (1985), wrote that it scandalizes most adults that a child be their equal and that, therefore, most parents raise their children as formerly princes ruled their king- doms. The sociopolitical reasons why this is so are obvious: a body–ori 98 - ented child is not a consumer of toys and a thousand needs and devices artificially created by the industrial consumer culture. For those who ob- ject this view, I recall that the repression of the child’s sexuality has exact- ly started with the onset of the Western industrial bourgeoisies, at the end of the 17th century. Françoise Dolto writes: 99 Françoise Dolto Until he was six years old, adults behaved with the prince in a perverse way: they played with his penis, allowed him to play with their genitals and to sleep with them and play the little devil with them. All this was allowed. But suddenly when he was six years old, they dressed him like an adult and he had to follow the royal etiquette [citing Ariès, L’Enfant et la vie familiale sous l’Ancien Régime, p 145]. Despite the trauma that could follow, he had nonetheless kept something essential since, dur- ing the first years of his life, he could live his sexuality with other adults than his parents. He had here more chance in spite of the precocious adult clothing they put him in. His ex- ample is only valid for the rich classes. However, in other levels of society, how could a child of that time repress his incestuous desire and sublimate it? 100 Most researchers came to agree that this is the true reason for the repression of child sexuality; while patriarchy has well repressed the sex- uality of the girl child long before, this was not true for the boy child. Françoise Dolto, La Cause des Enfants (1985), p. 13. See also Ronald David Laing, Divided 98 Self (1991), Bruno Bettelheim, A Good Enough Parent (1988) and The Uses Of Enchantment (1989). Françoise Dolto, La Cause des Enfants (1985), pp. 28, 29, citing Ariès, The Childhood of 99 French King Louis XIII. Id. (Translation mine). 100 | Chapter Two 142 Historical studies on child rearing practices in Europe stress the fact that still during Renaissance the sexuality of the child was not interfered with, and that, back in the Middle–Ages, apart from Christian circles, it was completely free. The paradigm of child repression, as I came to call it, clear- ly started out with industrial culture, and as a matter of fact, it treats both sexes equally in the denial of child sexuality, and thus cannot be at- tributed to patriarchy, as some researchers wrongly believe, but is a mod- ern phenomenon, and related to consumerism and materialism. Consumerist industrialization brought the societal replacement of body pleasure (to be) by ersatz body pleasure (to have), to refer to Erich Fromm’s psychoanalytical research on this matter. Ersatz body pleasure is the pleasure that replaces original body pleasure; thus first of all the toy. Not the self–made toy that still has some connection with the body, but the industrially produced toy that is completely alien to the child’s body. Typically this toy – which is produced by a gigantic worldwide industry – consists of materials that are not akin to the human body, that is plastic and metal. Both materials have in common that they are cold and rigid while the body is warm and pliable. Unconsciously children are conditioned upon the characteristics of the toys they is playing with. Be plastic! Be without feelings, artificial. Be metal! Be hard and mechanical These are the characteristics of the culture you are growing into. So mold yourself accordingly! Techniques of confusion are all the educational methods that gradu- ally alienate the child from their own truth – which is their body continu- um. The child namely thinks from the body toward the spirit (inductively) while the conditioned adult thinks from the spirit towards the body (deductively). This means that the child’s truth is defined and experienced as the truth of their own body. Every truth that disregards their body or tries to set it aside will not be regarded by the child as truth. It is for this reason that children cannot comprehend moralistic edu- cational concepts since those concepts deny the body and hypertrophy the intellect. The result are lifelong giant babies in the form of adults who never made the cut with their childhood and remain psychosexually Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 143 immature: true virgins. While life has not made us to remain virgins, but to leave virginity and grow into loving copulation, for otherwise life could not continue. The fundamental conditioning of man is done within his first seven years of life. What comes later is only polish. Oedipal confusion cheats about this truth. It creates a confused spirit within an immature and rigid nonsexu- al body that has lost its natural intelligence. Oedipal confusion plays the game of eternal maternity until the baby is far older than thirty! It loves naive mother dependence and mistrusts children who are precociously mature. It blows up the child care industry to a gigantic worldwide business with children as their products! Children who resist oedipal castration and maintain their natural capacity for sexual love and sensual pleasure and curiosity are put in the corner and labeled as sexualized and delinquent. If they still dare to play their own game, the child psychiatrist is ready to interfere and to issue a certificate which will mark the social death blow: schizophrenic or epileptic. Summerhill School was founded in 1921 in a village near London, Eng- land. It was a free school which means that there was no moralistic educa- tion and no punishments. What is the difference between the free school concept and other alternative educational concepts? Unlike in concepts such as Montessori or Steiner, in free schools no repression is used in educat- ing the child. True, Montessori looks very pragmatic, very rational and focused upon the necessities of daily life. Children learn to iron shirts, to do gardening, to cook. They are put in sensitization classes to stimulate their sensorial perception – but this this enchanting rhetoric is deeply false. The child does not need to be stimulated sensually since it is naturally sensual. But of course, the moralistic and in this case Catholic back- ground of Montessori education does not allow the children to live out their emotions and display their sensual and tactile needs. So they are first emotionally killed and then artificially induced into fake–feelings in so– called sensitization classes – a ridiculous and hypocrite procedure after all. With Steiner, it’s the stressing of the soul values of the child, as if the | Chapter Two 144 child by itself was not able to realize their soul level, which is why I came to think that Waldorf education is just another make–believe that is un- able to see the reality of children when they are free to develop their nat- ural emotions. Of course, behind these different approaches are different root philosophies regarding the role of the child in society. Neill, the founder of Summerhill, was against Montessori that he considered as a milder and more intellectual but nonetheless intrinsically authoritarian form of modern education. There is no doubt that Maria Montessori who was a believing and practicing Christian wanted to revolutionize education and her contribu- tion for more humanity and respect towards children was certainly re- markable. Her teachings brought about amazing change, not only in her own schools. One of her inventions was the child–oriented furniture that we know from modern day care centers. But was it really an approach that served children to be more able to realize their own intrinsic nature? Montessori’s point of departure was the observation that the child’s brain, not unlike a sponge, absorbs the intrinsic atmosphere of his or her environment. In her book The Absorbent Mind, she cites psychological re- search that proves that children learn in the first three years of their life more than adults in sixty years of hard study. 101 Although Montessori was in the beginning against all educational programs, she designed a specific educational program for her own schools that focused in first line on the intellectual training of the child. By means of a sophisticated system of different games, puzzles and assem- bler games that by the way are much more complicated than what usual- ly can be bought in toy stores, the child’s mind is well prepared to handle both intellectual and practical situations in daily life. As such, the theory real- ly makes sense and actually was very appealing to me at first. But what about the soul level of the child and their communication abilities? Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind (1995). 101 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 145 My experience of this approach when actually visiting Montessori Schools was rather negative. First it was extremely difficult to get a per- mission for visit at all. I had to justify my wish as if I wanted to visit a secret terrain of the armed forces. The permission was conditioned upon my being very short and my restraining from any communication with the children. The children seemed to be robots, pale, dull, insensitive, without life. But they worked, and how! Their way to work though the various tasks seemed obsessive, almost neurotic, while they were bom- barded with a full–cry Beethoven symphony from a portable stereo. These schools really were places without soul and without humor. When the children had their pause, they sat down on a bench, opened their lunch boxes and eat silently, without talking to each other. They seemed to have no contact to each other, isolated in their intellectual cages, without all what usually makes the somewhat noisy and happy so- ciety of natural carefree children. These children were little adults that had lost their souls and stared in the air with moody faces. I was highly irritated when I left those places. I found them even worse than the vio- lent orphanages I had seen in some third–world countries. This was child dressage of its best, but one that was no circus because here not even clowns were allowed. I never got a chance to visit Summerhill. I doubt that it is as permis- sive as it pretended to be, and this simply because it is located in England. Can one imagine a more repressive culture as to the expression of natur- al human emotions? Of course, it is much more humane than most tradi- tional schools and, in particular, corporal punishment is absolutely taboo. The education is permissive regarding the healthy emotional and sexual development of the child. Masturbation is not repressed, sexual play only for the purpose to avoid procreation. That is at least what we learn from Neill’s books, but it must seriously be doubted if in practice, the free sexuality of children and youth would ever be tolerated in a school. Today, more than half a century later, it is not tolerated. Thus we have to take Neill’s statements, cum grano salis. None- theless, Summerhill has followed up to a great tradition. Neill’s educa- | Chapter Two 146 tional approach can be seen on a line with famous historical educational methods, like Jean–Jacques Rousseau’s educational ideas, or John Locke’s, in that it was founded upon nature being generally good. Summerhill was 102 thus in flagrant contradiction with Christian, and in particular Calvinistic child rearing which uses harsh punishments and emotional frustrations in order to better the human soul that it considers as basically bad and rotten. The goal of Summerhill was not to bring about conformists, but adults with high self–esteem, strong intuition and sensitivity, humor and respect for life in all its forms. One of Neill’s main motivations was to 103 produce adults with a positive and constructive mindset, people who are free of hatred and the repressed anger that is part of traditional educa- tion; people also whose emotional life is intact and lively. When Neill opened Summerhill, he was already fifty–one years old. He had spent not years but decades with studying human history and education and was deeply concerned that human history was marked by hate and violence, human destructiveness, intolerance, war and slavery. Neill got to see behind the veil of lies of modern civilization. He saw this perverting hatred again and again in the children who arrived from tradi- tional institutions where they had been declared uneducable; he saw that the whole concept of the difficult child was wrong in that these children were not more destructive than others, but unhappy, emotionally blocked, frustrated and lonely. Their destructiveness and violence was but a symp- tom of the underlying reasons that were deeply rooted in the hypocrite, paranoid and violent societal system they were raised in. 104 In addition, most of them had been neglected or even abused by their parents or by educators in the homes they were coming from. These children had lost confidence in adults. They had been deceived and felt the cold pressure that comes from authoritarian ways of child–rearing. Jean–Jacques Rousseau, Émile ou de l’Éducation (1762). See also critically René Schérer, 102 Émile Perverti ou des rapports entre l’éducation et la sexualité (1974) and John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1690), Vol. IX., pp. 6–205. Alexander S. Neill, Summerhill (1961) and Neill! Neill! Orange Peel! (1972). 103 Alexander S. Neill, Summerhill (1961), pp. 139 ff. und pp. 301 ff. 104 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 147 They doubted the existence of love and how it feels to being loved. In this sense, Neill acknowledged, all children who are raised in an authoritarian and repressive system will be difficult once they are freed from the pres- sure they are subjected to. This difficult behavior, Neill found, actually was an inner healing process that established a new value system in their mindset. But first they exploded, of course. With adults it is the same, as we all know. Violent crimes, war, slavery, torture and terrorism are the results of the hypocrite make–believe that we call civilization and that has in truth nothing to do with being civi- lized. All these consequences of the authoritarian system show that this system is based upon wrong premises, and that it is not human and not made for humans since it disregards human dignity in the most flagrant way. Neill knew that only an education that was based upon love could finally overcome the violence inherent in a society that is full of hatred. For the only way out of violence is fighting its roots: lack of love and re- spect, lack of positive encouragement, dehumanizing treatments and a belief system that is based on the idiotic and arrogant idea that nature is fundamentally bad and has to be improved. Corroborating Wilhelm Reich’s research, Neill found that moralistic education not only negatively impacts upon the mindset of the children, but also infringes upon the soma, especially the energetic and muscular balance in the body of the child. Also in accordance with Wilhelm Re 105 - ich, Neill applied in his school the principle of self–regulation. Every at- tempt to impact upon children in a purely intellectual or moralistic way was leading to failure and was soon abandoned by Neill. Instead Neill believed that the children will comply with what they really subscribe to and understand so that they do it because they believe that it has to be done. This attitude of course requires that the educator himself believes that children are beings born with reason and that they will use this rea- son whatever their age is. Id., p. 207. 105 | Chapter Two 148 That is exactly where moralistic educators have doubts. They often dig a ravine between adults and children, as if the child lived in another world with different natural laws. While they acknowledge the necessity of reason, they deny that children possess this reason and rather put chil- dren on one level with animals. Free child–rearing is unthinkable without conceding children the freedom of their natural erotic and sexual feelings and, not to forget it, the freedom of speech regarding these feelings. 106 The latter is as important as the former because children who are allowed to do it without being allowed to talk about what they have done will never really believe that this freedom has been given to them. Instead they will experience guilt and shame. Only a child who is sexually free and erotically satiated will develop their full potential of interest and work energy. It is further necessary that children really feel accepted as per- sons in their own right, in their natural wholeness that encompasses an undistorted emonic setup that wants to be developed and experienced, for all life asks for growth, and it is therefore total nonsense when main- stream psychologists pretend the child had to grow with a sleeping sexuali- ty that would awake at the end of puberty. Fairy tales. We are facing this challenge for a more truthful education also on a collective and global level when we develop more tolerance, understand- ing and compassion for others. It is by changing the basic foundation of our educational and pedagogical values. The Summerhill concept real- ized a first step to more humanity here on earth, by raising more humane humans. Interestingly, the overwhelming majority of Summerhill gradu- ates were later seen to score very well on the social ladder while leading healthy and balanced lives and experiencing positive and highly reward- ing relationships. Neill stated that his own measure of success was the capability to work with joy and to live positively. 107 See also Floyd M. Martinson, The Sex Education of Young Children (1981), pp. 51 ff. 106 See A. S. Neill, Summerhill (1961), p. 29. 107 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 149 After forty years of experience with Summerhill, Neill was able to conclude that, applying this definition of success, ‘most of the Summer- hill graduates became successful people’. 108 Id. 108 | Chapter Two 150 The Touch Pattern In our observation of the Love Pattern and Pleasure Pattern and of the non–violent and sexually permissive Trobriand culture, we saw that orig- inally love and sex were not separated, but were linked in a functional way. For developing our love capacity, we need to live as children our sexual curiosity to its fullest. In order to be able to remain with a partner over many years, we need to have had promiscuous sex previously, and preferably during childhood. Instead, what we can derive from the anthropological field research is that our Western theory of love and sex being separate experiences is fun- damentally schizoid, and contradicts the nonlinear logic of life and all insights into the connectivity of mind and soma. It seems to be an elabora- tion of pornographic clerical fantasies rather than the worldview of sane and integrated individuals. The word sex itself, that interestingly is missing in the vocabulary of many a sexually permissive culture, implies, by the very fact that such word exists, the possibility of a split between sexual func- tion from love so that love remains a kind of reductionist concept of pure caring and affection which, of course, does not exist in real life. This split between love and sex makes for a lot of damage in our striving for unity and harmony. One of the typical problems that many Westerners face is that they unconsciously split off their love feelings and their sexual long- ings and project them on different partners. The marriage partner re- ceives love, care and affection and all sexual longings are split off and projected upon prostitutes or prostitute–ersatz figures such as secretaries, servants or female children. Many a reader may object that it often happens that sexuality is lived in its cold form, deprived of love, as mere satisfaction and rather brutally, and that some people even experience more intense sexual feelings when they can encounter sex without being obliged to fake tenderness or car- ing. This may be true but research has also shown that sex which is expe- rienced connected with love engenders a higher level of lasting feelings of happiness and joy than sex that is acted out in form of an ego trip. Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 151 Whatever our personal opinion in this respect may be like, there is no doubt about the fact that sexuality in every form is focused upon our skin as the main sexual organ. It seems, however, that sexology has rather hesitantly taken the turn to consider the importance of skin contact in the give and take of body pleasure. Without the skin we would be like barrels without ground. Our bod- ies are water–sleeves containing more than ninety percent of water. Be- sides, the skin is our temperature regulator, similar to the astronaut’s spacesuit. Besides this protective function, our skin plays an important role in our wellbeing and health. When we experience to be caressed or massaged, when we are touched with love, we feel good. It feels good. Ashley Montagu spent more than thirty years researching about the overwhelming importance of children’s tactile stimulation. His book Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin is a guide not only for his own research results, but also for the complete range of literature on skin re- search collected over twenty years, in this study. Ashley Montagu gives 109 many examples that demonstrate how destructive the touch taboo in our culture is, especially for children. He found that the deprivation of tactile pleasure creates a misbalance in the psychosomatic setup of the child. As I reported it already, Montagu, starting out with animal research, inquired about the biological reasons for the motherly licking is a primary condition for the survival of the young. It is noteworthy to observe that 110 the mammal mother extensively licks the perineal zone, the region be- tween anus and genitals of the young. Experiments that prohibited test animals from licking and being licked led to grave urinogenital infections of the young animals or even their death. Further, Montagu found that 111 licking is normally not part of human child care. An exception was found with an Eskimo tribe, the Ingalik. The Ingalik mother would lick the face and the hands of the newborn in order to clean them. She would contin- Ashley Montagu, Touching (1971). 109 Id., p. 15. 110 Id. 111 | Chapter Two 152 ue this licking until the baby is old enough to sit on the bench. Mon 112 - tagu found that humans generally touch children more with their hands, that is by touching, stroking, caressing, than, for example, with their tongues, and thus by licking, and that, in addition, eye–to–eye contact plays an important role in nurturant child care. Different researchers found that tactile stimulation of the child is of primary importance for building and maintaining a strong immune sys- tem with the child’s organism. Montagu remarks in this context that 113 love has been defined as the harmony of two souls and the contact of two epider- mises. In this sense body pleasure of mother and child is the most basic, the most natural and the most beneficial form of human sexuality. Need- less to add that this is a form of pedophile sexuality. And this is one of the examples that clearly show that pedophile erotic and sexual sensations are in some ways part of nature, and not per se a perversion. The skin is our primary sexual organ. All stimulation of the sexual organs is effectuated through the stimulation of the skin that surrounds them. Sigmund Freud has defined sexuality as any behavior that has a physical connotation to the sexual organs and that is focused on receiving pleasure. We could ask if body pleasure really must be concentrated on the sexual organs so that we can qualify it as sexual? It is certainly also a form of body plea- sure to drink a fresh beer or to eat one’s favorite dish. This kind of plea- sure could be called oral or nutritive pleasure. Hardly anyone would go as far as qualifying it as sexual. But how is it with caressing one’s chest or bottom? Is it sexual or not? Does it depend on the way we caress that it is sexual or merely affectionate, or does it depend on the intention? Or is the decisive factor which body zone is caressed? Or does it depend on the fact that the one who caresses is sexually aroused by the activity – or not? Still during the Renaissance it was common in Europe that all mem- bers of the family slept naked in one bed, as today it still is practiced with the Eskimo and many native populations. The bodily touch or casual ca- Id., p. 234. 112 Id., pp. 20, 21 and Michel Odent, Birth Reborn (1986). 113 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 153 resses that happened during the night were generally not considered as sexual or sexually intended. Today, in our culture, many people would 114 find it unusual to let sleep their children naked in one bed or that adults, be it the parents, would sleep naked together with their children. This is astonishing as the majority of psychologists are now outspoken about our need for direct body contact, warmth, togetherness, tenderness, and nu- dity –– and this independently of age or gender. Several scientists have researched on the consequences of a deprivation of love nutrition, that is the lack of tactile pleasure, and got alarming results. Unfortunately, the greatest part of this research was done with apes, although genetically, as we all know, the human race is very close to apes. But nonetheless it would seem more convincing to have achieved these same results with direct research on human beings. Pediatrics and modern child psychology have done great work during the last twenty years. After the publication of volumes if not entire li- braries of results of this research, now almost all specialists of child care agree that children who are raised in a milieu deprived of love, tenderness and caring body touch face greater adaptation problems later in life, frequently show learning difficulties and tend to be more rigid in experiencing joy and pleasure than children who grew up with love and body touch. The first group of children exhibit symptoms such as restlessness or hyperactivity; in school they often have drawbacks because of their low attention span and concentration ability. In the group, they are seen as rather isolationist and uncooperative. They are easily pushed aside as difficult, and once this has happened, the above symptoms aggravate, sometimes dramatically. Many of the children who are in institutions for so–called delinquent youth were formerly affectively and tactually deprived children; yet life circumstances and often an intolerant and punitive attitude from the side of the environment made them turn away from sociability and into mar- ginality. What is the specifically pathological in their behavior and in the Id., p. 15. 114 | Chapter Two 154 circumstances that have contributed to form it? How does it impact on children if in their family tenderness and care were replaced by violence and brutality? Research into domestic violence has shown that healthy forms of body touch and body pleasure do virtually not exist in such fam- ilies. If there is touch at all, it is one that hurts, violates, humiliates and degrades. There is almost unanimity among scientists and professionals that for the small child tactile stimulation is essential for healthy psychosomatic growth. It has been shown that close and long–term body contact be- tween the child and their mother, father or other tactually nutritive per- sons decisively strengthens the child’s immune system and improves health. One could conclude that these findings are not only valid for small children but also children between the age of six until puberty, and even adolescents, for what could be called skin erotic seems to be a life–en- hancing and health–strengthening factor in all living. In fact, in India, as Frederick Leboyer reports, where it is a common tradition to massage babies with warm oil, there are many mothers who continue massaging their children, which always includes gently massag- ing their genitals, until adolescence. It is believed that massaging chil 115 - dren’s genitals will enhance their procreative ability, sexual potency and resistance against illness. Such tactile forms of childcare are however by no means associated in India with incest or pedophilia nor is it even con- sidered as sexual. It is regarded as a natural and necessary attribute to nurturant parental care. Much research has been done on the roots of human violence, but there is hardly anything comparable to the findings of the American so- ciologist James W. Prescott. His publications are unique in that they found child care methods, sexual attitudes and violence level in a given society forming part of a subtle feedback system. As already pointed out, the 116 quintessence of this research is the thesis that cultures that continue to be Frederick Leboyer, Loving Hands (1977). 115 James W. Prescott, Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence (1975). 116 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 155 highly repressive regarding the emotional and tactile needs of small chil- dren and that, in addition, prohibit premarital sex, will end in an in- evitable chaos of violence and destruction that has not seen an equal in human history. Violence, Prescott states authoritatively, and with abundant amount of proof, is a compensation reaction of the human brain for the depriva- tion of tactile pleasure! These research results amazingly match with the findings of the British neurophysiologist Herbert James Campbell, who summarized forty years of neurological research saying that the motivation of every kind of human activity is nothing else but pleasure. In case pleasure is 117 prohibited, the human brain automatically compensates for this lack by activating the violence areas in the brain. The pleasure areas and the vio- lence areas function, neurologically speaking, in a way that one inhibits the other; their activity levels are thus mutually exclusive. For example, the more the pleasure areas are stimulated, the more the violence areas will be inhibited and deactivated. The other way around is equally true: the more the human brain runs on violence, the more its capacity of ex- periencing pleasure is infringed. Thus, to summarize Prescott’s findings provocatively, one could say that it is up to us, and within our individual responsibility, if we want to run our brains on violence or on pleasure. Both is not possible. We have to decide what we want. American society seems to have made this decision long ago, Prescott found. It has unequivocally decided for violence and against pleasure. The historical roots? Prescott identifies them in the Bib- lical and Jewish traditions that are the foundation of American or, more generally, Western society. The logical conclusions of this interconnect- edness are: ‣ the more a person has received tactile nutrition during her early years, the more she has known body pleasure from childhood, the more her pleasure areas will be activated and, as a result, the more her violence areas will be inhibited; Herbert James Campbell, The Pleasure Areas (1973). 117 | Chapter Two 156 ‣ the more a person was deprived of tactile pleasure during childhood, the more her desire for body pleasure was repressed or body pleasure experienced as a guilt–producing activity, the more the person's plea- sure areas will be inhibited and, as a result, the more her violence areas will be active. Interestingly, Prescott found that tactile deprivation in early child- hood does not automatically lead to a violent character. Interestingly, there are factors that compensate for early tactile deprivation, the most decisive of those factors being pre–marital sex. In this point resides the 118 specific appeal for a future world politics that is peace–centered. This appeal is to refrain from repressing children’s emotions, their sensuality, and their growing sexuality, to let it grow freely and without moralistic or other inhibitions, and to recognize this freedom by law. Unfortunately Prescott’s research never really penetrated into the mass media that seem to discard out from public forums this kind of research and is known only to a relatively small circle of scientists and intellectuals. The problem of the present public discussion about sex is that it is still rigid and impregnated with various fears and taboos. The stranger haunts American talk–shows and the general hysteria about abusive or non–abu- sive sex with children is all–pervasive in the American media culture. This general attitude is far from being supportive for the tactile needs of present–day Western children. Its obsessive focus on protecting children can easily be revealed as either a lip–service, or a new money–making device, or else another way to enslave children into a doctrinaire system of industrial or post–industrial values. To partly remedy the present almost hopeless situation would be, for example, to implement baby massage on a large scale as it was proposed by Frederick Leboyer. This would implement at least one possible form of tactile stimulation and body pleasure for the growing next generations. It would ensure that next generation societies will be a lot more peaceful and a lot less violent than the ones preceding them in history. We sponta- James W. Prescott, Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence (1975), p. 13. 118 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 157 neously communicate love through body touch and skin contact. Parents fondle and kiss their baby. Lovers embrace each other. Children like to cuddle into their parents’ bed and siblings naturally share one bed, at least until a certain age. Attitudes in this respect vary from one society and continent to the other. Historically body touch was natural and not reflected about. Sexual contacts in certain institutionalized forms are to be traced back into the beginnings of human life and history. Moreover, as the French child 119 therapist and book author Françoise Dolto reports in her book La Cause des Enfants (1985), still in the seventeenth century love and sex games be- tween adult women and small boys were not repressed and happened quite often. They may have been considered by some people as funny or scurrilous, but not as immoral and still less as dangerous. The separa 120 - tion of love and eroticism into different age groups and the sexual math- ematics that results from this modern kind of regimenting sexual rela- tions, has brought about much confusion and, as a result, much public discussion. After all, it seems to be entirely unnatural and artificial, to say the least. In fact, a generally schizoid and punitive attitude toward love, sex and tenderness can be traced back to the Assyrians and, in particular, the Code of Hammurabi, the first legal code in history that contained sex laws. In addition, the so–called holy books of all our important religions are filled with poisonous negativism regarding body pleasure. Tolerance, and as an essential ingredient sexual tolerance, has never been practiced by humanity. As a matter of fact, historically, the times of repression and persecution of sexual minorities by far prevail in human history. After all, modern science cannot compensate for the darkness and stubborn rigidi- See for example Susanne Cho, Kindheit und Sexualität im Wandel der Kulturgeschichte (1983) 119 or Floyd M. Martinson, The Sex Education of Young Children (1981), pp. 51 ff. This fact is corroborated by descriptions of the habits of the Royal Family in France, 120 as reported by the doctor of Louis XIII, Héroard, see: J. Héroard, Journal de Jean Héroard sur l’Enfance et la Jeunesse de Louis XIII (1868). See also: Lloyd deMause (Ed.), The History of Childhood (1974), p. 23 and Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood (1962). | Chapter Two 158 ty of a human mind that has been conditioned to violence since cen- turies. Only love can bring a change. The problem is not that people are not enough informed or not interested in science, but that most individuals are relying too much upon moral judgments that they have more or less blindly taken over from higher authorities, instead of relying on their own intuitions and the inherent intelligence of their bodies and their skins. It does not make sense to start witch hunts in order to eradicate witch hunts. It is more intelligent to leave those how are armored in their armor and to take care of those who have not yet built such armor against life and against pleasure. Our skin can show us the way and gives the signals. In order to find back to our natural continuum, we must relearn to reason in a way that includes touching and feeling and to allow, in a real and a metaphoric sense, our skin to remain open for the osmosis of love. 121 Jean Liedloff, The Continuum Concept (1986). 121 Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 159 Points to Ponder ‣ In Chapter Two I provided an introduc- tion into systems theory, and a critique of traditional Cartesian ‘clockwork’ sci- ence. We have seen that I consider the shift from Cartesian science to present– day holistic science as a tremendous up- ward lift of human consciousness. ‣ I found eight dynamic patterns in the life- style of native peoples around the world, which are autonomy, ecstasy, energy, language, love, pleasure, self–regulation, and touch. As to our own culture, the lack of recognition of the eight patterns of living equals eight huge black holes in the cultural setup of modern society, which is the underlying reason of our social chaos, rampant violence and almost total disappearance of integrative social values. ‣ The eight dynamic patterns of living have never been integrated by Western society, but the one pattern that really clashes with our scien- tific materialism is energy, not energy as kinetic energy, of course, but energy as cosmic, vibrant subtle energy, the all–permeating bioplasmatic energy, the information field, the creator force, the human energy field, the cosmic energy field, the orgone, as Reich termed it. ‣ Reich was only one among a number of pioneers who questioned the status quo of Cartesian rigidity and introduced an energy–based sci- ence paradigm, while they gave different names to this concept; these men were attacked and persecuted by the system–conform science establishment. Today, while most of this controversy is settled and the information field recognized as the zero–point field or quantum vacuum, the seven other dynamic patterns are not for that matter recognized and embraced by Western consumer culture. ‣ A detailed regard on each pattern, with the autonomy pattern on top of the list, showed that autonomy is fundamental for every being in growth, and that the absence of autonomy within the Western child– rearing paradigm brings about rampant co–dependence and emotional abuse in the parent–child relationship, and within the modern nuclear fami- ly. Considering anthropological field research and cross–cultural data, | Chapter Two 160 we see that if the child is deprived of the autonomy to engage in erot- ic peer relations, as this is the case with the Western child–rearing paradigm since about the 17th century, the natural balance within the family gets upset; parents, then, develop an erotic, pedophilic, attrac- tion toward their children, and children develop a gerontophilic fixation upon their parents and caretakers. These fixations are thus not insti- tuted by nature, as psychoanalysis wrongly assumes, but are the result of Western children’s deprivation of autonomy, as a result of over- protection and the societal prohibition for the child to be actively sexual, in partner relations, and not just merely auto–erotic and mas- turbatory. ‣ Ecstasy, the second of the eight dynamic patterns of living, is not to be confounded with pleasure, and does not represent a form of sexual licentiousness. According to Terence McKenna and other shamanism researchers, ecstasy is a ‘contemplation of wholeness’, a vision of unity that is truly a form of direct religious experience. This con- sciousness pattern is almost entirely lost within the modern consumer culture, which is well hedonistic in the sense of pleasure–affirming, but not interested in the numinous, religious experience as a direct source of personal growth and rejuvenation. ‣ The energy pattern is existent without exception in all tribal cultures, but strongly, over centuries, banned from Western culture as a reli- gious heresy and a scientific monstrosity, which led to the persecution and in some cases the death of scientists who were interested to find the secret of the ‘forbidden tree of knowledge’. However, when we look at cutting edge physics, and research on the quantum field, we can say that the taboo is presently being lifted and the energy view of the world by and by integrated within Western science, over the course of about the last two decades, and under the pulpit of quantum physics. ‣ When we look at the language pattern, we see that culture and language are one interdependent whole, and that there is no culture without lan- guage and no language that is not imbedded in a cultural context. This means, as a consequence, that, according to psychoanalyst Robert M. Stein, the imaginal realm belongs to the cultural achieve- ments and is therefore sacred and exempt from being controlled by sociopolitical and moral rules and laws. This is the case with native cultures where all taboos are do–taboos, not talk taboos, but it is not so, and was not so historically, within Western culture, where the Church demanded absolute control also over the inner world of the believer. In our culture, rule and exception seem to be reversed here, in that what is not talked about, and is not sacralized through ritual and prayer, because it’s a non–dit, is done in secret, while it is vehemently Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 161 attacked and declared as vicious and abject in the public debate. Ex- amples of matters that are blinded–out and tabooed within modern culture are parent–child incest and pedophilia, which is why these modes of behavior are not socially coded and integrated, but are creating havoc in that without social code, they represent chaotic forms of human conduct. The reason is, as we saw it, that they are not being embraced as valid forms of human behavior on the imaginal sphere, and therefore are not openly discussed in films, books or in television – which would lead to their being embedded in culture and thus, would hold them within the limits of the culture. As they are not embraced but disintegrated, they became rampant, uncontrolled and harmful on the social scale. The primary reason, to repeat it, for this to hap- pen, is that the language pattern has been shunned by Western soci- ety through hundreds of years of Church terror and speech taboos of all sorts. That freedom of speech is now a constitutional guarantee has not changed this fact because of the widespread censorship being in place regarding the before–mentioned behavior modes that are rejected by the culture, and banned from publishing on a large scale, both in book and in online publishing. Hence, despite a modern con- stitution, the reality in a culture that has disintegrated the imaginal realm, and the language code to express it, is that contrary to the official rhetoric, censorship is the order of the day and the rule, while free speech is the exception. ‣ The love pattern is to be found with all native cultures, in the sense that their overall credo could be expressed in the slogan ‘life is love’, while the overall credo of modern culture would sound like ‘life is power’ or ‘life is control’. Tribal cultures that have an intact love pattern in place, have basic trust in life. Regarding the love pattern, we can make out another rule–and–exception principle, in the sense that trust was originally the rule with human societies, while in modern culture, the rule is mistrust. The fear of the proverbial ‘stranger’ is what constitutes the rule, and this fear is inculcated in children and babies very early in life. When you see that love is really a universal form of bonding among all living, a fact that is now confirmed by the existence of the quantum field, and resulting quantum entanglement of all living, it becomes clear that modern culture here is really upside– down, and much of the modern malaise, including large–scale de- pression, rape and violence are the result. As love has been shunned and denied early in Western history by patriarchy and fundamentalist religion, it has been largely replaced by moralism, or compulsive morality. The result is the destruction of real civilization because of the repres- sion of the natural emotions of the child and the building of moralis- tic behavior structures that have gradually replaced the primary self– regulatory processes that nature has coded for the growth of all living. In other words, if we compare all of the eight black holes in the body of modern society, the denial of the love pattern through moralism | Chapter Two 162 has inflicted surely the most devastating damage, feedbacked by our rampant sexual violence, child neglect, missing children and large– scale murder and genocide inflicted upon other civilizations, and na- ture as a whole. ‣ Regarding the pleasure pattern, we are facing a strange contradiction in the value system of modern society. On one hand modern society is outspokenly hedonistic in its overall approach toward life, and on the other it attacks and demonizes certain pleasures, almost arbitrarily. To find out what the truth is in this matter, we may investigate re- search on pleasure, which shows that since about the 1970s, pleasure is scientifically recognized as a prime motivator for human behavior and decision– making; this mechanism was intended by nature to insure procreation and healing. However, our patriarchal and puritanical past doesn’t face pleasure–seeking behavior as good and healthy but used to judge it negatively. Cutting–edge research on the roots of violence has de- livered clear–cut results, in that it found that pleasure and violence are in a mutually exclusive relationship. When we repress pleasure, we progress violence, and vice versa. When we look at our data once again with this knowledge, we see that most of the pleasure modern society endorses is ersatz pleasure, that is pleasure derived from material goods, while this same society keeps children from having natural pleasure with their bodies, by focusing their attention upon industrially produced toys. So when we compare this situation with the situation under the rule of fundamental religion, the only difference is that now the re- pression of natural pleasure is more subtle, in that it is done, general- ly speaking, not through coercion but through the subtly conditioning influence of toys, video games and television, except when it goes to adult–child sexual pleasures, where the repression is as blind, brutal and draconian as it used to be under church rule. We have seen that this, then, is the reason why our society is by far the most violent in human history, in that it has brought about murder and destruction in virtually every sphere of life. ‣ Self–regulation is a pattern more obviously built into the life function than the others, in that all living processes are auto–regulatory. But symptomatically so, in a culture that is widely alienated from nature, self–regulation is also the pattern that is most commonly denied. Most people follow the precepts of some or the other authority, be it a doctor, a religious leader or guru, or a psychiatrist, to ‘get on the right track’, or they follow standard moralistic or religious concepts such as ‘one should not drink alcohol’, ‘one should not masturbate’ or ‘one should only think pure thoughts’. Less than ten percent of the people follow their own rules, set their own goals and have clear in- tentions. In one sample, only three percept of the followed college students were having precisely formulated goals and revised them on Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living | 163 a regular basis. And it was only this tiny percentage, and no other criterium than persistent goal–focus, that later on produced great and unbounded success. From this perspective we can say that self–regula- tion properly seen means taking full responsibility for one’s life. ‣ Regarding the touch pattern, there is quite abundant research since about the 1960s, on physical, caring touch and wellbeing. While early child psychology and even Freudian psychoanalysis were touch–un- friendly, mainly because of their confusion between caring touch and sexually intended touch, we saw that lacking touch produces many pathologies both within the family and on a national and global health level. To begin with, early tactile deprivation that is produced by insufficient breastfeeding and growing career–focus among moth- ers brings about social and individual pathologies that range from depressions over antisocial behavior until rape–centered sexuality and psychopathic behavior. On a community level, early tactile depriva- tion has clearly been identified as one factor in the etiology of large– scale structural and domestic violence. ‣ As a consequence of the mess–up of caring touch, shared nudity and physical closeness with so–called ‘pedophilia’ when care is bestowed upon children by caretakers other than their parents, and particularly when the caretaker is male, there are almost no more male caretakers to be found in early child care. This alone is an impoverishment so drastic that it negatively impacts upon the healthy growth of chil- dren; one factor why this is so is because children know the truth be- hind the lies they are told on a constant basis, and as a result they develop the same bias regarding the male as the abuser–type, and the female as the (only) caregiving–type among the sexes. ‣ Further, no male child is able within such a distorted social paradigm to develop his maleness in a sane manner, and no female child is able to develop their heterosexual attraction strongly enough to later find a partner who is caring and homely, and thus not the abuser–type. In an abuse–centered culture, matters are messed–up and distorted to that point that the natural biogenic self–regulation has been disturbed at a level so deep that social pathologies are virtually built–in this system, and simply cannot be avoided. Even if modern society doesn’t follow the example of the natives, it could at least follow their own scientists who are clear–cut about the fact that touch deprivation brings about large–scale violence in any given society anywhere on the globe. CHAPTER THREE Consciousness and Shamanism Consciousness and Shamanism | 165 Introduction Since leaving high school and during my extensive law studies, I was deepening my knowledge in psychoanalysis and medical hypnosis as well as perennial sciences both from the West and the East. My law studies and work as a legal researcher taught me that so–called scientific knowledge is often a mere formula for manipulating opinion by invoking established research or scientific authorities. This is unscientific because it means to mea- sure the knew with the parameters of the old. Only much later, and inter alia through the writings of Edward de Bono and J. Krishnamurti be 122 - came I aware that this form of reductionism is inherent in the function- ing of the brain and the way perception works. This brought me to the conviction that exact science is a myth because all science is relative to the observer’s own set of beliefs. Meanwhile, my insights about science phi- losophy are widely confirmed by quantum physics and recent conscious- ness research, but when I first uttered them, more than twenty years ago, I was encountering but suspicion and estrangement. What I learnt from this is that instead of accumulating knowledge, we should always check if new knowledge we acquire resonates within our- selves and thus confirms our own intuition and sense of truth. For only then it is useful and reinforces our own higher intelligence. There is no knowledge outside of this source and all knowledge is thus individual in the sense that not all truth is valid for all. An example for belief hidden be- hind methodological reasoning is the famous meeting of Wilhelm Reich and Albert Einstein in Princeton when Reich demonstrated to Einstein that the temperature difference close to the orgone accumulator contradicts the second law of thermodynamics, the so–called law of entropy. Einstein, reportedly dumbfounded on first sight, handed the matter over to his assistant and Reich got to hear that for methodological reasons the experiment could not be reproduced under the same conditions as during See, for example, Edward de Bono, The Use of Lateral Thinking (1967), The Mechanism of 122 Mind (1969), Sur/Petition (1993), Tactics (1993), Serious Creativity (1996). | Chapter Three 166 the demonstration. In other cases, when Reich showed the bion reactions in burnt sand, he was told that air germs were causing the living cell struc- ture in the burnt sand molecules. The air germs theory was a methodological trick that did exactly what the Church committee did a few centuries earlier in order to not see the Jupiter moons through Galileo Galilei’s telescope. This is how main- stream science works, on beliefs that elegantly are veiled by methodological considerations. Through further study over more than twenty years, I became convinced that an alternative science and life paradigm always existed, and I retraced it and developed a terminology that I called Emon- ics. I also found that our science patriarchy had relegated it to the under- ground, and officially denied it. And I also found amazing parallels be- tween this alternative science and life paradigm deeply hidden within dominator cultures, on one hand, and science and life paradigms of trib- al peoples or scientific native religions, such as the huna religion from Hawaii, on the other. The present chapter will show that there is no split in the cognitive assessment of natural healing practiced within shamanism and by shamans when looked at through the eyes not of mainstream science, but using the millenary cognitive tools of alternative science, and particularly our insights into the functioning of hypnosis. Consciousness and Shamanism | 167 What is Ayahuasca? Ayahuasca, already mentioned as a favorite entheogen brew among shamans, is a brew intended to bring about a trance for self–discovery, healing, contacting spirits or exploring consciousness. The brew consists of two ingredients, Banisteriopsis Caapi, also called Ayahuasca liana, and the Chacruna shrub (Psychotria viridis), a Mono Amine Oxidase or MAO inhibitor. 123 There are many other entheogens used for religious purposes, and they form an integral part of shamanism. Entheogens are plants that contain psychoactive compounds, such as DMT, and others, and that, when taken at appropriate doses, produce a consciousness–altering effect upon our psyche and perception. While there are methods to alter con- sciousness without plants, modern researchers agree that from a point of view of effectiveness there is a large gap between those latter techniques, on one hand and the use of entheogen drugs, on the other. In fact, en- theogens are several hundreds of percent more effective than non–plant based methods. Some researchers have seriously tackled the question why this is so, and one of the most persisting on this specific point was the late Terence McKenna. In his book The Archaic Revival (1992), McKenna affirms that en- theogenic plants contain the very essential genetic code, the basic infor- mation about the evolution of life on earth, and that for this reason their ingestion, or at least the ingestion of the psychoactive compounds they contain, leads to an immediate opening of consciousness, which was something much broader and much more intelligent to experience than mere colorful visions. In fact, McKenna’s visionary and illuminating books would never have had such a powerful impact on the consciousness change of West- ern society if they only talked about some nice hallucinogenic visions. See, for more details, Richard Evans Schultes, et al., Plants of the Gods (1992), pp. 124 123 ff. | Chapter Three 168 Anthropologists and shamanism researchers who don’t understand the unique phenomenon of shamanism, tend to reduce the entheogenic ex- perience to a mere social game, a distraction or a search for some kind of artificial nirvana; they are of course deeply misled. It is therefore not sur- prising that most anthropologists, and especially those of them who really do not understand shamanic cultures, tend to employ expressions such as ‘hallucinogens’, ‘narcotic drugs’, ‘narcotics’ or ‘psychedelics’. Apart from the fact that these plants are not narcotics, because a narcotic drug, such as for example opium, renders somnolent but does not alter consciousness, the important thing to know is that entheogens are not understood, in shamanic cultures, as leisure drugs, ‘to have a nice time seeing some vi- sions’, but really are considered as assets of the religious and numinous experience. That is why the only expression that comes close to the shamanic mindset is the term entheogens: facilitators for getting in touch with the god within. And as such they form part of the religious ritual, and not of par- ty time. This is generally little understood in most Western countries where so–called ‘drugs’ are usually associated with leisure, distraction, party time and sex. Yet in native cultures the very idea to for example relate an entheogenic voyage with sex would offend every shaman if told about it. It has been equally affirmed that entheogens, apart from their help- ing us to reach the inner mind, also dissolve nasty and somehow destruc- tive habits such as alcoholism or heroin addiction, and generally help in a process of social deconditioning. Entheogens help us to see behind the veil of the normative behavior code in any given society as they show us options of different behavior. What we can thus learn from taking these plants as a sort of social medicine is to recognize the pattern of normative behavior we are caught in and that obstructs our creativity and self–real- ization. People who are socially oppressed, racial, ethnic, religious or sexual minorities, may want to inquire into the possible dissolution of rigid be- havior rules and oppressive normative standards in society. They may Consciousness and Shamanism | 169 thus look for the ultimately most intelligent catalyzer that exists to see all the options reality offers and as a result may want to experience the thrill of a consciousness–opening voyage. Another important observation regards mental health. It has often been wrongly stated that indigenous shamanic populations were psychot- ic or at least pre–psychotic and it comes to mind that usually pedophiles, in our society, once convicted and subjected to psychiatric expertise, are la- beled in exactly the same way. When we remember the times of communism in Russia or read books by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and others, we learn that under that totali- tarian regime the same murderous psychiatry with exactly that same vo- cabulary had been used to eliminate intellectuals who were treated as system enemies because they defended human rights and democratic val- ues. The effective mechanisms to defend a given standard behavior par- adigm are all founded not upon natural pleasure–seeking behavior but upon adaptive perversity. Hence, the necessity to look beyond the fence of behavior patterns and inquire into realms that seem apart from it but aren’t. The human soul expresses its originality always in paradoxes and sometimes in extreme behavior and the very attempt to ‘classify’ human behavior into rigid standards for all is in itself an ideology – idiotology. The more a given society puts up general standards, the more it is alienated from life and its creative roots and the more it is subject to decay and perversion. Shamanism is an effective guidepost for reentering the realm of nature’s wisdom and true connectedness to all–that–is. As far as I can see, people caught in minority groupings and the so- cial fight involved with minority lobbying hardly ever come up with be- yond–the–fence solutions such as studying shamanism and experiencing entheogens, which makes for the extreme poverty of many of those movements, not to say their ultimate system–obedient stupidity. And this unconscious system–obedience can be seen in many a limitation that so- cial activists impose upon themselves and that are, ultimately, still system– prone. As Krishnamurti said, repeating an old wisdom: the social revolt | Chapter Three 170 or bloody revolution is still within the same frame of mind as the society it revolts against. The entheogenic quest is therefore an inner quest, not necessarily a defeatist approach on a social level, but certainly an important add–on to any social activism for any possible social or humanitarian cause. For it opens the mind for the difference, for what Apple, in their publicity, call Think different and which is a very handy formula for what I try to convey here. The shaman is not a theorist, not a scientist and not a theologian. He is practical, a pragmatist, a solution–finder and his first rule is effec- tiveness. He is something like a highly effective Zen manager in his uni- verse of natural laws, and he is a communicator. He communicates with the spirit world, the world of the ancestors and the world of the animal and plant spirits. A shaman receives his basic education from the entheogenic plant teachers, and only at a minor degree from another, elder, shaman tutor. Shamans around the world, asked why they knew this and that secret about healing, about certain hidden connections, as Fritjof Capra calls holistic knowledge or about specific illnesses, answer they knew it directly from the plant spirits. They tend to affirm that they themselves know very little and that they just humbly ask plant spirits every time they can’t solve a problem or not find a remedy for a certain illness. And the effectiveness of a shaman, then, is exactly to maximize the response–ability he has for all possible problems he is asked to solve. This involves curing sickness, doing counter–magic, finding the right timing for harvest and even the task to solve political questions regarding tribe relations. The shaman does that by maximizing his unique communication with the invisible world. By the same token, shamans around the world, when asked about reality tend to affirm that our visible reality, the one most Westerners think was the only one, is a very minor and rather insignificant part of reality and that the real reality is the hidden one, the one that is unveiled during the entheogenic visionary experience. If we refuse this bias of a more or less in terms of reality assessment, we can still enrich our mindset with the option that there might be parallel Consciousness and Shamanism | 171 realities and that all realities, visible or invisible, or visible only through facilitating drugs or other consciousness–altering devices, are equally valid and equally important. An opening of science toward parallel uni- verses, and an acknowledgment of a multitude of possible realities that are intersecting would be a great advance and evolution of Western sci- ence. I shall now first report my Ayahuasca journey, and then evaluate it in a hopefully objective manner, using scientific methodology to evaluate it. | Chapter Three 172 An Ayahuasca Experience I had two options to experience Ayahuasca on my trip to South America in June 2004. It was either the Santo Daime ritual in Brazil, which is a mixup of psychedelic experience and a modified Christian liturgy, or encounter the wistful plant as part of a shamanic ritual in Ecuador. I chose the second, not only because I got the contact with this shaman already before, but also because I felt that none of these churches in Brazil were really welcoming me as a participating visitor. In Ecuador, then, Esteban, the shaman, told me that the original ritual was a pure and solitary experience of encountering the plant teachers, and not a group event. I was thus confirmed in my intuition and was glad to have chosen the more original initiation instead of indulging in a vulgarized and sectarian mix of perhaps incongruent elements. Some months before my starting for the travel, and when I first ex- changed with Jimela, a friend of the shaman who, like him, belongs to the Shuar Nation nation of tribal peoples, I got several dreams that I will just paste here from my daily dream journal: I was talking on the phone with some people from Ecuador; they gave me a Spanish lesson and then one of them said I was already speaking Spanish at eighty–four percent. Then I was outside of the house and there was somebody who said I needed to be careful with Columbians. One moment later, all were getting down on the earth for protection because they expected an explosion to occur. In the next dream I was in a room with several people, one of them a nude woman. All was a bit dark in the room and now I saw that this room was a library. For one moment I thought I wanted to ask the woman if she did not feel cold, but immedi- ately changed my intention and went to the other side of the Consciousness and Shamanism | 173 room. One moment later I was outside and held in my hand a book that I wanted to restitute to a library as the book cover was damaged already when I bought the book. I said to some- body: ‘This book is only one of many that I want to restitute to the library.’ At the end of the dream I hear this sentence in Spanish, and the sentence reminds me of García–Marquez book Cientos años de soledad, ‘Cientos años de liberdad.’ In the following dream I realized that somebody had stolen me money from my bag. In the next dream I saw a small boy and the idea was that I was going to drink Ayahuasca together with this boy. A guru or shaman asked me if I eventually had made the decision to drink Ayahuasca? An astrological divination had told him that it would be good for me to drink Ayahuasca. In fact, shortly before I had seen that young boy drawing an astrological chart for me. And this divination seemed to result in a magical out- come: there were suddenly two big water containers and on top of these containers were various things. It seemed to me that all these things were serving the purga (inner cleansing). I replied to the shaman that the astrological divination was valid only for the boy, but not for me. Then the shaman put objects close to my body to see how my vital energy would react to them or interact with them. I don’t remember what the first object was. The second object was a large oven that had the form of a square. The shaman turned the oven in a way that one angle was pointing to my body. Then he said that during six hours I would feel very cold and that the oven could not help me because it was standing in a wrong angle to my body and thus was creating bad Feng Shui. I silently agreed with this reasoning of the shaman because I remembered in the dream | Chapter Three 174 that one principle of good Feng Shui was that objects were not pointing sharp corners to a human body. The morning after my arrival in Misahualli, I met Esteban, the shaman, who was a young man with little shamanic experience. I actually wished to discuss the dreams with him, but he did not seem to be a listen- er and expert of the soul. I intuitively felt that he had not the maturity of a real shaman. He was a short, strong and healthy native in his thirties who had a rather pragmatic approach to life; he and Jimela were working together to promote their native culture to tourists. Esteban did not hide that he was not a grown shaman, but just a be- ginner in shamanism and I got an intuition that he might not be able to help me with my fear problem. In addition, the two seemed to be caught in a negative pattern regarding Jimela’s husband, a Polish businessman, the person who had invited me. From what they said, he seemed to be a strongly authoritarian character who had not understood their culture and had reacted several times in a rather displeasing way during the Ayahuasca experience. After breakfast, I went out with Esteban to collect the plants. Close to Esteban’s own wooden house, we found a very nice and about 15–year old Ayahuasca liana that Esteban called la madre. It was a strong liana of about fifteen centimeters diameter at the bottom and becoming finer and finer higher up. It was spiraling around its host tree and at its top end firmly rooted in the branches of the tree. Esteban first decided not to take this plant but a daughter of the mother, but looking around we found only very small and thin ones that Esteban, after careful examination, rejected as not being fit for the brew. So we went back to the mother liana and Esteban climbed up the tree, asked me to hand him the knife, climbed higher, put the knife in a fork of two branches, and balanced it exactly so that it didn’t fall down, climbed still higher and cut a medium–sized liana of about two meters that fell down next to my feet. I was praying to the plant to allow us taking it, as this is a holy cus- tom of the natives. Not far from the place we found the liana, we also Consciousness and Shamanism | 175 found the second plant for the brew, which is a Mono Amine Oxidase inhibitor, that is called Chacruna or Psychotria viridis. Esteban used for it another name in Spanish that I did not retain. He put the liana and the leaves carefully in a little bag that he carried on our way back to the ho- tel. When we were arriving back, the sun was getting out a bit and im- mediately the air became hot and sticky and I had a heavy headache that lasted until the afternoon when I could eventually get some sleep. As I am not used to this climate, the two hours walk had exhausted me. However, after sleeping I felt alert and fine when, at about eight in the evening they called me for the ceremony. Esteban, his wife, and Jimela were sitting around a fireplace, in a the little hut of the hotel that looks over the river and where the floor was covered with a thick layer of beach sand. It was strange that, following my intuition, I went to this place while I did not know that they were there. Jimela knocked at my room door and left and I did not know where she had gone. Some intuition told me they might be in a hut behind the restaurant that previously I had seen during lunch and that I thought was the private apartment of the hotel owner. Still more alien was the fact that when I got there, I saw three people, two women and one man, sit- ting in arm chairs, and in the dawn I did not recognize them. This never happened to me in my life before, that I saw people I know and did not recognize them. I was looking at them a moment and they did not say anything. Finally I said: – Can you tell me where I can find Jimela and Esteban? And Jimela got up and greeted me, and I went to the chair she ad- vised me, and was very confused. The hotel owner, this slim aloof French, was stitching in the fireplace with a fork, trying to light the fire, in vain. He had no regard for me. At the end, he was not even able to light the fire. Only on my angered remark about the misplaced amateurism of that guy, Jimela went there to light the fire again, and that time success- fully. I wonder why all this happened as it happened? | Chapter Three 176 It wasn’t dark yet, all was well visible, but in that moment upon enter- ing the spacious hut that is open all around and well lit, I had not recog- nized them. Had I been in a state of hypnosis already? By the way, I experienced hypnosis already when I encountered a magic healer from the Philippines in the cabinet of a natural healer in Frankfurt, Germany. He put the audience in a state of hypnosis, suggest- ing that he was opening the belly of the patient, taking out the intestines, cleaning them and putting them back. I had seen all this with the other participants, the open belly, the blood, the strange sound like a wobbling noise when he put his hands deep into the intestines of the person in or- der to find strange objects that he threw out on the floor and that looked like black stones. The woman who had been treated before me, and who was sitting next to me, complained about strong pain in her belly after the treat- ment, while I went through the experience unhurt. Whatever the ratio- nale is of magic healing, one thing is sure: this kind of group hypnosis works perfectly well and suggests a scenario to our minds that is more real than reality. You can’t but affirm that you have seen it while you know of course that no belly was open and no blood was flowing and no black stones were to be found on the floor. And indeed, the first spot I was gaz- ing at when we went back to normal perception was where one of those black stones were formerly to be seen, and even heard, on the floor. Needless to say that there was nothing. I complimented them about the choice of the place that I found ide- ally suited. They said it was the first time they did it here, actually for my convenience, and that formerly they had done it in a little hut outside of the hotel. The advantage here was that I could any time go to my room, relax, or go to the toilet if I needed to. And that had been a wise precau- tion indeed. Esteban was looking very handsome in his traditional dress and I found set and setting really appropriate. I was in a very positive mood when drinking the cup and was surprised about the good natural taste of it. In all the books was written that the taste was horrible and that some people even vomited only because of the appalling taste. Nothing of Consciousness and Shamanism | 177 that. It was a plant taste, bitter, but agreeable. I must add that I am quite different from most Westerners as I eat as good as nothing sweet, drink every day bitter herbal tea without sugar and also take now tree times a day a plant medicine that is bitter. And even with wine and cigars, I like the dry and slightly bitter ones. During this half hour of waiting for the DMT to be absorbed by the blood so that the trance could start, I made up in my mind a hypothesis that I have not found in any book, and it seems that no researcher has hitherto come up with it. My strange experience when entering the hut was giving me the idea: And what if nothing in that plant really produced the effect, but if all was a hypnotic trance induced by the shaman himself ? While I knew that it was a daring hypothesis because we cannot deny Ayahuasca containing a considerable amount of DMT, and know from much laboratory research about how DMT is affecting human con- sciousness, it is, I think, something that needs to be addressed. When we are scientific, we actually must address this possibility be- cause it is scientific method to scrutinize all the causative factors of a result produced in an experiment. And when we do that, we cannot per se ex- clude from the start the hypnosis explanation I am forwarding here. While I find it little probable myself in view of the fact that Esteban was a rather young and hardly experienced shaman, I think we would have to disprove the hypnosis scenario in order to more firmly establish the plant teacher theory. And this, nobody has done it yet. After my experience with the Filipino healer, I know how powerfully suggestive hypnosis can be, and it was exactly for this reason that I drove the two hundred miles to Frankfurt to see for myself what I had found in several German magazines about the spectacular stories about Filipino healers. The experience started about half an hour later. I was feeling the trance actually from the fingers up, in the lower arms, then climbing into the whole body. I felt very clearly how my arm muscles gradually relaxed and this experience reminded me of the medical hypnosis I experienced as part of the hypnotherapy I did about ten years ago. Only that, with | Chapter Three 178 Ayahuasca, the trance was getting much stronger. It was a unique experi- ence. I immediately was aware that the whole thing was not an automa- tism, but a directed voyage. It was directed by an intelligence. This intelli- gence communicated with me in a subtle way. It was very gentle, loving and caring, and the trance was very gradual, actually as if it had been especially adapted for me and my needs. With my eyes closed, I saw some faint colored forms, like arrangements of flowers or ornamental drawings and thought they were not as colored as in the books, but rather a physi- cal phenomenon of the retina of the eye that was stimulated by the drug. My logical intelligence – that was at no moment veiled or dysfunctional during the whole experience – suggested me that these visions had no meaning in itself and that the experience was something much beyond the mere visual effects. It then came to my mind that most reports about the Ayahuasca ex- perience only focused upon these visions, and in my view people have taken the symbol for the truth or the finger for the moon. The young French couple who manages the hotel had told me at lunch about their own Ayahuasca experience: Just visions …, you know, very nice! There was a noise developing that I found very interesting. I was clear enough in my mind to detect within this noise the river’s sound, the cricket’s sounds, the frog’s sounds, and yet I found that noise being of another quality than just a mix of all those natural sounds. And it was gradually raising, and after some time, I clearly understood that this sound was something like the pulsation of the universe, of life, and that creation was a result of sound, that life intrinsically was vibration, was sound. Then I got clear telepathic messages that I should go beyond that first phase and intuitively knew that there was three or five depth levels of the trance and that I was just in the first. Then the intelligence gave me sig- nals. It was like a gentle knocking at my doors of perception. It was a flickering of about five red squares at the left upper corner of my vision, when my eyes were closed. I intuitively knew that this was the signal to go deeper, and yet I could not. Every time it happened, the fear came up Consciousness and Shamanism | 179 and blocked me to go beyond. I then remembered that it was this fear, from childhood, that had blocked me in realizing myself, that it was this fear that was blocking me to experience hypnosis really deeply and not only slightly, that it was this fear that blocked me to really give my best when I played piano in front of an audience or did anything I really love to do. The rest of the experience is without importance. It was a terrible struggle between the call that I received to go beyond the fear and the fear block itself. I began to vomit and had to call Esteban two times for help. To make it worse, I could not remember Esteban’s name, and thus formulated in my mind a cry for help, and that, to put this cry in lan- guage, needed some really hard effort: – Chamano, ayudame por favor! Esteban then got up from his chair, put his hand on my head, blew cigarette smoke in my face and treated my aura with a special device made from dried leaves, a kind of rattle that is used like a feather to give passes from top to feet, similar to what is done in hypnosis. This treat- ment helped me wonderfully, but only as long as it lasted. Actually, I opened my eyes several times just to see if the others were still there. Interestingly, the communication with the intelligence stopped at once when I opened my eyes, and in that condition, I felt swindle. Only when closing my eyes again, the communication would gently be taken up by the plant intelligence. Sadly, I felt isolated from the other humans or any other humans, as if I was totally alone on earth, as if there was no soul connection between them and me, while intellectually I since long affirm this connection to be true and part of all life. But emotionally I could not feel it, I could not understand it. I felt I was locked in my body, cut off from all other life, and cold. I saw the two women sleeping in their chairs and Esteban, on my right, was looking strange. The trance view of him was not the normal view of him. When he was talking to me, his face appeared diabolic and grinning and it made me still more afraid. His mouth was not in the | Chapter Three 180 middle of his face, but shifted to the right side, and very large, as if it was open, and white inside. Now I must recall a similar experience. It was when I got a Bach plants treatment from a very experienced natural healer in Germany. This woman had studied with Filipino healers and was using strong hyp- notic trance for healing. Holding one flacon after the other of the Bach essences in her left hand, she let me put my left hand into her right hand in order to establish the flow of the current. In that moment, I had experi- enced the same what happened with the Filipino healer and during the Ayahuasca experience. I suddenly relaxed deeply and my consciousness shifted. When I looked at her face, I saw that she had three eyes, one very large third eye on her front, at exactly the location where there is our third eye chakra, only that in this state of trance, I saw a real eye there, a large one, much larger than a human eye. I was not afraid to see her and telepathically knew that she was spiritually a very developed soul with true healing capabili- ties. The strange difference between her and her aura and Esteban and his aura is that this lady’s aura had a calming, luminous and beneficial effect on my soul while the aura of Esteban had a frightening and confus- ing effect. After each treatment Esteban gave me and despite the fact I vomited out all the contents of my stomach, there was obviously still enough DMT in my blood to continue the experience. Well, in hindsight, this would actually favor the hypnosis theory again because from what I read in books, with most other people, once they had vomited out the contents of their stomach, the trance was broken, while in my case it was not. The intelligence called me still, so gently, so lovingly, so calmly, and I could not get over the block. But it might also be that the DMT was still in the blood while the actual substance, the Ayahuasca brew, was already evac- uated from the stomach. The most important experience was that this intelligence questions everything. Every thought I had was immediately returned to its contrary and every phrase that I pronounced in my mind was immediately re- Consciousness and Shamanism | 181 duced to some more general insight. For example I heard myself think- ing: – I love life … And it was immediately reduced to: – I love … Or I heard myself thinking: – I feel to be alive … And it was reduced to: – I feel … And the intelligence seemed to tell me telepathically that I was locked in language, that all my experiencing of life was conditioned upon lan- guage, and that I hardly ever perceived life directly, spontaneously, as an immediate connection. I knew that this intelligence was connected to all, was connecting all and was all. It simply was, and it gently invited me to enter this connec- tion, this wonderful all–encompassing love that it irradiated. Several times, when I wanted to communicate some of the experience to Este- ban, the intelligence seemed to hold me back. Once I wanted to say something regarding the intelligence, and I was stopped inmidst of the sentence: – Este inteligencia …, was all that I could say. The intelligence seemed to wanting to free me from the conditioning I had received through language, and through using language for describ- ing reality. It might be that my fear is in some way connected to language and my fear block a hypertrophy of language or of my left brain. This is how I can try to explain it while all what I write here and can express in words never can come close to the actual experience. I was constantly communicating to the intelligence as well. I had prayed already before the experience to reveal my life’s mission to me and to free me from fear, and I kept addressing Ayahuasca in respectful terms during the experience to assist me in my quest for truth. And as if it was a final test that this intelligence really understood me, I said this, when I felt I wanted to go back to my room and sleep: | Chapter Three 182 – Dear Ayahuasca, thank you so much for all the insights, please stop calling me now. I know that I was not able to get over my fear block now, and I hope I can find the courage to continue because I know you will reveal me so much more when I get deeper in the trance. But for now I have decided to stop. It is enough. And immediately the calling stopped, the flickering lights did not ap- pear any more and the alien noise was calming down and stopped as well. This alien noise, I understood then, was the language of that intelligence. It was something like many people, in some distance, speaking all at the same time, and as if many conversations converged to a chaotic no–sense that was but the secret code or pattern of a deeper, much more unified language of the universe, and of which our human language is only a tiny and almost insignificant part. Esteban suggested to guide me back to my room and I stumbled back, with his support, because I was hardly able to walk and felt swindle. In my room I spent at least two hours of dreadful vomiting and diarrhea. It was la purga as it is described in many personal reports about the Ayahuasca experience. Eventually I became very quiet and full of gratitude and I said this in my thought, in German: – Ich möchte Liebe! (I want love) And immediately the response was: – Ich möchte lieben … (I want to love) And with all my heart and my soul I understood this subtle difference and it was clear to me that in this difference of language was all the differ- ence. It was the secret to happiness. I had taken love as a commodity that can be received, instead of understanding that love was not something to receive, but something to build, something like an attitude, and this atti- tude, it seemed to me then, simply was total openness. And I think this insight transformed something in me. Consciousness and Shamanism | 183 Shortly thereafter I fell asleep and slept wonderfully, without dreams, until around eight in the morning, and woke up like newborn, feeling light and alert. While usually, after the many strange dreams I normally have, I wake up fearful, anxious and powerless and have to do a whole program of prayer, meditation and exercises every morning, I now felt completely free of any fear and of any past. It was the most exhilarating morning in my life, and perhaps, in some way, the start of a new life. | Chapter Three 184 Hypothesis My hypothesis is that the consciousness–transforming cognitive expe- rience subsequent to ingesting the ritual brew Ayahuasca is not, as it is of- ten suggested, the direct result of plant chemistry, but of the shaman’s consciousness reaching the experiencer’s consciousness through the medium of plant chemistry as a thought and energy transmitter. This view is not to be understood in a reductionist way. I do not say that all is to be reduced to one single root cause, but propose to consider one more op- tion in our scientific investigation of paranormal phenomena. To corrob- orate my hypothesis I shall report a mind–opening experience with Ayahuasca during a visit to a Shuar native shaman in Ecuador, back in 2004. There are several facts and events around my Ayahuasca experience that are explainable more soundly when applying my own hypothesis instead of trying to match it with the often voiced theory that psychedelic experiences are caused, as a linear effect, by a plant–contained chloride named DMT. To anticipate a little on my conclusions, my hypothesis provides a non–linear explanation of the psychedelic experience. My hypothesis does not deny the existence of the chloride and its possible effects on the hu- man psyche. But I content that the mind–opening effects noticed by the novice after ingesting the brew are a result of the shaman’s consciousness impacting upon a passive perception matrix that is part of the plant realm and that the shaman uses as a transmitter platform. I repeat that I do not discuss away any possible other explanation, so much the more as I myself, after the trance began to grip on me, had the impression there was an intelligence in touch with me, an intelligence that was alien in a way, and that I attributed to the plant realm. My point is not to invalidate any of the current hypotheses about psychedelic plant substances, but to help finding a valid theory that shows what it is that Consciousness and Shamanism | 185 effectively opens, modifies or expands human consciousness during the Ayahuasca experience. 124 Before I am going to give some flesh and bones to my assumption, let me report that I found till now at least a couple of references that seem to confirm my point. As the result of a general research on shamanism and entheogens, and particularly Ayahuasca, that I undertook over several years, I must conclude that most of the researchers seem to defend a rather mechanistic causation theory that sees the source of all paranormal phenomena in the chemical plant substances. For example Terence McKenna, under the spell of his large knowledge on ethnopharmacolo- gy, and his brother Dennis McKenna, an enthnobotanist, never left a doubt in all their writings on the subject of psychedelics that causation of altered states of consciousness is due to psychoactive compounds in plants called entheogens. The question what exactly the role is that the shaman plays in open- ing greater pathways of consciousness is left open or subject to specula- tion. Dr. Rick Strassman, a researcher on DMT for many years, has quite the same linear idea about causation and sees plant chemistry as the acti- vating force, and the title of the book is a typical American euphemism. The book’s approach is all but revolutionary, it is hardcore mechanistic and linear, with very little holistic insight. I have found so far only two 125 researchers who express a view that really makes sense. Their research seems to corroborate my own findings. Jeremy Narby, in his book The Cosmic Serpent, puts up the daring hypothesis that causation is due to bio- photon emission, not plant chemistry. He observes that initially his ap 126 - See, for example, Mircea Eliade, Shamanism (1972), Piers Vitebsky, Shamanism (2001), 124 Ralph Metzner (Ed.) Ayahuasca (1999), Michael Harner, Ways of the Shaman (1990), Jeremy Narby, The Cosmic Serpent (1999), Richard Evans Schultes et al, Plants of the Gods (2002), Terence McKenna, The Invisible Landscape (1994), True Hallucinations (1998), The Archaic Revival (1992), Food of the Gods (1993), Robert Forte (Ed.), Entheogens and the Future of Religion (2000), Luis Eduardo Luna & Pablo Amaringo, Ayahuasca Visions (1999), Adam Gottlieb, Peyote and Other Psychoactive Cacti (1997), Rick Strassman, DMT (2001). Rick Strassman, DMT (2001). 125 Jeremy Narby, The Cosmic Serpent (2003). 126 | Chapter Three 186 proach to psychedelics research a valid branch of research that however from the middle of the 1970s onward disappeared from the scientific lit- erature. What is seen in psychedelic visions, according to Narby’s re- search, are photons emitted by the DNA. Narby writes in The Cosmic Ser- pent: Jeremy Narby Researchers working in this new field mainly consider biopho- ton emission as a cellular language or a form of nonsubstantial biocommunication between cells and organisms. Over the last fifteen years, they have conducted enough reproducible exper- iments to believe that cells use these waves to direct their own internal reactions as well as to communicate among them- selves and even between organisms. For instance, photon emis- sion provides a communication mechanism that could explain how billions of individual plankton organisms cooperate in swarms, behaving like super organisms. 127 Now, succinctly speaking, what Narby wants to show is that what the shamans perceive as spirits are in reality biophotons emitted by the cells of the human body: Jeremy Narby What if these spirits were none other than the biophotons emitted by all the cells of the world and were picked up, am- plified, and transmitted by shamans’ quartz crystals, Gurvich’s quartz screens, and the quartz containers of biophoton re- searchers? This would mean that spirits are beings of pure light – as has always been claimed. 128 In fact, Narby’s theory does not exclude that causation might also be due to plant chemistry, but he surely concludes that what is seen, what is perceived, is not parallel reality but the reality contained in our own DNA and the superconscious memory surface that is connected to it. A perhaps more convincing evidence of causation being an effect of the Id., pp. 127–128. 127 Id., p. 129. 128 Consciousness and Shamanism | 187 shaman’s own superconscious powers, and not of plant chemistry, is brought forward, or at least hypothesized by the American medical an- thropologist, shaman and psychologist Alberto Villoldo. In his book Shaman, Healer, Sage (2000), Dr. Villoldo introduces the third chapter enti- tled The Luminous Energy Field with an entry from his journals. Don Ed- uardo was one of the powerful Inca shamans Villoldo studied with for many years: Antonio Villoldo I’ve found that the San Pedro potion does nothing other than make me sick. (…) I’m convinced that the altered state I’m in is created by Don Eduardo’s singing. And then there is the energy that he claims enters the ceremonial space when he summons the spirits of serpent, jaguar, hummingbird, and condor. (…) What I can’t explain is the fact that I’m seeing energy. It only happens when I sit next to Don Eduardo. When I go more than a few feet away from him I sense nothing. It’s like he is surrounded by an electric space, where the air actual- ly tingles. When I’m inside his space I see everything he sees. 129 The perhaps most convincing corroboration of my research comes from theosophy and the pulpit of Charles W. Leadbeater. If clairvoyant research is or is not considered as valid scientific research under the present reductionist science paradigm is not my problem. It may be a problem for those who, for reasons of psychological defense or emotional distortion, or else for reasons of professional reputation, adhere to a re- ductionist, limiting, exclusive or sectarian science paradigm as the ulti- mate hanger for their lacking emotional stability. From a point of view of real science as methodically sound, holistic, mentally sane and intelligent- ly communicated observation of nature, clairvoyance is science. As a little excursion, let me quote what a clairvoyant herself has to say about this extraordinary faculty of perception that is clairvoyance. Dora van Gelder writes in her book The Real World of Fairies: Alberto Villoldo, Shaman, Healer, Sage (2000), p. 41. 129 | Chapter Three 188 Dora van Gelder The fact is that there is a real physical basis for clairvoyance, and the faculty is not especially mysterious. The power centers in that tiny organ in the brain called the pituitary gland. The kind of vibrations involved are so subtle that no physical open- ing in the skin is needed to convey them to the pituitary body, but there is a special spot of sensitiveness just between the eyes above the root of the nose which acts as the external opening for the gland within. 130 In his book, The Astral Plane, Leadbeater very much stresses the fact that we can hardly judge a human being by their acts only; in fact, as thoughts are much more important as an influence upon the world than most of us in the West know, when we go to praise somebody for his achievements and judge him or her ‘a good person’, we may be com- pletely wrong, because that person may have exerted a ravaging influence on others and the world by their self–talk, by their way of thinking about others, and by their way of judging others harshly over years and years, in their mind. What self–talk namely creates are elementals or thought– forms and these thought forms are more or less permanent, and gain permanence over time and depending on the emotional energy we invest in these thoughts. I think it’s good that Leadbeater addresses this point so clearly because most people in our culture are completely ignorant about the impact of thought on the world, on others and on their own karma. Leadbeater writes: Charles W. Leadbeater The fact that we are so readily able to influence the elemental kingdoms at once shows us that we have a responsibility to- wards them for the manner in which we use that influence; indeed, when we consider the conditions under which they exist, it is obvious that the effect produced upon them by the thoughts and desires of all intelligent creatures inhabiting the same world with them must have been calculated upon in the scheme of our system as a factor in their evolution. In spite of the consistent teaching of all the great religions, the mass of mankind is still utterly regardless of its responsibility on the Dora van Gelder, The Real World of Fairies (1999), p. 4. 130 Consciousness and Shamanism | 189 thought–plane; if a man can flatter himself that his words and deeds have been harmless to others, he believes that he has done all that can be required of him, quite oblivious of the fact that he may / for years have been exercising a narrowing and debasing influence on the minds of those about him, and filling surrounding space with the unlovely creations of a sor- did mind. 131 Now, regarding the elementals that are created through thought and intent, and the gestation that is brought about by the repeated fostering of a well–defined thought pattern, Leadbeater explains that these ele- mentals are not autonomous in the sense that they can begin to act on their own and trigger changes; they must be pushed to do so: Charles W. Leadbeater But the ‘elemental’ must never be thought of as itself a prime mover; it is simply a latent force, which needs an external pow- er to set it in motion. It may be noted that although all classes of the essence have the power of reflecting images from the astral light as described above, there are varieties which receive certain impressions much more readily than others – which have, as it were, favourite forms of their own into which upon disturbance they would naturally flow unless absolutely forced into / some other, and such shapes tend to be a trifle less evanescent than usual. 132 The spirits of nature, shunned by Christian fundamentalism and re- born now in the course of the New Age movement, and the revival of the folk lore of fairies, as it was, for example, rediscovered by Dr. Evans– Wentz in his remarkable study The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries (1911), and observed by clairvoyant Dora van Gelder in her book The Real World of Fairies (1999) have certain well–defined characteristics and they are quite distinct of human beings. Leadbeater explains: Charles W. Leadbeater, Astral Plane (1894), pp. 54–55. 131 Id., pp. 55–56. 132 | Chapter Three 190 Charles W. Leadbeater We might almost look upon the nature–spirits as a kind of astral humanity, but for the fact that none of them – not even the highest – possess a permanent reincarnating individuality. Apparently therefore, one point in which their line of evolu- tion differs from ours is that a much greater proportion of in- telligence is developed before permanent individualization takes place; but of the stages through which they have passed, and those through which they have yet to pass, we can know little. The life–periods of the different subdivisions vary great- ly, some being quite short, others much longer than our hu- man lifetime. We stand so entirely outside such a life as theirs that it is impossible for us to understand much about its condi- tions; but it appears on / the whole to be a simple, joyous, irre- sponsible kind of existence, much such as a party of happy children might lead among exceptionally favourable physical surroundings. Though tricky and mischievous, they are rarely malicious unless provoked by some unwarrantable intrusion or annoyance; but as a body they also partake to some extent of the universal feeling of distrust for man, and they generally seem inclined to resent somewhat the first appearances of a neophyte on the astral plane, so that he usually makes their freaks, they soon accept him as a necessary evil and take no further notice of him, while some among them may even after a time become friendly and manifest pleasure on meeting him. 133 What this means is that by impacting upon reality through thought and intent, and through emotional focus, we actually create elementals, which are thought–forms that are somehow embodied and individual- ized. Now, what I conclude from this insight, extrapolating the research of clairvoyant Charles W. Leadbeater to shamanism, is that the shaman, when concocting the traditional Ayahuasca brew, and when focusing on it, actually builds elementals by his strong intent and the thought–forms resulting from this focus. These elementals then, are absorbed by the plant matrix, or the psychoactive compounds in entheogenic plants, and are transmitted to the adept who desires to be initiated by the shaman, through ingesting the traditional Ayahuasca brew. Charles W. Leadbeater, Astral Plane (1894), p. 61. 133 Consciousness and Shamanism | 191 There is another very recent research that also seems to corroborate in some way my hypothesis, and also Leadbeater’s clairvoyant observa- tions. It has this time nothing to do with shamanism but comes from a core physics research. It is William A. Tiller’s highly innovating research on the power of intent involved in the transformation of matter. In his book Conscious Acts of Creation, and the DVD with the same title, Dr. Tiller, Stanford University Professor Emeritus, claims that there is ample evi- dence for the fact that conscious and condensed thought, and intent im- pact upon matter, and actually change matter. DVD Back Cover Text Based upon years of detailed research, Dr. Tiller has amassed convincing experimental data showing that in seemingly the same cognitive space, basic chemical reactions and basic mate- rial properties can be strongly altered by human intentions. Essentially, he says, we are all capable of performing what we typically think of as miracles. 134 If our intent projected upon time and space creates what Leadbeater and others call elementals or if it creates thought–forms or if it creates a col- lapsing of the wave function, to use an expression of quantum physics, really does not matter. We might as well call it magic thought power or telepathy. What imports is that we see that there is no magic other than the impact of spirit upon visible and tangible reality. When I extrapolate this research that is amply documented by addi- tional research in the meantime, then I must conclude that shamanic power is more than the mechanistic ingestion of plant chemistry ‘to make things happen’. Then I will see that it’s the preparation of the concoction much more than its chemical ingredients that make for the outcome of the experience, and that’s ultimately intent projected into the subtle matrix of plant consciousness that is the trigger here. Dr. William A. Tiller, Conscious Acts of Creation (DVD). 134 | Chapter Three 192 The Consciousness Theory I shall discuss the theory that I bring forward in this paper using my own experience with Ayahuasca as a point of reference. There are eight arguments for supporting my hypothesis that I will bring forward and illustrate with examples. These arguments are: ‣ 1) Preparation of the brew; ‣ 2) Trance lasting hours after extensive vomiting/diarrhea; ‣ 3) Effect of the shaman’s use of cigarette smoke; ‣ 4) The shaman’s focusing his thoughts on the client; ‣ 5) The strange reception; ‣ 6) The hypnotic view of the shaman’s face; ‣ 7) Similarity with hypnosis used in natural healing; ‣ 8) Similarity with hypnosis used in psychiatry. Let me now discuss each of these points. 1) The Ayahuasca Preparation Upon my question about the details of the preparation of the brew, it is highly interesting what the shaman conveyed to me the morning after my arrival in Misahualli, Ecuador. We had been discussing the religious nature of the Ayahuasca experience and Jimela, his assistant, was talking about her husband Rafal, a Polish businessman who, from what they said, appeared to be a prototype of a skeptic. For him, the plant simply con- tained a chemical that brings about certain psychedelic effects in the hu- man brain, and it was all a matter of ingesting that chloride so as to ex- perience the consciousness–altering effects. Consciousness and Shamanism | 193 Interestingly, from what I was told, things worked out in a way to firmly contradict his positivistic worldview. After several attempts to con- vince Rafal of proper set and setting, and the necessity of careful prepara- tion of the religious experience, Esteban and Jimela said they had given up on him and let him prepare the brew by himself. The occasion soon was given through the reception of several busi- ness friends from Poland that Rafal wanted to initiate in the Ayahuasca experience. To everybody’s surprise the ceremony ended with a total fail- ure. Rafal complained later to Esteban that his friends did not feel anything. And Rafal himself, while having gone through the experience several times successfully when the brew was prepared, with all due care, by Es- teban’s mother, could not understand that the effect was practically zero this time, plus headache for several hours. I was intrigued. – How can that be? I asked Esteban. – Well, he replied, you see it’s not just a matter of cooking that stuff and reducing a large pot of the brew to a tiny cup that you later drink. It’s not just concentrating that substance. It’s much more. – What more? I insisted. – It’s respect, basically. This respect must be shown in many ways. The tradition for example says that a woman who has her days must not be in the house, and the couple must not engage in intercourse during the time the brew is on the stove. Even the children must not make noise and preferably remain playing outside. And then, there is one more element. During the whole three to four hours the Ayahuasca is on the stove, the shaman must focus on the pot. His entire psychic energy must be focused upon the brew all along it’s on the stove. He should not engage in any other thought, he should not leave the house, he should not have any leisure time and he should by all means not touch a woman. He must give his entire respect to the Ayahuasca until the moment it is ready. – What does this imply practically? I asked. – It implies that he concentrates his thought energy on the event. He is mentally preparing the event in the sense that he prays to the serpent, | Chapter Three 194 the Boa Constrictor which is the spirit of the Ayahuasca, to please provide a meaningful experience to the ones drinking the brew so that they may be guided on the right way. That means he will not quit the room where the stove is burning and he will kind of court the brew with his whole attention, caring for the fire, the right level of heat, and so on. He may smoke, but his mind must remain focused upon a positive outcome of the later expe- rience. He also must feel a sort of reverence toward the Ayahuasca spirit. It means that he really is pure in his intentions, and not doing it for money, for example, but with the intention to help people, either for their spiritu- al advancement, or for healing, depending which branch of shamanism he is personally adhering to. While I found that some of the precepts Esteban mentioned were simply destined to assure that the tradition not be spoilt by the ignoramus using it as a showcase kind of thing, I listened very carefully when he spoke about the focus the shaman had to give to the brew, about the mantras he had to recite over the brew, about the prayers he had to say and over the energetic input he had to give to the brew in form of total attention and a stringent concentration of his thought energy upon the outcome of the experience. 2) The Lasting Trance The second interesting point in the experience is that after having vomited out completely the contents of my stomach, and very violently so, the effects of the trance lasted for several more hours. I already felt sick after the first thirty minutes passed agreeably, went on my knees and experienced a rather painful purge because my chest and back muscles began to hurt intensely. It took at least half an hour until I was back in my chair. And even then, the vomiting reflex persisted while nothing was coming out any more, except small quantities of stom- ach saliva. And every time I closed my eyes, all would restart as a meticulously working computer program. Closing my eyes was like a code contained in that software. When I closed my eyes, and not before, the intelligence Consciousness and Shamanism | 195 namely asked me telepathically if I wished to restart; affirming silently, I was at once experiencing the slight visual effects again and the trance began to get hold of my body once more. Unfortunately every time instead of being able to let myself get deeper and deeper into that agreeable state of numbness and comfort, something in me terribly resisted and built an annoying level of anxiety that I was absolutely unable to get rid of. The anxiety, then, in turn trig- gered the vomiting reflex. I was mentally very clear about it all and how it was setup altogether, and told Esteban several times that I understood my resistance to the brew as a psychological defense against self–aban- donment; and yet I was unable to cope with that dreadful anxiety. Esteban however had no advice for me except suggesting me to go back to my room and sleep, and I felt helpless, then, and kind of guilty. Why was I resisting? This went on for several turns. Each turn I would call him for help and he would slowly get up from his chair, put one of his hands on my head, blow cigarette smoke in my face and give strokes to my luminous body with the feather, and this felt great. Interestingly, when he blew smoke in my face, the trance immediately vanished, even if I left my eyes closed. How could that be, as the DMT was all the time in my blood? These few moments filled me with delight, with confidence, with pos- itive feelings and a sense of well–being. And then I would thank him, he would go back to his chair and sink in his own trance, and all would get back to the former desperate condition, and the vomiting would restart. And eventually I asked to be guided back to my room and even there, about one to two hours after I had vomited out the brew, the process would restart in just the same way as before, just upon closing my eyes as the signal to restart. Sleeping was only possible in the early morning hours, after more than two hours of a virulent duplex reaction of my body: I got diarrhea and vomiting at the same time. I was once really laughing about it, while I felt so much pain and misery, because I was getting into a rocking move- | Chapter Three 196 ment between the toilet and the sink that were luckily quite close to each other. That was my Ayahuasca rock! Only when I was completely empty and pure, I felt I was ready for sleep. And then it was really wonderful, like being in heaven, a wonderful dreamless sleep and a very happy light feeling when waking up in the ear- ly morning. 3) The Shamanic Treatments How can it be that the treatments I received from the shaman could completely change my condition for the time they lasted? As I said, they consisted of several elements some of which I have not yet mentioned: ‣ Putting his hand on top of my head for a moment; ‣ Gently blowing cigarette smoke into my face; ‣ Giving me magnetic strokes with a feather–like device; ‣ Chanting an ikaro, a magic chant. There was a moment when I became aware that my terrible anxiety had to do with my early childhood, that I had been abandoned as a small baby several times, a fact that my mother, when I was already adult, more or less hesitantly told me once when she was drunk. I felt a great sense of comfort from the care I got from the shaman and it seemed to me that this care contained the same love that a mother bestows on her baby and I was just absorbing that love as if I was a small helpless baby. But scientifically speaking, if the hypothesis is true that the trance is induced by DMT, how can the effects of the trance completely stop, while the DMT is still in the blood, under the influence of a kind of psy- chosomatic energy treatment? If the trance was only induced by the DMT, as a linear kind of causation, there is hardly any even remotely logical reply to find to this question. However, from the perspective of my hypothesis that the plant is only a passive matrix absorbing and remitting, Consciousness and Shamanism | 197 and perhaps amplifying as well, the thought energy received from the shaman, then what I am saying begins to make sense. Truly, all the effects of the DMT ceased, including the disagreeable swindle that set in every time when I opened my eyes, and I left them open every time I got the treatment as I found it pacifying and nice, and liked to see the shaman in his traditional dress and his serious and caring allure when gently blowing me cigarette smoke in my face. There was a tenderness in his simple silent movements that greatly contributed to comforting me and alleviate my anxiety. But logically, if the shaman was the agent of the trance and not the DMT, or if it was both, if he was the primary agent of the trance using plant consciousness as a transmitter of his thought forms, it is clear that he could stop it at will and re–trigger it at any moment in time! 4) Focus and Intent In our initial talk about the Ayahuasca experience at the morning upon my arrival, Esteban had addressed the issue of focus and care in deal- ing with his clients. I think he wanted to come over as a serious practi- tioner of the shamanic science as there are today many charlatans, espe- cially in the tourism–plagued areas in Peru and Ecuador. And explaining me more about his work and attitude, he said he would very intensely focus upon the client when beginning the trance. I was intrigued and asked: – Do you drink the Ayahuasca brew as well, or only the client? He replied that it depended on the wish of the client, and if I wished him to drink the brew together with me, that was okay with him. I affirmed that I wished him to do that and asked him why he focused or concen- trated upon the client after the latter had ingested the brew? He said he focused his mind on the client in order to help him better access the boa spirit, the mother spirit of the Ayahuasca, as he himself had been in touch with this spirit from the start, and that this was after all the precondition to being a shaman. | Chapter Three 198 Thus, consciously remembering this conversation with Esteban, I tightly observed him when we started the ceremony, and indeed, after we had drunk the brew from the beautifully carved traditional silver cups, he was sitting down not like me in the beach chair, stretched out and re- laxed, but in a fetal forward position that suggested to me he was concen- trating on something. And he remained in that position for a long time, actu- ally as long as the preparation lasted, the time before the DMT begins to being absorbed by the body and deploy its effect – which is about thirty to forty minutes. Then, when I felt the trance began, he was stretching out in the chair in a more relaxed position. And I think that even for a third observer this connection of events, this Gestalt as it were would suggest the hypothesis that it’s the shaman who is the primary trigger of the experience, and not just some chlorides in a plant concoction. 5) The Strange Reception Upon entering the hut, I saw three human figures in beach chairs and did not recognize them. I was unable to recognize who they were, as if my thoughts were seized by an unknown power, or as if there was an overlay over my thinking process. I felt I was floating. Please note that at that moment I had just come from my room, refreshed after some sleep, and yet suddenly, upon entering the place where the ritual was going to take place, dominated by an alien force. I have never had memory lapses or anything even remotely close to a lack of memory for human faces. I have a very good memory for human faces, even after long years to have known a person, and meeting her again. But here, there is no valid reason to be found why I did not recog- nize the three persons sitting there. Something like that never happened to me before. I felt as if under the influence of something that rendered me incapable of assessing the reality of the simple scene I was facing. It was just after sunset, and it was not yet dark, around eight in the evening. The distance between them and me was not more than five or six meters, not more and perhaps less. The Consciousness and Shamanism | 199 strangeness or queerness of the moment was the fact that I did not feel their presence. It was as if there were humans present but that these hu- mans were strangely disconnected from me. And they did not invite me to come closer and just remained silent, and I felt like an idiot, not knowing what to do, not knowing what to say. Eventually, feeling really embarrassed, I asked if they knew where Jimela and Esteban were? And only then the female got up from her chair and approached me and I saw it was Jimela. When I apologized for not having recognized them upon entering the hut, they said it did not matter, but to me it mattered a lot. How could some- thing like that happen? It remains a mystery to me until this day. I namely evaluate this event as an overlay of consciousness. Already at that moment the shaman tried to get into my consciousness interface, and he did this by what he said he always did when preparing for accom- panying a client on an Ayahuasca trip: he focused on the client’s con- sciousness. This focusing on the client simply was a native variation of what in Western medical science we call hypnosis. He had hypnotized me, even before I had taken in a drop of the Ayahuasca brew. And this is essentially the core of my hypothesis. And as I am not a newcomer to hypnosis, because otherwise I would probably not have dis- covered this intriguing explanation of how shamanism works, I erect this now as a theory and ask scientists for evaluating it by either corroborating or falsifying it. I will honestly relate in this paper my earlier experiences with hypno- sis both in the setting of natural healing and in the medical hypnosis set- ting. 6) The Hypnotic View Strangely, when I was in trance, I saw the shaman’s face differently. I guess this experience would frighten someone with lesser paranormal knowledge and experience. His face seemed distorted, ugly and diabolic. His mouth was shifted to the right, open and white inside. And this strange mouth did not move while I heard Esteban talking, and even talking quite fast, so fast that I wanted to tell him to talk more slowly because my un- | Chapter Three 200 derstanding of Spanish, while normally quite good, was reduced in trance, but finally I did not get a word out and just remained silent. I remembered my experiences with hypnosis and especially the one I went through with the quite extraordinary female German healer that I will report further down. Needless to add that this strangeness about Esteban’s face resulted only in increasing my anxiety and discomfort about the whole of the Ayahuas- ca experience. 7) Hypnosis and Natural Healing It is important to retain here that hypnosis itself was not at all some- thing strange or alien to me because I have had quite extensive experi- ence with it in the past, and I think it is very important that I relate this experience shortly. To repeat it, without this experience, I do not think I would have come up with the present hypothesis; I would probably have accepted my Ayahuasca experience as a queer one and forgotten about it. Now, let me be very precise what I am talking about. I am talking here about medical hypnosis, not about stage hypnosis. There is almost a world of difference between both forms of hypnosis. Medical hypnosis is a form of auto–hypnosis in the sense that it builds upon the full consent of the patient and his active participation in the progression of the trance, while in stage hypnosis the willpower of the individual or the en- tire audience that is hypnotized is as good as put to zero. Let me illustrate this a little further. It is recognized in the meantime that, for example, the acrobatic trick of sawing the woman can be done in two different ways. The traditional way was to hypnotize the entire audience and suggest to them what they were going to see, as for example the woman cut in two, who yet afterwards leaves the box unhurt. As stage hypnosis has been discredited as a form of abuse and also because the art of stage hypnosis was an orally transmitted knowledge and got more and more lost with the disappearance of the circus as an institution, today, in almost all cabaret’s, when you see the sawing the Consciousness and Shamanism | 201 woman trick, it’s a simple trickster effect you are succumbing to. And yet still today a famous popular figure such as David Copperfield admits that part of his magic is hypnosis, and not only tricking the audience out with visual and sensory effects, immense speed of action, and uncanny ways to act. Thus, the two experiences of hypnosis that I wish to relate here, and the further ones that I will report in the next paragraph exclusively deal with medical hypnosis, and not with stage hypnosis. And it goes without saying that I do not suspect Esteban to be a charlatan, but an integer shaman who applies, as exactly as possible, a tradition that he shares with several tribes of Shuar natives, and that he learnt from an old and expe- rienced senior shaman. The two experiences of hypnosis that I will relate are quite different while both can be qualified as medical hypnosis. Their difference is that in the first experience the hypnosis was a person–to–person one, while in the second experience the hypnosis was a person–to–group one and thus a form of collective hypnosis. The first experience was taking place back in 1997, when I had just returned to Germany from an exhausting two–year business trip to Asia, with my intestinal flora completely down. I had gone through severe diar- rhea and intense dehydration over months and was at that time still con- sulting Western doctors who gave me high amounts of antibiotics to fight the diarrhea. The result was that the diarrhea continued despite all but my intesti- nal flora was completely destroyed by the long–term antibiotics treat- ment. I was suffering from chronic fatigue and felt very lethargic, lacking motivation and appetite. It was for this reason that I consulted a homeo- pathic healer for help. I got several effective treatments and one of them, the one I remember most vividly, was a treatment with the famous Bach flower essences. The female practitioner who had told me she had studied hypnosis and Reiki with a powerful Filipino healer, first wanted to choose the right Bach flower essence for me and my problem. She explained me very pa- | Chapter Three 202 tiently the various methods for finding the energy essence corresponding to my organism’s energy code and asked me which one I preferred. I chose the most direct one, the one that is done through hypnosis, and the expe- rience was going to be a particularly revealing one for me. She was sitting at a forty–five degree angle at my right and asked me to put my left hand in her right hand. Then she told me to look in her eyes while she would take one flacon after the other in her left hand to sense the effect the vibration of the plant essence had on my organism. Never before was I hypnotized so easily, so effectively and so joyfully. It was a very agreeable condition and I felt very clearly how each of the essences impacted energetically upon me. She said I was going to feel either joyful, peaceful, positive and happy, which indicated that the essence was right for me, or I was feeling queer, anxious and negative, which was indicating that the essence was not compatible with my aura’s vibrational structure. Now, what I wish to re- port about this experience is something really unusual and that I would call the hypnotic view. What I want to say is that from the moment I was hypnotized I real- ized that my perception of ordinary reality shifted and I saw things dif- ferently, in a distorted way, or I even saw things that we ordinarily never see. And what I found most amazing was that I saw on the front of my healer a huge third eye, as real as it could ever be, a very intelligent–looking large human eye that did not in the least frighten me. In the contrary, in that special hypnotic condition I knew and acknowledged that I saw her third eye, her sixth chakra, only that in this special view I could visualize this eye that all the old mythologies abound of telling us. And I told her at once about my discovery and she was not the least astonished. She said that other patients had seen it as well and that it was quite a normal experience for her, and that according to her Filipino teacher it showed that she had a great innate potential for healing – and this was really true as her treatment was the most effective one can imag- ine. It was almost miraculous. I was completely cured within three months, and with only six sessions. Consciousness and Shamanism | 203 Two years later I started off to another fascinating healing experi- ence, this time directly with a Filipino healer. At that time the magazines in Germany were full of reports about Filipino healers and the photos were absolutely dumbfounding. I saw that the healer had both his hands deep within the belly of a female patient and that there was blood all around, so much blood, and that suddenly he took out something from her intestines, something like a black stone, and threw it on the floor and declared to have found the evil in her body. I really thought it was all a dirty trick and wanted to know the truth about it. Thus I signed up when a befriended natural healer from Hamburg called me and invited me for an audience in a naturopathy practice in Frankfurt where I was going to meet one of the most powerful Filipino healers. While I have studied quite a bit of parapsychology over the years, already during my law studies, I was very skeptical regarding this kind of healing. I told to myself I’d be very watchful to find out what was their trick, while I thought to myself that the soundest hypothesis for all this to happen simply was group hypnosis. However I was struck by the fact that this hypnosis can affect photo- graphic plates as well, and be taken on video. So, after all, can it be ex- plained with group hypnosis? I had seen this in those magazines even before I went to Frankfurt, and thus it was possible to photograph some- thing that is not to explain within our present reality paradigm. It is and remains a miracle until this day. I plead for the hypnosis theory here simply because I was experi- enced with medical hypnosis already and knew how it felt and how ordi- nary perception reacts to it. Because it’s really that once you have experi- enced hypnosis, you know for all times how it feels when somebody tries to hypnotize you. You are aware that you are being hypnotized in a certain moment, and you can fight it if you don’t wish to succumb to it, however pleasurable it may feel. Let me add that indeed, generally, it feels very pleasurable if your general anxiety level is not, like mine at that time, higher than average and you build a resistance against it. Now, they | Chapter Three 204 seemed to try everything to avoid resistance when we were comfortably installed in that natural healer’s practice in Frankfurt. We were being thoroughly prepared for the experience, during more than two hours, during which the healer was still busy with another group. We did not see him and had to remain in a special meeting room where we were being instructed about the strictly spiritual principles that traditional Filipino healers are bound to. We were really well informed and I got to know the first names of most of the participants that were women in their great majority. The atmosphere in the group was friendly and amicable and I felt really relaxed when we entered the room where I saw the healer on the floor, near to a bed and next to a vessel with burn- ing incense. He seemed to be in a deep state of prayer and meditation. In the room several pictures showing the Holy Virgin and Jesus the Christ were hanging on the walls, and the audience was visibly collected and in a state of respect and awe upon entering the room. During the whole experience I did not feel the slightest discomfort or fear and I wish to state this right at the start of this report because it so sharply contrasts with my Ayahuasca experience. Then, all went exactly as I had seen it reported in the magazines. The healer called one of the women to the bed and let her stretch out comfortably, asking her to slightly open the belt of her trousers or skirt so that he could plainly touch her abdomen. By the way, none of the women felt the slightest discomfort at this demand of the healer. His requesting her to take off her shirt equally did not result in any resistance. Then he opened her belly by the navel entry, and virtually penetrated into the navel with the fingers of his right hand, until the navel was an open hole of about the size of the healer’s fist. This opening bled abundantly, and the healer then introduced both of his hands through the navel hole until deep in the woman’s intestines. He seemed to search for something in there. Several times, he extruded a part of the large or small intestines, looked at them or rubbed them. He appeared to search for something particular and almost in every case he Consciousness and Shamanism | 205 found it: it was objects like small stones, most of the time of black color, and when he got one he threw it visibly and audibly on the floor. One of the most interesting details is namely that upon awakening from our collective hypnosis, not only was there no blood anywhere, but there were absolutely no stones to be found on the floor! Then the woman who was sitting to my left was called. She was a nice young lady who had complained in our previous talks about a prob- lem with digestion that lasted over many years and that she thought could not be cured with Western medicine, as she had tried everything already. With her, the treatment took longer than with any other participant and she seemed to suffer from it, was howling two times very deeply from the depth of her body, like a hurt animal, and gave me a deep regard when she returned, saying: – I feel very hurt, I am suffering great pain! I was kind of shocked, so much the more as I was called as the next patient. But in my case all went fine and I did not feel anything and avoided to open my eyes, somewhat afraid I could be shocked to see blood, yet did not feel any pain. And upon returning to my seat, I imme- diately asked her if she had seen me bleeding and she replied that, yes, I had been bleeding abundantly and that the healer had put his two hands in my intestines but that in my case the treatment had been a lot shorter than with most of the other patients, and especially herself. I was asking her then if her pain was less and she said that indeed, the pain was grad- ually decreasing, giving rise to a feeling of comfort that she had not expe- rienced since many years. Later we were discussing and exchanging about this daring experi- ence but never got a chance to talk directly to the healer. However, the naturopath and owner of the practice offered a free consultation and re- vealed to be a very good initiate into this practice that he had learned from several Filipino healers. Thus, we all left that experience with a great feeling of delight and amazement, and I can only say with Goethe that school knowledge will not suffice to explain this extraordinary form of healing. | Chapter Three 206 To avoid a misunderstanding, let me be very clear and to the point: I do not say that healing induced by hypnosis, related to hypnosis or which may be a veiled form of hypnosis was charlatanism or was not effective. In the contrary! What I say is that healing which seems miraculous to us is in fact a treatment that is so effective that we can’t believe it when we compare it to our ordinary, and rather palliative, healing methods. I further say that this effectiveness is due to suggestion and that suggestion is a command that uses the power of the word to impact upon the condition of the body. The only difference between the normal waking state and the hypnotic state is that in the latter, the body is more suggestible. Now, what most people don’t want to see is that the healing brought about by suggestion is by no means fake healing, but healing that is as good or even better than ordinary healing. Sometimes we understand certain things when we look at their con- trary, or their negative side. So let me give an example that demonstrates what I am saying. It is an old experiment and has been repeated often by Milton Erickson to demonstrate the power of hypnosis as a verbal sugges- tion that directly impacts upon the soma. The patient is in deep hypnosis and is told by the hypnotherapist that a sizzling hot iron will be applied to her arm for a few seconds. Then, the therapist takes the iron which is of course cold, and applies it to the patient’s arm. Immediately the body reacts is if the iron was really burning hot, and builds a huge watering blister. This blister is still present when the patient wakes up and it takes the same time to heal out as if she was really burnt. It goes without saying that she also experienced some local pain and had to give her full consent before engaging in that really dumbfounding experiment. Now imagine that what can be done negatively to the body through verbal suggestion can as well done to it positively. This explains that under hypnosis healing can be instantaneous and totally effective! The most important to report in our context is the similarity in the way the hypnotic trance manifests. You will read about it again in the Consciousness and Shamanism | 207 next paragraph regarding medical hypnosis used in psychiatry. Let me summarize so far that this trance usually begins in the arms with a relax- ation of the hand and lower arm muscles and then gradually mounts up- wards into the body, passing region by region like a gentle embrace, thus the upper arms, the shoulders, the face and head, then the chest and the muscles around the heart. The fear block I experienced was located in my heart region and this already had been confirmed by the homeopathic healer in Germany who, after an extended treatment, told me that from my earliest child- hood I had suffered a problem with being abandoned and that my heart chakra was closed, whereupon she opened it by slightly touching my heart region with her finger. This slight touch triggered an amazing amount of tears and I suddenly remembered early childhood feelings and went through a really difficult moment during about one hour, upon which I was left in total peace and serenity, feeling like newborn. To summarize, I reacted very differently during the inducement of the hypnotic trance. In two instances, with the Filipino healer and the German homeopath, it was a very agreeable and smooth experience, while when I did it with psychiatrists, it was rather anxiety–creating. And with the Ayahuasca it was frightening as well. I conclude that the fact to experience fear or not depends on the hypnotizer and not the particular kind of hypnosis he uses. I tend to be- lieve, and I am open to change my opinion if it should reveal as scientifi- cally unsound, that hypnosis requires a high amount of immediate trust between the patient and the hypnotherapist or shaman, or natural healer. When this trust is lacking, anxiety will interfere with the depth of the hypnosis or make it a rather disagreeable negative experience. 8) Medical Hypnosis The first time I experienced medical hypnosis was in 1989, in Gene- va, with a quite famous transactional and Gestalt therapist, Dr. Margareta Robinson. | Chapter Three 208 It was the first time that I ever got in touch with hypnosis, and unfor- tunately I was not informed that it was hypnosis that I was going to experi- ence! When she presented her approach to me, Mrs. Robinson was talk- ing about a combination of transactional and Gestalt therapy that she seemed to have melted into a powerful approach for healing various problems from neuroses to narcissism. I was surprised at the ease of how that hypnosis was brought about. It was by means of using a pet, a teddy bear. Indeed, upon holding that magic pet I felt a deep and very sad kind of relaxation affecting my body and mind. I suddenly felt extremely tired, and powerless; that sensation was not at all joyful and agreeable, but an experience that left me very depressive. I began to feel apathetic and helpless, very powerless, like a baby aban- doned at the mercy of some or the other untrustworthy caretaker. My arm muscles became weaker and weaker, as if I was given a sleep potion, until I could not lift my arms up any more. Then she asked me to get up, handed me a tennis racket and said: – Here on this bed your mother is stretched out. She is sleeping. Hit her with this racket as much as you like! And I could not do it and told her about it. She said: – Well, this proves only your problem to me. You have inter- nalized all the violence and resistance against your mother and are for the moment unable to exteriorize it. That’s why you suffer from depressions. They indicate the deep hatred against your mother and we would have to work on releasing this en- ergy. I did not agree with her and her approach. I felt she was pushing the therapy in a very hurried and jumpy way that was not bringing me relief while I must say that when coming home from each session, I felt I was seeing the world literally with other eyes, so much all seemed to have changed for the better. Consciousness and Shamanism | 209 I then began a hypnotherapy with an American therapist and this therapy progressed much more carefully, while I must admit that we nev- er entered a really deep level of hypnosis because of the fear problem I already described earlier in this report. | Chapter Three 210 Summary The experience with Ayahuasca as I made it with the Shuar shaman back in 2004 is in my view supportive for a non–linear and multi– causative, rather than a linear and single–causative theory of cognition regarding the psychedelic visions and insights subsequent to ingesting the traditional brew. In addition, in my discussions with the shaman and his assistant, equally a Shuar native, it appeared clear that they themselves rejected the linear and single–causative theory of the kind stating ‘it’s the DMT that makes for all that Ayahuasca does’, explaining that all the art was in the traditional procedure of preparing the cure and the consciousness focus that forms part of it. In fact, the negative experience of the Polish busi- ness man with the brew, and the resulting ineffectiveness of it, shows evi- dently that the single–causative linear theory of cognition regarding the Ayahuasca is flawed. The cognitive experience with Ayahuasca is probably not a simple direct consequence of the plant–containing DMT, as this has been sug- gested, for example, by Terence McKenna and his brother, the ethnob- otanist Dennis McKenna in their book The Invisible Landscape (1994). In the eight specific particularities that I have brought forward and commented on in the previous chapter, there appears to be a certain weight of the evidence for a causation of the cognitive experience by shamanic consciousness acting as a hypnotic agent on the plant matrix that serves as a resilient transmitter and amplifier of thought energy. The specific cognitive elucidation and the insights experienced after ingestion of the brew, that I shall report in more detail in the following last chapter, are brought about through a multi–causative impact of the consciousness imprint on my own consciousness interface. This impact was brought about through the strong focus of the shaman’s thought en- ergies on my perception matrix and reception frequency both during the preparation of the brew and at the onset of the intake ritual. Consciousness and Shamanism | 211 This concentration of thought and attention is known both from parapsychological research and clairvoyant experience, and from medical hypnosis to bring about an energy imprint in form of a consciousness overlay on the perception interface of the receiver. I am talking about a multi–causative effect here because the evidence at stake does not allow to exclude any proprietary additional impact of the plant consciousness in the process of triggering the consciousness overlay. In fact, there are details in my report that indicate such an additional im- pact directly from the side of the plant realm, as a genuine plant–proprietary consciousness reaching out into my human consciousness. The most striking detail in this context was that I had myself the clear intuition of being in touch with a proprietary plant consciousness or even an unspecific universal consciousness that I was in an ongoing telepathic exchange with as long as the trance lasted, and that I was, strangely enough, in state of turning that telepathic communication on and off by simply closing or opening my eyes. In addition, the obvious parallels with my previous hypnosis–induced alterations of consciousness demonstrate that the focusing of thought energy that the shaman did as a preparation for the ritual in accordance with traditional native tradition has in some way to do with hypnosis, or brings about an effect or imprint on another’s consciousness that is simi- lar to a hypnotic injunction. The most important detail in this context is well the fact that there is a plant–specific matrix involved in this process, and not just a shaman focus- ing thought energy on myself as his client. This is the specific contextual link with plant consciousness acting as a matrix receiver for intent, similar as this has been reported for water, by the elucidating research of the Ja- panese researcher Masaru Emoto. As Emoto’s water research suggests, it is possible to leave imprints in the memory interface of water by positive or negative affirmations, for example in the form of textual labels glued on the water bottles for some time, that produce or not in the water specific crystals. Typically so, the aesthetically appealing crystals are formed by positive and uplifting intent | Chapter Three 212 and correlated affirmations rather than by negative and defeating intent and affirmations. My argument here with regard to the cognitive imprints received in the form of insights during an Ayahuasca trip is on the same lines of rea- soning. My idea is that the consciousness interface of plants, at least of plants that are qualified as entheogens or as plants containing mind–altering compounds, serves as a transmitting and amplifying interface for the thought imprint given to it by the shaman’s consciousness and thought energy. In how much the plant here participates with its own consciousness– altering compounds, such as DMT, cannot be evaluated from this experi- ence with Ayahuasca, but needs additional, tightly curtailed research. It is namely possible that the plant chemistry, instead of being a unilateral agent of altering human consciousness, serves as a receiver, transmitter and amplifier interface for human intent and thought energy, as this has been reported by Masaru Emoto and others for the hado, the specific en- ergy–interface of water. But even Masaru Emoto has not found, and not even tried to explain the ultimate reason why human intent can have an energetic impact on water, and other substances. The explanation, or one possible explana- tion is given by Charles Webster Leadbeater in his 1894 booklet Astral Plane where he describes the function of elementals in the communica- tion between humans and all realms of nature. 135 Leadbeater explains that thought is an energetic phenomenon that creates certain vibrations, called thought–forms or elementals. These ele- mentals, he says further, gain permanence over time and depending on how much emotional energy we invest in those thoughts. And interestingly so, here we encounter the philosophy of the natives who speak about spir- its when asked what the communicating agents were between humans and plants. And the solution of the riddle is to view the natives’ explana- tion and the theosophical or clairvoyant view together. Charles W. Leadbeater, Astral Plane (1894). 135 Consciousness and Shamanism | 213 The technique consists thus in imprinting intent in the plant matrix by gestating, through the power of thought–energy, certain elementals that function as communicating agents between the human and the plant realm. These elementals, I suppose, are created during the process of collecting the Ayahuasca liana and carefully preparing the brew, and it is these elementals impacting on the plants’ psychoactive substances that are becoming active and communicative as it were in the initiate’s con- sciousness. And, to come to an end, I think what the contextual scope of the present Ayahuasca experience well indicates is that a simplistic linear cause–and–effect mechanism between DMT and cognitive insights can safely be discarded as a theory. | Chapter Three 214 The Cognitive Experience When asked to summarize the insights I got through the ingestion of Ayahuasca, I can establish the following catalog: ‣ The intelligence’s alien noise interface; ‣ The intelligence’s pulsation as a cosmic energy; ‣ The intelligence’s attempts for calling me in touch; ‣ Insights about my conditioning through language; ‣ Insights about relationships with others and the world; ‣ Insights about love and life. These insights did not come up in my consciousness all at once, but rather through little chunks that were repeated several times and varia- tions, extending virtually until the moment, early in the morning when I feel asleep. Interestingly so, the very last insights I got immediately before falling asleep, at around four in the morning, when already stretched out on my bed, after the purga eventually had stopped. It was then that I was suddenly intensely aware of my solitude, my utter lack of relationships, and my general feeling of being disconnected from other people. And it was then that the insights about relationships and about love and life came through. Another interesting detail is that most insights only came up after I had asked questions to myself or this specific intelligence I was in touch with, while I had not always formulated my questions as questions, but often as affirmations that were then propelled back to me like in a boomerang effect. And what happened was that most of the time the affirmations had been slightly altered in the process. I shall give exam- ples. Consciousness and Shamanism | 215 Alien Noise and Pulsation The first phenomenon I noticed about the specific intelligence I felt approaching right at the onset of the trance was its alien noise. This noise was clearly distinct from the frog concert and other natural sounds that surrounded me. My senses were not dulled by the trance but in the contrary sharp- ened and I could clearly distinguish between the multitude of natural sounds around me in the clear evening air, and the specific alien noise of this intelligence. When I should put it in words, which is somehow an impossible quest because of the paranormal reality as the contextual background, I would say it’s like many, thousands or millions of human voices simultaneously whispering a mantra. I think it is an important detail that it’s not just like a machine–noise, or a tone, but that it bears a resemblance to a whisper- ing human voice multiplied by the millions. I know that Terence McKenna has spoken of the machine elves and their alien sound as a typical manifestation during the DMT–induced trance. But what I am saying is that in contradistinction with McKenna’s perception, the sound was not machine–like but came over to me as organ- ic, and somehow related to nature. I call it alien only because there is no sound or anything you could have ever heard in your wake life that bears any similitude to this sound. Actually I prefer the term noise over sound because noise is a term used in telecommunications, as something that can either be a background hiss, such as the hiss on vinyl records, or a certain unspecific hum contained in ultra–short wave receivers, or else it’s a term used by graphics designers for the lacking smoothness of an image. All these connotations fit here, in my opinion. The presence of the natural intelligence of the Ayahuasca spirit is relat- ed to sound as it manifests not visually in the first place, but audibly, and thus it bears an impact of resonance. It has to do with vibration, and with frequency. It has to do with cell resonance and with Sheldrake’s notion of morphic resonance, as it resonates the mix of nature’s frequencies, and | Chapter Three 216 comes over as the Universal Communicator, and at the same time, the Uni- versal Bearer of all these energies. 136 This is exactly what I wanted to convey actually about the organic quality of the sound: to me it bears a morphological resemblance with organic life, and organic sounds, only that it overlays many or a multitude of such sounds in its audible presence. So, as with ultra–wave communi- cation, the Ayahuasca intelligence comes through on a certain frequency, and not on another, and the frequency is tuned by ingesting the brew, and here the DMT may well be active as the attunement agent. From the onset of the trance, the alien noise was gradually rising in volume, and after some time, I clearly understood that this sound was something like the pulsation of the universe, of life, and in that moment I got an intense awareness of the fact that all creation is in fact a result of sound, and that life intrinsically is vibration, is sound. This is an insight that I have well today acquired through having studied hermetic and modern literature on sound used for healing, but three years ago, when I went through this experience, I was not yet consciously aware of this fact. Hence, I can say that this insight was novelty for me. And yet, it sounded completely sound and solid, so to speak, and did not come as a surprise. It is as if the intelligence had not just communicated me some- thing using telepathic touch, but as if it had subtly awakened my intelli- gence to a novel insight that from that moment could not be unthought any more from my consciousness. The Five Depth Levels From the onset of the Ayahuasca trance, I got clear telepathic mes- sages that I should go beyond that first phase during which I saw subtle geometric forms that bore however much of a lesser brilliance and lumi- nosity than those I had seen in some research volumes, such as Pablo Amaringo’s Ayahuasca Visions (1999). And I knew in that moment that, contrary to what I had learnt and heard from others about the Ayahuas- See, for example, Rupert Sheldrake, A New Science of Life (1995). 136 Consciousness and Shamanism | 217 ca trip, the visions were of no importance at all. I simply knew this or it was communicated to me in that moment. At the same time I was called upon by the intelligence to go beyond that first rather insignificant level and explore into the next depth level, but that for getting there I needed to relax more and let go some of the fear that I felt was like a congested knot in my heart chakra. The intelligence also communicated to me that there were in total five depth levels in the Ayahuasca experience. I think it is significant to note that I found this in none of the books I had read when doing my research on shamanism and entheogens, and I have not found it subsequent to my experience in any additional books I read about the Ayahuasca quest. What I have well learnt from Michael Harner’s seizing account of his own primary Ayahuasca trip, during which he almost died, in his book Ways of the Shaman (1990), was that he had himself experienced, right from the start, the toughest depth level – encountering the primal dragons. But neither Harner nor other re- searchers and experiencers have given an account of how many depth levels there are, while all seem to agree that there are in fact several levels of intensity to be possibly experienced during the psychedelic trip. There is something like a consensus doctorum in the literature about the ritual use of entheogens that sets a relationship between dose of the substance in- take to the intensity of the trip – and here I made a nice and meaningful typo, writing insensity instead of intensity. This is true in so far as the ex- perience gets weirder and apparently more insane as a result of our cher- ished assumptions about reality, and the sense that we give to certain expe- riences being shifted in the course of the strong psychedelic experience. However, I want to warn here again falling in the trap of single causality and of linear thinking when it goes to evaluate a type of experi- ences that is intrinsically multi–causal and non–linear in character. In my view, the depth levels that Ayahuasca contains are probably not triggered by the dose alone, but also by the intensity of the focus and intent bestowed upon the brew from the side of the shaman. | Chapter Three 218 Now, what is also rather uncanny and that I have not found in any description of Ayahuasca trips anywhere in a book is that the intelligence gave me signals. It was like a gentle knocking at my doors of perception. I typically saw a flickering of five red squares at the top upper left corner of my vision, when my eyes were closed. I intuitively knew in these moments that this was the signal to go deeper in the trance, or jump to the next depth level, only that to my sadness I could not follow the invitation because of my fear block. Every time it happened, the fear came up and blocked me to go beyond. And this blockage was not just mental. If it had been mental only I could have overcome it. In fact, I wanted to overcome it, but then the blockage som- atized and manifested as vomiting, and later also as strong diarrhea. It was not only my mind that resisted the experience, but also, and perhaps primarily so, my body. Calling Me in Touch I was constantly communicating with the intelligence, from the first to the last moment of my Ayahuasca experience. I had prayed already before the onset of the experience, while still on my bed in my hotel room, that through this wisdom quest I might receive guidance for find- ing my life’s mission and for being freed from my constant anxiety, and I kept addressing the Ayahuasca spirit in respectful terms during the expe- rience to assist me in my quest for truth. And as if it was a final test that this intelligence really understood me, I said this, when I felt I wanted to go back to my room and sleep: My Silent Prayer Dear Ayahuasca Spirit, thank you so much for all the insights, please stop calling me now. I know that I was not able to get over my fear block now, and I hope I can find the courage to continue because I know you will reveal me so much more when I get deeper in the trance. But for now I have decided to stop. It is enough. Consciousness and Shamanism | 219 And immediately the calling stopped, the flickering lights did not ap- pear any more and the alien noise was calming down and stopped as well. This alien noise, I understood then, was the language of that intelligence. It was something like many people, in some distance, speaking simultane- ously, and as if many conversations converged to a chaotic no–sense that was but the secret code or pattern of a deeper, much more unified lan- guage of the universe, and of which our human language is only a tiny and almost insignificant part. Freeing from Conditioning The plant intelligence I was in touch with seemed to convey to me telepathically that I was locked in language, that all my experiencing of life was conditioned upon language, and that I hardly ever perceived life di- rectly, spontaneously, as an immediate connection. At the same time, I received the instant confirmation that this intelligence was universal in the sense that it was connected to all, and that it was constantly trying to connect all, such as a total communication matrix of the universe, and third that it was and represented all–that–is. I became keenly aware that this intelligence was the Logos, and that it simply was, and it gently invited me to enter this connection, this wonder- ful all–encompassing love that it irradiated and communicated. Several times, when I intended to tell the shaman some of my cogni- tive experiences while still in trance, the intelligence seemed to wanting to hold me back. Once I wanted to say something regarding the intelli- gence, and I was stopped in midst of the sentence: – Este inteligencia …, was all that I could say. The intelligence seemed to wanting to free me from the conditioning I had received through language, and through using language for describ- ing reality. It might be that my fear is in some way connected to language and my fear block a hypertrophy of language or of my left brain. This is how I can try to explain it while all what I write here and can express in words never can come close to the actual experience. | Chapter Three 220 Love, Life and Relationships Before I come to talk about the important insights I received about love, life and relationships at the end of my Ayahuasca trip, I would like to expand a little on that peculiar question–and–answer game that was developing between the intelligence and myself. In fact, I was naturally the one who, puzzled, asked the questions, and the intelligence always instantly replied. When I say instantly I really mean that the reply did not even take one second to appear, but it was instantly in my mind upon formulating the question. I think this is quite uncanny as a fact while it is probably known to other researchers. And the reply could have various forms. It was always economical in the sense that it never wasted even one syllable, and when this was possi- ble, it was just turning around my question, or simply shortened it, in order to give the answer. This is something I really have never heard of before, and it reminded me of a higher evolution of certain circus jokes or mind games, and it definitely had a note of humor to it. The most important experience in this context was that my questions were somehow returned as questions–that–question–again–my–questions so as to give the answer to any question as a result of the question itself – and not as some kind of outside input. So in a way, the phenomenon suggested that the intelligence I was communicating with was altogether not an outside or outward or distinct intelligence, but simply a part of my own higher consciousness. Now, succinctly speaking, this manifested in a way that every thought I had was immediately returned to its contrary and every phrase that I pronounced in my mind was immediately re- duced to some more general insight. For example I heard myself think- ing: – I love life … And it was immediately reduced to: – I love … Or I heard myself thinking: Consciousness and Shamanism | 221 – I feel to be alive … And it was reduced to: – I feel … And now, when you evaluate the returned, condensed or shortened statements as answers, you will notice that they are indeed highly intelli- gent answers to underlying questions. The first statement could be read as an underlying question of the kind: ‘What does it mean to love life?’ Now from the returned shortened version, it becomes evident that when I love, I simply love – which means I am in a state of love, and thus as a result I love all–that–is, and thus also life. So it’s somehow unintelli- gent to say a sentence like ‘I love life’ because love cannot be reduced to just a concept like ‘love of life’ or it is that: a concept. By the same token, to divide love off in concepts such as ‘filial love’, ‘passionate love’, ‘love for children’ or ‘love for the elder’ does not make sense, as what it produces is splitting the holistic notion of love off in tidy compartments that are concepts of love, but not love any more. So somehow the intelligence politely corrected what I was saying without correcting me! And I immediately understood the hint, like when you solve a koan in Zen. 137 Eventually I became very quiet and full of gratitude and I said this in my thought, in my German mother tongue: – Ich möchte Liebe! (I want love) And immediately the response was, in German: – Ich möchte lieben … (I want to love) I use the expression koan in my books in order to denote the paradoxes that are the 137 outcome of our intellectual, conceptual look at life. However, please be aware that I am convinced that life or nature is not per se paradoxical, but bound together in infinite har- mony. The paradoxical nature of life is an appearance of reality made up through our limited, concept–based and thought–created image of reality – and not reality itself. | Chapter Three 222 And with all my heart and soul I understood this subtle difference and it was clear to me that in this tiny difference of syntax there was all the difference. It was the secret to happiness. I had taken love as a commod- ity that can be received, stating that I wanted to be loved, instead of un- derstanding that love was not something to receive, but a state of being to develop into, something like an attitude, and this attitude, it seemed to me, simply was total openness. And at the same moment I became intensely and acutely aware that I was not in that state of love, that I was not giving love to others, and I also knew why! It was fear that blocked me off to love. And Krishnamur- ti’s saying came to mind that for the first time I really understood: where fear is, love cannot be. And I think this insight transformed something in me. And really, afterwards my relationships changed much for the better. Consciousness and Shamanism | 223 Literature Review The first book I read on the subject of shamanism in the 1980s was Les appeleurs d'âmes by Sabine Hargous, a French ethnologist. This study published in 1975 with the well–known French publisher Albin Michel and that translates in English as The Soul Callers is a well–documented thesis on the shamanic universe of the Andine native population. This book clearly centers on one aspect of shamanism only: the healing. The study divides into three main parts Indigenous Pathogenics, Diagnostics and Magic Rituals. However, implicitly, the author expands on virtually all aspects of shamanic spirituality. After all, it was perhaps a good thing to have begun with this study and not with something that conveys a felt sense of indigenous living, as for example the excellent books of Michael Harner, because Sabine Har- gous’ approach represents decidedly a Western view, with all that this implies. She calls natives primitives, as it was the custom in traditional eth- nology and that says in one word more than a whole thesis about what quantum physics has taught us about the observer standpoint. But for this reason the study is not to be discarded. I would even say this consciousness split is important for some people who else would never read a similar study because their anxiety to remain fixated in their own cultural belief system is greater than their curiosity to explore other, and certainly more direct methods to approach reality. And as, at this time, I was still working on my international law doctorate and not yet on the daring path to question the Western science approach – while I became more and more critical to it – this was certainly a good book to begin with. As the author was keeping her Cartesian distance to an alternative worldview, she was nonetheless getting deeply immersed in the world of the natives, and her book is all but a dry thesis paper. The next book that virtually fell in my hands, as I found it on a garage sale, was Michael Harner's bestseller Ways of the Shaman. This book had a different impact upon me than the first one. It was a shock and a revealing new learning! | Chapter Three 224 While I found that Sabine Hargous’ study had a rather philosophical touch, Michael Harner’s study really moved me into planning myself a voyage, and it was then, now already years ago, that I took the decision to engage on the Way of the shaman – or, to be honest, the book rather re- vealed me that since childhood I was on this way already, without ever knowing it, without ever being able to voice, to describe the special mis- sion I feel is mine. Before I got to read other of the real power stuff, so to say, because written by empirically minded researchers, and as I had to wait quite a long time to get the books from Amazon USA shipped to France, I or- dered two books by Spanish authors in Barcelona, Spain, that I got with- in two days only and I did not regret to have read them, as they dealt with the philosophical and conceptional issues. The first was a book from one of the foremost Spanish authorities on the subject of shamanism, Josep M. Fericla, entitled Al Trasluz de la Ayahuasca. Reading this book, I realized that in Spain there is absolutely no moralistic bias against psychedelics such as, for example in France, and in Great Britain or the USA. But compared to France, the legislation even in the United States is still quite liberal. France is really the worst one can imagine in any of the Western nations, and this is after all well comprehensible when you look at the Cartesian mindset of French people, their extreme left–brainism and their almost total lack of true spirituality. In Spain, the exact contrary is true which obviously has nothing to do with left or right–wing governments. In Spain, nobody would get the idea to put Cannabis on an index. It is as legal as Cuban cigars and per- haps, definitely, more healthy than those. The second impression was that for this Spanish author, the psychedelic quest was a real parallel way of perception, serious not only for freaks and pioneers in consciousness ex- ploration, but also for philosophers. Fericla is one of the finest in Spain, and not just for his preoccupation with psychedelics, but in general. Thus, a book from a real authority, and written with a serious mind and true commitment for consciousness ex- Consciousness and Shamanism | 225 ploration. This book confirmed my decision to really take on the voyage I had planned and not just do a theoretical research on the topic of shamanism within the greater project of my research on the Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living. The literary magazine El Idiota that I equally had ordered in Spain contained many interesting contributions one of which I wish to mention here as I find it very important. This special issue of the magazine enti- tled Visionarios, contains an article about Carlos Castaneda. Carlos Castane- da: El Enigma del Último Nagual is a very interesting article by Cristóbal Cobo Quintas that deals with the somewhat mysterious content of Cas- taneda’s well–known spiritual apprenticeship with the Yaqui sorcerer Don Juan. This Spanish author sees the importance of Castaneda’s books – be they invented as a part of the media debate about Castaneda pre- tends, be they real accounts of the practices of one of the last living wit- nesses of Toltec culture. It is noteworthy that Castaneda, inter alia on his web site, claims to be the only legitimate last descendant of the Toltecs and spokesman for their culture within a largely ignorant world. In fact, what we learn through visions is more than just the visions; this was already clear to me when I read Castaneda myself, more than ten years ago. And what all serious studies and reports about visionary experiences, at least those done with Ayahuasca, other DMT derivates or Peyote converge to is to affirm that these visions enhance our understanding of nature. In addition, these studies contribute to helping us understand what is direct perception or, as we would call it today, systems intelligence. In my personal view it’s not even the visions themselves that have this impact upon our intelligence but some kind of telepathic code written into the visions, but that we are not aware of, and which is transmitted directly into our DNA or, if already contained in it, thus activated or stimulated. Eventually the books arrived from the USA and the first one I read was Ralph Metzner's excellent book about Ayahuasca – Ralph Metzner, Ayahuasca: Human Consciousness and the Spirits of Nature – which is actually a | Chapter Three 226 sampler that he edited and in which many people related personal expe- riences with Ayahuasca. This book, including Metzner’s highly interest- ing introduction, is through and through a master–piece because it gives so many insights simultaneously. It is all but a dry scientific report, but an exciting adventure to read. In a way, one cannot but feel all those individual experiences on almost a gut level, in order to definitely, and once for all, put aside a Cartesian worldview that tries to split the world off in nice little tartlets called ‘sci- ence’, ‘emotions’, ‘perception’, ‘experience’, etc. One then begins to understand that awareness is beyond all of this while it encompasses all of this, awareness being the very fact of being aware of being aware. To begin with, it is interesting to see what the pri- mary motivation was for most if not all of the people who contributed to the reader, most of them being involved in natural healing, or otherwise working in social professions. These people all had in common that they expected some tangible results from the experience, for becoming better healers or advisors, or for solving personal problems, and there was none of them that did not at the end of their statements confirm that the expe- rience had been worth it and helped them to reach this goal. The next book I was reading, and that I found even more mind–bog- gling was Jeremy Narby’s The Cosmic Serpent (1999). This book, written by a Swiss anthropologist, originally written in French, takes a completely different perspective. Narby, questioning the native shaman’s conviction that plants really transfer knowledge during the visions, states: Jeremy Narby First, hallucinations cannot be the source of real information, because to consider them as such is the definition of psychosis. Western knowledge considers hallucinations to be at best illu- sions, at worst morbid phenomena. Second, plants do not communicate like human beings. Scientific theories of com- munication consider that only human beings use abstract sym- bols like words and pictures and that plants do not relay in- formation in the form of mental images. For science, the hu- man brain is the source of hallucinations, which psychoactive Consciousness and Shamanism | 227 plants trigger by way of the hallucinogenic molecules they contain. 138 He then puts up the hypothesis that what the plants actually do is to open a perception channel to our own DNA’s photon vibrations. Photon ra- diation of the DNA has been confirmed in recent quantum science but physicists did not go as far as saying that this photon radiation’s informa- tion flow was in any way consciously readable for the human mind. This hypothesis has something daring about it and Narby makes his point with quite an amount of writing skill. However, I was again and again consid- ering the premises he based his research upon, and in my opinion, Narby made a paramount mistake in failing to question these premises before he set out to write his book. Here is what I would advance against Narby’s argumentation: – Why should mind visions not be the source of real information? The fact that this contradicts modern psychiatry means nothing in terms of perception theory, a field that psychiatry has nothing to deal with and does not understand anything about. – Why should it be important how Western knowledge considers hallu- cinations? To call them morbid phenomena is definitely not a scientific judg- ment, but a moralistic opinion and as such irrelevant for the scientific researcher. – Who says that plants do not communicate like human beings? Who has the knowledge to deny this possibility? The natives do not say that plants communicate like human beings; they say that plants communicate with us using a form of telepathy that is part of consciousness itself and that makes that communication can be cross–species. – Scientific theories of communication consider that plants do not relay information in the form of mental images, states Narby. I want to see the treatise of communication where this is written! This sentence is highly unscientific in itself in that theories of communication deal with human communication only and are generally silent about plant com- munication. The mere silence of this research regarding plant communi- Jeremy Narby, The Cosmic Serpent (2003), p. 42. 138 | Chapter Three 228 cation cannot logically be interpreted as a denial of the existence of such communication, in general. Here, Narby clearly committed a logical faux–pas. – Finally the last sentence in Narby’s hypothesis is equally suggestive, and not scientific in that it suggests namely that the human mind was seated in the brain and only in the brain, an assumption that is scientifi- cally overthrown. Neuroscience and consciousness research now coincide in acknowledging that the mind or consciousness, while functioning through the physical brain, is not forcibly physically located in the brain, but certainly also in the pineal gland, the pituitary gland, and especially the luminous body or aura. Some go beyond and suggest the mind was located probably everywhere, even in the cells of the skin of the feet, for example, but also outside of the body, as psychic research has confirmed since long. But Narby’s study certainly has high value in the present discussion be it as a contradicting resource. One thing was namely clear to me from most of the German and American shamanism researchers and their publications: they do not question the possibility of plants being able to communicate information to the human mind in what form however this takes place! They also do not, like Narby, start from a concept of Western knowledge but rather take a pioneering, open and experimental approach while sticking to the facts and avoiding speculation. And they all seem to take for granted that the mind and the brain have in common only that the brain functions like an interface for the mind to operate within us, and within all. Thus, I found that Narby was, from the start of his book, much more restrictive and skeptical than, for example Michael Harner, Adam Gottlieb, Ralph Metzner or the McKenna brothers in their respec- tive studies. On a similar line of reasoning while from a totally different perspec- tive is the DMT research of an American doctor, Rick Strassman, DMT, The Spirit Molecule (2001). Strassman was all but mystic–minded when he began his study with hundreds of patients to experience precisely dosed DMT injections in their veins. The book, or how much I could stand of Consciousness and Shamanism | 229 it, was quite boring to read and, as a result, my quotes collection is rather scarce, which is certainly not a mishap of the book itself but more of the reader. I just do not find much interest in this kind of soulless research that goes out to understand life from monkey experiments. Okay, a simi- lar marathon study once conducted in France by two sociologists to dis- proof astrology, was finally exactly confirming its functionality. But for a serious astrologer, such a study is a circus joke for the ignoramus because since thousands of years initiated individuals know about the cognitive value of astrology and they do not need monkey experiments to confirm this perennial knowledge. I trust more a critical intelligent and initiated human such as, just to give an example, Michael Harner or Terence McKenna, who have taken DMT and who say with unshaken conviction that they received knowledge, real knowledge through the experience, and not just experienced a kalei- doscope of silly flash lights. If shamanism research was so dull and in- significant as most medical doctors and skeptic anthropologists think it was, highly intelligent and trustworthy writers and researchers such as Schultes, Metzner, Harner or McKenna, would have to be called school- boys. You and me know they were and are not, and that in shamanic voyages we are not dealing with kaleidoscopic games. I was glad, then, to read something from a different mind, and frame of mind. Aldous Huxley, the author of the novel Brave New World and other great fiction and non–fiction writings, was one of the foremost wit- nesses in experiments with perception, altered perception and immediate perception. His book The Doors of Perception is an enlightening account of someone who approached the psychedelic experience at first rather as a philosophical curiosity. 139 Huxley had no or very few preconceptions and his mindset was the one that Zen calls the beginner’s mind; thus the ideal explorer of an un- known world, at least to our Western mindset. And Huxley’s experience was entirely positive. Reading his account, you are thrilled and charmed See Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell (1954). 139 | Chapter Three 230 and at one point or the other seduced to try it yourself. Huxley is very outspoken about the philosophical implications of his experience and he values it positively, so positively that he is cited in every book published on entheogens; he figures almost like an authority while, reading him, one does not have this impression at all. His style is artful, witty and charming, more than in some of his other books, in my opinion. The book is written from the heart, and there remains no doubt that Huxley loved this mushroom and its hallucinatory compound: mescaline. I think it is not a bad idea, for anybody interested in altered consciousness, to read this book as a kind of introduction. Consciousness and Shamanism | 231 Points to Ponder ‣ In Chapter Three we were considering one possible way of looking over the fence of social and cultural conditioning, so as to broaden our consciousness, and become aware of the impurity and limitations of our perception. I was reporting, for that purpose, an experience I made back in 2004, by ingesting the traditional Ayahuasca brew in Ecuador, with a local shaman. ‣ I have tried to convey in this chapter that Ayahuasca, and most probably other psychedelics as well do not have merited that name ‘psychedelics’, as they are not set for bringing about ‘nice and colorful visions’, but have a much deeper and more serious purpose. They are also not set in the world for confusing our primary perception and render us ‘high’ or to alter our consciousness; what they do is not to alter our consciousness, but to sharpen it, not to distort our perception but to purify it and to render it more immediate, more direct, and less conditioned by culture and language. ‣ Native peoples have understood this sacred purpose of entheogens, which is why they have created that term in the first place, which means that these plants are ‘awakeners of the god within’. By the same token, it is unthinkable for natives to use entheogens for plea- sure or leisure purposes, or to take those compounds for entertain- ment. There is a belief among most native peoples that doing this desacralizes the plants and offends their protective spirits, with the result that misfortunes of all kinds may happen to those who engage in this kind of frivolous action. However, in our society this view is not shared, at least not on the government level, with the result that entheogens are indiscriminately put on the index of forbidden drugs, with the afterthought of course that, if allowed, they would be used, and abused, for mere entertainment, pleasurable indulgence and de- bauchery. The idea is not as far–fetched as it sounds; if this view is the dominant one in a society, then the government probably just acts on the line of the general opinion. If a certain behavior would result in large–scale abuse and harm done to citizens, it is natural and cor- rect that a responsible government prohibits that behavior. That harm can be done to self and others, including death, with strongly | Chapter Three 232 active compounds is a fact that even pro–psychedelic researchers such as Terence McKenna have openly admitted. The solution here, then, cannot be short–term, and it cannot just target at proving our gov- ernments wrong, provincial or fascist when they only act upon a be- lief that is shared by the meta group. The solution is to change that very belief of entheogens being ‘leisure drugs’, and to give the right information, and also transmit the ethical values related to the correct use of plant–teachers, which is first of all their sacred purpose, their cor- rect use, and proper education given for their ingestion. This cannot be done short–term but takes a real educational effort from the side of science and government working jointly and with the correct vi- sion and motivation. ‣ Contrary to common belief, entheogenic plant substances do not render addictive but in the contrary tend to dissolve addictions, which is why in some countries, they are used in the therapies targeting at healing heroine or cocaine addictions. ‣ Perhaps the most important point that I stress in this chapter and that I called my ‘hypothesis’ is that I have found evidence for the fact that the mechanistic idea of DMT or any other psychoactive compound being the direct trigger of the mystical and mind–opening experience is wrong. I have presented several anomalies occuring within the course of my Ayahuasca experience that cannot be explained in any other way than by saying that what really happened was that the shaman triggered and directed the trance by his own intention and psychic energy, using the psychoactive compounds as a transmitter matrix. ‣ The ‘chemical’ etiology of trance inducement is mechanistic, and cannot explain why I was being ‘turned on’ and ‘off ’ by the shaman blowing cigarette smoke in my face, and why, as the DMT was in my stomach only for about forty minutes, having vomited it all out right after that short period, it was active for the whole night, invariable in strength, and thus for almost ten hours. ‣ These and other striking details of the experience make only sense when we see shamanic voyages as not directed by plant chemicals, but by human intention that uses the plant matrix as in information am- plifier and transmitter. It appears that, based upon my literature re- view, I am presently the only researcher on the globe who has come up with this hypothesis, as most Western researchers follow the mechanistic approach of ‘the plant chemicals altering human con- sciousness’. Consciousness and Shamanism | 233 ‣ Why is my hypothesis important? It is important because it shows that the Western understanding of using psychoactive compounds is actually a misunderstanding. For natives, it is the shaman, and only the shaman, who controls the consciousness–opening voyage, and the plant–teachers are seen and approached in the awe–inspiring attitude of being real beings, not just chemicals or molecules, but living be- ings. And it would never enter the mind of a native to say that plant– teachers are just chemicals that flood the consciousness interface of those who ingest them, thereby bringing about ‘hallucinogenic vi- sions’. ‣ My hypothesis should lead to a new understanding within Western culture of the real function of the shaman and the interaction that is taking place, in every authentic shamanic voyage, between the shaman’s consciousness, the consciousness of the client, and the con- sciousnesses of the spirits who are somehow involved, through the mystery of the psychoactive compounds contained in the entheogenic plants. It is this interaction between various conscious forms of living that brings about the amplifying effect, the consciousness–opening, the sharpening of perception, the pristine intelligent awareness of reality that is typically the unique gift one carries away from such experiences. ‣ After all, looking at the details of my experience as a single case among many cases to be studied and evaluated, we can safely con- clude that the mechanistic ‘chemical’ explanation of consciousness– opening shamanic experiences is a reductionist concept that cannot truly and objectively explain what really happens in such kind of ex- periences. By contrast, my hypothesis forwards an epistemological approach to these experiences that is systemic and complex enough to explain the uncanny details of such voyages, and that understands that all about consciousness, after all, is intention. It has been seen in other fields of research, such as quantum physics, as well, that inten- tion really is the greatest influential agent in the universe, to a point that scientists now even argue that the big bang, the very starting point of creation was already a result, and not the cause. The cause, as it appears, was a form of cosmic intention. ‣ I was not hiding the intrinsic content of this learning experience, a learning that was given to me despite my fear of the unknown, de- spite my unwillingness to experience a deeper trance than the first of five possible levels of going down the rabbit hole. The message I re- ceived was clear and unambiguous, it was telling me that reality is not the semantic mantel that we are wrapping our life experiences into, that language is like the finger that points to the moon, but not the moon, the map, not the terrain. Hence, to conclude from this insight, | Chapter Three 234 we can say that we cannot perceive reality through language, as lan- guage itself is conditioned and related to the thought interface, which can only operate within the known, shying away from experiencing the unknown. As a result, when we want to experience the unknown, we need to let go of language, of the safety valve. My fear was to lose ground, to die in all senses of the word, or to become mad. The ex- perience rendered me aware that I was not ready for the real spiritual opening which is a form of death, not physical, but very real to expe- rience, as real as dreams are. And while I was not allowing myself to experience the unknown, I was nonetheless carrying away an im- mense gift from the experience in that I was, then only, completely aware of the known, and of its limiting and comforting nature. Hence, the Ayahuasca experience gave me an immediate and flawless cor- roboration of Krishnamurti’s teaching. CHAPTER FOUR The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | Chapter Four 236 Introduction This chapter helps in your quest for your finding out about your in- ner god or goddess. In a society with mainly patriarchal values, the soul will keep the counterplayer inside, hidden, and in the dark. Thus in a solar culture, such as ours, the counterplayer is the lunar principle, or, as it was called in antiquity, the lunar bull. If you want to become whole so as to embrace your soul values, you have to heal that phylogenetic split be- tween patriarchal and matriarchal culture. This split was a historical fact and it has left imprints in our soul and our psyche. But while this may have been so as a matter of history, while there have been matriarchal cultures first and patriarchal societies later, this is not how the soul has experienced these matters. Recent research has cor- roborated that things are really not as clear–cut as historians thought they were. When questioned about patriarchy and matriarchy, many people, and among them even researchers of repute, tend to jump to quick conclu- sions. They take either–or positions or they question the whole dichoto- my calling it a historic bluff. And there are those who try to find a way out of that hide–and–seek game that leaves very important questions open by declaring them as ob- solete. There is one author who stands out: it is Riane Eisler. She has 140 not declared the dichotomy as a historic bluff, but showed with a lot of evidence that both of these concepts never have existed in a pure form, but that in a way they are complementary. However, in a second step, that was perhaps more important than the first, she has looked at the ba- sic ingredients of each of these cultural opposites and found remarkable, if not striking, differences. There is one main difference that she peels out and that, once you know about it, cannot be unthought. It is the discov- ery that, deep down, the two concepts differ by the way they look not at one gender, but by the way they look at both. See, for example, Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade (1995) and Sacred Pleasure 140 (1996). The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 237 More precisely, Riane Eisler found that matriarchy is predominantly a paradigm that favors partnership relations between the two sexes and gen- erally between all members in a given society, while patriarchy favors dominance and oppression, male over female, but not only. Also above over below, in the sense of strict obedience–based hierarchies. Also pow- erful over powerless. Without knowing more, here already, with this kind of rudimentary knowledge as a quintessence of Eisler’s in–depth re- search, we see that there is something of an automatism built in patri- archy. It’s the automatism of abuse. It’s as if all was setup for it to occur. It’s as if the cultural and social framework was exactly drafted for abuse to happen. Abuse that is so eloquently fought, in patriarchal terms, as a sin and an abject behavior. While matriarchy tolerates it and has built rape right in most of its cultural myths. But patriarchy has institutional- ized rape, in all its forms, sexual, social, racial, ethnic, military and com- mercial. That is the difference. Riane Eisler’s amazing research has brought to daylight that main- taining the age–old dichotomy of matriarchal versus patriarchal is only accurate when we describe their psychological content, but not when we describe evolutionary changes in the human setup. In reality, Eisler points out, we are dealing with a partnership–oriented paradigm versus a dominator par- adigm, the first coming close to the idea of matriarchy, the latter more or less synonymous with patriarchy. The merit of Eisler’s approach is that we can get away from extreme positions: because there never was a really pure matriarchy or a really pure patriarchy in human history. When we look, for example, at the mythology of highly patriarchal tribes, such as the ancient Hebrews, we find matriarchal elements, and therefore must conclude that we got a mix rather than a pure soup. In that mix, to rest with the example of the Hebrews, are predominantly patriarchal elements and a few matriarchal elements, as in yang is a small portion of yin, and vice versa. And as Johann Jakob Bachofen found in his classical treatise on matriarchy, even in highly matriarchal cultures there | Chapter Four 238 are to be found a few elements of patriarchy. Therefore, when we use 141 the dichotomy matriarchal–patriarchal, we are arguing not from a real– life perspective, but rather from our ideological understanding of patri- archy or matriarchy. What counts for us within the purpose of this book is the spiritual significance of matriarchy as a psychological and archetypal complex in the collective unconscious of humanity not the historical or psychohistorical evolution of humanity. Regarding the evolutionary 142 aspect, Joseph Campbell writes in Occidental Mythology: Joseph Campbell For it is now perfectly clear that before the violent entry of the late Bronze and early Iron Age nomadic Aryan cattle–herders from the north and Semitic sheep and goat herders from the south into the old cult sites of the ancient world, there had prevailed in that world an essentially organic, vegetal, non– heroic view of the nature and necessities of life that was com- pletely repugnant to those lion hearts for whom not the patient toil of earth but the battle spear and its plunder were the source of both wealth and joy. In the older mother myths and rites the light and darker aspects of the mixed thing that is life had been honored equally and together, whereas in the later, male–oriented, patriarchal myths, all that is good and noble was attributed to the new, heroic master gods, leaving to the native nature powers the character only of darkness – to which, also, a negative moral judgment now was added. For, as a great body of evidence shows, the social as well as mythic orders of the two contrasting ways of life were opposed. 143 It is not difficult for us today to see that the symbolism of mythology bears a specific psychological scripting. Particularly under the perspective of psychoanalysis, and even more so, of psychosynthesis, there is little doubt that the old sagas are of the nature of dream, or that dreams are symp- tomatic of the dynamics of the psyche. Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Otto Rank, Karl Abraham, Géza Róheim, and many others Originally in German language, Johann Jakob Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht (1948). 141 See Lloyd deMause, Foundations of Psychohistory (1982). 142 Joseph Campbell, Occidental Mythology (1973,) p. 21. 143 The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 239 have within the last century developed a vastly documented modern lore of dream and myth interpretation. With our modern–day discovery that the holistic patterns of fairy tale and myth correspond to those of dream, the long discredited ideas of archaic man have returned dramatically to the foreground of conscious- ness. One of those archaic symbols or archetypes is that of the Lunar Bull, for there is a direct relationship between mythology and astrology. It can be said that astrology uses mythology to a large extent in order to make spiritual energies more visually comprehensive. When explaining the nature of the planetary energy of Moon, for example, astrology will use certain metaphors. These metaphors are em- bodied in symbols, and the symbols, as such, build a necessary vocabu- lary for anybody to study who wants to practice and explain astrology. For example, the main symbols traditionally associated with the Moon energy are: Cancer, Bull, Female, Shell, House, Black, Water, Shadow. As the mythic bull's characteristics are associated with the lunar ener- gies, it was called, in Antiquity, the Lunar Bull. This expression is not a fancy, even today, because the bull fighting tradition that dates from pa- triarchy, has put the whole bull mythology completely upside down. The killing of the bull that was once a ritual sacrifice for the Goddess as the tutelary divinity of the bull was transformed into a sport in which the stabbing of the bull is a symbolic rape expressing the subordination of the female under the male’s sexual dominion. Thus, by analogy, the modern bull, the bull that is stabbed and killed by the Matador within the traditional bull fighting has quite little or nothing to do with the matriar- chal mythic or lunar bull. The lunar bull was the object of worship prevalent in the age when our sun was passing through the sign of Tau- rus. What was preserved from that time were the mysteries of Mithras. The horns of the bull were generally a symbol of fertility and bountiful riches in many cultures for thousands of years. The constellation Taurus may also allude to the Greek story of Europa and the Bull. | Chapter Four 240 Europa was daughter of King Agenor. One fine spring day, accom- panied by her hand maidens, Princess Europa went to the seashore to gather flowers. Zeus, who had fallen in love with Europa, seized the op- portunity. Zeus transformed himself into a magnificent white bull, and as such he joined King Agenor’s grazing herd. Europa noticed the wonder- ful white beast, who gazed at them all with such a mild manner that they were not frightened. Europa wove wreathes of flowers for the beast, and wrapped them around his horns. She led him around the meadow, and he was as docile as a lamb. Then, as he trotted down to the seashore, she jumped onto his shoul- ders. Suddenly, to her surprise and fright, he plunged into the sea and carried the princess to Crete. As they reached the Cretan shore, Zeus then turned into an eagle and ravaged Europa. She bore three sons, the first of which was Minos, who is said to have introduced the bull cult to the Cretans. He had Daedalus build a labyrinth in the depths of his palace at Knossos, which became the home of the Minotaur, the offspring of Minos’ wife Pasiphae, and a bull. Seven young boys and seven maidens were ritually sacrificed to the Minotaur every year, until Theseus killed the monster. The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 241 The Lunar Bull The mythic lunar bull, lord of the rhythm of the universe, to whose song all mortality is dancing in around of birth, death, and / new birth, was called to mind by the sounds of the drum, strings, and reed flutes of the temple orchestras, and those attending were set in accord thereby with the aspect of being that never dies. The be- atific, yet impassive, enigmatic Mona Lisa features of the bull slain by the lion–bird suggest the mode of being known to initiates of the wisdom beyond death, beyond changing time. Through his death, which is no death, he is giving life to the creatures of the earth, even while indicating, with his lifted forefoot, the leftward horn of the mythic symbol. – JOSEPH CAMPBELL, OCCIDENTAL MYTHOLOGY What does this myth tell us? Which psychological truth does it reveal? Let us have a deeper look at this intriguing story. We got a seducer here, we have an abduction, a rape, and then, as a result, a child–eating mon- ster that eventually is killed. And we have a bull. What does this bull stand for, psychologically? Experts of mythology and psychiatrists agree that the bull, despite of his phallic horns is a symbol for matriarchy, and this because the bull cannot be seen isolated from the Goddess that, metaphorically and from the vis- ual depictions, stands on the shoulders of the bull. This is a metaphor because we would not be interested in that bull if it had only a historical meaning for us. We are interested in that bull because we have its energy within us. Joseph Campbell affirms that all the gods are within us. Hence, the bull, as a sort of matriarchal god, also is within our own unconscious, a part of our male love instinct that can enjoy to conquer | Chapter Four 242 and rape, abduct and possess, enclose and abuse. We are used today to a psychological language that suggests all these longings were abysmal and abject and we tend to project them, as a result of our blinding them out, onto others that we call the monsters, perpetrators, rapists or sex offenders and that our morning papers abound of. And yet, all this psychological hide–and–seek is useless: we are facing but parts of ourselves when deal- ing with these well–hidden issues that often are wrapped into the folder of our best–kept family secrets. When in the extraordinary book The Power of Myth (1988), which is actually a wonderful example of human dialog, Bill Moyers asked Joseph Campbell about the serpent as the seducer in the biblical story of the genesis, Campbell replied: Joseph Campbell That amounts to a refusal to affirm life. In the biblical tradi- tion we have inherited, life is corrupt, and every natural im- pulse is sinful unless it has been circumcised or baptized. The serpent was the one who brought sin into the world. And the woman was the one who handed the apple to man. This iden- tification of the woman with sin, of the serpent with sin, and thus of life with sin, is the twist hat has been given to the whole story in the biblical myth and doctrine of the Fall. 144 Joseph Campbell basically affirms that patriarchy is but a form of life–denial, a collective neurosis, not a lifestyle, a philosophy, or a Weltan- schauung. It’s a disease, a twist given to life and that perverts its very nature. And ultimately, therefore, it’s a refusal of humanity. Campbell develops the theme further by alluding to the Star Wars plot: Joseph Campbell Darth Vader has not developed his own humanity. He’s a ro- bot. He’s a bureaucrat, living not in terms of himself but in terms of an imposed system. This is the threat to our lives that we all face today. Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes? How Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth (1988), p. 54. 144 The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 243 do you relate to the system so that you are not compulsively serving it? 145 Patriarchy, with its craving for obedience to the father, is a sort of compulsion neurosis. Not only are individuals flattened out by systems that are eternal replacements of real fathers, those that have typically aban- doned their roles as true caretakers, having become troublemakers. These authority–craving individuals have flattened out their better halves, their right brains, so as to serve the system even more. The bull story tells us that rape desires as part of sexual longings are not destructive per se, but become destructive when they are enclosed, incarcerated, tightly controlled and discarded out of life by strict moralis- tic rules rules. The Minotaur became a child–eating monster because it was enclosed in a tower, because King Minos was afraid for his reputa- tion and wanted to hide the monster from the populace. And this may historically have been the first time when child protection thinking was to be noted in human history, and when the results were obviously as devas- tating as they are today. We have the symbolism until today written into the Tarot where The Tower, the 16th Arcane , is a symbol of something 146 that is too tightly controlled, to a point to explode, with all that usually accompanies those explosions – that most of us have gone through, once in our lives, in one or the other way, be it a scandal, a public outrage, the revelation of a family secret, an abuse story, or criminal conviction as a sex offender. And then, we ask ‘Why has this happened?’, and we are again regressing in childhood longings for autonomy that were thwarted by over–control- ling parents or educators, and we face our rage – eventually. The public outrage we encountered was but a projection of our own inner rage that we had repressed. We had forgotten about the library with the books that can talk, and the wizard, and magic houses that endure. And back where we came from, we can eventually ask what we really want when we want to rape, to possess, to abduct, to ravish. And we Id., p. 178. 145 See, for example, Sallie Nichols, Jung And Tarot (1986). 146 | Chapter Four 244 gradually, very gradually, find out that, then, we want to find unity with our soul, and make the split undone that was forced onto us by patriar- chal life–denial, by moralism, by a schizoid education that we suffered, individually and collectively. After all, to copulate means to link! And then we might finally ask the pertinent question: ‘How has patriarchy come about – and what was before?’ It all started with a murder. The murder of the Goddess. Which is ultimately a matricide, and implicitly a moth- er–rape. And it became the foundation of what is called a culture. It be- came the foundation of what is called a religion. Joseph Campbell ex- plains: Joseph Campbell [I]n biblical times, when the Hebrews came in, they really wiped out the Goddess. The term for the Canaanite goddess that’s used in the Old Testament is the Abomination. Apparently, throughout the period represented in the Book of Kings, for example, there was a back and forth between the two cults. Many of the Hebrew kings were condemned in the Old Tes- tament for having worshiped on the mountaintops. Those mountains were symbols of the Goddess. And there was a very strong accent against the Goddess in the Hebrew, which you do not find the Indo–European mythologies. Here you have Zeus marrying the Goddess, and then the two play together. So it’s an extreme case that we have in the Bible, and our own Western subjugation of the female is a function of biblical thinking. 147 It seems that when man began to preach high morality and confessed to strive for goodness, he began to really become diabolic. Campbell re- marks that the vandalism involved in the destruction of the pagan temples of antiqui- ty is hardly matched in world history. 148 Again we may reflect on the teaching of the Lunar Bull. Zeus mar- ried the Goddess by raping her, and that rape ultimately was union and creation. Joseph Campbell, Power of Myth (1988), pp. 215, 216. 147 Id., p. 248. 148 The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 245 While patriarchy, with its strong emphasis about the abomination (sic!) of what it labels sexual crime is exactly embodying the perversion that it so strongly projects upon matriarchal cults, and, today, upon matriarchal peo- ple. I mean the so–called pedophiles, who are put today in the shoes of that Goddess that early patriarchy wiped out. And as their ancient precursors did, the Hammurabis of old, the darth vaders of the modern state are out to euthanize those they don’t understand and who disturb their circles, by questioning their culturally sanctified paranoia. The true abomination is not matriarchy or Goddess cults, and not rape, but a cult or religion or cultural paradigm that perverts nature into a total re- pression of the living impulse and that puts a single male god as the creator principle, thereby annihilating the eternal balance of polarities, manifesting as yin and yang, female and male, Moon and Sun, red and blue, cool and hot, dry and moist, and that restricts life to a dead morality. Campbell ex- plains: Joseph Campbell The patriarchal point of view is distinguished from the earlier archaic view by its setting apart of all pairs–of–opposites – male and female, life and death, true and false, good and evil – as though they were absolutes in themselves and not merely aspects of the larger entity of life. This we may liken to a solar, as opposed to lunar, mythic view, since darkness flees from the sun as its opposite, but in the moon dark and light interact in the one sphere. 149 Many people, even in our days of feminism, women rights and open criticism of patriarchal tradition and values do not really grasp the impli- cation of patriarchy upon our sexual mores and sexual laws. Or they are simply afraid to question the reigning system as deeply as that, scratching the surface with their research. I have been in touch with several researchers from Germany and the United States who openly unveil and criticize the trap of patriarchy and Joseph Campbell, Occidental Mythology (1973), p. 27. 149 | Chapter Four 246 who also defend the sexual freedom of children. But their rhetoric has only one leg when it goes to see what sexual freedom for children really means! It means free partner choice. It means that a child can also choose an adult as a partner for play, including sex play. When faced with that argument, all those researchers that from their books sound so well–bred, well–educated and well–groomed block off. They cease to argue and suddenly become dogmatic and declare that in such a case we could not speak any more of child sexuality but about pe- dophilia, and that the latter was invariably rape, violence and abuse. They assert this without having anything in hand for the backup of their unsci- entific rants. That is how far our science goes, all science goes. We cannot access knowledge that we are not ready to get because we are emotionally not mature for it. These men, while they may have many letters behind their names and while they may be accredited at famous universities, are anxious children who, when it goes to open the forbidden door, shy away and declare that there are no forbidden doors because we lived in a democratic society. A society so democratic obviously that it in- carcerates people for love! These apparently so liberal scientists would thus forbid their child to have an adult sex partner, while they would allow their child to have sex with a peer. What a high form of respect indeed! A slave is forbidden to make love with a noble while he is graciously given the right, by his mas- ter, to love and fuck his brothers–in–fate. What, then, is that modern childhood else than slavery? And in what those liberal parents really differ from our patriarchal house tyrants of old? What Joseph Campbell calls a solar worldview, I call a worldview where stupidity has become the order of the day. To deny our shadow is suicidal, and it’s exactly what a solar worldview is all about. It denies shadow. A picture without shadows is a one–dimensional drawing of life, a shallow affair. It’s sketching a life that is not worth to be lived, because all is on one level, without ups and downs, without excitements, the shallow The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 247 boredom of a moralist who goes to Church at fixed hours or who bows to the ground to lick the feet of his cosmic monstermind. In another publication I have demonstrated that all our major civi- lizations or dominator cultures since Babylonian times almost completely disregarded eight fundamental patterns of living that however pre–patriarchal cultures, and still today most tribal cultures respect. This denial, I showed, makes for: ‣ our high destructivity; ‣ our judgmental and persecutory attitudes; ‣ our schizophrenic split between mind and body; ‣ our belief in the superiority of the mind; ‣ our belief in the inferiority of the body; ‣ our dysfunctional approach to living and loving; ‣ our hypocrite in–group and out–group morality; ‣ our disregard for the yin principle; ‣ our preference of death science and vivisection; ‣ our disregard for life science, integration and synthesis. The terms lunar and solar world view that Campbell uses are derived from astrology. The bull enters the books of world mythology in both versions as the mythic bull and the lunar bull. And in both versions, accord- ing to Erich Neumann, the bull on which the goddess stands is the sym- bol of masculinity. The bull is also said to have succumbed to the ar 150 - See Erich Neumann, The Great Mother (1972), p. 141, with many reproductions of an 150 - cient sculptures featuring both types of bull. See also the recent study of Michael Balter, The Goddess and the Bull (2006). | Chapter Four 248 chetypal mother in matriarchal incest, which is a phantasmagoric incest, sym- bolizing the closeness and symbiotic aura of the mother–son relationship. This phantasmagoric incest that in ancient matriarchal rituals was put on stage dance and chant as a celebration of creation, has quite little to do with actual incest, the prototypical father–daughter incest so in- grained in patriarchy. It is not a sexual incest, but symbolizes the need of the young male for a healthy symbiosis with his mother, if he is to devel- op his full psychosexual potential. An important detail in those old representations of the Goddess and her Bull is that the bull is actually in a supportive role: the Goddess stands on him. He thus supports the Goddess. The male supports the female. That is the quintessential message of matriarchy. That does not mean he’s a servant of the female. In patriarchy these poles have not just be reversed. The female is not just supporting the male, but serves the male. That is the substantial difference. In matriarchy, the son supports his mother, but he is not her servant. In patriarchy, the daughter is not just supporting her father, but she’s sup- posed to be his servant. We have that incarnated both in the household– female and the love–female. The wife is supposed to serve her husband. The prostitute is supposed to serve her client. Both are in not just a sup- portive role, but hold actually slave roles. That is why we can say that patriarchy has not just reversed matri- archy. It has distorted it to a caricature of life in which roles are no more naturally taken by people, but artificially forced upon people. 151 See Joseph Campbell, The Hero with A Thousand Faces, (1973), pp. 258, 259, note 5: 151 This recognition of the secondary nature of the personality of whatever deity is worshipped is characteristic of most of the traditions of the world. (…) In Christian- ity, Mohammedanism, and Judaism, however, the personality of the divinity is taught to be final – which makes it comparatively difficult for the members of these communions to understand how one may go beyond the limitations of their own anthropomorphic divinity. The result has been, on the one hand, a general obfusca- tion of the symbols, and on the other, a god–ridden bigotry such as is unmatched elsewhere in the history of religion. The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 249 Historical Turn If we look at the whole span of our cultural evolution from the per- spective of cultural transformation theory, we see that the roots of our present global crises go back to the fundamental shift in our pre–history that brought enormous changes not only in social struc- ture but also in technology. This was the shift in emphasis from technologies that sustain and enhance life to the technologies sym- bolized by the Blade: technologies designed to destroy and domi- nate. This has been the technological emphasis, rather than tech- nology per se, that today threatens all life in our globe. – RIANE EISLER Another important historical turn, after the one in pre–history de- scribed by Eisler that is usually associated with the beginnings of patri- archy is the introduction of the school system. If we take Europe as an example, why and how schools came up? In the Middle Ages, when the Church tried to gain as much power over people as possible and indulged in human rights abuses of all kinds, monks and nuns opened the first schools. These schools were recruitment centers for the monasteries. From the beginning, boys and girls were sep- arated in different schools. From the boys’ classes, the monks the recruit- ed, from the girls’ schools the nuns. When you read history books, the Church is cited as the great bene- factor of mankind in implementing the school system. But the Church’s intention was first of all an effort to sustain the power of its own worldly hierarchy and oppression system, and second, and most importantly, direct | Chapter Four 250 perception of truth was going to be wiped out from civilization from that point in history. Before the existence of schools, children were raised by their parents and the other adults present in the extended family. They learned pri- marily by observation and direct perception. They picked up what they needed for their later career, from their early environment. It is interesting to re- member, in this context, that early language learning takes place in exact- ly the same way. The young child picks up whole patterns from the lan- guage spoken around him or her. Research during recent years provided evidence for the fact that this form of learning is much more holistic and adapted to the passively organizing intelligence of the human brain than any system that has so far been implemented in schools. Human beings generally learn their mother tongue perfectly, whereas they cripple along learning a second or third language later in school or at college. Only relatively recent learning methods such as Superlearning have taken serious the wisdom of nature present in every learning experience. Think tanks such as Edward de Bono have in addition shown us the relevance of the brain’s functioning as a passively self–organizing system. 152 From his experience as a corporate trainer, Edward de Bono found that our usual learning processes, such as curricula in schools, universities or, more specifically, in management training, are awkwardly maladapted to the way our brain organizes and stores information. De Bono, much in the same way as Dr. Georgi Lozanov, originator of the Superlearning method, found that only in early childhood learning, and especially in the way young children learn their first language, we see nature's full intelli- gence at work. It is a well–known fact that geniuses such as Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso and many others among our creators never finished school, dropped out or flew it. They knew that they knew better and followed their inner instinct rather than an artificial learning system which involves a considerable waste of time and resources and which violates human See, for example, Lynn Schroeder, Sheila Ostrander & Nancy Ostrander, Superlearning 152 2000 (1997). The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 251 dignity in the most flagrant way. With one word, they followed their soul and thereby realized their soul reality without perhaps reflecting about it. They did not let society condition their inner mind to a point to crush their creative impulses. They were marginal in just the same way as a pe- dophile is marginal, or as an autistic child is marginal, and as we as cre- ative souls are all marginal in front of the herd of school–fed morons. It is not a matter of research or of statistics to draw out the human potential, and still less when we talk about the human soul. Every soul is marginal in the sense that it can’t be measured on the lines of idiot sci- ence, the usual whitewash of complexity for the masses, the perennial fascist over–up of true human genius. | Chapter Four 252 Murder of the Goddess For every stoic was a stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christ- ian? – JOSEPH CAMPBELL Joseph Campbell’s research on the religious roots of culture is not new, but for this reason it is not less a theme of the day. For it is coun 153 - teracting fascism, as it shows with such strong evidence not only how complex the human soul is, but also that this has to be that way if man wants to maintain psychic health. This astounding holistic information opens infinite insights into how to live peacefully, resourcefully and re- spectfully. The historical shift toward stupidity was a profound shift in human consciousness, opening a deep schizoid split that some explain esoterically with an alien manipulation of the human DNS. But even if we stay with the historical facts alone and see their symbolic and archetypal content, we must acknowledge that something went wrong at that point in human evolution. Riane Eisler, in her best–selling study The Chalice and the Blade (1995) called it the truncation of civilization. It was the unwritten historical vow of many to deny their humanity and follow the course of atrocious violence that began with the slaughtering of peaceful and nature–abiding cultures by the new arrogant patriarchal hordes and their violent, jealous and blood–thirsty God Yahweh, and psychologically a turn from permissive- See, for example, Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces (1973), Occidental 153 Mythology (1973/1991), and The Power of Myth (1988). The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 253 ness to moralistic repression. Wilhelm Reich called it the irruption of com- pulsory sex–morality , whereas Campbell qualifies it as ‘the power impulse 154 [being] the fundamental impulse in European history [that] got into our religious traditions.’ 155 As Reich and other psychoanalysts clearly showed, this power obses- sion, that lasts until today in our Western culture, was from the start a sort of cultural cancer as the result of the denial of nature and man’s arrogant claim to improve creation and make it better, thereby destroying it. And that is exactly what I am saying earlier in this book, it is by re- pressing primary power and breeding depression that the thirst for power was taking immense dimensions in our culture, until this day. It was the denial of primary power that was at the origin of this cultural perversion. Joseph Campbell observed that the gravity of this historical shift was so deep and lasting that even the mythological and archetypical symbolism changed with it: Joseph Campbell The new age of the Sun God has dawned, and there is to fol- low an extremely interesting, mythologically confusing devel- opment known as solarization, whereby the entire symbolic system of the earlier age is to be reversed, with the moon and the lunar bull assigned to the mythic sphere of the female, and the lion, the solar principle, to the male.’ 156 It was the real beginning of the apocalypse, for all that came later and that we face today as facts of life are but results and consequences of the profound shift that took place at this time. It was the shift from matri- See Wilhelm Reich, The Irruption of Compulsive Sex–Morality, (1971). 154 See Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth (1988), p. 248. 155 Joseph Campbell, Occidental Mythology (1973/1991), p. 75. 156 | Chapter Four 254 archy to patriarch or, in new terminology, the shift from a partnership 157 culture to a dominator culture. Joseph Campbell acknowledges the dom- inance of the patriarchal gods since then in our Western cultural par- adigm, but he considers the goddess as the counterplayer in the collective unconscious and thus assigns her at least a shadow role. This shadow 158 role of the Goddess in Christianity is symbolized by the Holy Virgin, and it is sexually fantasized about as a secret wish to defile, debauch and rape virgins. In fact, how can a deity that originally stood for fertility be 159 - come an eternal virgin? When we study Greek mythology, we see that the original mother goddess was Demeter, while the Church’s virgin cult suggests that her daughter Persephone, a girl abducted by Hades, god of the un- derworld, became the new, castrated, Virgin Mother. And Hades rep 160 - resents the psychologically and socially rejected sexual longing for virgins, for little girls, that became suppressed in our personal and collective un- derworld, the unconscious. We can thus see that the virgin cult is a direct consequence of patri- archy and already well present in the Hellenistic and Roman cultures, The great majority of authors before the new perspective brought up by Riane Eisler 157 were founding their terminology on Bachofen’s study about Das Mutterrecht (The Matrilin- eal Order) that was first published as early as in the 1920s and similar studies by Bronis- law Malinowski and Wilhelm Reich in the 1930s. All these authors spoke from a shift of matriarchy to patriarchy. In Occidental Mythology (1973/1991), p. 70, Joseph Campbell remarks: 158 I am taking pains in this work to place considerable stress upon the world age and symbolic order of the goddess; for the findings both of anthropology and of arche- ology now attest not only to a contrast between the mythic and social systems of the goddess and the later gods, but also to the fact that in our own European culture that of the gods overlies and occludes that of the goddess – which is nevertheless effective as a counterplayer, so to say, in the unconscious of the civilization as a whole. See R.E.L. Masters, Forbidden Sexual Behavior and Morality (1951), p. 387 who observes: 159 It is ironic that where the desire to defile, humiliate or otherwise sadistically abuse children is concerned, it is so often the very notion of the child’s purity and inno- cence that leads to the violation. In Greek mythology, Persephone, daughter of the earth goddess Demeter became the 160 queen of the underworld after her abduction by Hades. The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 255 and not an invention of the Christians. The female, to become accept 161 - able in an entirely man–dominated world, had to be deprived of her own desire, castrated, relegated to the role of the obedient little girl. Without desire herself, the girl–female became undesirable as an unconscious reflex of the superego’s copulation prohibition. She was no more desired as a child to be lovingly procreated by her parents, but her birth was largely considered an accident; in many cases a man who procreated only girls or too many girls was considered weak in Antiquity and even through the Renaissance. Hence, the undesirable girl–female became a sexual taboo; for the unconscious, in fact, there is no difference between the desire of a couple to have a child and the sexual desire for copulation with a child. In French, this is more obvious than in English. Je désire un enfant both means ‘I wish to have a child (to be born)’ and ‘I desire this child (sexually)’. This linguistic particularity in French language reflects the fact that for the unconscious there is no difference between the desire to have a child born as a companion for a couple, on one hand, and the desire to have a child as a companion for bed, on the other. Both is desire pro creation, both is sex- ual desire in its larger cultural sense. What I am saying is that with the psychological castration of the fe- male and the moralistic prohibition of her being desirable sexually, hu- man sexuality became forever damaged, and perverted into a voyeuristic cult that hypertrophies the visual and neglects the tactile: the psychologi- cal roots of pornography are to be found in the taboo to touch a female child sexually. (While she still could be looked at sexually). The more sex- uality with female children became tabooed, the more the sexual female child became a haunting sex obsession for males, and led to the criminal def- As I show in The Idiot Guide to Love (2010), it was in the Victorian Era that the virgin 161 cult became a real sexual obsession or mania, a cult for well–to–do men to rape and defile young girls, when those were available, for example, in the worker classes of the poor quarters in industrialized London and other major cities of that time of the early Industrial Revolution. | Chapter Four 256 i n i t i o n o f r a p e , o r i g i n a l l y a p r o p e r t y offense. 162 Rape originally meant theft, and this can be well shown in French, where the word for theft is vol and for rape viol. In Antiquity, to possess a female child sexually meant in most cases to abduct her, a fact that is well established in Greek mythology in the story of Hades abducting Persephone for enjoying and possessing her sexually. In ancient patriarchy, the rape of a little girl was an offense against her father, a kind of property damage that could be repaired by paying an indemnity to the father, but not a crime against the person of the child. 163 From the Church’s modified goddess doctrine, its virgin cult becomes easily understandable. While the god–mother is a very old idea and exist- ed long before Christianity, this god–mother, for the Christians, had to be a virgin, and even a Holy Virgin. 164 Behold, the doctrine of Immaculate Conception was only valid for the conception of the Son of God. All other children were born in sin, from ordinary, non–virgin mothers. I can’t think of a greater perversion and dis- tortion of nature because this mental construct means in fact that nature is wrong and faulty and that the very denial of nature is right and holy. And yet, if the Church had really been consequent in their view, they would have needed to sanctify man–girl love as the ultimate modification or cul- turalization of nature. The interesting pointe of this reasoning is that the Church’s dogma, seen from this perspective, makes sense culturally. In addition, it would have helped men to integrate their tender love for the small female, a love every sensitive and cultured man knows to appreciate, instead of disintegrating See, Florence Rush, The Best Kept Secret (1980), and Riane Eisler, The Chalice and The 162 Blade (1995). Id. 163 Joseph Campbell writes in The Power of Myth (1988), p. 217: 164 The virgin birth comes into Christianity by way of the Greek tradition. When you read the four gospels, for example, the only one in which the virgin birth appears is the Gospel According to Luke, and Luke was a Greek. The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 257 this tender love and rendering it a shadow experience only to be experi- enced through the rape, abduction and sometimes even murder of little girls. The Church could have codified love of men for little women in its non–violent and respectful dimension in a way that is socially useful, and even biologically logical. This would have had a peace–inducing effect on human sexuality and would have prevented widespread sexual crime against little girls. As in every yang, there is a small amount of yin, visually represented by the yin–yang symbol, in the large strong male there is a small weak female that the male can unconsciously project upon little girls. And if the Church had considered that it is important socially to integrate desires so as to avoid violence, she could have declared girllove a socially viable and acceptable sexual and cultural phenomenon. If the Church had integrated the small female as a desirable love ob- ject, the consequences would have been positive. We would not face such terrible amounts of female children raped, abducted and killed every month in many countries that follow the patriarchal dominator par- adigm. And we would not have had such a raise of homosexuality in our culture because homosexuality in my view is the result of an unconscious blinding out of the desire for small females. Thus, the Church, by the same token, would not have had to invest so much energy for fighting homosexuality during several centuries in its existence. The large fallback into paganism today is the result of this denial of responsibility of the Church to integrate human sexual desire in all its forms. And by doing so the Church missed the sense of the Grail. 165 The same can be projected for boylove, represented in the Church as the love of the priest for the altar boy, and the beautiful Sapphic love of adult females for little girls. In older documentations of the Church’s an- nals, the love of the priest for his altar boys was never questioned. The priest had to renounce females as a matter of religious dogma, but that never implied that priests had to live like eunuchs. Metaphorically, we may say that the undesirable little goddess was not less undesirable for the According to Joseph Campbell, the grail symbolizes the respect not of abstract rules 165 and regulations (sexual or other ones) but respect of nature, of creation. | Chapter Four 258 priest, but practically replaced by a desirable, and available, little god represented by the virgin altar boy. Only with the much more encompass- ing sex repression in modern times, and the fascist business of child pro- tection could it happen that all adult–child sexual relations became a matter of social disapproval, even within the Church. Many tragedies were the result. Under the original paradigm, the Church could well have promoted peaceful and respectful man–boy love relations as a social ne- cessity for integrating homosexual pedophilia. The priest as an idealized figure of virtuous conduct could have served as example of a responsible and resourceful boylover. Boylove is not fundamentally different from Girllove in that a small boy has predominantly more feminine than masculine characteristics. But the hot melting sensations experienced by a sensitive man toward a tender, smart and loving little boy was to be rejected by patriarchy as these nat- ural feelings, as a matter of religious correctness, had to be bulk–repressed together with all that even slightly reminded female power. The Baby- lonic Epic of Creation amply demonstrates this fact: Joseph Campbell [It is] a forthright patriarchal document, where the female principle is devaluated, together with its point of view, and, as always happens when a power of nature and the psyche is ex- cluded from its place, it has turned into its negative, as a de- moness, dangerous and fierce. And we are going to find, throughout the following history of the orthodox patriarchal systems of the West, that the power of this goddess–mother of the world, whom we have here seen defamed, abused, insulted, and overthrown by her sons, is to remain as an ever–present threat to their castle of reason, which is founded upon a soil that they consider to be dead but is actually alive, breathing, and threatening to shift. 166 On the other hand, Campbell reports in Oriental Mythology that in most non–Western cultures the very opposite paradigm was being in See Joseph Campbell, Occidental Mythology (1973), p. 86. 166 The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 259 place, isolating Christian life–denial as something unique and atrociously perverse in human evolution: Joseph Campbell The dreamlike spell of this contemplative, metaphysically ori- ented tradition, where light and darkness dance together in a world–creating cosmic shadow play, carries into modern times an image that is of incalculable age. In its primitive form it is widely known among the jungle villages of the broad equator- ial zone that extends from Africa eastward, through India, Southeast Asia, and Oceania, to Brazil, where the basic myth is of a dreamlike age of the beginning, when there was neither death nor birth, which, however, terminated when a murder was committed. 167 The synthesis is to be found in what the Taoists called The Tao and that Campbell calls ‘the perfume, the flowering and fulfillment of human life, not a supernatural virtue imposed upon it.’ And like the Taoists, Campbell says 168 that ‘heaven and hell are within us, and all the gods are within us.’ Campbell 169 makes his point clearly by telling us to overcome the schizoid split so deeply rooted in the patriarchal shift that occurred five thousands years ago and reminds the myth of the Grail as a syncretic doctrine of love allowed to grow beyond all borders: Joseph Campbell The Grail becomes symbolic of an authentic life that is lived in terms of its own volition, in terms of its own impulse sys- tem, that carries itself between the pairs of opposites of good and evil, light and dark. 170 And Campbell emphasizes that love ‘is not expressing itself in terms of the socially approved manners of life because it has nothing to do with the social order.’ 171 Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God (1962), p. 4. 167 See Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth (1988), p. 245. 168 Id., p. 46. 169 Id., p. 245. 170 Id., p. 254. 171 | Chapter Four 260 Even more clearly, Thomas Moore, in his book Care of the Soul states that ‘[m]oralism is one of the most effective shields against the soul, protecting us from its intricacy’. Thomas Moore pursues: 172 Thomas Moore The soul’s complex means of self–expression is an aspect of its depth and subtlety. When we feel something soulfully, it is sometimes difficult to express that feeling clearly. At a loss of words, we turn to stories and images. Nicholas of Cusa con- cluded that we often have no alternative but to live with enig- matic images. Since soul is more concerned with relatedness than intellectual understanding, the knowledge that comes from soul's intimacy with experience is more difficult to articu- late than the kind of analysis that can be done at a distance. Soul is always in process, having, as Heraclitus says, its own principle of movement; so it is difficult to pin down with defin- ition or a fixed meaning. When spirituality loses contact with soul and these values, it can become rigid, simplistic, moralis- tic, and authoritarian – qualities that betray a loss of soul. 173 Reich stated this fact in similar terms in his book Children of the Future (1950): Wilhelm Reich Moralism only increases the pressure of crime and guilt, and never gets at or can get at the roots of the problem. 174 Finally, I wish to address that endlessly boring and senseless control paradigm of life–denying society that has brought about the split be- tween so–called erós–inspired and agapé–inspired love. Reich appears to anticipate Riane Eisler’s research for almost a century: Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul (1994), p. 17. 172 Id., pp. 239, 240. 173 Wilhelm Reich, Children of the Future (1950), p. 44. 174 The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 261 Wilhelm Reich The splitting of sexuality into debased sensuality and transfig- ured love, which generates entire systems of philosophy on the problem of sexuality and eroticism is nothing more than an ex- pression of the dominant position of the man and, in addition, a consequence of the efforts of distinguished hypocrites to set themselves apart from the masses by adopting a special morali- ty. 175 The moralists, however, only have eyes for what occasionally, in their opinions, confirms their theory. They do not see and do not even want to see that their doctrines do not apply to the mass of young people, and they duck responsibility for what will happen in the future if people follow their teachings. 176 Reich explains something very important for our quest to reunite with nature’s wisdom and overcome our socially programmed and cul- turally sanctified alienation, our split existence; it is the fact that when the emotional nature of humans is not bent and has not been thwarted early and life, we are naturally sane, both emotionally and sexually. To say it crudely, men and women who are sane and natural won’t abduct, rape and murder children because of lust for child sex; hence, moralism’s reasoning about the ‘impossible human’ is essentially a per- ception error, and so are our sex laws and the whole body of behavior rules that more or less implicitly assume that when people are unob- served, and let free, they will indulge in perverse acts of all kinds and jeopardize the friendly togetherness of the community. Wilhelm Reich Sexual responsibility is automatically present in a healthy, satis- fying sexual life. 177 It is this dependence on parental care and authority which the Church immediately enters the fray to defend, equipped with all the machinery of stultification and platitudes about an avenging God, his eternal will, and his wise foresight in its at- Id., p. 204. 175 Id., p. 197. 176 Id., p. 208. 177 | Chapter Four 262 tempt to translocate marriage and family to divine regions far removed from the real world. 178 Reich’s position is clearly for a free emotional and sexual life of chil- dren as a conditio sine qua non for overcoming the life–denying patriarchal pest: Wilhelm Reich The means which such parental homes use to bring their chil- dren to heel consist essentially of sexually intimidating and crippling them and making them afraid of their sexual desires, thoughts, and deeds. 179 When the Tao was lost, Lao–tzu wrote in the Tao Te Ching, the schizoid spirit of dualism began to build images of ideal substance. Instead of recognizing substance as eternal change, expressed in the yin–yang al- ternation of ever–changing evolution, the schizoid thinkers began to split the world into what they called the miserable state of the world, on one hand, and the ideal paradise–like state of heavenly existence, on the other. Despising the origin of their very existence, that is mother earth or Gaia, they began to despise and fear the essence of earth, the sparkling spirit of abundant creation, naming it serpent or devil. Having condemned the source of their bliss, the new inhabitants of a split world were making for the ground of their profound unhappiness and paranoia. Instead of striving for harmony and accepting all–that–is, they trans- formed in their madness peaceful togetherness into innumerable wars that they proudly proclaim as war–of–the–sexes, war–for–survival, war– against–evil, war–against–perversion, war–against–drugs, war–against–pedophilia, and so forth. The result is a world full of strife, war, destruction and a perverse rat–race for material gain and dominance. This new, and even larger, international dominator culture is currently spreading all over the Id., pp. 214, 215. 178 Id., p. 215. 179 The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 263 world and our modern global consumer culture is its latest, and most ap- palling, offspring. Taoism, by contrast, teaches that the seeker of truth does not will to consume or dominate the object of his love. The lover of the original state of existence who studies the Tao, the spontaneous principle of cre- ation, is a lover of small children as they represent the original inhabi- tants of the non–split world. This was recognized in olden times all over the world, but has been forgotten and is today carefully veiled behind the lies of violent moralism. This is however not a new phenomenon, as the same, only regionally more limited, was occurring when China became a feudal state. Lao–tzu then retired into the mountains and wrote in the Tao Te Ching: The more laws and restrictions there are, The poorer people become. The more rules and regulations, The more thieves and robbers. The wise does not discriminate between the sexes, recognizing that yin, the female principle, was first in creation and is more encompassing than yang, the male principle. That is why the wise man who is inspired by the Tao will celebrate and worship little girls as protector–goddesses of his universe. He will not nourish an exclusive preference for one of the sexes because he knows that in relating only to yin, his yang force will over- flow and damage his inner yin, and that by relating only to yang, his yin force will overflow and damage his inner yang. As a result of this fact, and because of his self–knowledge, the sage does not reject anything; he is not influenced by the split–paradigm that says ‘There are adults, and there are children’, as if talking about two different races. Knowing that all things are nourished by the Tao of spontaneous creation and change, the wistful lover recognizes the values of care, love and parenthood in other adults; he does not attack the fami- ly order nor the order of the state. The wistful lover does not reject the world, nor does he need to make for an ideal or paradise–like state of | Chapter Four 264 happiness. He is happy by accepting all–that–is, and the world as it is, by not trying to do creation better than the Tao. We have created total confusion in our relationships, and put the love principle upside–down, demonized what is naturally beautiful and enrich- ing and put up false values that render us shallow and mean, and full of suspicion and fear. To justify what we see is producing still more confu- sion and destruction, and in order to veil our millenary stupidity, we blame nature and human nature. While it is so obvious that it’s the per- version of nature and human nature that has created the mess and brings about the destruction, but not this nature herself, we go on affirming that nature was wrong and not to be trusted and our so–called scientific mind could correct the errors in inherent in nature. The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 265 The Murder Culture No murder can happen without being preceded by a murder inside of us way before we set out to kill in the first place. The very desire to kill comes about through the schizoid split created by killing something with- in ourselves. Our past millennia of collective murder and genocide were preceded by the killing of one of our internal opposites and thus upset- ting the natural balance of yin and yang within us: by condemning and tightly regulating sexual pleasure or certain forms of it, by achieving to inter- fere with and repress the natural emotional flow in the lives of our chil- dren, we have distorted the natural order, and turned upside–down the subtle energy flow, not only in the human being but, as all is connected, also in the stratosphere of the earth, the planetary energies within our galaxy and the intergalactic energy balance within the whole of the cos- mos. And we had no right doing so because the bodies of our children are not our bodies, as we do not own our bodies. The human body as the whole of life cannot be owned. Lao–Tzu said the human body is ‘the eternal adaptability of heaven.’ Other philosophers said that the universe or mother earth lends us a body that we have to give back when we go back to the subtle realms of existence. In fact, even the dullest of the dull must admit that we cannot take our bodies into any afterlife. Minutes after our spirit has left our body, this body begins to decay and in a few days it is but a peace of rot- ten flesh that is virtually eaten up by a multitude of birds, insects, worms, beetles and other animals and plants that mother earth sends out to em- brace back in her substance what she has so generously granted us as a vehicle for our spiritual advancement. Life is created by pleasure and natural death equally is pleasure as it opens an illuminated path into a subtle vibrational existence. Killing natur- al attraction was the foremost tool of dominator culture to get hold of humans and to manipulate and control them into the literal essence of their flesh and their bones. By the same token and with the same goal, | Chapter Four 266 dominator culture repressed the truth about the cyclic nature of birth– and–death, and invented the myth of a linear one–time life that ended in death as ultimate shock and destruction. The three dominator religions have coincided in suppressing the teaching of natural reincarnation that is an essential element of perennial philosophy. There is a new culture now raising especially in highly civilized soci- eties that refuses to stay with analyzing and blaming the terrible state of affairs we are in, and instead practices a new way of living. While these movements are very diverse, what they have in common is that they at- tempt to become germs or living cells of what could be realized on a larger scale within a new human, and truly humane, society and culture. While communities were existing already in the 1960s, they were over- ruled by a new wave of fascism from about the 1980s, but the basic idea is familiar with all those who practice one or the other alternative life- style. Young people today who subscribe to what could be called a love cul- ture seem to be inspired by a deep quest for innocence. They tend to ac- cept and understand the spiritual significance of matriarchy and respect what they call the Gaia principle, a deep veneration of Mother Earth. They are often involved in professions that either involve art, drama, dance and music, or the professions that deal with natural healing, body work, healthy diet and integral living, or else they are unconventional psychia- trists or psychoanalysts, astrologers or numerologists as well as those who engage in one or the other spiritual path such as Yoga or Zen. But there are also people from other professions who individually join these circles, temporarily or permanently. This brings me to explain more in detail what I exactly mean when I am talking about the spiritual significance of matriarchy. In Occidental Mythology, Joseph Campbell observes: Joseph Campbell In the older mother myths and rites the light and darker as- pects of the mixed thing that is life had been honored equally and together, whereas in the later, male–oriented, patriarchal The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 267 myths, all that is good and noble was attributed to the new, heroic master gods, leaving to the native nature powers the character only of darkness – to which, also, a negative moral judgment now was added. For, as a great body of evidence shows, the social as well as mythic orders of the two contrast- ing ways of life were opposed. Where the goddess had been venerated as the giver and supporter of life as well as con- sumer of the dead, women as her representatives had been accorded a paramount position in society as well as in cult. Such an order of female–dominated social and cultic custom is termed, in a broad and general way, the order of Mother Right. And opposed to such, without quarter, is the order of the Patriarchy, with an ardor of righteous eloquence and a fury of fire and sword. 180 In simple words, whenever we face a life paradigm that does away with the changeability of life and thereby reduces the concept of living to a monistic, monolithic principle, we are facing not human saneness, but insanity at its peak, and the result, invariably, is violence. All the elo- quence of Biblical preachers cannot betray the truth seeker’s intuition of what is naturally sane, and the more missionaries preach and exhort, the more violent, the more dangerous, the more genocidal they are. Human colonial history has given abundant factual proof for that sad psychologi- cal reality. Ours is undoubtedly a murder culture because those who founded it were themselves based upon murder, the rape and extinction of their sur- rounding out–groups which was, at that time of much more limited pop- ulation compared to today, already a mass–murder to be qualified as geno- cide. I do not know on which mountaintop today’s conservatives gather to acknowledge that their worldview if founded on goodness or were inducing goodness in people? What goodness, the hell, comes from a worldview in which only the in–group enjoys respect and where everybody else, includ- ing their children, is subjected to torture, rape, murder and genocide? It is here where the spiritual significance of matriarchy comes in as a regu- latory principle. Joseph Campbell affirms: Joseph Campbell, Occidental Mythology (1973), pp. 21, 22. 180 | Chapter Four 268 Joseph Campbell I am taking pains in this work to place considerable stress upon the world age and symbolic order of the goddess; for the find- ings both of anthropology and of archeology now attest not only to a contrast between the mythic and social systems of the goddess and the later gods, but also to the fact that in our own European culture that of the gods overlies and occludes that of the goddess – which is nevertheless effective as a counterplayer, so to say, in the unconscious of the civilization as a whole. 181 What has the female become under patriarchy? A virgin to be defiled, raped, abducted and killed, on the subconscious level, and a daughter of good breed, the obedient slave–girl, at the apparent or outside level, the princess to be married off for material riches paid to the father. An invest- ment at best, when older, a household item. When old, a nuisance. Patriarchy instituted correction homes for the young, prisons for the free thinkers and retirement homes for the elder. All those who fall out- side the in–group, which is the 20–40 majority, have to be taught that sex is a shame, and has to be repressed. They are deprived of it as a matter of social duty, just as prisoners are. That is the respect patriarchy has in front of the child and old age. The rest is lip service and sentimentalism. The reality of life speaks in facts, not in cathedral speeches. An old female, once the person of highest regard and social status in matriarchy, under patriarchy has become a double form of plague, the plague to be a female and the plague to be old and useless within the greed machinery of patriarchal making. Id., p. 70. 181 The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 269 The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy The spiritual laws of matriarchy are the counterplayer in the collective subconscious that Campbell intuits, not the imaginative embodiment of the female in patriarchal minds because it will be debased until the, probably catastrophic, end of patriarchy! But patriarchy cannot alter cosmic laws and this, and not human wit, is what I am talking about here. Matriarchy is based upon a whole range of laws regulating the rela- tionship between the human realm and the animal and plant realms. Pa- triarchy, by contrast, is based on the violation of these spiritual laws. It cannot last because it dethrones nature and, by doing so, debases creation itself. It is blasphemic, in last resort. And patriarchy’s monotheism was born on the blood–soaked linen of raped and massacred nations and populations that have been sacrificed for Yahweh’s cool walk in the garden. Thomas Moore has spent more than a decade in monastic seclusion as a Catholic monk and he finally quit religious life with all its restric- tions, only to discover that life within the busy world of modern in- ternational society can guard and purport the same soul values and the same sensitive and lucidly intelligent approach to life he once discovered and implemented by spending long years in monasteries. In his best- selling book Care of the Soul, Moore writes: Thomas Moore Moralism is one of the most effective shields against the soul, protecting us from its intricacy. (…) I would go even further. As we get to know the soul and fearlessly consider its oddities and the many different ways it shows itself among individuals, we may develop a taste for the perverse. We may come to appre- ciate its quirks and deviances. Indeed, we may eventually come to realize that individuality is born in the eccentricities and unexpected shadow tendencies of the soul, more so than in normality and conformity. 182 Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul (1994), p. 17. 182 | Chapter Four 270 Caring for our soul, being connected to all–that–is, implies to pay attention to detail – all detail in life. Moralism, in last resort, is a form of shallowness, an ingrained laziness to deal with all the stuff that makes daily life, including our oddities and difficult–to–admit perversities. Moralism is the banner of patriarchy and for good reason it never had a stand in matriarchal cultures. Whoever is really soulful, and spiritual, pays attention to all–that–is and does not make up a phraseology of ought–to’s that fills his mind in order to put his soul at rest, so that it does not be- come too virulent and inquisitive. The highest spiritual law is total attention. The moralist does not deal with detail. He haughtily rushes over all detail in life, declaring that ‘little daily matters’ did not count for a ‘spiritual’ man, a man of word, of hon- or, of principles, a man whose life was based upon values. In reality, there are no little daily matters as all matters, as all is important for the one who pays attention to detail. Love is detail. For the truly spiritual person, there is no shame connected to talking about his perverse sides, fantasies, long- ings or deeds. He knows that the energy can flow in one direction and at times in the other direction, that energy can retrograde and pent–up and that this brings about perverse reactions, desires and needs. But to recog- nize this means to be free of it. To admit perversity means to deal with it, while moralism entangles one who arrogantly wipes off the idea of admitting perverse desires, making him a slave of his repressed perversions. That is why non–judg- mental, permissive cultures, which are those that are more matriarchal in their base setup, can deal with human perversity, and constructively so, while human history shows with much evidence that patriarchal moral- ism brings about emotional stuckness that puts on stage a clean reality, while behind the stage all the devils are playing hide–and–seek. Moore explains: Thomas Moore Care of the soul is interested in the not–so–normal, the way that soul makes itself felt most clearly in the unusual expres- sions of a life, even and maybe especially in the problematic The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 271 ones. (…) Sometimes deviation from the usual is a special reve- lation of truth. In alchemy this was referred to as the opus contra naturam, an effect contrary to nature. We might see the same kind of artful unnatural expression within our own lives. When normality explodes or breaks out into craziness or shadow, we might look closely, before running for cover and before at- tempting to restore familiar order, at the potential meaningful- ness of the event. If we are going to be curious about the soul, we may need to explore its deviations, its perverse tendency to contradict expectations. And as a corollary, we might be suspi- cious of normality. A facade or normality can hide a wealth of deviance, and besides, it is fairly easy to recognize soullessness in the standardizing of experience. 183 The spiritual laws of matriarchy are of course no written laws. They are no worldly statutes or regulations. They are truths valid on a cosmic level, and on a soul level. But they are observable in the lives of those who live in close relation with nature: tribal peoples who maintain a liv- ing spiritual contact with all natural forces through their shamans, and their long–standing traditions of dialogue with nature’s wistful energies. When I talk about the spiritual laws of matriarchy, I do not mean gener- al spiritual laws such as the law of attraction, the law of prosperity, the law of harmony, and others. I am rather talking about patterns of living, directly observable in the lifestyle of wistful peoples and that are no secret knowledge, but to be verified by any serious researcher on shamanism. For there is no occult hermetic tradition to be studied, as these patterns are directly applied, by tribal peoples, in their daily life and relationships. After several years of research on shamanism, I I came to summarize these spiritual patterns of living. The Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living are the result of an observation of tribal peoples and tribal lifestyle, to be applied for a partnership oriented and Id., p. 18. 183 | Chapter Four 272 systemically as well as emotionally intelligent lifestyle and society. I 184 185 found that all tribal populations who apply these eight patterns in their lives and societies swing in accord with the movement of life, are healthy, hap- py, peaceful and productive. I found the Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living to be valid as a nature–loving lifestyle that concords with universal laws and that is dynamically pro–life, favoring mental, emosexual and economic health, happiness and peaceful togetherness. Regarding systems theory and the transformation of a traditionally mechanistic sci 184 - ence into a systemically intelligent society, see for example, Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life (1997) and The Hidden Connections (2002). See, for example, Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence (1995). 185 The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 273 Bull and Serpent The spiritual significance of matriarchy is not just a matter of mythology, of energies, of symbols. Its meaning goes beyond the mythic bond of humans with nature and all the forces that have their imprint upon us and the whole of the universe. The matriarchal laws have a di- rect impact upon our soul. I dare to say that if the soul itself obeys to certain laws, then to these matriarchal laws or patterns that I was talking about in the previous chapter. Our soul is at odds with the normalcy concept that is at the basis of patriarchal laws and their underlying morality code. As Moore expresses it: Thomas Moore Care of the soul sees another reality altogether. It appreciates the mystery of human suffering and does not offer the illusion of a problem–free life. It sees every fall into ignorance and confusion as an opportunity to discover that the beast residing at the center of the labyrinth is also an angel. The uniqueness of a person is made up of the insane and the twisted as much as it is of the rational and the normal. To approach this para- doxical point of tension where adjustment and abnormality meet is to move closer to the realization of our mystery–filled, star–born nature. 186 The soul really follows the self–regulation pattern of living; it cannot be forced to adopt other than its own rules, and its intelligence is not ratio- nal, but the emotional intelligence of the heart. The soul’s major longing is balance, harmony, wholeness, and its major effort is the one of healing fragmentation. Carl Jung writes in Religious and Psychological Problem of Alchemy: Carl Gustav Jung But the right way to wholeness is made up, unfortunately, of fateful detours and wrong turnings. It is a longissima via, not Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul (1994), p. 20. 186 | Chapter Four 274 straight but snakelike, a path that unites the opposites, in the manner of the guiding caduceus, and whose labyrinthine twists and turns are not lacking in terrors. It is on this longis- sima via that we meet with those experiences which are said to be inaccessible. 187 The soul and its superior knowledge about life and happiness is in- deed inaccessible if we think life, instead of living life, applying only our left brain hemisphere and considering only logical thought as being rele- vant for understanding life and living processes. It can be said that this kind of lifestyle, that today is widely adopted, is lacking shadow, render- ing life as a one–dimensional drawing, a solar worldview in the words of Joseph Campbell, where shadows are lighted away by the sun rays of the purely rational mind. Thomas Moore explains: Thomas Moore A neurotic narcissism won’t allow the time needed to stop, reflect, and see the many emotions, memories, wishes, fan- tasies, desires, and fears that make up the materials of the soul. As a result, the narcissistic person becomes fixed on a single idea of who he is, and other possibilities are automatically rejected. 188 For the narcissist, all in life is about statistics. Love is expressed in percentages and probabilities. But what is the daily life taste of it? Never known, never seen. The narcissist talks about principles, rules and facts: he suggests love could be measured, quantified and scientifically demon- strated. Nay, such a thing cannot be, otherwise it would not be love, but the shallow soup that today is yelled from all megaphones of in- ternational consumer stupidity. Love me forever! The soul knows that love is not a concept and cannot endure according to the mind and will. It has its own life span, and it knows its own death. The narcissist flies in the air and cherishes lofty Apollonian ideas. But where is their Dionysus? The truth is encoded in that part of them, and Carl Gustav Jung, Religious and Psychological Problems of Alchemy (1993), p. 541. 187 Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul (1994), p. 67. 188 The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 275 carefully hidden from their public appearance. Care of the Soul, for most of us, means care for the Dionysian principle in us, the Sad King, as I called it. Narcissism is an inevitable by–product of patriarchy, and its etiology as wrong relating. Wrong relating to self. Wrong relating to others. It is built on the preclusion of the shadows of the soul – and thereby ignores its own shadow. Narcissists, therefore, are tragic figures. They are tragic in the sense that they run into the abyss without the slightest idea of what they are doing. Because they are not grounded and have their feet in the air, like the Fool in the Tarot. They are lunatics, because they have not integrated their own Luna, their Moon energy. They are the eternal Peter Pan’s of sunshine movies, and present themselves to the public smiling, broadly smiling, most of the time, but in haphazard moments you see their true face – while they themselves ignore it. Thomas Moore observes that narcissism, in our times, is a problem that by far surpasses the individual and has become a societal concern: Thomas Moore America has a great longing to be the New World of opportu- nity and a moral beacon for the world. It longs to fulfill these narcissistic images of itself. At the same time it is painful to realize the distance between the reality and that image. Ameri- ca’s narcissism is strong. It is paraded before the world. If we were to put the nation on the couch, we might discover that narcissism is its most obvious symptom. And yet that narcis- sism holds the promise that this all–important myth can find its way into life. In other words, America’s narcissism is its refined puer spirit of genuine new vision. The trick is to find a way to that water of transformation where hard self–absorption turns into loving dialogue with the world. 189 Narcissism is so destructive because it eternally believes in shortcuts, quick fixes and once–for–all solutions. The soul however, and evolution in general, proceeds in a spiraled movement, which is something like a cir- cled forward movement. Thomas Moore describes it in alchemical terms: Id., p. 62. 189 | Chapter Four 276 Thomas Moore All work on the soul takes the form of a circle, a rotatio. (…) I keep in mind the alchemical circulatio. The life of the soul, as the structure of dreams reveals, is a continual going over and over the material of life. 190 The spiraled movement is more holistic than the linear movement because it carries our base all along from here to there. That means we do not leave our origins, but remain firmly rooted in where we came from. These roots are essential for providing us with living energy. It’s a serpentine movement, the movement of a snake. However, our quick effi- ciency, our stress on immediacy, our lack of time, our focus on straight solutions prevent us from integrating, rooting, personal evolution in the soul. As a result, our progresses are merely peripheral and remain at the surface of the personality. All this, while it sounds commonplace, is the inevitable result of pa- triarchal morality because it circumvents the soul. To explain this on a mythological level, let me introduce another symbol, as important or even more important in world mythology than the bull: it’s the serpent. Ralph Metzner, in the introduction to his book Ayahuasca: Human Con- sciousness and the Spirits of Nature, observes: Ralph Metzner Not only among Amazonian shamans, but throughout the world, in Asia, the Mediterranean, Australia, serpent images are used to represent the basic life force and regarded as a source of knowledge – the wisdom of the serpent. The serpent image is seen often as a link between heaven and earth, and in this regard the snake is often found in association with other images of ascent. 191 Joseph Campbell reports two crucial turning points for the cosmic serpent in world mythology. The first occurs in the context of the Iron Age Hebrews of the first millennium B.C where the mythology became inverted, so as to represent the opposite to its origin, the second is to be Id., p. 13. 190 Ralph Metzner (Ed.), Ayahuasca (1999), p. 34. 191 The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 277 found in the creation myth where the serpent who had been revered in the Levant for at least seven thousand years before the composition of the Book of Genesis, plays the part of the villain. Yahweh, who replaces it in the role of the creator, ends up defeating the serpent of the cosmic sea, Leviathan. For Campbell, the second turning point occurs in Greek mythology where Zeus was initially represented as a serpent, but then, when the myths changed, Zeus became a serpent–killer. From that time, Zeus was depicted to secure the reign of the patriarchal gods of Mount Olympus by defeating Typhon, the enormous serpent– monster who is the child of the earth goddess Gaia and the incarnation of the forces of nature. 192 It is in accordance with this fundamental change in mythology that, as I mentioned earlier, the significance of the bull equally changed from a matriarchal to a patriarchal meaning, and the Hispanic tradition of bull fighting clearly reflects the perverted patriarchal tradition rather than, as some pretend, representing a matriarchal base structure in Hispanic machismo. While the female principle in the Babylonian epic of creation has been devalued, we can still find it associated with the serpent, the boa, the Great Mother, in the natural philosophy of most tribal peoples, as reflected by shamanism. The Ayahuasca reader by Ralph Metzner, already quoted, contains a range of reports contributed by people from all walks of life who have taken the traditional Ayahuasca brew in order to encounter the plant teachers or spirits of the plant. Two of them report visions of the cosmic serpent. Raoul Adamson entitled his experience Initiation into Ancient Lin- eage of Visionary Healers and writes: 193 Raoul Adamson I become aware of a morphic resonance between serpent and intestines: the form of the snake is more or less a long intesti- nal tract, with a head and a tail end; and conversely, our gut is See Jeremy Narby, The Cosmic Serpent (1999), p. 66, with further references. 192 Id., pp. 46–57. 193 | Chapter Four 278 serpentine, with its twists and turns and its peristaltic move- ment. So the serpent, winding its way through my intestinal tract was teaching my intestines how to be more powerful and effective – certainly a gut–level experience! 194 Ganesha, in her Vision of Sekhmet , reports: 195 Ganesha As I read about Sekhmet and assimilated my experience with her, the understanding that formed in my consciousness was that Sekhmet is a Great Mother Goddess, one that spans all time. With the sun disk at her head and the snake around it, she symbolizes the serpent power of the root chakra having risen to the crown. Thus, she encompasses both heaven and Earth, and demonstrates the way to unite the heaven and Earth of our own nature, Spirit and Form, through the awak- ening of the kundalini power in the muladhara chakra and its arising to the sahasrara chakra. 196 Raimundo D., in his The Great Serpentine Dance of Life , writes: 197 Raimundo D. The plumed serpent is masculine, involves outer impression and show of power; the unplumbed serpent is feminine, in- volving inner expression and statement of strength. (…) I ex- perienced my entire body being reprogrammed and re- arranged, even reconstituted at the deep cellular level. This resulted in an incredible feeling of openness, solidity, whole- ness and openness. 198 We can thus summarize that the association of the serpent as a ma- triarchal symbol for the Mother Goddess is not only a recurring theme of world mythology, but can be experienced, with the use of entheogens, as a spiritual vision that impacts directly on the soul and super–consciousness. As it can Id., p. 48. 194 Id., pp. 76–85. 195 Id., p. 83. 196 Id., pp. 129–131. 197 Id., p. 130. 198 The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 279 be argued that what is seen in psychedelic visions is but the content of the collective unconscious of humanity, there is truth in Campbell’s state- ment that the Goddess still today acts as a counterplayer to patriarchy, on the level of the unconscious, and this independently of personal beliefs or intellectual understanding of shamanism or nature religions. | Chapter Four 280 Points to Ponder ‣ In Chapter Four we became aware that the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy, and the correlating change in symbolism was not just a historical or psychohistori- cal event, but something that has affect- ed human consciousness as a whole. ‣ We learnt that on the level of both the individual and the collective uncon- scious, this change or transition that however deeply impacted upon wake consciousness, is rather secondary. Vi- sionary and psychedelic experiences, as well as experiences with hypnosis have given repeated evidence to the fact that the matriarchal symbolism is still deeply rooted in our subconscious mind and its pictorial vocabulary. ‣ These visions are not just visual effects that show the energetic impact that encountering cosmic spiritual entities has on those who go through such transformative experiences. In fact, the amazing and almost miraculous healing that most have experienced who encoun- tered mythic creatures in the trance state that is induced by en- theogens can only be explained when we assume a direct infusion of bioenergy from these sources – whatever the explanation one may give as to their origin. ‣ What I wished to demonstrate in this rather complex chapter was that the large rhetoric about the matriarchy–patriarchy dichotomy is but an intellectual problem, because on the soul or super–consciousness lev- el, such dichotomy simply does not exist. The patriarchal gods may have taken their place in our churches, but they were fortunately not able to penetrate in our hearts and the larger parts of our conscious- ness that are accessible for the spiritually awakened individual. Here, we have the whole of the Olympus, so to say, and not only the official part of it. And for everybody who has once entered that dimension, I do not need to mention the fact that the matriarchal symbolism is the only one that really stands out on that level of consciousness, while the patriarchal gods may well exist also on that level, but have a mi- nor importance. The psychological reason for this fact was clearly recognized by Joseph Campbell. He writes: The Spiritual Laws of Matriarchy | 281 Joseph Campbell [A]s all schools of psychology agree, the image of the mother and the female affects the psyche differently from that of the father and the male. Sentiments of identity are associated most immediately with the mother; those of dissociation, with the father. Hence, where the mother image preponderates, even the dualism of life and death dissolve in the rapture of her solace; the worlds of nature and the spirit are not separated; the plastic arts flourish eloquently of themselves, without need of discursive elucidation, allegory, or moral tag; and there pre- vails an implicit confidence in the spontaneity of nature, both in its negative, killing, sacrificial aspect (lion and double ax), and in its productive and reproductive (bull and tree). 199 Joseph Campbell, Occidental Mythology (1991), p. 70. 199 CHAPTER FIVE Processed Reality All of you will need to heal, decode, rescript and reprogram, so that fear is no longer a part of your psyche. – WENDY MUNRO, TRANSMISSIONS FROM SIRIUS Processed Reality | 283 Introduction We already have been asking in the first chapter what conditioning is and what it does when it impacts upon our human potential. Now, in this chapter I go much deeper, and ask if it is at all possible to enjoy reality unprocessed, as raw information that comes in through the senses, or if re- ality as we perceive it is already a processed one in the sense that it is distorted by our perception interface? Hence, when we want to find out about the subtle techniques of cultural conditioning, we better look first into its contrary and ask: what is that state that is not conditioned. This leads us automatically to the question what reality is. Is reality a matter of percep- tion? Or a matter of beliefs? How do our beliefs impact and imprint upon our perception? What makes us believe at all? Do we need to be- lieve anything? Or is making up beliefs perhaps an automatism of our brain? Is reality rational, irrational or meta–rational? Do we live in different realities or is there one single reality? Can we perceive reality in a pure, unprocessed state or is every reality we perceive a processed reality in the sense that our perception is conditioned by the feedback–loop of our memory surface? And can we clear our perception surface to a point to perceive reality, whatever it takes to get there, in a pure and unprocessed state? Is the universe a creation of our thoughts, or is it an abstract cre- ation? What about poetic reality? How is it possible that great poets and thinkers have intuited most of the findings that quantum physics now reveals to us? And once we have clarity about how perception works, and how easi- ly it is manipulated by the big commercial and political players, we may inquire into that latest slogan they have come up with some years ago, and that reads worldwide democracy. And we may ask: ‘What is that soup and what is the taste of it?’ What is worldwide democracy and in which ways does it infringe upon our perception of reality? And upon which myths is it built? These are some of the questions I try to ask and answer as good as I can in this | Chapter Five 284 chapter. By the way, those who see the solution of all problems in the propagation of what they call rational reality or logical reality are mistaken as they blind out the irrational, which is equally part of human nature. Our emotions have their own intelligence, and yet they are not rational when perceived only from the left side of the river, our deductive mind. We have a right brain hemisphere, and that functions pretty much on the irrational side most of the time, and through associative logic. We cannot perceive the totality of reality as long as we blind out a part of our human setup. We are totally aware when we are totally human. And we are totally inhuman when we are totally rational. The intelligence of na- ture is not rational, but meta–rational or holistic. Processed Reality | 285 Processing Reality This chapter on consciousness research questions the ontological validity of cultural, social or moral conditioning and throws us back to appre- hending our true soul values, both on an individual and a group level. Our first topic of inquiry is the question if the human mind is able to perceive the crude unprocessed reality as is – or if it inevitably needs to process it? With other words, can we eat the soup of life without putting salt in it, and without heating it up? Is it possible to perceive reality other than through the opaque filter of our conditioned mind? Can the mind be cleansed for better perception, or else altogether circumvented during the process of perception? Can perception be pure and undistorted in the sense of being direct and immediate? Before I try to give answers to these questions further down in Creating Reality, let us first see the mechanism of our mind when perceiving reali- ty; this implies the process of perception and also the question how the brain, as the long arm of our mind, handles the information which is received. It is today agreed upon among the majority of neurologists and con- sciousness explorers that the mind and the brain are both necessary in the process of perception. The mind is the larger framework and perceives the whole of reality, while the brain seems to be a functional unit of the mind, more involved with the actual information processing. Much is still open here, but one thing is sure: the mind and the brain are not, what was thought still some decades ago, one and the same thing. The mind can be imagined as the matrix, and the brain as the processing device. But we must not functionally confuse them as their roles in percep- tion are clearly set by nature, and this was formerly a terra incognita in sci- ence and came to be known only by modern neurology in combination with the insights we gained from mind–opening and consciousness trans- forming psychedelic experiences. The process of learning, if we want to understand it intelligently, can only be seen when we look at the totality of perception. Learning is the | Chapter Five 286 way we deal with what we perceive, it is a process of processing information and this information is collected by our brain through a rather compli- cated process that we call perception. Thus, when we care about the process of learning, the way we learn, we need to look at what perception is and how it works. Perception is a topic not very broadly discussed in modern science. This obvious neglect of scientific in–depth study into the holistic process of perception has various reasons. The main reason is the general focus of modern science upon information processing. There was a historic shift around the end of Antiquity that led to a trend away from direct percep- tion and toward information processing, archiving or mere information reproduction, that earlier in this book, I called Historical Turn Toward Stu- pidity. That is why today we have collectively forgotten about direct per- ception. Yet this knowledge has survived in shamanism and with spiritual healers in South America, Asia and Africa, and generally with native peoples. And it is part of a perennial spiritual tradition among sages in the East and the West. What, then, is direct perception? Direct perception is our natural and most intelligent mode of percep- tion. It is perception that circumvents most of the information processing circuits and therefore leaves the incoming signal as untouched and intact as possible. New research has fully corroborated the teachings of the old sages who said that learning has to be holistic and whole–brain in order to be truly effective. To look deeper into these facts, we cannot get around the disturbing insight that since about the scientific doctrine of Aristotle, and within Occidental culture, we have used our brains in the wrong way. You may laugh but I am serious when I say that there is another abuse you haven’t heard about yet: it’s brain abuse. And it’s a cultural thing. We as a culture have misused our brains, millions of brains in mil- lions of people. We do that by educating children in the wrong way, in a way to sys- tematically abuse of their brains, until they do it the way we other adults Processed Reality | 287 do it, by using only about four to eight per cent of their brain potential. Now, we hardly got time to sit around crying. I would say that there was never a better time for us, as individuals, as a group, as a nation, as hu- manity, to really see this fact as it is and to work on the reformation of cul- ture. To turn it upside down. So that the garbage falls out, and all the wrong beliefs. How to turn culture upside down? By studying it, deeply, thoroughly, with all our energy. This culture is in us, in our cells, in our brains, in our skin, in our stomachs. We cannot just vomit it out for being newborn as a tabula rasa. Metaphorically speaking, it’s not by throwing bombs in McDonald restaurants that you get free from the murder culture. It’s by accepting all the ingredients of this culture. Thus, by going to a good restaurant, eat- ing with good table manners, and selecting fresh food, by using the nap- kin and patiently, and lovingly, teaching your children to do the same, you reform and transform culture. It’s because you renew it by really absorbing it. What you do, instead, is to pay lip–service to it and then go to eat like a pig. And then, after a while of indulging in pighood, you wonder why your children become pigs. You think that when you let your children grow into a no–culture, you give them freedom and options, right? Not so. You give them violence, chaos and a no–option mindset. Your children can only grow in culture. And that culture is your culture. Tell me in which culture they should grow if not in yours? So, when I follow your logic, we both can only agree about this: your children will grow in no culture. You do not teach them your own culture because you think it’s a messy kind of thing, too violent, not really con- scious, manipulative. Yes, it is all that. But, you cannot turn the culture upside–down by rejecting it. You can only turn it around by ingesting it – and then, once you have also digested it, by overcoming it. When you know what culture is all about, you can choose another culture to live in. We can only wonder when we hear scientists say that generally we use only five to eight percent of our brain or creative resources. Why are | Chapter Five 288 we so terribly unproductive, so utterly ineffective in our creativity, in our performance, in our achievements? Despite this whole process called civi- lization, despite schools, colleges and universities, despite the printing press, Gutenberg and all the rest of it, we have remained in a truly primi- tive state of evolution regarding learning and understanding the learning process. The answer is simple. It’s because we live without culture. And this, in turn, is so because quite without reflecting about it, we have never real- ly accepted that culture into which we were born and that is ours. I am not really concerned with finding out about the causes or reasons for this tremendous waste of opportunity, but well with the possibilities to change this state of affairs on an individual human level. The world changes through multiple and repeated changes on an individual level. Once a sufficient number of individuals have done their quantum leap to a higher evolutionary vibration, there will be a major paradigm shift in the whole system that makes that group or collective consciousness, too, will reproduce this shift on the group, national or global level. This is how all true civilization comes about: all begins in the cell and then expands to bigger patterns. Nature is coded in patterns that are holistically related to each other and where the information of the whole is contained in every single cell of the pattern. The pattern structure is the model for the information the brain re- ceives and stores. New information is added–on to existing information. Without this kind of information routing, which is part of the brain’s mechanism of information processing, that in neurology is called preferred pathways, memory would not be possible. The better the brain can manage to associate new input with existing patterns of information, the faster the information storage will be, and thus the higher will be the memorization result. Our brain does this intake of information automatically, passively, without a need for us to set a decision about it. This fact is tremendously important for the understanding of the functioning of the brain. There is namely a positive side and a negative side about it. Positively, the passively Processed Reality | 289 organizing perception structure of the brain insures that we continuously receive and store information; we cannot shut down the brain. Even in coma or deep hypnosis we perceive and register all that goes on around us. All the information from the five, and I would correct, the six senses is perceived and stored in the subconscious memory surface that never sleeps, and that perhaps, at least in a condensed fashion, also survives death. So the apparently passive functioning of the brain is actually a vividly active process. The important point about it is that the organizer of the information is inside and not outside of the system. To give an example, let us have a look at two groups of children. The first group is raised per- missively so that they can pick up any information freely from their envi- ronment and grow, from the information they get, into what they are in- dividually destined for. The second group, however, is strictly regulated, protected and warded off from any unprocessed information. Which group, would you think, will be more intelligent and more creative, the first or the second one? Of course the first one. Simply because in their case the freely organizing system of their perception and the free flow of information, combined with high input will make their brains working on high gear from early age, whereas in the second group creative learning processes are for the most part impaired, blocked or even mutilated. In the first group the organizer of the information is inside, within the children, while in the second group it is outside, and in the tutelary adults around the children, their parents and teachers for the most part, that are putting up valves for the free flow of incoming information, filtering out the larger part of it. We can also put it that way: in the first group it is nature’s intelligence that cares for the children’s evolution, in the second case it is limited and rather shortsighted human willfulness. This simple ex- ample shows the high impact the early environment has on the develop- ment of our intelligence and our later use of the potential that we’ve got. In my opinion we all have got high or exceptional potential but only very few of us were exposed to the right environmental support and have, | Chapter Five 290 in addition, developed the necessary creative will to free themselves from the dangers of conditioning. And we need both those factors working in a positive sense if we are to fully develop our talents and creative powers. J. Krishnamurti, today recognized as one of humanity’s most impor- tant spiritual teachers, was as a child constantly beaten in school by a stu- pid and ignorant teacher. His childhood was all misery and solitude and he would probably have ended as the village idiot if the theosophists had not discovered the boy and taken him to England where he was educated under their patronage. Announced by seers as the New Messiahs, this boy was found, at age fourteen, at a beach in Bangalore, South India, neglected, almost tooth- less, malnourished and sad. Krishnamurti, as a little boy, rejected the knowledge he was supposed to assimilate. He rejected all of it, the whole of conditioning, societal, religious, moral or whatever. And because of this refusal he was treated with utter disrespect and violence, as so many children who, like him, prefer to remain in their original state of mind which is pure and unspoiled, the mind of a totally conscious direct observer. Krishnamurti learned by direct perception and therefore his learning was immediate, perfectly spontaneous and almost instantaneous: the whole–brain learning of a genius. Direct perception is the key to using our hidden potential in hitherto unforeseen ways that allow us to bring about unusual capacities that we know only from people who are either called yogis or geniuses. However, we are all gifted with the spark of the Divine and able to pass beyond the limitations of our conditioned mind. Processed Reality | 291 Pitfalls of Perception Edward de Bono was one of the first coaches and professional think tanks who, after thorough research into the functioning of the brain and human perception, found that human perception is faulty in the sense that its self–organizing structure is conditioned to ensure survival, and not to bring about the highest possible level of integrity in processing and storing the data that is coming in through the senses. When the brain receives new information, it has only two alternatives for storing that information away; it builds a new pattern or adds the data on to an existing pattern. The first alternative would ensure the highest level of preserving the integrity of the incoming information. The second alternative ultimately brings about a faulty perception interface, but it’s much faster to process for the brain, and it serves survival because it builds upon already established information pathways in the brain. The Memory Matrix When de Bono, in 1969, released his theory of passively organizing systems in one of his first books, The Mechanism of Mind (1969), scientists at first disregarded his research. When later Nobel prize winners con 200 - firmed it, and amazing new discoveries in neurology corroborated it, de Bono became well–known and his advice was sought after by some of the largest corporations in the world. The preferred–pathways theory, now presented even in popular sci- ence books, is the scientific formulation of de Bono’s early theory. Histor- ically, de Bono certainly was the first author to write about the negative side of this system whereas many neurologists, until this day, continue to recognize but the positive effects of it. The essential negative point in self–organizing systems is that the recognition of new patterns is condi- tioned upon the characteristics of already existing patterns. Edward de Bono, The Mechanism of Mind (1969). 200 | Chapter Five 292 Bono said in his book Serious Creativity (1996) that when we analyze data we can only pick out the idea we already have. That de Bono’s 201 insight is more than neurology is shown by the fact that Krishnamurti, Maharshi and many yogis teach us that only total awareness, not thought can help us understand the world intelligently. Thought or the rational mind is not able to recognize patterns; it can only process patterns that are already stored away in the memory surface. The conditioning of perception by thought and by past experience was one of the arguments Krishnamurti used to show how to overcome the limitations inherent in the thought process. Krishnamurti showed in his writings and talks that there is unlimited intelligence and awareness not in thought but in the realm beyond thought. In simple language, when we perceive reality, the reality we perceive never looks fresh and new, but as something already known; this is so be- cause the brain, as a matter of automatism, conditions the new informa- tion it receives upon what it already knows. Practically speaking, the pat- terns we perceive that can fit in existing patterns are automatically added–on to these existing patterns by the brain. When it occurs that a new patterns reveals to be so different that it cannot be added on to any existing pattern, the brain, instead of imme- diately building a new preferred pathway, will try to bend the new pattern so much that it becomes similar to an existing pattern. Practical example: when you see an UFO landing and some extra–terrestrials leaving it, you will look at this in amazement, but later, in hindsight, you will tend to argue ‘Oh yes, I guess it was just a normal airplane that I saw landing, and I was probably hallucinating altogether in that moment.’ Your brain added the new information on to already existing information instead of forming a new pattern in the memory surface. This is how the brain, and the process of thought, works, and how this system impacts upon percep- tion by actually per se distorting perception. Edward de Bono, Serious Creativity (1992). 201 Processed Reality | 293 The British neurologist Herbert James Campbell gave comprehensive answers. Campbell argues that our brain has developed this kind of faulty memory surface because it was protecting human survival – while by doing that it has brought about millions of deficient thinkers! Now, how can we avoid this automatism? Krishnamurti taught that it was by practicing total attention. We can be so alert that we are aware of the brain’s attempt to trick us out. A woman says: – I was once stolen money by a trickster. Today I saw a charm- ing young trickster and stage hypnotist. We were flirting a moment. Then, when I looked in his eyes, it came to my mind that he just wanted to steal me money. The new pattern was: A trickster – potential lover. The old pattern was: A trickster – thief. The new pattern did not fit in the memory sur- face. The pattern was: a trickster – thief. The new pattern a trickster – possible lover could not ‘erase’ the old pattern nor could it be added–on to it because of the contradiction thief–lover. What should we tell that lady regarding the old pattern? We saw that her brain could not erase the pattern automatically, but that some kind of input from herself was needed. I would have the following dialog with the client: – Please first question the validity of the old pattern! Was there not a logical fault in the old pattern as it was a generalization? A trickster who stole you money, yes or no? – Yes. – All tricksters steal money. Yes or no? – No. Through raising her consciousness by these simple questions she could indeed have erased the old pattern; however, this is only valid for the brain, for her intellect, not for her heart: her emotions could still ad- here to the old myth that all tricksters or stage hypnotists were thieves. So I tell her: | Chapter Five 294 – Please engage in a new love relation in order to disprove the validity of a single experience that was triggering a general belief. Through a new positive experience the belief you have stored away as a result of an earlier experience can be effec- tively erased. – Do you guarantee that? she asks. – There is no guarantee in life, regarding love, I reply. If you want a guarantee for love, you kill love. When you love, go for love, not for security. Security is the death of love. It is obvious that the second method is better than the first, because it will impact both upon the mind and the emotions of the subject. Processed Reality When I have a certain opinion about books, my whole attitude to- ward books, my handling of books, my appreciation or depreciation of books, and my habits for purchasing books are all impregnated by my opinion about books. Whatever made me form that opinion in the first place – most of the time I will have forgotten about it anyway – is not important. The opin- ions I cherish have an immediate impact upon my perception of reality. Instead of leaving reality as it is, the brain thus processes reality by the very mechanism of perception that it uses to perceive this reality. When I have certain religious convictions, such as the conviction that eating pork meat is bad for my health, mind, growth and attitudes, and perhaps even for my sexual behavior, my relationship with pork meat is impregnated by this conviction: in the most common case, I will make a big circle around pork meat. When I eat pork, and as a result of my con- victions, I will think that I am a swine. It works like that. And in talks with others I will stress the undesired effects of pork meat. I will certainly find a great number of scientific research that proves my point of view, and thus validates my conviction that pork meat is a harmful component in Processed Reality | 295 the human organism. Let’s get free of swinish things and habits …, you will declare, and conclude, with your habitual enthusiasm: – Oh folks, begin to pray for the new religion that is free of swines! Still stronger than opinions and convictions are beliefs. What are be- liefs? Figure beliefs as highly condensed convictions, so condensed that they have an immediate and absolute impact on our perception, an im- pact that is so strong and direct that we are totally unaware of it. The danger of beliefs is in fact that in most cases they are completely uncon- scious. In fact, all our life circumstances are but reflections of our inner life, projected upon the interface of real life. From our inner state, the screen of thought and of our conscious and unconscious beliefs, energy irradi- ates into the universe that brings about changes and that drives us and others to various kinds of actions. Depending upon the level of integra- tion and harmony of our inner actors, the resulting actions are effective or ineffective, constructive or destructive, harmonious or disruptive. That is why beliefs immediately condition our reality. They are very important keys to understanding our personal reality, while they are real- ly in the way of understanding our soul reality. But beliefs lose their pow- er, and they are no more a trap to holistic perception the moment we un- derstand their impact, when we see how powerful they actually are, and how dangerous. When I understand my beliefs, I understand my life. When I am un- conscious about my beliefs, I am a ball for others to play with because my life is fake, and I am lacking authenticity. Why? Because I am lacking au- tonomy which is a state of consciousness that is free of limiting beliefs and idiotic convictions. Living without convictions and values is the only way to be free. Values, the big word in American power training is in fact the greatest manipulation. Because it is but belief. There are no values other than what I project upon the surface of my consciousness. I may setup guiding prin- | Chapter Five 296 ciples in my life and call them values, but what most people call values are beliefs. Self–Fulfilling Prophecies Prophecies are not only those by famous seers such as Nostradamus, or those contained in the Bible’s Apocalypse, but also prophecies that we receive from astrologers, fortune–tellers, or numerologists. Apart from the creative flow that marks the distance between a poetically expressed prophecy and a precise time–lined event in world history, there are no popular books that report how many of Nostradamus’ predictions have not realized in tangible reality. Thus, the proof, if there is any, would have to be corroborated by counter–proof. This is not a matter of trust or mis- trust, but a matter of statistics. Responsible and honest astrologers, numerologists and Tarot experts do not work with prophecies, and they consciously avoid being suggestive. As all fortune telling is but scanning the content of consciousness and extrapo- lating it onto the future, it is a volatile thing because through changing the content of my consciousness, I change my future implicitly. That is why a responsible and conscious astrologer will tell the client only the present content of their consciousness as it appears from the planetary constellations in the birth chart and all the additional vectors such as Moon Nodes, Transits and Progressions, Part of Fortune as well as Lilith and Pro- gressed Lilith. We cannot know or predict the future as the future is based upon the present and the present is subject to constant change and transformation. The change of the vector Present triggers the vector Future to change ac- cordingly. Thus every prediction of the future truly is an inquiry into the con- tent of present consciousness. Here the paranormal element comes in, which is simply telepathy. The worst prophecies are those that we use to call self–fulfilling prophecies, those that we give to ourselves, as a form of voicing our beliefs. For example Mister X. loudly voices at a party that he Processed Reality | 297 just has started a new business, and then takes a deep look in the beer glass, after which he declares: – Well, well, but … surely … as I know myself … and my life … all this will end like all ended before: in a complete failure … And everybody laughs. While there was nothing, absolutely nothing to laugh about. Somebody killed himself in front of the whole audience. Self–fulfilling prophecies are suicide. And they have been shown to be involved also in the etiology of cancer. Recognized alternative cancer therapists Dr. Carl Simonton and Stephanie Simonton write in their book Getting Well Again that a patient who avidly expects recovery has clearly more chances for complete healing than one who expects to die because he or she has given up any hope for recovery. They speak in either case of a reinforcing cycle that is put in motion through the expectancy they harbor and feed in their mind. They write: Dr. O. Carl Simonton [A]n expectation of success will often lead to success, which in turn provides evidence / that the original expectation was cor- rect. On the other hand, an expectation of failure will often result in an unsuccessful outcome, which in turn validates the negative expectation. In both cases, the outcome created by the expectation supports the validity of the original expecta- tion. The expectancy, whether positive or negative, gets stronger the more the cycle is repeated. 202 What is valid in medical science, the Simontons pursue, is also valid in education. They report in their book the following startling survey: Dr. O. Carl Simonton Rosenthal and his associates produced equally startling evi- dence on expectancy in a study conducted with children in a California public school district. A non–verbal intelligence test was administered to eighteen classrooms of elementary stu- dents at the beginning of the school year. The teachers were Dr. O. Carl Simonton, Getting Well Again (1992), pp. 80–81. 202 | Chapter Five 298 told that the test would predict which children were ready to bloom intellectually. Twenty percent of the students whom Rosenthal selected at random, and not on the basis of test scores, were then identified as being ‘intellectual bloomers’, and their teachers were told that these students could be ex- pected to show remarkable gains during the coming year. The only difference between these students and a control group was the expectancy created in the teachers’ minds. Yet when both groups of students were retested eight / months later, the randomly chosen ‘bloomers’ had gained in I.Q. points over the control group. 203 Unconscious Repetition Urges Unconscious repetition urges were first discovered by psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud found a mechanism in our psyche that is quite uncanny : when we suffer a traumatic event, especially in childhood, our brain has only two possibilities: ‣ shut off the computer: we turn mad; or ‣ reprogram the software: we forget all. The brain avoids the first, as a matter of self–protection, and prac- tices the second. While all is stored away in our memory surface, the con- flictual content becomes repressed into the unconscious. And then, it happens that we attract circumstances that lead us to again and again repeat the same scenario, really or metaphorically, and this is organized by our memory surface not for bothering us, but for giving us a chance for healing the early trauma. Alice Miller often refers to her own childhood and the traumata she has suffered from a deeply narcissistic, cold, cruel and lifeless mother. But her main problem, as probably the main problem of the patients she treats in her psychiatric practice in Switzerland, was not the hurts and traumata that she or them could remember. It was those that they could not remember but that were signaling their existence through the nasty Id., pp. 81–82. The original research can be found in R. Rosenthal, Experimenter effects 203 in behavioral research, New York: Appleton–Century–Crofts, 1966. Processed Reality | 299 fact that over and over in their lives, they are facing the same problems with people, the same problems with partners, and the same patterns in those problems. Patterns that thus are similar and repetitive, or rather one pattern that manifests with a little variety. I have tracked this pattern and found what I call an abuse pattern being present in many women. For example, a mother lives within a conflictual marriage where she and her partner engage in extramarital sex and pornographic parties, something that occurs in continental Europe more often than not. She has strong fears about her children, and especially the fear that her little girl could be abused by a stranger. As a result of her obsessive fear, she is suspicious about her babysitter, as he is a male, and she is kind of convinced that all males want to abuse once in a while, just to prove themselves they are males. After further talks, I invariably found with such clients that they had been abused in their younger years or dur- ing their girlhood by either their father or stepfather, their grandfather, an uncle, an older brother, a cousin, or a boyfriend when they were dating for the first time. Thus, I did not need to read Alice Miller to know about that specific pattern. I had enough crying mothers in front of me, when over a cup of coffee they told me about what they called their ‘problem’. And in a case that particularly touched me, I was dumbfounded to see how inescapable the fate seems to be that unconscious repetition urges bring about. When I was seven years old, I fell in love with a neighbor girl, Ursula. Ursula was the daughter of a policeman who was working with the French military, the former occupation force in our town. He was thus a horse–top policeman, called in French, a cavalier. But he was not a gen- tleman toward his daughter, because he was whipping her regularly for punishment. And that girl suffered terribly from the sadism of her father and our relationship was rendered impossible by that sadist and equally by the girl’s very suspicious and neurotic mother. To a point that she sim- ply was forbidden to ride on the bike with me. She was never allowed to leave the house when I came to pick her up. | Chapter Five 300 And after almost twenty years I met her again, by chance, in a little bistro in our town. And she told me the following story: Ursula P. I have suffered terribly from men in my life. First my father and then my husband. You know what my father did to me, but you don’t know what my husband did. He raped me con- stantly and was beating me, so that I asked for the divorce. We were divorced and after the divorce, he broke in my apartment and raped me again. I had to call the police but they said they could not really protect me. Unconscious repetition urge means that destiny wanted Ursula get beyond her affliction and once for all solve her victim condition, a problem of co–fusion, of co–dependence puzzled up with hate–love feelings to- ward her father. You may think Ursula will get a gun and shoot down the next guy who attempts to take advantage of her. Yet that is not what usu- ally happens in life. That’s perhaps the movies, but not real life. And it’s no solution because the abuse pattern is within Ursula, not without. And it can’t be healed through violence, but only through consciousness. It’s only possible if Ursula can regress again in her childhood, during medical hypnosis or any other method that uses hypnosis implicitly, or if Ursula can play it out in a psychodrama with a male who in some way stands for all those who have abused her in the past. And through that game–like role play, Ursula could observe her reaction and her feelings and see what exactly in her attracts men that violate her integrity. When Ursula was seven years old, she could not do that work and her brain had to react with a trauma response. But with twenty–seven that archaic reac- tion of the brain is not any more for Ursula’s best and she has to learn alternatives in behavior and regarding her expectations so as to attract men that care for her, love her and see the beauty in her. The tragedy in Ursula’s life and the lives of so many others who have had traumatic childhoods is that at least once they met their savior, but were not allowed to develop the relationship. I was for Ursula that per- son, that savior, the one who totally loved and understood her, a boy of Processed Reality | 301 her age. Many dreams that I received in my childhood about her and me confirmed that. The tragedy was that our love was impossible – rendered impossible by exactly the violators that traumatized her whole life. Her parents. | Chapter Five 302 Spiritual Pitfalls The recognition of the secondary nature of the personality of what- ever deity is worshipped is characteristic of most of the traditions of the world. In Christianity, Mohammedanism, and Judaism, however, the personality of the divinity is taught to be final – which makes it comparatively difficult for the members of these communions to understand how one may go beyond the limitations of their own anthropomorphic divinity. The result has been, on the one hand, a general obfuscation of the symbols, and on the other, a god–ridden bigotry such is unmatched elsewhere in the history of religion. For a discussion of the possible origin of this aberration, see Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, 1939. – JOSEPH CAMPBELL, THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES, NEW YORK: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1949, THIRD PRINTING, 1973, PP. 258, 259, NOTE 5. Churches Among spiritual sense givers churches are at the first place because they are considering themselves as superconscious organizations established for man’s spiritual welfare – while in truth they are representations of our inner shadow, the black man that we bear inside, the part of us that is not light, not conscious, and thus in a magic condition, and as a result subject of, and subjected to, myths and mythologies. Churches and their like institutions in other religions have the nasty habit to interfere in people’s lives like your mother–in–law, telling you what you ought to do, and what you ought not to. As if you were a baby or a psychotic, or a psychotic baby. It’s a fact that churches and other so– called spiritual organizations exert power over people that subject themselves Processed Reality | 303 to them as their believers. Apart from the interesting word play that this represents when we think of what beliefs are and how devastating they are for any success in life, we may understand what we can expect from churches – and what we cannot expect from them. In Singapore, the Christian churches have a spicy note that distin- guishes them from Christian churches in the West: when the time of the mass approaches, the yard is filled with shiny new cars, predominantly Mercedes and BMW, Jaguar and Rolls–Royce, and inside the building the walls are covered with big and golden panels that cite in detail who has given which contribution to the church’s monetary fund. The amounts range from several thousand Singapore dollars to several hundred thou- sand Singapore dollars each. When I asked a Christian Singapore Chi- nese what he thought about that, he openly laughed and declared: Christian Singapore Chinese But Christian churches in Singapore have nothing to do with the Christian dogma. They are prime meeting places for busi- ness people to get to know each other and to talk business. That is why we go to Church! And when you join a mass in Geneva’s Cathedral on a Sunday morn- ing, you will hear how spicy Swiss Calvinism can be out of the mouth of a sadist and world–hater that declares all pleasure as ‘sin’ and the chil- dren’s carousel in front of the Cathedral an ‘invention of the devil’. Human theatre? I agree. But what the hell has it to do with spirituali- ty? To split life in a spiritual and a non–spiritual part per se destroys any chance to get beyond the soup of mass thinking. The way to a spiritual life simply, and importantly, begins with questioning our beliefs, and all the rest of the human soup that preaches mediocrity, fatality and misery as the human condition. The true way to spirituality consists in learning to say No, and again. Until something happens that was not expected and that you might call bliss. The Baby Jesus was a fist in the face of all churches! And a prisoner | Chapter Five 304 incarcerated for loving a child is a fist in the face of all so–called human justice. Sects It is a tragic irony that churches are trying to distance themselves from sects. They do this after they saw that sects simply were more radi- cal, while they are for the most part based upon exactly the same princi- ples as churches. When I applied for a position with the European Parliament’s Administra- tion in Luxembourg, I was invited to participate in a nationwide competi- tion in which eight hundred German lawyers participated. The subject of one of the written tests, guess it, was sects. At the time, in 1983, sects had become a European problem, as not only the member states of the EU were suffering from the sect problem, but the European Union as a whole tried to get hold of the ‘spiritual epidemics’, so to say, by giving out guidelines to all the ministries of education of all member states about how to handle the sect problem. What had been my recommendations? I in fact recommended to not treat the symptoms but cure the disease. What was the disease? A spiritu- al vacuum in young people. And I had seen how it happened with a friend of mine who was a blooming youth, artist and teacher, before he entered that sect in France, and after they had brainwashed and force– married him in that sect, he was a decrepit elder with a rigid, judgmental mindset. And that sect was named The Church of Enlightenment. They obviously and for well–founded reasons had avoided to name the organization a sect in order to circumvent the national and suprana- tional regulations against sects. From the basic paradigm, the life denial, the dogmatic approach, the repressive attitudes toward children, with their resulting harsh beatings, the Draconian restrictions on lifestyle, diet and sexual behavior and the arrogant preaching of so–called truth ‘in the name of Jesus Christ’, they were exactly behaving like most churches. And the danger for modern society comes equally from both churches and sects, because it’s only the label in which they differ. Processed Reality | 305 Gurus And there are those who think they are especially modest and virtu- ous. They do not go to churches because they find that old–fashioned, and they do not join sects because they do not want to restrict their life- style. Thus, they travel to India to see Sai Baba or any other guru with a certain reputation. And then they come back with longer hair, dirty clothes and an enlightened mind. The guru and the disciple engage in a shared form of corruption and they are both responsible for it, not only one of them. They both play theatre, not only the guru. They both share in the same comedy, or tragedy, as you wish to see it. They are actors on the same stage. And their credo is: you have to follow a better one so that you will become better. You have to follow a higher one so that you become higher. You have to follow a more intelligent one so that you become more intelligent. You have to follow an humbler one so that you become more humble. You have to follow a famous one so that one day you will be famous. And so on. Guruism is one of many outflows of the hero paradigm that is in turn a direct result of the patriarchal rut with its rigid senior–junior hierarchy among males, and even among females, but stronger rooted among males. Gurus, not those who are meta–teachers by living their truth, such as Krishnamurti, but self–declared gurus and especially those who call them- selves ‘spiritual teachers’ are professing to know better than their disciples how the latter should live their lives. Where they take this superiority from remains occult, and is not explainable simply because in matters of our individual quest for truth, there is no hierarchy, absolutely no hierar- chy among humans. This is simply so. We are called upon as individuals to find our per- sonal reality, as an intimate quest, a search for our own Holy Grail that can be found only in our heart, and not in the bosom of any guru. | Chapter Five 306 Saviors Every religion cherishes a savior, some kind of super–human that is put as the living ideal, the first–class vintage, so to say, the best of the best in terms of human perfection – or whatever that might be. And that is exactly where the problem is resulting from. Saviors are mythical figures, full of mystery and disdain, it seems, for so–called ‘ordinary reality’. They are nice as actors on the stage of fairy tales. But they are not nice when taken as ideal humans, as targets for projecting our wishes to be better than we are. Because in this quality, they are truly destructive for our growth. Saviors are supposed to live special lives, lives of magic and wonder, lives that we all would like to live. But when we look and compare, for example historical facts and feats from the real lives of Jesus of Nazareth or Gautama Buddha, we see that there is really a large gap, to say the least, between what we can find was their real life, and what later was made out of that life and out of that person. Jesus and Buddha were later declared to be cosmic masterminds. Gee. Oh. Dee. What is Gee Oh Dee? A new song? An old soup? The name of a famous actress? No. The name of that super–savior mastermind, the big brother robot that is sup- posed to be the lonely baboon, the biggest boss or the most original hack- er in our universe. A story for youngsters – at best. All savior stories are hero stories. Food not for thought, but for your inner child. When you are conscious of the damage these kindergarten stories do and have done in the course of mankind, you can prevent that the damage will affect you, and you can avoid to fall in the savior–trap, as a result of a narcissistic fixation, in becoming the savior for your mother, your father, your brother, your sister, your spouse or your child. Not only mental hospitals are full of saviors and Jesus Christs, but also most fami- lies. Françoise Dolto, in a workshop for child therapy back in 1988 reports the case of a young boy suffering from a priapus, a painful long–term erection of his penis that lasted for months. The father, a bank director, Processed Reality | 307 was in high sorrow about what he called the ‘indecent condition’ of his child and took the boy to Françoise Dolto’s famous psychoanalytic prac- tice in Paris. Dolto was able to cure the boy from the long–term erection of his penis, but two weeks after the successful termination of that cure, the mother of the boy called Dolto and said her husband had died from a heart attack. The boy had been the savior of his father and as long as he was the suffering agent, the father could keep the balance in an otherwise unbal- anced life. When the boy was cured, the father’s rolling chair was taken away and he fell struck dead. | Chapter Five 308 Ideological Pitfalls Today, the propaganda machine of postmodern international consumerism is the result of more than a millennium of knowledge prohibition, spiri- tual manipulation and systematically bred life–hate. It is the newest and the most fashionable of our present–day sociopolitical ideologies. Con- sumerism blindfolds the masses surely in a sweeter way than the Church’s brutal knowledge prohibition that was enforced by the Inquisition and endless witchhunts. The sweetness and big promise of freedom as an in- tegral part of consumer culture guarantees much higher effectiveness than coercion or brute force in repressing the original love wishes of the populace. This is so because in fact subtle media–based manipulation is used to innocuously replacing emotional and sexual longings by material longings for acquiring and possessing consumer goods. And when looking at it in a superficial way, I gain freedom when I exchange a part of my money in the bank with a nicely designed and smoothly running sports car, plasma television or computer notebook. I gain creative freedom, can move around in a splendid way, comfortably, and can get a self–esteem boost through the admiration I receive from others for being an XY–Limousine owner or a VZ–Notebook owner. Besides that, I can write, compose, draw and publish my media productions in fully using the creative possi- bilities of my notebook. This superficial observation however veils the fact that the over- whelming majority of limousine and notebook owners are not more sub- stantially creative after buying these goods than they were before. Or, put differently, the truth is that my real freedom is not that I have money in the bank that allows me to buy or not buy consumer goods. My real free- dom is to be able to live without working for anybody, without being a slave for eight hours a day, forty hours a week. By the same token, my real freedom is my urge to be creative, constantly creative, and it makes no substantial difference if I use a notebook or write by hand on a simple sheet of paper. Processed Reality | 309 My real freedom thus is my spiritual drive or soul’s desire to surpass my mere physical human condition and express my ideas, or create art. When you take a deeper look, you see that the masses are cheated twice through the promises of consumerism. They for the most part do not have enough money in the bank, or property, or company shares al- lowing them to live a meaningful existence without working for some- body. Thus, what indeed most people need and desire is freedom! Con- sumer culture promises this freedom, but let us see what it boils down to. For acquiring the goods that will grant me some form of creative free- dom, I need money. For acquiring the money that I need to buy these goods, I need to work, and work more than usual, because I need a surplus of money, a lot more than the amount I anyway need for food, clothes and shelter, or the education of my children. How to get this amount of surplus money? Through effort, increased effort and still more increased effort. Thus, in order to expand myself more within consumer culture, I in fact need to curb myself more. For every dollar of surplus money, I need to work relatively harder than for the same dollar of money covering my basic human needs for food and shelter. Of course, this reality is blinded out by publicity, and one essential task of publicity is exactly to blindfold the consumer, suggesting that the acquisition of goods is smooth and easy, using consumer credit as the ultimate backdoor for climbing on the bandwagon. However, it has been shown by leading financial consultants that the consumer credit is the single most destructive form of credit there is in the economy. This is so because the consumer credit, contrary to the business credit, is not backed up by an increase in productivity, but in the contrary needs a constant almost super–human effort to produce the surplus of financial resources needed to pay back the credit. It is a time bomb! This is so much the more embarrassing when the duration of the credit surpasses the average life–span of the consumer good. For exam- ple, when my computer notebook is trash after two years because of the swindling progress in IT technology, and I need four years of credit dura- | Chapter Five 310 tion to finance it, I will use two years of my life to pay for something that I do not use anymore and that does not give me any more freedom or creativity value. Of course, you may still use your notebook, but you are highly incited to sell it for a very low price and buy a new model using another consumer credit. This is how in very credit–intensive consumer cultures such as the United States, people who seem well–to–do on first sight, actually are often caught in a net of credits that, if the slightest thing happens that disturbs the credit payback–cycle, the card house crashes and people who were enjoying life yesterday, today plan to suicide themselves. It is not a Marxist idea, then, to say that this system incarcerates the ignorant masses in pretty much the same false beliefs than previously the religious caste did with their endless taboos. Marx and Engels have bril- liantly analyzed the destructive effects of capitalism, but acting on these insights brought about governmental regulation, prohibition and coer- cion, unfreedom, persecution and even torture. And all this justified by the initial intent to prevent the masses from indebting themselves destruc- tively. That’s how it goes. These policies were wrong and ineffective because they disregarded the basic human need for distinction, and the readiness of human beings to give sustained effort, and even sacrifice themselves for a higher quality of life, a higher social status, academic or scientific distinction, opportunity for travel, more popularity or a greater circle of friends and acquaintances. Clearly, these values are not commercial and what the communist ideologies have overlooked is that the human being does not per se strive for money or for accumulating money or other riches. What people strive for is the creative freedom that wealth brings, and they do so with very good reasons, with the main reason namely that this freedom is real freedom and not the fake freedom of consumerism. Mod- ern culture has no idea of how to live a happy life. It replaces true happi- ness with fake–values that suggest consumer satiation being the ultimate enjoyment in life. Processed Reality | 311 ‘I have a new car, refrigerator and air–condition, a home the- ater and the walls in my garage covered with books. I am a well–red and cultured person. I work hard and go to the gym in my free–time. I am married with a wife and three children. My wife works. My children go to school. I am a happy citizen. I have a family. I have values. I have convictions. I have posses- sions. I have.’ Possessions–based lifestyle kills every form of culture. And when you look at modern life you realize that it’s not a culture, but a fake–culture, that it’s not based upon values, but upon fake–values, and that the people on the stage are not humans, but marionettes. Postmodern international consumer culture is based upon the geno- cide of countless tribal populations who really knew what happiness is about and who lived happy lives – until they were massacred by value– based and principle–ridden modern citizens. | Chapter Five 312 Emotional Pitfalls ‘A random telephone survey of 800 American adults in September 1996 found that 74 percent – virtually three out of four citizens – believe that the U.S. government regularly engages in conspira- tional and clandestine operations.’ ROBERT A. WILSON, EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL: CONSPIRACIES, CULTS AND COVER–UPS, NEW YORK: HARPER & ROW (HARPER–RE- SOURCE), 1998. What did Gandhi mean when he said that spiritual training should be educating the heart? Gandhi was talking about raising emotional intelligence and holistic thinking. Worldwide Democracy, as we all know, moves rather in the opposite direction. We will always have secret services, conspiracies and persecutions as long as we uphold the paranoid view that there is a greater force that shapes our individual destinies instead of realizing that we are the only makers of our personal universe. Countless individuals throughout human history have demonstrated that they were able to shape their destinies according to their own intrinsic life paradigm and soul values, refusing to subordinate their vision under shallow mainstream convictions. Worldwide Democracy is based upon the exact opposite vision of the human being, namely on the myth that total consumption is what basically makes happy living. This goal, evidently serving economic interests, is largely veiled by a moralistic and fundamentalist cover paradigm and by Processed Reality | 313 a bulk of myths. The cover paradigm, which is one of projection and per- secution, is generally hidden to mainstream consumers. The veil however can be lifted quite easily by those with an inquisitive and critical mind. The information, while it is filtered by mainstream media, is easily avail- able through alternative presses and the Internet. But as it does not fit in the rosy foam of glorious consumerism, thus after filtering, what remains in the mainstream media are the myths, and the projections. The main targets of the strategy of repression–and–projection are the Muslims and the Pedophiles; both groups, strategically demonized in public with a growing emphasis on their difference, are supposed to em- body the evil that is believed to erode the happy consumer world with its asexual and emotionally castrated children that, consequently, need to be strongly protected and meticulously supervised. This is why child protection is actually an over–arching myth that serves as an ideological goal and polemics maker just in the same way as the racial purification theories of an Adolf Hitler or the intellectual purification theories of a Pol Pot. What stands behind this new form of fascism, that for this time in history truly is worldwide, as it is sponsored by the publishing multimedia giants, is a basic denial of complexity, which has been proven by historians, and among them especially Jacob Burckhardt, as the quintessential root of fascism. This can easily be made out by an intelligent observer, when follow- ing up the daily news on the subject of Islam and what it pretendedly is up to, the war in Iraq, and how it is justified, the new impending war with Iran, and what is advanced in public by the United States govern- ment to justify it, and the blunt ignorance and one–sided polemics that stares out of any media coverage on the subject of pedophilia. It is not difficult to see the obvious parallels between the present scapegoat groups and the historic ones. And even today, the old persecu- tions have not ceased either. Anti–Semitism is on the rise again, and that despite the protection that the state of Israel enjoys by the United States of America and other Western powers. The stress when analyzing fas- cism should perhaps not be put so much on the objects of the current or | Chapter Five 314 past persecutions, but on the general climate that leads to intolerance and persecution. As to this general climate, I am certainly not alone in saying that we are again in an era of political and social intolerance, of irra- tionality, of blunt media manipulation and of persecution. And what I am saying here is essentially that the new salvational construct that is put in the formula worldwide democracy is actually at the basis of the new dan- ger to true humanity, as it serves as an easy eye–catcher and an attractive packaging device. It’s truly a Pandora box. And contained in it, there is a time–bomb that ticks. The myths I am talking about here are observable phenomena, and not only theorems, and they have a rather widespread if not devastating influence upon the non–reflective and consumption–prone mass mind. And when this is true for adults, how much more children are affect- ed by this ultimate postmodern form of mass hypnosis! Out of a large number of myths, I will select a few and shortly present them in this last part of the theoretical first part of the study. Processed Reality | 315 The Myths of Worldwide Democracy The Myth of Child Protection Many parents who think they are modern and generous to their children are in reality consume–training their children and molding them into co– dependent partners. Unconsciously such parents act as the long arm of political systems and ideologies subtly hypnotizing their children with the concepts they have themselves been fed with. It is for this reason revolu- tionary, if not considered subversive, to rear children in truth and auton- omy. For such kind of education is not compatible with the Oedipal– paranoid worldview that mainstream education is based upon. To raise children responsibly does surely not mean to charge them with a burden of responsibility that they cannot meet. However, the contrary is perhaps worse. To infantilize children, discard them out of real life, institutionalize them into plastic worlds of crap and lies, and degrade them into oblig- atory play is part of the tactics of Oedipal confusion that justifies its ut- terly manipulative attitude with the claim it was serving to protect the child. Oedipal confusion brings about highly adapted standard citizens that are deeply disloyal! In fact, the reigning Oedipal mainstream culture is a community of secret anarchists that obediently say their credo, but silently sabotage the very content of it. By contrast, education toward autonomy is based upon recognizing the existence of soul values and the unique truth of every single child, also and especially if this individual truth is contrary to the reigning sociopolitical ideologies. It is disturbing today’s global consumer culture that the child be a complete human and thus a sexual being from birth, and that, as a result, children own a birthright to have their emotions and sexual feelings respected. Françoise Dolto, the late French child therapist, wrote in her book La Cause des Enfants (1985) that it scandalizes most parents that a child be their equal and that, therefore, most parents raise their children as for- merly princes ruled their kingdom. | Chapter Five 316 Why this is so is obvious: a body–conscious child is not an easy con- sumer of compensatory toys and a thousand devices artificially created by international consumer reality and that are after all but cultural trash. For those who contradict this view, I recall that the repression of the child’s sexuality has exactly started with the onset of the Western indus- trial bourgeoisies, toward the end of the 17th century, and not, as many researchers wrongly believe, with the beginning of patriarchy. Histori 204 - cal studies about child rearing practices in Europe stress the fact that still in the Renaissance, the sexuality of the child was not interfered with. Back in the Middle–Ages, apart from orthodox Christian circles, it was completely free. 205 I would like to introduce here a useful dichotomy coined by the psy- choanalyst Erich Fromm. He created a simple metaphor calling con- sumer society a state of to have, and original unspoiled being, a state of to be. Our original body pleasure and natural psychosomatic connection between body and mind is the state Fromm called To Be. Consumerist industrialization replaced that condition by To Have, a state of affairs where body and mind are split and the mind acting, most of the time, against the body. This state of To Have is the primary condition for con- sumer society to function because if people firmly decided to stay with To Be, our marketing system would not work. See Françoise Dolto, La Cause des Enfants (1985), pp. 28, 29, who reports, citing Ariès, 204 about the childhood of French King Louis XIII: Until he was six years old, adults behaved with the prince in a perverse way: they played with his penis, allowed him to play with their genitals and to sleep with them and play ‘the little devil’ with them. All this was allowed. But suddenly when he was six years old, they dressed him like an adult and he had to follow the royal etiquette (citing Ariès, L’Enfant et la vie familiale sous l’Ancien Régime, p. 145). Despite the trauma that could follow, he had nonetheless kept something essential since, during the first years of his life, he could live his sexuality with other adults than his parents. He had here more chance in spite of the precocious adult clothing they put him in. His example is only valid for the rich classes. However, in other levels of society, how could a child of that time repress his incestuous desire and sublimate it? (Translation mine). See, for example, Susanne Cho, Kindheit und Sexualität im Wandel der Kulturgeschichte 205 (1983) and Floyd M. Martinson, The Sex Education of Young Children (1981), 51. Processed Reality | 317 It’s working because people, already in early childhood, are condi- tioned away from the body and into the mind, something our schools know to do brilliantly and which is emosexual castration combined with intellectual hypertrophy. In good English, these kids talk like university professors when invited at a birthday party, but their emotions and their genitals are dried out. They have turned sadistic in their general mindset, and their high–pitched voices express their mix of subordination com- bined with inner revolt and growing violence. Have you ever met an emotionally and sexually sane child, a child who is sexually active? Such a child has a dark–pitched and slightly smoky voice! Consumer culture is founded not on pleasure, but on ersatz pleasure. Ersatz pleasure is the pleasure that replaces original body pleasure; thus first of all the industrial toy. While the self–made toy still has some con- nection with the body, the industrially produced toy is completely alien to the child’s body. Typically this toy – which in the meantime is produced by a gigantic global industry – consists of materials not akin to the human body, such as plastic or metal. Both plastic and metal are cold and rigid while the body is warm and pliable. Unconsciously children are conditioned upon the characteristics of the toys they is playing with. – Be plastic! translates into Be without true feelings and artificial! – Be metal! translates into Be hard and mechanical! This is how the child is molded upon the values of the culture he is born into. In addition, consumer education uses techniques of confusion as educational methods to gradually alienate the child from their own truth – which is their body continuum. The child namely thinks from the body toward the mind, and thus inductively, while the conditioned adult thinks from the mind toward the body, and thus deductively. This means that the child’s truth is defined and experienced as the truth of their body. Every truth that disregards this body or tries to set it aside will not be re- garded by the child as truth. It is for this reason that children cannot comprehend moralistic edu- cational concepts since those concepts starve the body and hypertrophy the intel- | Chapter Five 318 lect. The consequence are lifelong giant water–headed babies in the form of adults who have never made the cut with their childhood, remaining emotionally and sexually immature. True virgins. While life has not made us to remain virgins, but to leave virginity and grow into loving copula- tion. The fundamental conditioning of man is accomplished at the age of six, which is since Freud an established assumption in psychoanalysis. What comes later is only polish. The Oedipal confusion cheats about this truth. It creates a confused mind within an immature and rigid nonsexual body that has lost its natural intelligence. This is neurosis programmed into culture! Oedipal confusion plays the game of eternal maternity until the baby is far older than thirty! It loves naive mother dependence and shuns and mistreats children who are precociously mature. It blows the child care industry up to a gi- gantic worldwide business with children as their products! Children who resist cultural castration and maintain their natural capacity for sexual love and sensual pleasure are put in the corner and labeled as sexualized and delinquent. If they still dare to play their own game, the child psychiatrist is ready to interfere and to issue a certificate which will mark the social death blow: schizophrenic or epileptic. The Myth of Civilization Many religions have tried to force peace upon man by dogma, prohi- bitions and punishment. Clerical and worldly forces have imprisoned mankind in a set of tight rules, laws and prescriptions that have had only one result: to render man a violent beast full of contempt, rebellion, strife, falseness and turmoil. To get out of this net of obligations and the feeling of oppression that goes along with it, man is caught in an endless pursuit of pleasure. To make it worse, through the split in man’s mental and emotional setup as a result of the schizoid dualism that judging our emotions in good and bad ones brings about, our psyche is divided in a conscious or official part and an unconscious or unofficial one. Through the process of Processed Reality | 319 so–called civilization and primarily the school system with its mass indoc- trination and the disregard of the individual as a unique soul–being, hu- manity has in fact devoluted since the great Minoan and other pre–patri- archal cultures of Antiquity. In fact, evolution has made its way only in the tiny range of techno- logical advancement while in all other areas of life, we are today more barbarian than five thousand years ago. Therefore, the solution for world peace is entirely different from what clerical and worldly powers have ever taught us. Truly, only those who were considered as heretics, saints or prophets have told the truth. Buddha, when he was alive, found truth by human struggle and suffering, while after his death his teaching was perverted into its exact contrary. Through levitating the man Buddha into a god–like tower of virtue, the applicability of his teachings for us was impeded, if not rendered to- tally vain. The Myth of Control In killing the pleasure function and submitting it to group supervision and control, the human race has signed a contract with the devil, after having created this devil as a split self that controls the controller. Most of us are dulled and pacified into aloofness, and our once critical sense has been castrated and sanitized, first through the emotional death they suffered in childhood, second through the intellectual and neurotic over- drive they are in, as adults, as a compensation for the connectedness they lost, and third through the constant mass media manipulation they are too weak or too lazy to resist. It is a deep fatal error to think that this was a modern phenomenon. The analysis of human evolution shows that the present worldwide murder culture has its roots in our five thousand years of patriarchal his- tory. In fact, it is ignorant to believe anything in nature or in the human– created world could come about in a vacuum. The present multi–faceted and institutionalized murders are based upon a murder tradition that goes back to the Code of Hammurabi, or what Wilhelm Reich called The First | Chapter Five 320 Human No to the endless flow of life, represented by the natural ebb–and– flow of pleasure. It is equally naïve and ignorant to believe that the 206 present catastrophic state of affairs could have come about through any specific religion or ideology. While still decades ago, the human masses were so ignorant to be- lieve that most ideologies were necessary or even god–given, many today start to question this. But instead of seeing the failure of all ideologies for the advancement of humanity, they blame particular ideologies, such as Islam, while upholding others, more akin to their race or mindset. The Bible is very explicit in favoring the in–group and excluding the out–group, and murder was not only permitted but even ordained by Yahweh, the cultural divinity, when there was a need to advance in one’s business through domination and the ruthless holocaust of those that were naturally opposing such dominion. Today’s short–sighted Western credo is that Islamic culture was to blame for the terrible disorder in the world. This assumption overlooks that Islam shares with Christianity and Judaism the same base paradigm and murderous ideology that promises human advancement based upon the rape and repression of nature, oligarchic control and the hypertrophy of yang to the detriment of yin. This terrible lie, that is by itself the root of mur- der, has been paid with innumerable victims, in the past, and today, and it has caused humanity to retrograde in its evolution. The Myth of Culture Freud reasoned that culture was based upon the sublimation of our instincts. While Freud clearly said that sublimation is not to be equated with repression, at the end of the day the difference between sublimation and repression seems minimal. Freud meant that while he was in favor of children living freely their sexuality, he thought that for cultural reasons, medical and psychiatric experts had to accept the cultural choice of the repression of the child’s See Wilhelm Reich, Children of the Future (1955). 206 Processed Reality | 321 early sexuality, limiting their professional role to healing the neuroses and psychoses that result from this choice. A deeper look reveals that it is nothing less than an act of castration to forbid the child his or her own sexuality. This is a form of parental or educational child mutilation, a form of societal child rape, if our hypocrite culture considers it as such or not. Since Havelock Ellis it is clear that all sexual deviations and neuroses are born out of the repression of children’s and adolescents’ healthy sex- uality. If parents, as a consequence of their own sex–denying upbringing, are inhibited from talking openly with their children about sex, they should at least be able to psychologically support their children by adopting a permissive and non–obtrusive attitude regarding their children’s intimate lives. It is a relict of patriarchal tradition that boys and girls are treated as two different species with regard to their sexual urges and behavior. Gen- der impregnation that is too early and too strong will kill certain valuable characteristics in children that are attributed to the opposite sex, as for example tenderness, caring behavior, altruism, patience with men and activity, healthy egoism and competitive thinking or impatience with women. Havelock Ellis found that the early repression of sexuality in girls was a major factor in female frigidity. The feminist view underlines that the problem is not the repression of basic drives but the general oppression of women and children. Who can be interested in perpetuating sexual dysfunctions in both sexes as a result of sexual repression during child- hood and adolescence? Who can be interested in rising sexual deviance, suicide rates and rape? Who wants to favor the escalation of violence, racism, war and destruction? For all this is the price we have to pay for maintaining the clean, pure and asexual façade behind which we hide all the negative secondary impulses which come up as a result of repressing the natural sexual function. It is not surprising that after centuries of sexual repression and the distortion of the knowledge about natural life functions now society | Chapter Five 322 needs scientific corroboration of the most banal realities of life. But after all, it’s absurd. Experience shows that people with natural attitudes to- ward sexuality will also be inclined to accept new permissive forms of education whereas people with sexual inhibitions and moralistic concepts tend to be suspicious of new and non–authoritarian concepts of educa- tion. So–called child sexual abuse is a fake cause, a propagandistic cover– up of the real abuse in our culture, which is rampant parent–child co–de- pendence, which constitutes emotional abuse, and besides, physical abuse. Out media debates regarding children’s alleged sexual innocence are but fights about words; all concern about trauma through early sexual expe- riences are but projections of adults’ own orgasmic fears and armoring against natural biological functions. Anna Freud’s research on war children in London during World War II provided striking counter–evidence to the fake trauma theories of to- day’s mainstream abuse culture; children are not traumatized by sex, and not even by bombs falling all around of them in wars and civil wars. They are only when their parents are bundles of walking paranoia and when they thus have been conditioned to be apprehensive to all and every- thing in life. Natural children are fearless. The most devastating effects in adult–child sexual encounters do not result from sex but from fear and panic associated with engaging in a tabooed and not coded form of conduct. An analogy to this situation can be seen in the psychological reasons for drowning accidents. While infants can swim without having learnt swimming, older children and adults lost this ability because of the fear associated with drowning. Research has shown that many people who died through drowning could have been saved if they had received proper psychological training to cope with panic. Adults’ fear of water is irrational in much the same way as is or- gasmic fear. Water, in the subconscious, is being associated with emotions and sexuality. Society is for a large part responsible for the killing of children in chaotic sexual encounters because of its refusal to code certain forms of Processed Reality | 323 behavior. This is a collective form of irresponsibility that hits society at large in much the same way, or even more, than the individual perpetrator. Moral wars and hysteria cannot replace responsible laws and rules of conduct; in the contrary, they tend to prevent or disable such rules. This is one of the most obvious reasons why pedoemotions and the whole spectrum of sexual behavior between adults and minors needs to be coded socially. A social code – which is much more than a legal 207 statute in that it encompasses certain forms of conduct that are socially acceptable – is the only way to maintain culture while the present irre- sponsible attitude produces chaos, confusion, insecurity and, at worst, a new form of civil war. It has been shown by different research that there is a functional link between the repression of the human sexual drive and the upsurge of violence. It is first of all the repression of the child’s natural sexual function and the social disapproval of tactile pleasure for certain age groups that prepares the ground for societal violence. Thus the cultural choice that Freud wanted to respect and preserve was a culture not founded upon nature, but upon perverted nature. And that is why all the problems that culturally today we are dealing with, first of all the problem of rampant domestic, social and structural violence, are our own creation, and not at all an outcome of any fault in the origi- nal human setup. It’s our collective denial to assume responsibility for our emotions, and our sexual function, that among other factors are the most obvious pitfalls in our constant drawbacks and individual and social cata- strophes. I define Pedoemotions as a universal erotic base attraction that nature has built in adult 207 men and women toward children so as to ensure their loving care for the young. This base attraction however does not generally become sexualized, but is well acted out through tactile closeness with the (naked) child. In certain cases, this base attraction can become eroticized, which may result in the feeling of sexual attraction of an adult toward a child, which may, or not be acted out. Research has brought to daylight that, however, in most cases, such attraction is not acted out by actual sexual penetration of the child, but rather by fondling, shared nakedness and masturbatory acts. See, for example, Bender Lauretta & Blau, Abram, The Reaction of Children to Sexual Relations with Adults (1937), 500–518, Brant & Tisza, The Sexually Misused Child (1977). | Chapter Five 324 The Myth of Education Striving for autonomy is an inherent component in every young life. Therefore hyper–protective education clearly is a form of child abuse because it smashes children’s natural autonomy through emosexual deprivation. Mainstream education sacrifices the child–as–a–person for bringing about the child– as–a–consumer. I call this education death education since it is based upon the emosexual murder of children in order to subvert them into consumer robots. To achieve this, mainstream education uses what I call braincut to castrate children emotionally and sexually. Modern society acts here much after the example of the Church. The Church, while paying lip service to love, destroyed love by instilling in their believers an horrible fear of pleasure and by punishing, through the Inquisition, free unregulated love in every possible way, including putting people to death by persecution, torture and planned murder and genocide. Modern society castrates the child emotionally through a hypertro- phy of the left brain hemisphere and logical thinking, while downplaying, circumventing and outright neglecting the development of the qualities of the right brain hemisphere, such as creative intuitions, associative thinking, systemic thinking, fantasy and creativity. The Myth of Morality There is no god, no savior and no punishment. There are no wrong acts, nor right acts. There is karma only, feedback given by the universe. By observing that feedback and recognizing its nature, positive or nega- tive, I can evaluate the nature of my actions. There is no other way. You can’t do that by thinking about your behavior. Thought is circular and inbound within my own continuum. I cannot abstract from my thought and become an observer–thinker, despite the fact that great sages such as Krishnamurti told us we could develop this ability. Let’s assume I have not reached that stage of development and thus am still caught in the ego–based structure. Then I have the option to observe the nature of my actions by evaluating the feedback they create in the universe. Processed Reality | 325 In being careful and observing what happens around you before you take any major action, you can avoid fatal mistakes and setbacks and act in accordance with the steering power of the universe. This power is of a higher intelligence, and considers not only your actions but the actions of all other humans, of all other beings, and even the actions of natural forces. How does a particular action you are going to take fit in the universe? What kind of waves will it create? What kind of responses will it trigger? All this can be evaluated before the action is taken. And the I Ching has been created exactly to assist us in that quest. Once you understand this, you will agree that to take blind actions is a foolish thing to do. And yet, most people, especially in the modern world, take blind actions all the time, and even think that it was normal human behavior. It is ignorant human behavior. Educating children to take blind actions is irresponsible education, or no education at all. Most Western people will reply that it was through a set of firm behavior rules, so–called morally correct behavior, that positive karma could be created. However, moral correctness is on the same line as political correctness. It is a total fake as moral rules change from country to country and in some countries even from village to village, and they change over time as well, and they change fundamentally when economic conditions change. Morality is a fiction and one of the most sordid ways to blindfold the masses of ignorant citizens and keep them from educating themselves about the universal laws and rules that really regulate action and reaction. How much morally correct behavior has triggered wars and genocide! How many massacres have been committed in the name of well–sound- ing moralistic slogans, how many millions of people killed for politically and morally correct principles! That the Western world, today, is caught in a cancerous and destructive death cycle is primarily the result of sever- al millennia of moralistic tradition and education! | Chapter Five 326 The Myth of Normalcy Normalcy does not exist in nature; it is a left–brain concept, a pure intellectual construct. The assumption that normalcy equals heterosexu- ality follows thus the same bias; heterosexuality as such is a concept, but nothing real. Sexuality is not a fixated condition; humans are not animals that unconsciously follow instinct and conditioning; human sexuality is not a drive – and here I am consciously contradicting Freud and sexology. Human sexuality is not distinct, not abstract from human emotions; both emotions and sexuality are linked in that sex attraction follows emotional attraction, not vice versa. In addition human sexual attraction is not some- thing that can be split off from the individual person; it is part of the soul level of the person and as such in itself invested with soul, with life, with vital energy. Not all in sexuality is teleological with the ultimate goal of (total) penetration; all is here subject to dialogue, to mutual bargain, to mutual discussion, to trial–and–error over time, to play–like fun, and so on. And the ultimate satisfaction is by the same token not always and I would even say typically not the sexual satisfaction as such but the emo- tional satisfaction or the congruence between emotional and sexual fulfill- ment with one and the same partner. This can well happen between an adult and a child, despite the obvi- ous divergence in body size and genitals. I would even say that the very fact of the existence of childlove shows that nature has not programmed us like machines that do sex in a wheel–like manner or in a robotic obses- sion so that all fits in each other. I once said it in a poetic manner: – We are not machines, we are human beings. We are more like cigars, hand–made and individually differently shaded, some coming with broken leaves, some having a different tint. We are not like cigarettes, machine–produced, every single cigarette like any other one, exactly the same. There is no straight line in nature, only in human intellectualism. Today’s idea of sex is after all a sort of compulsion to do sex, which is a left–brain concept, a pure intellectual construct and it came up probably Processed Reality | 327 as an anti–reaction against patriarchal sex repression. It also is part of the competition culture where sex is most of the time a matter of performance which makes that many men are driven, time and again, into temporary, sporadic or even long–term impotence. The Myth of Poverty One does not need to know about differential calculus to see that we can never fight poverty as long as our national budgets allocate for military and defense purposes more than ten times the amount spent for educa- tion. Instead of admitting these simple socioeconomic and political facts of life, most politicians try to veil this truth and instead come up with ideologies. We had communism around long enough to see what it does with the human potential. And we have capitalism still around – for how long? Neither the capitalist nor the communist model have found the way to sustain human potential and creative living in a non–destructive way. While the capitalist model blindfolds about the strangling effects of con- sumer credits, the communist model seems to totally disregard the human nature. This is why, I think, the capitalist model is still around, with all its inherent pitfalls of course, whereas the communist model has almost to- tally disappeared from the globe. This being said, and positively put, it is well possible to end poverty by a deliberate global collaboration of responsible governments who, aided by private foundations and businesses, set out to really build a global community, a global market and a decent living for all peoples on the globe. It is well possible to reduce military expenses and it is well pos- sible to dedicate a substantial share of our national budgets to the fight against poverty. But to get there, a will is needed – and this will is lacking. This is the reality and not what the media tell us as the mouth pieces of the status quo. The problem is that this will is lacking, both on the indi- vidual and the collective level. Those who are rich think that by sharing a part of their riches with those who have nothing, they will have less, they | Chapter Five 328 will be deprived, they will starve. This is nonsense. The contrary will be true. If we can realize a truly global market, not a fake global market as we have it today, because in our global economy today less than twenty percent of the world population can participate, we will have much more, and in addition we’ll have this much more with a much better conscience, with a much better feeling. The benefits cannot be seen in advance be- cause growth is non–linear. It cannot be grasped by linear, mathematical thought. In reality, once poverty is eliminated and all peoples on the globe able to participate in a truly global market, the synergy that is created through such a change would be immense, it would be so immense that no economics guru can ever adequately predict it. And not only would we be so much richer, but our general life quality would be much higher because of the positive vibrations that this would cre- ate. This is so because when human suffering is effectively reduced, posi- tive and growth–fostering vibrations would virtually transform our lives and our environment. And war would be eliminated as well because war is well also a function of poverty, material poverty and poverty of com- prehension typically going together. Thus, whatever you think about poverty, you should at least be honest and when others come up with the same lies that are spread out in the media every day more, you should stand up and say : – No. I do not want to share. That’s all. Period. Then, at least you would be consistent. The Myths of Religion We are today facing a terrible violent mess called spirituality, in the West and in the East. What is the most obvious in this chaotic situation, is the dishonesty that sells as spiritual or religious what is but a matter of confusion and false beliefs, or else a cunning poker of socioeconomic in- Processed Reality | 329 terests played out in the name of fundamentalism. We have to face it, without moving, and then only, if we can stand it without falling in the next horror trip, into the next depression or the next alcoholic or mesca- line trip – we can make an evolution. That is how it is. We are progressing despite all. You get the picture intellectually, but that is not it. The only solution is the heart, not the mind. Your knowl- edge from books does generally not help you much. What helps you is to gain awareness about yourself. But this quest to be yourself is impossible if you bury your feelings under a masquerade of– ‣ How should I be? ‣ How should I behave? ‣ How am I being adequate? ‣ How should I plan my future? ‣ How am I to grow? ‣ How am I to develop my full potential? ‣ How is life and what is it for me? ‣ What is the sense of all living? ‣ What is the sense of love? ‣ Why do we have sexual urges? It’s only after stopping to ask and accept life as it is and yourself as you are, and your being imperfect as a good and normal condition, that you can do any kind of evolution, and advance. The Myth of Science Any valid science is focused upon dealing with the dynamic patterns of living, and not with what these patterns have brought about. From this | Chapter Five 330 holistic perspective, our modern Western science is neither a science nor is it modern. By contrast, the I Ching that is five thousand years old, is both a true science and modern. It is a true scientific tool because it deals with the dynamic patterns of life and helps to identify them. And it is modern because its wisdom is without age, and still today fresh and new. With modern science it’s as with modern medicine. It deals with the symptoms and not the cause of a malady. It looks at secondary effects instead of regarding the primary causes. Instead of understanding that life is coded in dynamic patterns, it has assumed that life was founded upon certain principles. A pattern is a set of things, a certain systemic arrangement I can make out in the complex scheme of reality. It is something I can observe. A pattern can be fix or it can be changeable. It can be static or dynamic. By contrast, a principle typically is the beginning of a down–hierarchy, a top– something in a kind of up–to–down order. It is not something I can di- rectly observe. It’s but the outcome of a conclusion I draw intellectually after observing nature. A principle thus contains my observer point or my judgment about reality. Death science looks at life through the glasses of principles it has set before it was going to observe. It is essentially blind, and it proceeds by im- posing characteristics upon nature. Western science is death science. Tra- ditionally, it has gained its first conclusions about life by vivisecting ca- davers, not by observing the moving changes of living. It is, and remains, a cadaver science that is far removed from the changing patterns of reali- ty. Life science looks at life without any prefixed principles or assumptions and observes the dynamic patterns or changes in the texture of life. It is a science that since its start, around five thousand years ago, was interested in life, and draw conclusions from life, and not from death. Traditional Eastern science is life science, one branch of this very large body of sci- ence and philosophy being Feng Shui. The I Ching is based upon life sci- ence, and is perhaps the highest condensation of it. Needless to add that, as such, it is non–judgmental and thus bears no moralistic judgments Processed Reality | 331 about human behavior. It looks at human behavior in exactly the same way it looks at all life patterns, and sees the changing nature of it before all. Western scientific thought and philosophy, ignorant about the fun- damentals of the truth of the bioenergy as the primary creator force in the universe, was of course taking as real what it saw. As it saw matter only, it deducted that matter was the ultimate creator force, hence it assumed and formulated a basically materialistic scientific paradigm. However, this statement is valid only for mainstream science. As I have shown in vari- ous publications, even in times of the most fundamental repression of holistic pro–life wisdom in Europe, the original holistic life–science was taught and practiced in the underground by many alchemists and natural healers such as Paracelsus, to name only the most famous among them. 208 Today, mainstream science is like a lazy school–boy, timidly learning lessons in dim afternoon classes it should have learnt, long ago, in the bright morning hours. See Pierre F. Walter, Do You Love Einstein?, Monograph (2010). 208 | Chapter Five 332 Creating Reality Move on and leave your past behind you!, said the wizard, and you answer Yes, this is all right and good, and I can see it with my rational mind, but the rest of myself does not seem to follow that insight. So I remain caught in the net woven by my past and my deeply ingrained ha- bitual thought and emotional patterns. I have the habit to make myself down, says one. I have the habit to make myself up, says the other. They talk to each other and conclude they were opposite characters. In reality, they are very similar. Both make themselves down. The second one however has a narcissistic pattern in addition to his guilt–and–shame pattern which means that he covers his wound by counterfeiting his own knowledge, saying I’m Peter Pan, and as such far removed from your petty world. I fly in the airs, catch me if you can. The sane mind does not make itself down, nor up. It accepts itself and all– that–is. His reality is either perceived directly and without dis- tortion, which is possible and to be found with spiritual coach- es and shamans, or processed to a minimum extent because of a highly developed consciousness surface, which is a state of spiritual evolution each of us can attain. The present second part of this chapter is a short guide to assist you in this very important quest for self–development. We have seen in the first part of this production that most people are on the passive side of life, so to say, perceiving reality more or less unconsciously and processing that information as good as they can. Perhaps it is true what David Ma- honey who was named in Fortune Magazine one of the ten toughest bosses in America, has to say about this subject: Processed Reality | 333 David Mahoney I just keep moving every day as hard and fast as I can. High– intensity and high–voltage. Light comes from that, not from passivity. I insist we all do our best every day. I’m intense in everything I do and I expect others will be, too. There may be timing factors in it, good luck and fortune factors, but the question is, do you utilize it? Some of it you can’t control – some of it goes against you – it works both ways. You run to daylight – where you see the break you go. Most people aren’t even aware of what’s happening around them. Two–thirds of the people don’t know what’s going on to them, personally. 209 I find it always amazing to see in which precise ways the insights of spiritual teachers, successful psychiatrists, famous artists and outstanding entrepreneurs coincide when it goes to explain the why and how of suc- cess. This tells me that this information and insight is available to all of us, and not only to some chosen elite. This insight is intuition. What most mediocre people do is to foreclose, in one or the other way, this natural knowledge about high achievement in order to justify their limitative worldview and to have a reason for engaging in self–pity and endless pro- crastination. In all great success there is an element of novelty, something that was hardly predictable before the person succeeded on their particular path. This element of novelty is what makes the essential part of success in that it is part of a new reality that has been created, consciously or implicitly. As Edward de Bono states it: – Once a new idea springs into existence it cannot be un- thought. No, I’m not talking about science fiction here. It’s true that science fiction authors have been particularly imaginative for envisioning a new global reality, a new reality for the whole of humanity, and this particularly on a technological level. Here I’m talking about personal reality, not about the reality of a future humanity. I am not a science fiction author, nor a social utopist. See Edward de Bono, Tactics (1993). 209 | Chapter Five 334 What I show you is not something related to myself, but something that is within your own personal potential. I show you an ability that you al- ready possess, alongside your other skills and capacities. However, most people ignore that human imagination could have such a strong impact upon reality, and that it’s actually a creator force, the creator force in the universe. Yet this tremendous energy has to be properly channeled. Your best imagination is not of much use when your general thought patterns are overwhelmingly negative. Look at the life story of the great French novelist Honoré de Balzac, who was one of the most imaginative authors in the literary history of humanity. And yet his personal life was a series of tragedies, failures, dis- asters, scandals, open or hidden fights with others, animosities of the worst sort, and on the other hand unbridled debauchery, self indulgence and a lifestyle in which he exhibited very little self–discipline. Suffices to read one page of this literary genius, the description of a person, the way the hero or heroine is clothed, walks, talks, thinks and we are put directly on–stage, facing that person in real life, so vivid are Balzac’s descriptions, so brilliant and sharp was his imagination. But to what purpose was it used? It was certainly used to create great literature and art. It was hardly ever, or not at all used to create a new and different personal reality for the author himself. This is an example for the fact that imagination alone does not bring the result, but that all depends on how imagination is channeled. How do you use your imagination? And with which purpose do you use it, when you use it? When your memory surface is not clear, what happens when you use imagination for achieving your goals? I cannot tell you what happens, but I can tell you that chances are low for what you wish to happen really to come about. Why? Because your memory surface intermittently infil- trates information in your imaginative content that you absolutely do not wish to have put. Is there any willful control over this process? No. There is only one way: clearing the memory surface. When your glasses are dirty, and you see a foggy world, your willpower alone will not clean them. You Processed Reality | 335 have to take a piece of cloth and wipe them clean. It’s the same with memory. It can be wiped clean. I have done that at several instances in my life and thus I know that it works. You may have read in other books that it does not work, or that it works only for very exceptional people such as yogis, gurus, spiritual teachers, and the like. No, we are talking here about something ordinary, not about a mysterious spiritual matter. We are talking about something rather mechanical. The memory surface pretty much works like a mag- netic tape. You can store information. You can add–on information. You can erase information. Only one thing you cannot do. There is no func- tion that stops the brain from recording. This means that even though you may already program your reality according to your innermost wishes, reality always brings novelty of its own, because it’s not, and cannot be, dependent upon your creative mind. That’s a truth that our great poets express beautifully and that can be put very simply in the formula: reality always surpasses the individual mind. But that’s not something to deplore. It only shows that our individ- ual mind and soul are imbedded in a greater soul reality that kind of con- nects all minds within a cosmic meta–reality that is beyond the control of our individual mind. And yet, every impact of our individual mind upon this cosmic reality surface is noticed and can be retraced. I have explained this in order to prevent you from getting depressed by just another pitfall of perception, this time of self–perception: the pit- fall namely to believe we were insignificant as individual human beings on that cosmic, universal plane of consciousness. If this was so, we could not be co–creators, and we could not create our own reality. And in that case, I would not have taken the time and done the effort to tell you all of this. A philosopher once compared humans with the billions of grains of sand on a beach, and this image has been interpreted as a metaphor for the insignificance of human beings in the cosmos. This is, in my view, a fundamental error. Who, tell me, knows about the importance of an individual grain of sand in the whole of the cosmos, or even the whole of creation? To arro- | Chapter Five 336 gate yourself to state that a grain of sand is insignificant means the same as saying that the whole of creation, and implicitly also that the creator force itself is insignificant. Today we know through quantum physics that every single electron, every single particle, that is only a tiny, very tiny fraction of a grain of sand, is conscious, and maintains relationships, chooses partners and friends, and locations, or remains undecided and at many locations at the same time. Particles are conscious. And if that is true, by implication, grains of sand are conscious. And thus they are alive! There are various methods to clear the memory surface. In order to make a good choice, you need to know more details about what memory actually is. Forget what you heard in school about it as it’s most probably wrong. Memory is not in the brain, but in the luminous body or aura. It’s coded in energy patterns and these patterns are virtually flowing around you, they are in movement, not static. The brain acts as interface to the memory surface; it does not store information. The old scientific view of the brain as a storage house is long superseded by newest research that, eventually, has included the insights we gain from parapsychology, clair- voyant research, Chinese medicine and acupuncture, and meditation, as well as quantum physics. 210 To conclude from this research, we can say that memory is volatile; this has, by the way, a big advantage, namely, that memory is not forever engraved anywhere in our gray matter, as it was believed by a mechanis- tic neurology of the 1960s and 70s. It also means that memory can be triggered to release information by touching parts of the body, by doing certain movements, by doing body work such as Rolfing or Alexander Tech- nique. Reichian massage has proven to be especially conducive to releasing old memory patterns from the orgone shell or aura that permeates our organism, both inside the cell and around our physical body. I have also analyzed more recent techniques like Dr. Villoldo’s soul retrieval and re- Shafica Karagulla, The Chakras (1989), Charles W. Leadbeater, The Inner Life (1911). 210 Processed Reality | 337 viewed some of his books. There is more information in my Idiot Guide 211 to Emotions (2010). The second important point to know about memory is that it’s not memory itself that creates hangups, addictions, habits or obsessions we may suffer from, but the emotional entanglement with past events and hurts that is a typical side–effect of trauma and abuse. It is entanglement that makes us repeat again and again the same scenarios in life, as our inner intelligence puts them on stage for us to get out of the strings, and heal our past. The vicious circle in this is that when people are unconscious and blame life, god or others for their misfortunes, they are blocking the po- tential healing of their scars. Then they remain entangled, and perhaps so for their whole lifetime. That is why emonic consciousness is so important; it is energy consciousness, an awareness of the flow of energy in our organ- ism, which includes awareness of where and how our energy flow is blocked or obstructed in certain parts of the body. Typically, it’s the parts of the body that have been concerned when the abuse or traumatic event hap- pened. Now, how to build emonic consciousness? The paradox that I found is that there is no technique to bring that awareness about when using our rational mind; it has to be built unconsciously, by sharpening our in- tuition. How, then? The old Chinese saying Nonaction is action says it all in a way, when it’s understood what this saying means. My experience with healing has taught me that it means to not directly interfere in the process, as this may strengthen the evil, so to speak. Let me give you one example for this from the book Getting Well Again (1978) by Dr. Carl Simonton. Dr. 212 Simonton, who developed one of the most successful alternative thera- pies for cancer, reports in his book that many cancer patients who go to Alberto Villoldo, Mending the Past and Healing the Future With Soul Retrieval (2005). 211 Dr. O. Carl Simonton, et al.: Getting Well Again (1978). 212 | Chapter Five 338 energy healers or laying–on of hands practitioners experience their can- cer to grow, and not to shrink, after the treatment. Why? Dr. Simonton says that cancer cells are very eager to receive energy, which lets them grow even more. This is an example that shows that a direct interference in the disease pattern does often not bring relief. And by the way, an operation, the removal of a cancerous tumor, is just another of these direct interventions; and it has been reported, by Simon- ton, and others, that removing a cancerous tumor does not per se remove the cancer, as the cancer is not in the tumor. The tumor is only a secondary effect, one of many, of the cancer. This is why many cancer patients have made the sad experience that after having suffered a severe removal or amputation of an organ or limb, the cancer was beginning to spread elsewhere in the body. So let me take this as a metaphor for introducing the simple yet effec- tive technique I came to use for coping with hurtful memories; and let me add also that the expression erasing the memory surface is of course a metaphor as well. The process is much more complex in reality. The technique I found helpful and effective for healing early trauma is creative writing. I came to realize it during a hypnotherapy fifteen years ago, when my psychiatrist gave me certain themes to write about, asking me certain precise questions about my parents. I carried out these as- signments very seriously and meticulously, and made the amazing discov- ery, that later was confirmed by my psychiatrist, that the actual healing took place every time before I had the next session with my psychiatrist, and thus actually before I presented those memoirs to him. He would utter something like we would not need to do any work, and can just ‘chat a little today’, as the big change was obvious and could even be seen in my face. This dumbfounded me at first, but I had to report that indeed every time I wrote one of those little stories, a great calm came over me, an inner peace I had not known before, and I felt very clearly the stream of hot vital energy flowing through my whole organism, while before I felt Processed Reality | 339 the energy was stuck in my lower legs and my pelvis region, which is why I had icy feet most of the time. That problem with icy feet that I had been suffering from since my late adolescence was completely solved after writing the stories, and did no more recur later on in life. On the other hand I have to say that honestly the writing itself was most of the time not a very agreeable experience. The writing down of those hurtful events, or in case the memory was only scarcely intact, the whole scenery or taste of a certain period of my life, triggered rather un- welcome body reactions, like outbursts of heat, hot rage, strong sweating, or sexual arousal, or all of this at once in a frenzy Draculian bath of vio- lence that I can only compare with the eruption of a vulcan. At other times the body seemed to shrink and mourn, and I felt like a small fly in a universe of ice, where there are endless pathways in the dark, and icy chambers with rotten souls everywhere. Then I would fall in a deep de- pression and had suicidal ideas. Both the violent reactions and the suicidal ones were even stronger when I did not only the writing, but also used spontaneous art for trigger- ing the inner healing. That is why I suggest to beginners to not do both at the same time, at least not when you are alone and have no psychiatric sup- port at your side. If you are serious about creating your own reality, instead of consum- ing the infected reality of the bulk of unconscious road–runners that populate this globe for too long, you also have to start with Life Authoring. You may also want to begin practicing a body consciousness technique such as Tai Chi Chuan. Last not least the excellent movie What the 213 Bleep Do We Know, Quantum Edition offers many viable suggestions and sci- entific corroboration of the possibility to create our own personal reality – for good! And when you look over the fence, and in the art world, you may realize that some artists have done extremely well in creating new art reality. Let me mention only Pablo Picasso and Svjatoslav Richter here as ex- Master Liang, Shou–Yu, Simplified Tai Chi Chuan (1996). 213 | Chapter Five 340 amples while there are of course many more, but I know these particular- ly well. These great artists provide excellent examples for reality creation; they have not only revolutionized their specific branch of artistry, painting, and musical performance, respectively, but with their strong personalities they have coined, each, a grandiose universe. Let me close this chapter with two quotes from the book The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Dr. Joseph Murphy: Joseph Murphy Look around you. Wherever you live, whatever circle of soci- ety you are part of, you will notice that the vast majority of people lives in the world without. Those who are more en- lightened, however, are intensely involved with the world with- in. They realize – as you will, too – that the world within creates the world without. Your thoughts, feelings, and visualized im- agery are the organizing principles of your experience. The world within is the only creative power. Everything you find in your world of expression has been created by you in the inner world of your mind, whether consciously or unconsciously. 214 You must ask believing, if you are to receive. Your mind moves from the thought to the thing. Unless there is first an image in the mind, it cannot move, for there would be nothing for it to move toward. Your prayer, which is your mental act, must be accepted as an image in your mind before the power from your subconscious will play upon it and make it productive. You must reach a point of acceptance in your mind, an un- qualified and undisputed state of agreement. 215 Joseph Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (1963), p. 8. 214 Id., p. 79. 215 Processed Reality | 341 Points to Ponder ‣ In Chapter Five we were asking a radical question: ‘Can we perceive reality in its crude and unaltered form or does our perception interface per se distort reali- ty?’ Assuming that for reasons to be ex- plained, we cannot perceive reality ‘ob- jectively’, would that not mean, we fur- ther asked, that we actually see all reality as a ‘processed reality’, a kind of virtual reality that is created by our own mind?’ ‣ We were first looking at 1960s and 70s neurological research and the early theo- ry of ‘preferred pathways’, proposed by neurologist Herbert James Campbell in his book The Pleasure Areas (1973), as well as the ‘mechanism of mind’ theory of think tank Edward de Bono. We saw that this research clearly indicates that the brain ‘can only see what it already knows’ (Edward de Bono) and that as a result, researchers can only pick out the data from their research that confirms their basic as- sumptions and beliefs. This research thus anticipated the basic tenet of quantum physics that however we set up an experiment, the ob- server shall always be entangled with the object he observes. In addi- tion, this mechanism of our brain, which serves survival, not the highest possible accuracy of perception, makes for fundamental nov- elty most of the time brought about by accidents, mistakes, lapses of attention, and the like, because as long as the mechanism of our brain is intact, we cannot experience novelty. ‣ Does that mean that the door is closed forever in the sense that direct perception is an impossibility? Despite this setup of our perception interface, direct perception is possible, while it’s possible only for a select few of shamans, yogis, zen masters and generally, people who have really worked through their emotional entanglements, and who reduced their projections and blown–up belief system to a strict min- imum. As we thus can acknowledge that direct perception is possible, can can ask what the precise criteria are for it to happen? We saw, based on this insight, that we are actually educated in our culture to misuse our brains and to develop a faulty perception interface. ‣ In an attempt to define Love, Krishnamurti once said that Love can- not be defined, or it becomes a concept; thus to understand Love, we | Chapter Five 342 can only approach it negatively, looking at all what is not Love. This is the approach I was taking in this chapter about ‘Processed Reality’, showing with a number of present–day examples, that what is gener- ally taken for ‘reality’ is a ‘processed food’ in the sense that it’s per- vaded with concepts, ideological, religious or scientific, and thus data that is not part of the original idea. To remind one of the several examples of ‘myths’ I presented in this chapter, child protection, we can see that originally, the idea was to protect children from harm, as simple and as effective as this sounds. But then, when we look at what ‘child protection’ really does, what it really leads to in our society, what it really implies, what it really results in, then we see that it cre- ates more harm to children than the situation when children go un- protected, that it creates more confusion and more violence than a society would experience that doesn’t care, or cares to a lesser extent, at protecting their children in an organized and police–backed man- ner. And last not least, we see that this paradigm really interferes with children’s natural sexual growth in that it demonizes and persecutes any attempt of a child to experience sexual pleasure with another child or an adult, thus pervading the early environment of children with fear, a real fear of life that can develop into hysteria and para- noia, and can individually lead to autism, learning disabilities, anorexia, depressions, epilepsy, and even schizophrenia. ‣ Taking a kind of bird perspective, we can only wonder how a society can declare itself to being ‘scientific’ and ‘enlightened’, compared to a religiously fundamentalistic regime, and nonetheless bring about a reality that is composed of exactly the elements that fundamentalist regimes are putting in place, such as strong fear of authority, meticu- lous state supervision ruling into human relations, and especially, the family, large–scale prohibitions targeting primarily at human intima- cy, speech taboos, large–scale censorship of ‘sensitive’ issues such as adult–child sexual behavior, and draconian punishments waiting for the law breaker. And we can only wonder how such a society can be so bold and daring to sell this mix of violence, state–ordained brutali- ty, ignorance, manipulation and suppression of non–system–conform research, taboo–thinking, retrograde provincialism and fascism in a garment called ‘worldwide democracy’? ‣ To remind my base intention when writing this chapter, it was not meant as a pamphlet or social critique, otherwise it would have been published in a different manner, but as a consciousness opener. If such doing is possible in just any kind of society, be it motivated by religious or agnostic fundamentalism, then something must be basi- cally wrong with how we handle perception, with how we see and evaluate reality, with how we are brought up, with how we have learnt to handle reality. Then we need to actually reframe our per- Processed Reality | 343 ceptions and clear our perception interface; we might also want to take a role in the educational or political world so as to work against large–scale ignorance and for fostering real information, one namely that is based on correct perception, perception that is as direct and pure as possible, perception that is as much as possible free of contami- nation, of lies, of political maneuvering, and opportunism. ‣ Hence it is of paramount importance how we handle our perception interface; from this insight, we can then set about to improve self– reflective consciousness, to build awareness of our thinking habits and behavior patterns, and see how our actions impact upon society as a whole, considering karma for a whole group, or even a nation, or the entire globe. When we do this, we see that we are responsible, through the very fact of participating in creation and co–creation, or as Dr. William A. Tiller recently put is, in our being ‘avatars’. This, then, will shift our regard and deprive us from comforting projections such as ‘our government is the culprit’ or ‘modern–time debauchery and lack of values is the culprit’ or ‘lack of religious belonging is the culprit’. We then see that the universe doesn’t ask who is a culprit for anything that ever happened, but asks us to stay true to the basic principle in a responsive universe, that is, individual response–ability. ‣ This, in turn, leads to a careful approach when meeting ourselves, in our daily self–talk, when meeting others in our daily dialogues and exchanges, and in our cooperation with others. The starting point always is how we perceive reality, and how we still better perceive reality when being meticulous, as a warrior, in keeping our perception inter- face as pure and pristine as possible. CHAPTER SIX The Webolution You forgot a very important premise: it is your vision and dream for the future which creates the present. You have decided to interpret your present based on your past and allowed your past to be the reason why you do not go forward. – WENDY MUNRO, TRANSMISSIONS FROM SIRIUS The Webolution | 345 The Fruit of Frustration All great inventions have been motivated and initiated by frustration, the frustration about something lacking in our life, the dissatisfaction that an obvious need of many people at a specific point of time was not met. This is true not only for the invention of the light bulb, but for a whole lot of other inventions that belong to our surroundings and make out our daily life. The interesting thing about inventions is that they reveal lots about the human nature. When one human being invents, millions of others, who have the same unfulfilled need, just accept that faulty reality. And remain uncreative. It is the one or a handful of people who sense the need and bring about what so many not even dream of. We can indeed observe historically that human progress was pretty much the merit of individuals, and much less of groups. This is interest- ing because it goes along with another phenomenon; when you observe a group of people confronted with the same need, you will see that always the majority is either content with what is, the status quo, or although not content with it, unable or anxious to change it. It’s always one individual or a handful who dare to be dissatisfied and take action towards change. Therefore we have pioneers. And therefore dissatisfaction is the very seed, and the bliss of progress. All of you who were at the point to publish and encountered the deep frustrations every writer is confronted with, will understand me when I say that publishing, today more than ever before, is a channeling in the wrong sense. Of course, I am talking about the traditional form of publishing, the one which is done by a publisher, a person or company whose business is the commercial exploitation of sharing. Publishing is sharing, sharing of information or of an aesthetic feeling, sharing of a lifestyle, of experiences. There is a deep ethical foundation in publishing. Democracy is only thinkable with a continuous flow of information reaching potentially everybody. Gutenberg saw that when he invited the press and published the Bible. He took a certain risk, as every publisher | Chapter Six 346 takes it, who is responsible for the content of the publications he issues. This requires courage, especially when it’s about topics that are declared taboo in a certain political or social context. Back in the Middle–Ages, publishing houses who issued the writings and pamphlets of alchemists, or of Paracelsus, the famous Swiss natural healer, were endangered as they could be persecuted and trialed by the Church’s Inquisition. Publish- ing thus also involves the risk of being criticized for one’s opinions. It means that publishing requires from the publisher a certain amount of courage. When Gutenberg printed the Bible, his motivation was probably one of sharing, not in order to make money or a business out of publishing. This is why I contend that publishing is something directly connected to democracy and at the same time important for the functioning of a de- mocratic society. All political dictators and tyrants know that very well, for typically the first thing they got rid off is the free press, before they ever launch their first actions according to their particular agenda. Noth- ing is more in the way of political, social and ideological tyranny than free thought and its unlimited circulation among humans. The Webolution | 347 Self–Publishing The Internet began as a computer experiment for some military folks and then developed into a gigantic publishing company. The funny thing about this company is that it has no director and no management team and is self–organized and auto–regulated. Some cynics said once in a while the Web was like a horde of monkeys yelling at each other, and that it therefore had no or very little chance to survive as a serious communi- cation highway. However, the negativists were, as so often, not heading right with their pessimistic outlook; today the Internet is prospering as an alterna- tive publishing network. The reasons are obvious. It is the dramatic change in channeling in- formation and the possibility to share all that stuff that can be shared electronically that makes the difference to traditional publishing. It’s not really to bring out a book that contains links to other books, as well as voice, image and video content. It’s much more like TV having become interactive, before TV really has become interactive. We don’t have in- teractive TV yet and interactive journalism is still a pilot project. But the Internet is that TV that is interactive, or it has become that TV, as I am writing this text, in May 2007 – perhaps not so when I wrote the first draft for this production, ten years ago. But the intention, then, was al- ready there. And this intention is strongly motivated by reasons. There are reasons why people want to change certain things, or why they want to change a whole business, a whole industry, and even a whole history. There are very manifest reasons, but these reasons are not materialistic, not greed–related in the first place. This is perhaps not always so, but with the Internet, it’s surely the case. The reasons are related to personal power and to the ideal of total communication between human beings. And that is new. It’s new because formerly we were thinking more locally and less globally, we were much more tightly held by our leaders and our militaries, by our flags and our national myths, and much more | Chapter Six 348 tightly held within the borders of our national universes. While now the world has become a village. We still have national borders, flags, and militaries, of course, but we are going to change the thinker behind those things, those institutions, and those daily realities. And this thinker, somewhere somehow, has found out that he or she is more than a thinker, and that there is more than thinking. We have found out that it’s nicer to share thoughts than to think more. We have found out that it’s even nicer to share thoughts and art, and music, and this beyond our national borders and our national mentalities. We found that all this has somewhere somehow something to do with love, and that it’s love that is the ultimate motivation of this crazy network that we call the Internet. And with that new vision, we then look at traditional publishing. And we see the traditional publishing situation is such that creative new ways of publishing are most of the time obstructed by the simple fact that the publisher is profit–oriented and wants to make sure that the book is sold. This situation makes it gifted writers sometimes very hard or even impossible to get through and find the way to their audience. There are many stories about books that have been refused again and again and finally ended up for weeks or months on bestseller lists. One famous example is the short story Zen or the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig, one of the most important books of our times, and which yet was refused by one hundred twenty publishers! One can only admire the persistence of the author who approached the 121st publisher who, however reluctantly, accepted publishing. This book rapidly sold as world bestseller and was translated in I don't know how many languages. My point is that the Internet or, more generally, electronic publishing is a new form of information distribution, and follows different principles than the traditional publishing industry. To publish on the Internet has several major advantages. The Web is free of the profit filter built in tradi- tional publishing. A natural selection is made through the interest publi- cations find among users. The Web is a living system which grows naturally and is ruled by more subtle laws and customs than the traditional pub- The Webolution | 349 lishing landscape. These generally unwritten laws are similar to the very foundations of life. This is not astonishing since the Web grew like wild strawberries in the forest, rather than within the boundaries of century– old conventions. The Web is a landscape where everybody gets a chance to move in. And where everybody who pursues literary interests can learn and grow. And where everybody can build and revise publishing strategies. Okay, you need to channel your stuff, you need to find the right outlet, you need to do your marketing. And when you fail in it you probably will not sell your book. But that is a different pair of shoes compared to the often senseless rejection encountered time and again with publishing multinationals that fol- low rigid lines of established success strategies. It’s different because it feels different. I have a friend in Holland who is a psychologist and who has pub- lished hundreds of articles and books in several countries and languages, and this within traditional publishing, but he reports that he is helpless in front of the capricious tours played to him by his publishers. It happened to him several times that his texts were censored or cut down by the editor shortly before publishing, without previous notice. In one case, only by the time that the book was in the store, he had found out about the betrayal. He and several others told me that this was abso- lutely normal from the side of publishing companies, and worse even if those companies were large and renowned. Since I was rebellious in this respect, my friends told me that I was never going to publish. They were right and wrong at the same time. They were right in that I indeed never published with traditional publishers, and they were wrong in that I was going to self–publish my stuff, and in a way that, when they got to know about it, left them speechless. My elder friend was always astonished to see me editing my texts on my laptop as if they were the manuscripts of somebody else. – You waste your time with all this, he used to comment, smiling, since the publisher will disregard it completely and put it in the way he likes it. | Chapter Six 350 – He will not, used to be my reply. No publisher ever changed my manuscripts since I never gave any of my manuscripts to a publisher. Yet nobody thought at that time of the Web as a real new publishing option that could come even remotely close to traditional publishing. However, many people still do not grasp that new reality and think the Internet was just an advertising medium. If the Web was only an ad- vertisement tool, it would not have much fascination for authors. Fortu- nately, all those limited visions of the Web have proven wrong. The world has become unthinkable without online publishing. Today we call it blog publishing, but that is surely only one of the many masks that the new me- dia giant is going to wear. First, we were just talking about home pages, then we got the e–book, then the blog, but all these are but peaks of the iceberg of a totally new way of expressing oneself. Because there is not only the word, there is also the image, and there is the film, there is sound and there is music. And all these media can be combined in infinite ways. The industry has really become creative to come up with solutions, and the pace is somewhat too fast, and a lot will be trashed later on because it’s all based on trial and error. But why not? That’s better than to be based on speculation, or on endless theories and tiresome planning. The market will decide, and that means : all of us – the consumers. The way we live with art seems to change as a whole in our era of electronic publishing. With the wide use of personal computers, art has eventually become a part of our lives, while before it seemed to be con- fined within the narrow limits of art galleries and musea. Of course, at all times there were many more artists on the world than the few who are famous or to be found in Who is Who or in VIP lists. Yet with the Internet, the chance that everybody can share his art with many other people, without having to be a VIP are much higher than ever before. It is significant because we use to call local artists all those artists who are not world famous. The attribute local we give them means that the circle of people who know them are situated within their local area, such as compound, village, town or region. The Webolution | 351 With the Web, every artist, without being VIP, has the chance to be more than a local artist since they can be known and appreciated by peo- ple around the world. Where information is on the wave, art is on the wave. Art is but a form of information, perhaps the most elaborated form of it, the most complex one. And yet its message is often simple. Simplicity in com- plexity could be a slogan not only for art, but also for the Web. To send a message through the Web today is so simple that a child can do it, but technically seen it is a very complex procedure. It seems to me that the human intelligence that created the Internet is fundamentally different from all what man has created before that cre- ation. The interesting fact about it is that not one man or woman has created it, but many, often simultaneously cooperating from different points of the globe. The Web was thus perhaps the first really effective global institution we have created. And that is why, among other reasons that I believe the Internet will grow beyond an information highway to become a political highway as well. | Chapter Six 352 Unity.com When we compare the Web with another global institution, the Unit- ed Nations, there are at least two striking differences. The United Nations was the successor of the League of Nations, an inter–governmental organi- zation that was founded as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, in 1919– 1920. It was a creation of states, at a government level, and not some- thing that was grown from the base layer of societies. It was an elite club, and at its greatest extent, in the years 1934–1935, just had 58 members. The privileges or advantages it bestowed upon its members, it bestowed upon their rulers, or governments, not their peoples. With the United Na- tions, it was exactly the same. Let’s not forget the fact, that for the protection of the individual, in- ternational law still provides only a minimum standard. Human rights and the rights of minority populations are protected only within the range of spe- cial pacts or agreements, such as the conventions against torture, yet the na- tion states are free to join these international agreements or not. The second, perhaps more important point of difference is that the United Nations, after their creation, have pretty much split into regional power groups. It’s not a coincidence that the European Community was an- other branch of the same tree, coming out of a vision that people like Woodruff Wilson and, much earlier, even philosophers like Rousseau and Kant had about the future of a united world. At the same time, the Eu- ropean integration was pouring wine into the water of the original idea of a community of nations that is truly global. Therefore, the Web is after all an extraordinary creation, because it has a far–reaching political potential. It is as if it had been created by an unconscious will, something like a cosmic intention that is beyond mere human perspectives. When you observe the development of the Web and the fact that re- ally Mr. Everyone and Mrs. Shareware drive it forward to set new cultur- al and commercial standards, you will be amazed about the power of the individual. This may sound provocative. Yet we face here a mystery that The Webolution | 353 goes beyond all what we have observed hitherto on the globe, something that is like a new gospel, a new power, and a new global village for all. So, to put it clearly, the Internet is the first international organization that really works in the sense of res publica, as the old Romans called political matters. And in that sense, as a forum for the public cause, the Internet really is functional. Minorities, for example, be they racial, political or sexual, are effectively propagated through the Web. The police laws of most countries can prohibit minorities from gathering as long as those gatherings take place within local boundaries. But the police cannot legally control them when these gatherings take place online. Since Web meetings are virtual, they do not fall within those laws. As a result it can be said that the Web created more democracy and freedom of speech. However, this freedom also means that we have to use it responsibly. If we allow people to abuse of it, we jeopardize our newly gained privilege. International fundamentalism, secret intelligence ser- vices, right–wing movements, misguided groupings and a large mass of frustrated individuals only wait for the chance to exert a tight control over the Web so as to install new and hitherto unknown forms of totalitarian government and rulership. The only effective way to prevent this from happening is that we ex- ert self–control in all forms of online publishing and virtual communica- tion. This implies that we have to become conscious of the value that is linked to freedom and to simple and unprejudiced human communica- tion. Instead, people seem to ask for more regulation and strict guidelines for conduct on the virtual space. This is totally within the old paradigm. It means to restrict freedom again because a certain amount of frivolous people are unable to use it responsibly. If we want to avoid this result, we have only one choice, either to provide organizations with set regulations inviting people to become members for set purposes and to limit com- munication to set purposes and for set interests or topics, or to change the paradigm. What is presently taking place on the Web is the first alternative. It means basically to create cages for people who have not learned to con- | Chapter Six 354 duct themselves properly outside of those cages, in freedom. Human his- tory was an up and down of times of more and less freedom. But at all times certain people searched for cages because they were afraid of free- dom or abused of it to the detriment of all. We have to acknowledge that the Internet created a new landscape. It started out wildly, like a rain for- est, so to speak. And this is rather a positive circumstance in my opinion because, compared to traditional forms of communication, the Web in- vites users to become spontaneously creative. Furthermore, if we respect ourselves and others from a basic inner attitude that forms part of a new paradigm in human togetherness, we do not need organizations that restrict our freedom, nor rules of conduct. Because we will innately engage in the right and convenient forms of behavior for our largely enhanced ways and forms of communication. Sounds like Utopia? Let’s see now together what implications both paradigms, the old and the new, have for our further human evolution in general, and the evolution of the Web, in particular. The Old Paradigm The old paradigm represents a system of beliefs that goes from a premise that humans are basically enemy to each other and therefore use de- ceiving means and strategies in order to communicate. Typical for the old paradigm is a range of prejudice and phantom be- liefs among people belonging to an in–group, regarding those belonging to an out–group. All those beliefs render communication ineffective and, in extreme cases, impossible. We should always keep in mind that war among humans is only possible from the moment communication has stopped or has been undermined by phantom beliefs and superstitions. The old paradigm is deeply conditioned by the scarcity mentality, the belief that nature provides only for a certain number of individuals leav- ing deprived all others. Despite the fact that everybody who has observed nature clearly sees that one of the basic patterns of nature is abundance, and not scarcity, the adepts of the scarcity principle mentality continue to The Webolution | 355 plague the rest of mankind with their negativism, thus being responsible for the perpetuation of the old paradigm. These people are easy to recognize; they typically argue for protection, guidance and security when asked for engaging in communication with oth- ers, be it in virtual space or in real life. They consider all people as strangers who have not qualified to be friends, associates or at least ac- quaintances. The qualification of a person as a stranger means that the person is potentially dangerous. The underlying belief these people share is that the world was a hostile battlefield of conflicting interests and desires, probably simply because their own inner life represents such a battlefield of conflicting interests and desires and they have never found a way to experience inner peace. These people tend to believe in Darwinism in its most destructive di- mension, seeing in all human competition an element of the survival of the fittest. As a result of their conditioning and their dominant belief sys- tem, the adepts of the old paradigm maintain virtual and real borders and frontiers in the world, intelligence services, armies and other destruction devices because their main defense mechanism is aggression. In order to communicate, the adepts of the old paradigm gather within set organizations for set purposes, subscribing to set rules of behavior that fundamentally re- strict their freedom. They justify their sacrifice of freedom with their pretended gain in social and political security through the big brothers they have created. Un- aware of the illusion they are victim of, they strive to give more and more power to those big brothers, thus jeopardizing in the long run the human condition as a whole. The New Paradigm The new paradigm represents a system of beliefs which basically admits that humans are made to be friends and brothers to each other. Adepts of the new paradigm question why humans react aggressively or with hostil- ity to everything new or unknown, and tend to be more open and com- municative in situations that provide doors to the unknown. | Chapter Six 356 Typical for the new paradigm in communication is the attitude to potentially welcome every possible new encounter, be it with representatives or forces opposite to one's own culture or conditioning, thus considering unforeseen experiences as challenges and chances for growth and evolu- tion. Adepts of the new paradigm can be recognized because of their courage, curiosity, openness and a generally adventurous spirit which considers every human interaction at its root as a great potential chance for love, harmony, understanding and mutual help. It is the adepts of the new paradigm who have created the wonderful new jungle that we today call the Internet, although at the present moment the representatives of the old paradigm seem to dominate its general landscape. Adepts of the new paradigm question the necessity of joining large organizations in order to maintain power within the collective. They val- ue the individual to such extent that they tend to generally question the insti- tution of organizations that regulate and channel human encounters thus demon- strating more trust for spontaneous human relations within an unorga- nized gray area of human interaction. Adepts of the new paradigm therefore are more open to unusual or un- foreseen aspects of human relations, be they on an intellectual, psychological, artistic or sexual level. In my opinion, the most important trait of adher- ents of the new paradigm is their general openness to restructure human relations in accordance with all lessons we have collectively learned from the past, with the ultimate goal to enhance human happiness and welfare, personal and societal prosperity and quality of life in the future. Adherents of the new paradigm are generally grateful for new possibilities of human inter- action and they tend to value the Web as a precious new tool and adventure that has its major advantage not on a commercial or economical, but on a purely human level. For these reasons the adepts of the new paradigm are usually very busy learning, using and teaching all the features the Web offers us for creating new forms of human interaction and exchange. Among them are the geniuses who treasure the holy grail of the Web, the highest vision about the Web as one of the most important features of life in future cen- The Webolution | 357 turies. Although constantly exposed to criticism and typical modern–day skepticism, these people build on the positive image they maintain about life, themselves, others and humankind and thus help us all to create the foundations of a better world. On the Web, presently, the adherents of the new paradigm represent a small minority of intellectuals who are, unfortunately, not yet really orga- nized. They tend to fight single and isolated wars within the fields of their specific interests and occupations. One of the reasons they actively en- gage in publishing and providing publishing opportunities to others on the Web, on a purely non–profit basis, is that they set out to practically realize their high humanitarian vision of the Web. However, without doubt it is the adepts of the new paradigm who are actively involved in the further evolution of the Web and new forms of media such as inter- active TV, and developing high–level edutainment for large masses of peo- ple who seek their personal evolution outside of set organizations and ideologies. Economy, Trade and World Peace Another important aspect of the revolution that the Web presently undergoes is the profound change that it brings about within and be- tween our economies. It cannot be denied that human progress has also an important material dimension. Those who, like me, have lived for years in so–called developing countries know how fundamental for personal evolution it is to have access to educational, and this means today techno- logical, assets. It has become obvious that there cannot be a future culture without technology or based upon an outmoded technology that is mechanistic and inhuman. Technology transfer becomes demonic in the moment it is used as a pretext for getting rid of life–destroying technolo- gies that witness our greatest errors of the past. The Web has changed traditional economic rules or, for the least, offers an alternative economic concept for its users. Parallel to the devel- opment of the Web the software production technology has created the | Chapter Six 358 shareware concept as a new, hitherto unknown way to provide the use of products against later, and in practice voluntary, payment. This is really new because traditionally contracts on the purchase of goods legally require the payment of the price after product has moved. Later payment is considered as a form of credit and as such not immedi- ately covered by the contract. Legally, the credit agreement would be considered as a second contract, apart from the original purchase con- tract, and different in nature from the latter. The new and revolutionary difference in the shareware concept is its inherent trust in the user’s willingness or readiness to pay the requested price, by registering the software. In practice, we all know that many people never ever register a large part of shareware programs they operate. But this is exactly part of the system. It’s a really human system because it does not discard out the factor of human imperfection, but in the contrary calculates this factor, as it were, in the final bill. This is why the shareware concept, while a few decades ago it would have been considered a totally mad idea, makes sense and works; many a programmer although not be- coming a millionaire, can make a modest living out of sales engendered by shareware distribution. That shareware works, two requirements must be met: ‣ The software must be useful and work without major bugs; ‣ The software must be distributed large–scale. The Web has come at the right moment for shareware to make it as a new economic concept. Without the global distribution possibilities that it ensures, shareware would be lacking out on the second condition and, as a result, would have disappeared to this day. In addition to the shareware concept which has implemented a new important modification of the traditional idea of selling products, the Web has brought about a much more careful and concerned general atti- tude towards the customer, especially in the form of – The Webolution | 359 ‣ more added value; ‣ more products for free trial; ‣ more (accurate) product information; ‣ more customer service; ‣ more after–sales service; ‣ more innovative sales and payment techniques; ‣ more transparency about the seller; ‣ more concern about the satisfaction of the buyer. After all, an online customer is not someone who leaves the shop and disappears. He’ll be around, as it were, all the time. Consequently, com- panies tend to care more about their Web customers and the reputation they can gradually build as reliable and serviceable producers or service givers. After all, the online customer can give immediate feedback by means of e– mail, and will not hesitate to flame if he has been tricked out, whereas in real life, the willingness or readiness of customers to complain about insuffi- cient quality or bad price–quality relationship largely depends on the manufacturer’s or service provider’s attitude. He can be either open to customer feedback or rather put nasty customers off through intransigent and sometimes bluntly dishonest employees who simply insist on denying or refusing the complaining customer’s allegations. If a company would use a similar approach for online customers, it would risk to have its prac- tices very quickly unveiled and publicized on the Web, and thus exposed to a potential billion of people. No reasonable company in the world would bear that risk, which is one of the reasons why purchasing online offers a multitude of privileges and advantages for the end customer. After all, traditional sales also have improved through the Web be- cause flaming can be practiced also when people bought their stuff through traditional | Chapter Six 360 sales channels. It’s always possible to write about bad experiences with companies in blogs or post them on forums. Now, let’s shift our perspective from the economical to the political and have a closer look at that daring idea of the Web becoming, perhaps not too far in the future, a real international organization and political forum of all peoples in the world. We know from the development of the European Union (EU) that the political union is very difficult to realize, and in fact the EU is far from being a political union with all what this would involve for its member states. Probably because so much trust is involved in agreeing about the implementation of new systems of government or to concede national powers to a supranational organism. The United Nations is another example. They were from the begin- ning set out to implement a political unification with, in the future, ideal- ly, a world government. However, the anxieties were and are so high that the courageous goals were pursued less than half–heartedly. The end result was that bad compromises were made, compromises that really were compro- mising the whole idea and led to an absurd reality which counts as its major fact the largest bureaucracy in the world, engendering an irresponsible waste of resources. But let as ask: where is the Web heading? You may object that it is too far–fetched to admit that the Web could eventually bring about what both the EU and the UN did not achieve: a world community, a union of nations, of peoples. How can? If we take a closer look at this seemingly Utopian idea, we see that there is a fundamental difference between the EU and the UN, on one hand, and the Web, on the other in their respec- tive ways to realize this global union of peoples. The difference is that the Web begins at the basis whereas all other present supranational or international organizations began at the top. What do I mean? On the Web, masses of people from different cul- tures get into communicating with each other, first for research or acad- emic purposes, then also for business, the exchange of goods and services, and eventually for simply getting to know each other, looking at one an- other’s home pages, learning from each other, communicating basic The Webolution | 361 needs, feelings and opinions. The trend is that the Web becomes every day more a meeting place for a large variety of people communicating for a large variety of purposes. While in the beginning the user had to write out every single command, with the graphic interface of the World Wide Web things became really simple and intuitive. Soon illiterate people will be able to write: they’ll just talk and the computer will write for them. I already pointed out that existing organizations such as the EU and the UN, despite the fact that they were instituted to unify peoples, have begun their work with the top classes of society : the rulers, kings and later the sovereign states, and not really five billion individuals. If we build a house from the roof, forgetting about its foundation, its basis, the house will crash before it is ready. This is the true reason why neither the EU nor the UN accomplish in reality what they have been created for. It’s because they were established as roof structures that lack the founda- tion. They came about through governmental collaboration and agree- ments, and not as a result of the will and the work of the people who have set these governments in place. They have not grown from the base layer of society, but from its top range. That is why I am convinced that the Web will be the foundation for the true union of peoples in a not too distant future. The Web grew without any governmental control, although it was, paradoxically, created for governmental purposes. Yet from the moment it was given to the pub- lic by the American military agencies that had created it, it was a free landscape for new discoveries. And it quickly grew beyond national bor- ders and cultures. My idea may seem unusual. Consider that also on the national level, stability was reached only from the moment that the peoples themselves chose their governments. This is not so much a function of the constitu- tional system which can be monarchic or republican. As long as a king or ruler is firmly based upon the trust of his people, his government will bring about effective solutions and bear fruits. Some of the old Chinese kings who based their rulership upon the true interest of their people and uni- versal laws have given abundant evidence to this historical and political | Chapter Six 362 fact. On the other hand, the best republican government that is corrupt and has lost the confidence of the majority of citizens, will disappear sooner or later and leave a vacuum of frustration and a bad taste in the mouth of the populace. What is decisive only is that the system is truly democratic. On the na- tional as well as the international level, democracy brings about stability. Governments who do not enjoy the backup of their peoples, reign in un- stable conditions and can be thrown over by social unrest and upheaval. The present international organizations are for the great majority established from above, without democratic elections from the side of the peoples. This is one of the reasons why the man in the street, be it in the West or the East, when asked about the United Nations or similar orga- nizations, either admits ignorance and gives a negative or indifferent judgment. Simply because they have not been directly involved in the creation of the organization or the election of its staff. How can these organizations then seri- ously attempt to build a future world government? They would reign over people who do not even know them. Therefore, if these organizations, as it seems now, are unable to allow reforms, they will disappear. This is in part also valid for the EU. However, in the government of the EU, there is much more consciousness about the need for a democrat- ic setup than, for example, in the United Nations. That is why a few years ago the European Parliament has been fundamentally reformed and di- rect elections for the European parliamentarians have been institutional- ized. In the public opinion all over Europe this step was considered uni- formly as an advancement of the unification progress, although skepti- cism prevailed as to how the EU will practically carry out the will of the peoples at its basis, and not only the will of their governments or top– class industrials. The Web has grown from the root up, and not from the branches down, as all present political international organizations did. Therefore, the chance that my prediction will come true is, I think, higher than the chance that it will not. For it is much easier and much more effective to learn a healthy body perform more functions than to teach a sick and The Webolution | 363 dysfunctional body to perform even very few basic functions. And the present international organizations are not only sick and dysfunctional, they waste human and financial resources to such an extent that their mainte- nance equals ruin for all those who, willingly or unwillingly, have to fi- nance them. And that is all of us. | Chapter Six 364 A Cultural Revolution Just as the book, once it appeared after the invention of printing, rev- olutionized the world and our lifestyle, the e–book gave us another revolution. Not only because the e–book is read not on paper, but onscreen, but be- cause this kind of book is a multimedia book. The fantasy of the reader will not be left on its own, as before, but actively stimulated by multimedia links such as photos, videos and interactive functions. From here, to combine authoring with embedding virtual reality in order to create the photorealistic picture of an artificial, artistically created world, is but a tiny step. Visions are a non–touchable reality. Not only that they create reality and are the necessary predecessors of any creation, vision is by itself a form of reality. A vision is not a tool only, it is a form of being, not a seed only, but a fully grown tree. Visions form an invisible reality behind the visible one. They directly tap into what Aristotle called eidos and Plato ideas. You could imagine this world of vision which is universal, as a second reality, another virtual reality that is hidden for our senses yet real for our mind, our non–sensory perception and our imagination. The visualization of new reality is not only a creative game, but creation in itself. This is a sub- tle difference. Many people grasp well that imagination has creative power, yet only a few will admit that imagination represents a world in itself, an- other reality which is already existent, or existential, and not only a potentiality for the creation of future existential reality. Human creation is basically built upon visions. Visions are at the origin of all human progress. The word vision originally means sight. We see into the future, or into a better reality, with our inner eye. And we foresee events or things before the time is ripe for them or the technological standard is exis- tent to produce them in our tangible reality. Our inner visions are situat- ed outside the time–space continuum. They are part of universal intelligence which precedes the time–bound, earth–bound continuum and which is eternal. Publishing is for a great part sharing inner visions. Once this process was not a global one, but locally very limited. One shared with neighbor The Webolution | 365 villagers, the extended family, the clan. Today it may happen to you, es- pecially if you live in a big town, that you share your visions after break- fast with people from another continent via the Web, whereas you have not even said hello to your neighbor for the last two months. The fact is today that the people we are sharing with may live on the other side of the globe. It’s not as folk wisdom says that the good is always in front of your eyes or at the entry of your door. That was true long ago and it may be true in other respects. As far as communication and the sharing of experience is concerned, it is not easy to find friends among your neighbors if you are not member of the local football club and do not hang around in the local beer bar or coffee house. Let’s say your interests are Balinese Game- lan music and Renaissance literature, your favorite artist Dali, your films the old Charlie Chaplin movies, and your passion child photography, with whom within a radius of ten miles around can you share your interests? Our age is one of uniformity, of vulgarity, of common standards in almost all areas of life; yet it is paradoxically at the same time one of indi- viduality and marginality that find their place in small groups that are wired with each other by the fine cords of telephone lines and that hang out at different times since group members live in different time zones. On the Web, you can hang out anytime you wish since your server serves twenty– four hours, and mailboxes patiently wait until you retrieve their content. While you are logged in, the other members of your little interest group may sleep, fact which by no means impedes your new network friendships from blossoming. Publishing on the Web means to expose your book or multimedia product to an unlimited audience. Bill Gates wrote in The Road Ahead about devices to come on the world market that are small electronic books which we purchase ordinarily, and which have the advantage to provide not only text but the whole range of multimedia built in them. By now, this idea is already realized, yet I can’t see the revolution in that. The difference, in my opinion, of the new information age com- pared to the old age is not so much the form of the information, but the way this information is distributed. Until now, it seems that the Web is under- | Chapter Six 366 stood by most people as a provider of information, a shopping mall, an efficient research tool, an advertising forum and a new way of private and professional communication. The perspective that the Web could once completely replace our school system is perhaps far–fetched regarding the reluc- tance of most governments to invest more than the strict minimum into the reformation of our educational systems. Here we are confronted with an actual change of consciousness. In the meantime, the number of basic and secondary schools that have their web page grows quickly. If children learn at an early age how to manage Internet access and communicate properly with a large range of people, they have little to learn later on once confronted with team– integration and communication at the workplace or in a business of their own. Our children grow into the information age and many, before they touch the keyboard of a PC, know to manage their game boys and video games. Since the logic and often the handling of electronic devices are similar, our children will very soon be our masters and teachers, and more, our con- sultants in all what concerns the essential bones of the global information network. Common sense and practical reasons speak for a stronger implication of the next generation into the actual growth process of the Internet. If our governments do not care about a transformation of the educational systems, private institutions will and a growing number of parents shall send their children to alternative schooling. Children sitting through their most learn–intensive age on 19th cen- tury school benches with no access to technology are educated towards being either slaves or cultural cripples in the near future. Those children will have to learn later on, with more effort and perhaps less pleasure what they could have learned by playing in their early age. We are con- fronted with the fact daily. People loose their jobs because of the restruc- turing of the global industrial network, the different use and availability of resources, changing technologies and lifestyles, and a rapidly growing turn from a nation–centered economy to an international one. This makes for a large number of people worldwide who are in transition from The Webolution | 367 job to job, and from place to place. Some never understand that in our times, we have to learn constantly. Those remain jobless. Others learn to learn and to relearn; they are flexible or have learned to be flexible. They will find new, and perhaps more fulfilling jobs or realization opportunities. Some of them become outstanding examples of entrepre- neurship, simply because they took a passion for one or the other of the new technologies and put all their energy in a project that changed not only their life, but also their social standard. | Chapter Six 368 Points to Ponder ‣ In Chapter Six we were looking at a real novelty, a modern–day creation of large dimensions, and a fantastic new oppor- tunity for human exchange and coopera- tion: the Internet, the World Wide Web, or Word Wide Web, as I use to call it in its dimension of a publishing highway, and for spreading the word, and thereby, cul- ture. ‣ The idea of this chapter, which was pub- lished as an essay earlier on, was inspired by Bill Gates’ book The Road Ahead. I had been wondering if there is more to the publishing revolution than the mere technological aspects, if there is more both on a cultural and a politi- cal level? The first question was triggered by my quality of a writer and publisher, the second reasoning by my quality of an international lawyer. ‣ So I was formulating two precise questions that I treated in this chap- ter, in form of a double–helix hypothesis. The first question is if the Internet is a new highway for academic publishing that will be largely free and available to all members of society, globally? The second question is if the Internet is the base structure for a real and func- tional international organization or government that is created from the base to the top, not as all existing international organizations, and especially the United Nations, from top to bottom. ‣ Regarding the first question, the Internet as an academic publishing forum, I have not only researched on that matter since the beginning of the 1980s, but I have been actively involved in academic online publishing since 1996, and that is now for more than twelve years. What is the result I can today communicate to government and in- dustry, and the general audience? The result is a gigantic failure! The result is that life or society has steered against free academic publish- ing and even against all academic publishing on the Internet, and life has at the same time promoted book publishing, the competitor, so to speak. Book publishing has grown during these twelve years more than it grew from its starting point with Gutenberg, in the 15th centu- ry to today. And that means something! I have totally failed to reach my own niche audience during these twelve years of non–funded The Webolution | 369 investment in the information highway, of persistent effort and relent- less innovation and change of approaches, following the advice of friends and consultants. I have seen any kind of profane, idiotic, pro- vincial–minded, and ludicrous if not frivolous publishing effort crowned by large–scale success, and intellectuals and serious profes- sionals put more and more at the border of society, almost as outlaws. I have observed that academics who became popular icons and who are well–published in the academic world such as Fritjof Capra, Deepak Chopra or Alberto Villoldo, do not put much focus on their Internet au- dience, and generally do not reply to any messages coming from their web sites or forums. I have tried to reach these three icon and a few others, several times over the last years, only to receive silence. While these people certainly would react to letters snail–mailed to them via their publishers, and from the side of their readers. And here is exact- ly the crux I have discovered. ‣ Importance is given to the established channels, not to any kind of new channels put in place by the Internet. Importance is given to traditional publishing that channels the information through hyper– scrutinized and ever so tough selection by publishing agents, and huge international publishing houses, through the wholesale system, through book reviews and academic connections. And last not least, one of the strongest arguments against online publishing and pro book publishing is exactly the argument that brought about book publishing in the first place, back in the 15th century. ‣ While at that time, as we saw, it was the Church and its Inquisition that dominated the world and whose totalitarian rule publishing tried to tear down through democratic exchanges between free humans, today it’s the steadily growing police force maintained by all large modern civilizations that from the start tried to cut down, rule down and police down the Internet as a free publishing forum. What hap- pened after the turndown of the Internet as a really free exchange forum was that it was appropriated by the huge international corpo- rations, resulting in what today I would call the Corporate Internet, and which is not a free, but a highly police–controlled internet, where not freedom, but censorship is the order of the day. ‣ This mix of frivolity and pornography, on one hand, and non–free- dom, on the other, did have its effect upon academia all around the world, in that it made the Internet not attractive for free, and value– free, academic exchange across national borders. It simply did not happen that way, and it did not happen in the way I personally had hoped it to happen. It happened nonetheless, but in another way; it happened through the rise of self–publishing of printed books, out- side both the traditional publishing conglomerates and pure online | Chapter Six 370 publishing. And this is the novelty, for this kind of publishing really is not censored! On the other hand, this was not the solution either, as self–publishing has not reached academia either because of the fact that this publishing world virtually abounds of cook and garden books, pet books, do–it–yourself manuals, and other forms of vanity publishing, to a point it was never even seriously considered by acad- emic authors, as a serious publishing outlet. The result is that most of academic content, just as before the rise of the Internet, is filtered through a hand full of globally acting and globally ruthless publishing agents and book publishers who become larger and larger, and more monolithic in structure and attitude with every coming year through the huge market concentration in this field of business, that set in as a trend already in the 1950s. Needless to add that what gains attention and reward in this machinery is what sells, not what is the best of literary or intellectual astute, not what could potentially transform our world or could bring real solutions. It’s what pleases that gains its place in the sun, and on New York Times bestseller lists, and what makes money. That’s all there is to know about it. ‣ While I had to answer the first question negatively, I am still positive regarding the second answer, that is, if the Internet is a possible can- didate for being the forum of international brotherhood and political union to happen on a global scale. CHAPTER SEVEN A New Consciousness The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity. – ALAN WATTS | Chapter Seven 372 On Consciousness §1 Reality is wake reality plus dream reality. Dreaming is not only, as it is assumed by mainstream psychologists, a form of psychological digestion and integration of events and experiences in dreams , but also the di 216 - rect collection of knowledge and thus, a special form of perception. 217 In dream, our perception shifts and runs on different frequencies al- lowing us to perceive reality not in a logical and sequential manner, but in a synchronistic way that allows time to stretch and dissolve. In dreams we have access to past and future events without the limits set by the rational and time–bound mind. In dream, we perceive reality in a way more akin to the right brain hemisphere and, as a result, the rationality of dreams is one of associative logic. In addition, dreams are a test forum for ideas, plans and projects. In dreams, we can create unlimited virtual realities in which we can act at will, take roles and act out our ideas on a virtual stage in order to see how they will affect others and the world. Nowhere in nature the Darwinian theory of the surplus power of the stronger is to be found. It was through this fundamental error that domi- nator philosophies, until today, have been backed up and justified. In na- ture the main organizing principles are harmony, not strife, order and not chaos, balance and not the dominance of psychotic power abuse that only humankind has developed as a secondary drive structure. See, for example, Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1980) and Carl Gustav 216 Jung, The Meaning and Significance of Dreams 1991. This is the prevailing view in shamanic cultures. Interestingly, this is paralleled with 217 what has been received as information from extrasensorial dimensions through the prac- tice of channeling. See Pierre F. Walter, The Science of Shamanism, Monograph (2010). A New Consciousness | 373 §2 Freud said: ‘Wherever I went, a poet was there before me.’ Many poets are more scientific than scientists because they see more of what is essential in living. Scientists, in most cases, are defined more by what they blind out from the abundance of life’s appearances than by what they understand about them. §3 No outside circumstances have an impact on the state of the world; it is our own beliefs that create our reality and consequently it’s by chang- ing our beliefs that we are going to change this somewhat unlucky reality that we collectively created through a mindset of limitation, prejudice, the belief in scarcity and spiritual ignorance. §4 Every change in life comes about first on a psychic or etheric level and only thereafter on the level of physical or material density. §5 All our emotions have a direct bioenergetic impact on other humans, animals and plants, the environment and even the weather. There is a direct link between emotions and cosmic bioenergetic events through the natural streaming of the cosmic energy that flows through all and ani- mates all. §6 Our life experiences are not ‘falling from heaven’ but are the direct consequence of our beliefs and convictions. In this sense, all in life is syn- chronistic and thus part of a web of higher logic. Nothing in our universe is single and unconnected. | Chapter Seven 374 §7 Consciousness consists both of an outer and an inner reality. The inner reality is as important as the outer, and its main functioning mode is intuition. Intuition is the highest form of intelligence. When we follow our intuition instead of acting according to our beliefs or, worse, because of outside signals and commands, we always act right. 218 §8 Psychology and religion have to meet because they are complemen- tary halves of one and the same science: the science of total awareness. It will not end war when we hate war and it will not end racism and dis- crimination when we hate racism and discrimination. We have to begin to switch our inner polarity from negative to positive. Then our vital en- ergies will be used much more economically and we will dispose of a higher bioenergetic potential. With this higher energy potential we will natu- rally strive to connect more with the positive than with the negative forces of the universe. We cannot filter out of our consciousness undesired events, situations, perceptions, insights or generally any knowledge that will burden us. But what we can do is to see the relativity of all information and counterbalance burdening knowledge by positive, uplifting informa- tion. The world always offers both sides of the spectrum, and we are lim- iting our powers when we focus only on the negative, or the positive side of life or of people. §9 All beings are born innocently and there is no original sin. Empow- erment is a consciousness–enhancing process that acknowledges the nat- ural absence of any guilt or shame; all existing guilt and shame are a re- sult of negative childhood conditioning and came about through hypnot- ic spells and abuse. See also Pierre F. Walter, The Idiot Guide to Intuition, Awareness Guide (2010). 218 A New Consciousness | 375 §10 The belief in illness and faultiness of nature or the human body is the result of guilt. A guilt–free worldview looks upon life and studies health, and not death, and sickness. §11 Health and longevity depend on the capacity to render beliefs con- scious and to feed the mind with positive and integrative beliefs. The body is as conscious and as intelligent as the mind and works in synch with a mind that is feedbacking well with the body. Nobody dies without having taken the decision to pass over in another dimension and move on with his or her spiritual development in the other, more subtle, dimen- sions. By the same token, all those who die by accidents or catastrophes get to know in advance about their anticipated destiny, and can change it if they wish to. Their involvement in the event was a choice they have done on a subconscious level. §12 We live many lives simultaneously. Reincarnation is a misleading be- lief as it suggests that we lived lives sequentially. In reality, we live several lives at the same time, but on different consciousness levels or dimensions. §13 Most diseases are the result of repressing our natural emotions, espe- cially our hot and aggressive ones. When aggressiveness cannot be ex- pressed in constructive ways, they act like poison inside of us and, in the long run, block our emotional flow which in last instance means to destroy inner organs. §14 Our dreams have a major task in self–healing. Our psyche and our soma are both cleansed through healing dreams, many of which we are | Chapter Seven 376 not conscious of because we forget them in the moment or before we wake up. §15 The identification with either the body or the mind is unhealthy and brings about imbalances. Identification with the body leads to the wrong belief that life ends with death, while identification with the mind locks us out from our body and therefore in the long run destroys the body, which leads to premature death. Only the healthy integration of mind and body enhances vitality and generally leads to longevity. §16 Music balances the bioenergetic polarities in the mindbody; in addi- tion, it stimulates and enhances our natural self–healing capacities. How- ever, effective self–healing is blocked to a large extent when the person cherishes beliefs that belittle or deny nature’s inherent self–healing poten- tial. §17 Consciousness and science are linked to each other in the process of perception. Perception proceeds through sensation. Sensation is something like a window through which consciousness accesses nature. Through the gates of perception we realize the depth of knowledge that with quantita- tive science alone is not accessible. A holistic and whole–brain process of perception is needed for accurately conceiving and comprehending reali- ty in a scientific manner. A New Consciousness | 377 On Love §1 Love is part of living like breathing and drinking; it is inherent in love that it wants to express itself. It is difficult to live love naturally in a pornographic society. §2 A society that is pornographic is a society that represses emotions and allows to express them only in a very limited range of so–called sexual behavior; however, emotions are universal and by far not limited to sexual expression. §3 Sexual love within the family has often karmic reasons. Parents and children are often complementary in that they incarnate highly different or even opposing characteristics. For similar reasons, a couple may get a psychotic child because they are too stiff while the child incarnates the spontaneity that is lacking in their lives. §4 All sexuality is an ‘emosexuality’ in the sense that emotions cannot be excluded from sexual attraction, and also in the sense that sexual attrac- tion follows emotional attraction, and not vice versa. Western society has throughout history suffered from a schizoid split of love into erós and agapé, while this split does not exist in nature. §5 Most people follow sexual roles that are cliché models and not the natural expression of their soul desire; many have not enough self– | Chapter Seven 378 knowledge to know what they really want. That is why the majority of people are unable to really live their love. Naturally, our love and sex desires go together and are not to be split on different partners, one for love, and one for sex. Many men suffer from a schizoid split of love and sex projected upon different partners. This schizoid split of love and sex has brought about and brings about war, destruction, civil war and genocide on a worldwide scale. It is largely the result of moralism. §6 Sexuality is by no means fixated and rather of a moving, changing nature. It brings about strife, unhappiness and neurosis when people are exclusively heterosexual, homosexual or pedophile. All exclusivity in love and sex is a matter of rigid conditioning, of rigidity and neurosis, and not of intelligence and emotional and sexual sanity. For the future of humanity, it is absolutely essential that our bisexual nature as well as our pedoemotions be acknowledged and socially recog- nized and validated. §7 Children are from birth emotionally and sexually conscious and awake, but their sexuality has hardly anything to do with what most psychologists project on it. To condition children into early gender separation means to destroy their innate bisexuality. §8 Both lesbian and homosexual tendencies are natural with children, as pedophile tendencies are with adolescents, and are not to be interfered with. However, because sexual matters are generally little understood in our society, when children display lesbian, homosexual or pedophile at- traction, such desires more often than not are feared and repressed. One of the results is that natural heterosexuality is a rare exception within A New Consciousness | 379 Western culture because it is regularly destroyed by fearful and ignorant parents and educators during the psychosexual growth period of the child. That is how psychosexual imbalances such a homosexuality or pe- dophilia, and similar patterns are created as bioenergetic imprints early in childhood. This is because natural psychosexual growth processes are interfered with by ignorance instead of letting nature its course. Homo- sexuality and pedophilia as exclusive love options are unnatural, but the paradox is that they arise with higher frequency when early homosexual or pedophile experiences have been repressed and sexual feelings were thus soiled by guilt and shame. All early sexuality that is lived in freedom develops into genuine and lasting heterosexuality. §9 Most children are conditioned upon toys and pets in order to get away from feeling and being with their own body; this alienation and condi- tioning upon body replacements is the condition for international con- sumer culture to function, and shows how destructive this society model is in truth. An overwhelming part of children’s natural love potential is thus wasted and vested into material possessions. §10 Elders have a natural right to live their love life and sexuality without limits until old age. Sexuality is not limited to the period between birth and menopause but extends into old age without any limits but those set by people’s own minds, habits and beliefs. The Bible and other spiritual books abound of examples of couples having had late childbirth, up until in their eighties. Natural fertility depends but on the uninhibited flow of our bioenergy. The body even after menopause is able to regenerate completely so that something like a second puberty can naturally come about with people whose bioplasmatic streaming is intact and strong. When both partners are in this lucky condition, childbirth even in high age is no miracle and brings about happiness for parents and child. | Chapter Seven 380 §11 All those who have achieved self–knowledge and are in vivid dialog with their inner selves have discovered their bisexual nature and have integrated their other sexual persona. This work is the starting point of true spirituality. Sexual paraphilias are not sexual orientations sui generis but fake identities that offer those with lacking identity a point of reference for social or group acceptance, even though this very acceptance may be actually reject. On the other hand, what society projects upon paraphilias is inaccurate, because it consists of repressed perverse thoughts and long- ings and therefore lacks insight into the nature of these emotional and sexual attractions. §12 With observing some basic rules of conduct, every human life can be lived without destructive somatic disease in the form of cancer, aids, heart disease, rheumatism, arthritis, leukemia and others of the same kind, and without mental or emotional diseases such as neurosis, psy- chosis, schizophrenia, epilepsy or Alzheimer. §13 Psychoanalysis and most psychotherapeutic treatments are not natur- al and effective methods for healing emotional entanglement and early trauma, but conform with the cultural credo to reeducate, if not to brainwash people according to certain cultural beliefs. Effective trauma healing can only be done by aura healing and by honest shamans and clairvoyants. A developmental course is open for modern medicine to integrate these practices and wistful traditions in the near future. §14 A future society will have to take responsibility for socially coding sexual paraphilias. The social code is the rule of life for all. Uncoded be- havior creates individual and social chaos and brings about conflictual A New Consciousness | 381 and harmful behavior patterns as well as black markets. Coding behavior requires social acceptance. | Chapter Seven 382 On Power §1 For constructive living and a growing network of fruitful and mutual- ly beneficial relationships, we need to develop our natural soul power, which is an acute awareness of our spiritual human potential and all its possible expressions. Soul power typically manifests as a deep and lasting confidence in the goodness, intelligence and integratedness of cosmic life and love, as well as one’s own unique potential and creativity. 219 Soul power is the ability to live one’s unique form of love, whatever our loving energies are attracted to and wish to be close with. Soul power is developed mainly through the integration of our dream knowledge and wisdom. This source of knowledge is unlimited and depends only on our skill to read the language of dreams so that it is intelligible for us. Dreams also are our most genuine source of creativity. §2 Self–affirmation as a source of strength and goes along with soul power. Self–affirmation starts from the premise that we all have a unique potential and mission and do not need to accept others that are disagree- able for us or impeding us from realizing our mission. §3 Self–acceptance is a spiritual, psychic and biological necessity and the primary condition for success in life and love. We have a right to say no. To accept all in life without wavering can indicate a lack of self–accep- tance. Nobody is supposed to accept worldviews, beliefs and ideologies that deny the value of the individual. See Pierre F. Walter, The Idiot Guide to Soul Power, Awareness Guide (2010). 219 A New Consciousness | 383 §4 Traditional patriarchal education is based upon smashing the soul power of the child, raising disempowered emotional cripples that, once the emosexual castration called education is completed, are proudly called citizens. Only by a revolution in education, which is a psychological revolution, can this sad state of affairs gradually be changed and con- sciousness be raised about the need and the necessity of an education that respects the child as a person in her own right, as a spiritual entity and unique soul that incarnates with a definite mission as a learning process for his or her lifetime. | Chapter Seven 384 On Science §1 Science as unbiased observation of nature and comprehension of the cosmic laws and functionalities has been misunderstood and distorted throughout patriarchy in all dominator cultures of the world. Still in An- tiquity, when science was in the hands of philosophers who had a meta– cognitive view upon nature, science gradually developed into a quantita- tive concept, out for construing measuring devices and defining reality more and more along the lines of what could be measured with these devices, declaring nonsense or banning what could not be measured. Unfortunately, the unresolvable rest regarded as trash and blinded out from reality was the greater half of nature. As a result, the true sci- ence and its effective and functional counterpart, natural healing, had to go underground in Western civilization and survive under the threat of widespread official denial, slander and persecution. This science was first called philosophy during Antiquity, then hermetic science or alchemy, and then magnetism, spiritism, and finally new age science. §2 True science is first of all energy science, the intelligent understand- ing and use of the life force or cosmic life energy that is called ch’i in Chi- na, ki in Japan, mana or aka with the Kahunas from Hawaii and with most aboriginal peoples, prana in India, ka in old Egypt and that in Western alternative science was called vis vitalis by Paracelsus, spirit energy by Swe- denborg, animal magnetism by Mesmer, Odic force by Reichenbach, élan vital by Coué and with most hypnotists, universion by Lakhovsky and orgone by Reich. A future society’s science agenda should put the research on the cosmic life energy, the intelligent study of the use and functionality of the bioener- gy at the first place of its science agenda. Modern science has done a first A New Consciousness | 385 step in the right direction with the abandonment of the rigid observer standpoint and the acknowledgment of probabilities and paradoxes in quantum physics. The next step can only be the acknowledgment of the existence of the ether, respectively the vacuum, as an energetic continu- um, and the all–pervading cosmic life energy as the one single creator principle in the universe. 220 See also Pierre F. Walter, The Idiot Guide to Science, Awareness Guide (2010). 220 | Chapter Seven 386 On Health §1 For effective healing and medical care, we need to look at what is health, and not at what is sickness, at what is wholeness and not what is fragmentation, at what is sane and not what is insane, at what is life and not what is death. §2 Western science, since Aristotle, has looked at death in order to find out about life. Medical science was and is a death science. It has accumu- lated knowledge about decaying processes by vivisecting cadavers. It knows about the skeleton, tissues and blood vessels, but it has no idea what it is that distinguishes a living body from a dead body. To know that it would have had to look at the life force, the bioplasmatic energy contained in living organisms, and which vanishes from the dead and decaying body shortly after the moment of death. §3 Traditional Western medical science has asked the wrong questions and therefore got the wrong answers. It is merely palliative and cures symptoms without having the slightest idea about the true causes of ill- ness, be it somatic, be it psychic illness. It knows nothing about the ener- getic equilibrium of a healthy organism, and as a result ignores that all illness simply is a state of affairs where the natural equilibrium between positive and negative energetic polarities, called yang and yin, is out of balance. It is as if somebody, in order to see the sun, builds a telescope, points it at the moon, looks through it and affirms: ‘The sun is a dry planet, without life, without heat, without energy, a simple mass of stone; it appears heavy, stupid and useless’. A New Consciousness | 387 This is how Western medical science looks at the human body and what it understands about it. In reality, the human body is a luminous sun–like energy egg that irradiates a powerful bioplasmatic energy and is synergistically connected to, and resonating with, all other beings that vibrate at about the same frequency range, including animals, plants and even inanimate matter. §4 The complete human body contains twenty–four disc–shaped energy nods called chakras, seven of which are around the upper half of the human body and five of which are higher up, floating in the ether, and bioenergetically resonating with the human organism. These twelve basic chakras are mirrored by another twelve aura chakras that are contained in the luminous body and which have similar biotransformational functions. All sickness is to be seen, long before it manifests in the physical body, in the aura, the etheric body or bodies that build something like an egg– shaped luminous shell around the physical body. Illness typically mani- fests as a certain irregularity in the color spectrum of the aura; this was scientifically identified and corroborated as early as in the 1930s by a photographic technique invented by Dr. Walter J. Kirlian, a British physi- cian of Russian origin. The technique is known as Kirlian Photography. In addition, Tibetan medicine is specialized in measuring the pulse with such accuracy that it equals aura reading; illnesses can be predicted by this highly sophisticated traditional method several years in advance of their first somatization. §5 Already today, with the knowledge we possess about energy science, especially acupuncture, magnetic and cell resonance healing, aura treat- ment, homeopathy and orgone refreshment as well as macrobiotic diet, psychosomatic healing techniques and psychosynthesis, we can establish a body of futurist medicine that is effective, affordable, human, organic and environment–friendly. | Chapter Seven 388 §6 The only reason why this has not yet been done so far is the world- wide medical and pharmaceutical establishment with their strong mer- cantile power monopoly and their resistance against any progress in holistic medical science. §7 Each and every human being can be healthy from birth to death, without any use of chemical pharmaceuticals, without any visits to a medical doctor or hospital, and without any operations. This is true for the regular case; for accidents, especially road, train and airplane acci- dents highly effective urgency aid is of course still needed. §8 Childbirth is a sexual, orgasmic and first of all pleasurable experi- ence for mother, father and child and should be enjoyed at home, in the familiar setting, as a celebration of life and as a welcome party for the new soul that incarnates in the physical shell. For this to happen, the old profession of the sage femme has to be re–instituted. Childbirth has to be taken completely out of hospitals because it has nothing to do with sick- ness, and giving birth to a child is not the task of a medical doctor but of a specialized helper who by preference is a woman. Why this profession disappeared is clearly the result of the Church’s witch hunts over several centuries and the cruel persecution, torture and murder of thousands and thousands of natural obstetricians all over Eu- rope. What is true for childbirth is true for contraception and abortion as well. As it is the responsibility of the mother to carry her baby to birth or to decide to stop pregnancy, or else to avoid pregnancy altogether, a large body of methods existed over time in different cultures that was mostly in the hands of natural obstetricians. Very effective natural means for con- traception were available for very affordable prices that ensured parents A New Consciousness | 389 or a single mother got their children only in case they really wanted them, and thus were able to take care of them. This knowledge has been scattered for the most part if it is not completely forgotten. §9 The condom is one of the most decrepit, ineffective and body–hostile devices man ever come up with to interfere with sexual intercourse, as this device almost nullifies sexual pleasure for the man and as it desensi- tizes the gland, forces largely built men who have tiny built partners to use an unusual amount of force and pressure to realize orgasm – which puts unnecessary strain and in many cases also vaginal soreness and geni- tal abrasions on the female partner, not to talk about the displeasing smell and handling of condoms that must put off any sensitive human being from sex altogether. It is likely that behind the invention of the condom a sex–denying Puritan Weltanschauung has built up enough imbecility about natural functions to make the thought forms that eventually result- ed in the invention of that murky, ineffective and unaesthetic solution for safer intercourse. §10 As long as international medical care is in the hands of physicians and pharmacy multinationals, human health, on a worldwide scale, will deteriorate with every year, while the costs for this gigantic money–mak- ing machine of white–coated nonsense will astronomically increase. | Chapter Seven 390 On Emotions §1 Present society confuses natural aggressiveness with violence and brings about violence through repressing healthy aggressiveness. Rage and anger are positive emotions because they help us to become con- scious of unhealthy fusionary attachments and be grounded through our first chakra energy. In aggressiveness contained is a high communication potential that cannot be used when aggressiveness is totally repressed. Aggressiveness is not violence in that it is outgoing and creative, and as such an expression of our soul power, while violence is coming about through suicidal and disempowering feelings and is an expression of our weakness. §2 Our emotions are naturally complete and intelligent, and they are kaleidoscopically linked to each other. All emotions have a place in life and should be lived consciously and without controlling or repressing any of them. When one emotion is blocked, the natural cycle of emotions which can be visualized as a kaleidoscope, is broken with the result that the natural bioenergetic balance of our organism becomes impaired. §3 Knowledge about our primary power or soul power frees us of all our fears and also from rage and hate feelings. Natural soul power cannot be gained when we deny our natural goodness, and the creativeness of our subconscious mind. Even small children have a natural soul power poten- tial that is regularly destroyed in patriarchal education, bringing about fearful and perversely obedient children that do not question the status quo and go along with every kind of abuse without defending themselves. A New Consciousness | 391 §4 Sex laws should be abandoned and sexual experience be completely decriminalized and taken out of the hands of the state. Personal intimacy has no place on police agendas and in newspaper columns; what this leads to is that love and intimacy are screwed up, defiled and degraded into sexual acts without meaning and without soul. So save human love from vulgarity and perversion, and for fighting sexual crime, there is only one way: freedom. Hence, a body of independent consultants that work as public welfare agencies should step in and provide emotional and sexual consultancy in accordance with special statutes and regulations that es- tablish their social function and usefulness within a responsible medical and psychic health care system. 221 §5 Children have to be raised in a peaceful, natural and comprehensive environment, where their whole person, including their bodies and emo- tions are truly understood and accepted. For this to happen, any form of educational violence called corporal or physical punishment has to be definitely, by law, prohibited and abandoned. No adult has the right to 222 exert violence upon a child, and education is no exception from this rule. To justify educational violence and at the same time wonder why vio- lence is one of humanity’s major problem testifies of the shortsightedness and thwarted emotional intelligence of most humans raised under patri- archy. It is for this reason that changes in this important area are so slow to come and that so many, even educated people, continue beating their children like masters once were beating their slaves. Children who are regularly beaten cannot integrate their bodies and emotions into a non–fragmented and peaceful mindset because this very process is impaired through the presence of strong fear, guilt and shame See also Pierre F. Walter, The Idiot Guide to World Peace, Awareness Guide (2010). 221 See, for example, Dean M. Herman, A Statutory Proposal to Prohibit the Infliction of Violence 222 upon Children, 19 FAMILY LAW QUARTERLY, 1986, 1–52. | Chapter Seven 392 in the child’s psyche. This means that children raised in a violent manner are crippled and handicapped for life! Educational violence therefore should be prohibited by law for both parents and persons who act in loco parentis, such as educators, tutors and other caretakers. Ideally physical and sexual child abuse in the form of violence acted out upon a child, should be treated in one and the same legal bill, and not in diverse and difficult–to–find separate legislations. 223 See also Pierre F. Walter, The Idiot Guide to Sanity, Awareness Guide (2010). 223 A New Consciousness | 393 On Peace §1 World peace can be attained only by changing our basic paradigms about emotions and sexuality for they condition our views upon violence and how we handle this major problem in its manifold manifestations as domestic violence, street violence, gang violence, in–group versus out– group violence, racial and ideological violence, official governmental, military or police violence and structural violence. §2 All research done over the last decades on the roots of violence points to violence being a direct result of repressing our natural pleasure function and the establishment, within patriarchy, of rigid moralistic behavior rules. Pleasure, joy and sexual excitement are essential for bringing about novelty in individual and collective life patterns and the bioenergetic ex- change between organisms. This is independent of sex and age and it is valid for people from all walks of life and belonging to all races and cul- tures. §3 When natural body pleasure is thwarted and man thus deprived of tactile stimulation, a secondary drive structure builds up that is violent and destructive. This secondary drive structure that is fed by stuck and pent–up bioenergy rigidifies over time into a character armor that im- pedes man from feeling and thus inhibits important functions in the hu- man character: empathy and compassion. This is how humanity could become as violent as it is today, ruthlessly building in–group empires that shut out millions of people and dozens of nations and that expand on the price of genocide and public insanity. | Chapter Seven 394 §4 Man is not by nature violent and destructive. Those who believe that build their worldview upon myths and a manipulative history science that deliberately overlooks the fact that before patriarchy came up about five thousands years ago, most peoples of the world lived in peace and fruitful exchanges, while they maintained partnership economies instead of dom- inator economies. These cultures, one of them being the Kahuna natives from Hawaii, do not know strict moralistic behavior rules; they simply complied with the golden rule to not do to another what one wishes not to suffer oneself. Anthropological and cross–cultural research has shown that a tiny rest of these cultures luckily survived until this day, one of them being the Tro- briand culture in Papua New Guinea, another being the Muria tribe in India. These cultures have in common that they do not interfere with the emotions and sexual behavior of their children and thus practice what today is called permissive education. They also tend to raise their children not as a result of economic constraints but with great respect in front of natural biological growth cycles. Thus, for example, puberty is naturally the period where the child takes a leave from his or her parents, marries and engages in a professional career, as this was still the case in the Mid- dle–Ages in Europe but was afterwards completely eroded by the extend- ed educational cycles as part of mechanistic and alienating industrial cul- ture. §5 Today’s postmodern international consumer culture or Oedipal Cul- ture, with its worldwide exportation of traditional Western values, is an utterly perverse upside–down movement that replaces life by a form of collective psychosis and rampant violence and that is based on denial and ignorance: denial of the most part of our natural and important pleasure function and ignorance about the most fundamental scientific and spiri- A New Consciousness | 395 tual patterns of living. For the peace agenda of a future society the fol- lowing essential points have inter alia to be considered: ‣ Emosexual freedom for children and adolescents; ‣ Emosexual freedom for the elder; ‣ Respect and recognition of our natural bisexuality; ‣ Recognition of the ether and parallel universes; ‣ A unified field theory for the cosmic energy field; ‣ Expert advice for contraception and abortion; ‣ Respect of every state’s territorial and political integrity; ‣ Worldwide training of cross–cultural communication; ‣ Worldwide free–of–charge student exchanges; ‣ Scientific study of life–after–death and cosmic life cycles. | Chapter Seven 396 Points to Ponder ‣ In Chapter Seven I have given an account of intuitive insights that came about af- ter years of meditation and assiduous study of both spiritual and channeled literature from sources around the world, including native cultures. ‣ Generally speaking, the overall impres- sion I gained from these insights is that our human consciousness today is rather limited, rather small, and not worth the great human that was originally set in this world, as a unique and self–regulat- ing creation. What we have today is the small human, an almost grotesque reduc- tion of its original plan, a dwarf being spiritually, mentally, emotion- ally and even sexually. A dwarf being not rendered a dwarf but hav- ing himself restricted to a dwarf universe, by putting all kinds of limi- tations to its original, unbounded and very versatile and flexible struc- ture. ‣ Nature created us totally free and we have done all we could to do away with this freedom. Nature created us totally intelligent and self– reliant and we have done all we could to do away with raising chil- dren in truth and intelligence, molding them to our hundreds of con- cepts that are not worth the ink spent on writing them, perpetuating them, in our books of wisdom, bibles and other holy (and dusty) books. ‣ Nature has been honest with us; we are not born clothed, and we are not holy enough to not being urged for toilet visits once in a while where we face the not–so–nice nature of our bodily universe. We have done everything to pay nature her honesty back, by being large- ly and irresponsibly dishonest, hypocrite and abject over millennia, and in a manner that I can only call criminal. And the most dishonest creatures are paid, in our society, for being ‘professionally dishonest’, our politicians and members of parliaments, and those scientists that are top of the list when it goes to justify the past or present abuses, and that are generously funded by the military. A New Consciousness | 397 ‣ Nature has been humble with us, to cloth all its supreme wisdom and power in a human skin, and to embody in the human being the greatest of intelligence among all creatures on the globe. We have paid nature this humility back by having become the most hubristic, fragmented, violent and devastating creature on the globe and prob- ably within our planetary system, the creature that has accumulated so many weapons of mass destruction that it can click out the overkill of the planet more than four thousand times, and that has brought about, through its acclaimed and highly intelligent science, the eco- logical ruin of the entire planet. ‣ Nature has been taking care of us, to preserve our species, and we have paid nature this care back by ruthlessly discarding out thousands of species, and, worse, to reduce our own species drastically through large–scale murder, persecution and genocide, and this independent of time and space, in virtually all epochs, throughout human written history. ‣ Instead of repeating or paraphrasing the insights given in this chap- ter, I encourage the reader to just re–read it over and over again, for something is likely to happen on the consciousness level when doing this. It is less likely to happen when just paraphrasing the originally received insights, as they were coming from not my intellect and not even my being, but from a source I qualify as ‘intuition’ and that oth- ers would qualify as ‘channeled’ or ‘spiritual’. The word is not the thing. ‣ What is important to retain after having read this guide is that you and me are equal in that we can at any time go a path of self–criti- cism and freedom from the cultural and social hypnosis, and look over the fence. It needs courage, and persistence, and while only very few humans do that on a consistent basis, that doesn’t mean it’s im- possible. It means only that nature, despite all the perversion the hu- man being has brought about, holds the backdoor open for those who do not agree with the lies and fairy tales that are served in our luke- warm media soup with every day to come, and who begin to think by themselves. WORK SHEETS Doing the Work Please print these worksheets, take a pen and do the work. If you use the printed version of this guide, you may also write directly in your book. This makes your experience authentic and adds your own positive vibration to your copy. Doing this, while you may find it unusual, has the effect to imprint in your copy of the book your own vibrational code. This will enhance the im- pact and success of your study, and in addition will make this really your own! If you need more space, add additional sheets and attach them to the worksheets in the book. Giving your input is essential for realizing the benefits you can reap with this guide. If you are more comfortable writing on your computer, you can write your answers in a text file and save it for later review. Please note that the emotional or soul value of doing the work is higher when you print the sheets and use a pen or pencil because you will keep something original and your handwriting testifies about the soul condition you were in when you did the work. This gives you the additional advantage that you can scribble on the pages, color them, use little drawings or even put a mind map – and all this will enhance the soul quality of your work and help your subcon- scious mind trigger the changes that you expect to happen in your life. Work Sheets | 399 Your Ultimate Decision Your Ultimate Decision and Contract Our life is directed by our decisions, if we want it or not. In the latter case others take the decisions for us and we are not really in control of our destiny. Therefore, if you want to seriously subscribe to and engage in a process of raising consciousness and emotional self–awareness, if you want to take the key to open the locker of your highest potential, you have to make deci- sions. After all, you have to take only one decision, your ultimate decision. This decision is simply a choice, the choice to realize yourself exclusively on your highest possible level of achieve- ment. It is your decision for raising your current level of conscious- ness. The quality of the beginning is more often than not the quality of the end result. Therefore, because I want you to really succeed with this guide, you must take your ultimate decision first. And more than that, I require you to make a contract with yourself. If you take a decision for change lightheartedly, there is not much chance that you sustain your efforts beyond your first phase of enthu- siasm and overcome the inevitable drawbacks that are part of the way to high consciousness. If you are afraid of decisions, life takes them for you! No deci- sion is also a decision. In one word, you can’t avoid to make decisions, it’s only the question if or not you begin to make them consciously and intently. Thus, if you want to enter this new path of consciousness, you may want to profit from the techniques of empowering yourself so that you imprint upon your conscious mind what exactly you want. In this contract which is like a vow taken for your life, you as- sert for yourself your devotion to the path of change and achievement you want to take. You affirm your absolute intention and will to get rid of your problem forever and to make the change which will bring about all that you desire for improving your life. This contract is for yourself your substantial investment of will and energy which serves as a motor for your change. Your ultimate decision is a unique command that you imprint upon ✐ | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 400 your subconscious mind. It is a signal to your mind which automati- cally triggers the change mechanisms in it. I, undersigned, hereby conclude a contract with myself which follows the Ultimate Decision that I have taken. This contract is binding for myself. If I break the contract I impose on myself the following fine: – Work through this guide once again from the first to the last page. Decision I hereby ultimately decide that I apply from now on the uni- versal laws and principles that are basic for every form of life in the cosmos. Knowing that these principles are the guar- anties for raising my consciousness to a higher level, I do all I can to study these principles and to apply them in my life. I call these principles from now on: – My Consciousness Principles Contract I give all my devotion to the fulfillment of my Ultimate Decision and sign this contract with myself in the conviction that I fol- low from now on My Consciousness Principles. I hereby declare that I have the firm and absolute will to mas- ter any kind of fear, especially the fear of failing. Signature Work Sheets | 401 Your Needs Your Needs Statement There is unison agreement among psychologists that for any form of self–improvement, we need to know our present condition or state of mind, and inquire into our present state of consciousness, including our subconscious mind which speaks to us through dream monitions, mistakes, fears and accidents. One essential element in our status quo to be assessed and checked out are our needs. We all have basic needs, which are first of all the need for food and shelter, the need for touch and closeness with others, the need for sexual relations, the need for peace of mind, the need for creative expression, the need for social recognition, and others. Now, for any kind of personal evolution to take place, we first need to assess and render conscious our needs, all of our needs! Here is a list for you where you should cross the needs you feel are most urgently to be met, and that you feel are not adequately met in the present moment. [ ] I need better food and/or more comfortable housing [ ] I need better relationships and friendships [ ] I need more regular sexual fulfillment [ ] I need more touch and closeness with others [ ] I need to marry and have children [ ] I need my sexual difference to be recognized socially [ ] I need more peace of mind, and quietness around me [ ] I need more creative expression [ ] I need more social recognition [ ] I need my achievements to be awarded and rewarded [ ] I need a better workplace, where I can unfold my talents If you have individual needs that are not listed here, get full clari- ty about them and state them in the box below. ✐ | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 402 My Individual Needs Work Sheets | 403 Your Expectations Your Expectations Statement There is equally unison agreement among psycholo- gists that for any outcome in personal evolution, we need to know what our expectations are. Why? Have you ever observed how expectations seem to mysteriously program and condition the outcome of our expe- riences? Generally speaking, in life we get what we expect. If I expect not much, being just satisfied with the bottomline, I am not likely to attain the highest possible result. Therefore it makes sense to check out my expectations before I engage in something new, and deliberately set my expectations as high as possible. Check the boxes where you feel the answer applies to you. Be honest with yourself ! [ ] Consciousness work is for me a nice pastime [ ] To get to a higher form of consciousness is entertaining [ ] I expect to have a good time with this guide [ ] I expect to be more successful when being more conscious [ ] I expect to acquire a new skill called ‘high consciousness’ [ ] I think I will know myself better when being more aware [ ] I expect to acquire a new quality of living [ ] I expect to get along better with others when I am aware [ ] I expect to understand the sense of life better [ ] I expect nothing; I believe we shouldn’t expect much in life [ ] I expect this kind of work being boring and unfulfilling [ ] I expect nothing short of a miracle [ ] I expect a steep learning curve with this kind of work [ ] I expect an exciting time to pass with this work If you have individual expectations that are not listed here, get full clarity about them and state them in the box below. ✐ | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 404 My Individual Expectations Work Sheets | 405 Raising Your General Awareness Level Your General Awareness Statement Write below in the box how high or low you con- sider your present general awareness level and how much you wish to raise it. Give models and exam- ples, if known, state key experiences or refer to people you are looking up to, and who have real- ized the awareness level you wish to achieve. Raising My General Awareness Level ✐ | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 406 Raising Your Erotic Awareness Level Your Erotic Awareness Statement Write below in the box how high or low you con- sider your present erotic awareness level and how much you wish to raise it. Give models and exam- ples, if known, state key experiences or refer to people you are looking up to, and who have real- ized the awareness level you wish to achieve. Raising My Erotic Awareness Level ✐ Work Sheets | 407 Raising Your Socioeconomic Awareness Level Your Socioeconomic Awareness Statement Write below in the box how high or low you con- sider your present socioeconomic awareness level and how much you wish to raise it. Give models and examples, if known, state key experiences or refer to people you are looking up to, and who have real- ized the awareness level you wish to achieve. Hint: Socioeco- nomic awareness is awareness of the complex relationship between economy and society, or economy and social values Raising My Socioeconomic Awareness Level ✐ | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 408 Raising Your Sociopolitical Awareness Level Your Sociopolitical Awareness Statement Write below in the box how high or low you con- sider your present sociopolitical awareness level and how much you wish to raise it. Give models and examples, if known, state key experiences or refer to people you are looking up to, and who have real- ized the awareness level you wish to achieve. Hint: Sociopoliti- cal awareness is awareness of the complex relationship be- tween social values and politics, or between politics regulating the social field. It is awareness also of the process of social policy making. Raising My Sociopolitical Awareness Level ✐ Work Sheets | 409 Raising Your Body Awareness Level Your Body Awareness Statement Write below in the box how high or low you con- sider your present body awareness level and how much you wish to raise it. Give models and exam- ples, if known, state key experiences or refer to people you are looking up to, and who have real- ized the awareness level you wish to achieve. Hint: Body Awareness is the awareness of all your bodily functions and the interactive connection between your body and your mind. Raising My Body Awareness Level ✐ | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 410 Raising Your Emotional Self–Awareness Your Emotional Self–Awareness Statement Write below in the box how high or low you con- sider your present emotional self–awareness level and how much you wish to raise it. Give models and examples, if known, state key experiences or refer to people you are looking up to, and who have real- ized the awareness level you wish to achieve. Raising My Emotional Self–Awareness Level ✐ Work Sheets | 411 Raising Your Group Awareness Level Your Group Awareness Statement Write below in the box how high or low you con- sider your present group awareness level and how much you wish to raise it. Give models and exam- ples, if known, state key experiences or refer to people you are looking up to, and who have real- ized the awareness level you wish to achieve. Hint: Group Awareness is awareness of your interacting within a team or group of people, and what your conditioned behavioral reflex- es are when you are around others. Raising My Group Awareness Level ✐ RESEARCH FAQ Frequently Asked Questions Research FAQ | 413 Part One Child Sexuality and Child Abuse Q–01. Do you endorse or defend child abuse? The motivation for my research is academic, not based upon defending any lifestyle or group opinions. To say it clearly, I have no affiliations to organized pedophilia anywhere in the world. I say this right at the top of this FAQ because at least one scientist worried about it and actually in- sulted me, without having anything at hand against me, just by making up assumptions. As this is very common today, which doesn’t astonish me when you see the public hysteria around these subjects, I am explicit. In addition, I have found that among people who are fanatically ‘fighting child–abuse’, it suffices you research on child sexuality, and they put you already on their agenda of suspicious individuals. So I have to be outspoken. Q–02. What is your motivation for researching about sexual abuse? I have been facing violence against children at repeated occasions in my life, most of the time in the school and home setting, and here most often with religious institutions. In addition, I have been physically abused in my childhood by the female directors of a Catholic home in Germany. I would like to make a contribution for substantially reducing the battery and abuse of children in whatever setting and therefore started a research on violence against children back in 1985. My goal is to help society overcome limitations that are exactly bring- ing about what it most fights, abuse. All abuse is society–made, man– made, a direct consequence of moralism, that is, of coercive, compulsive morality. Abuse is not necessary and not natural. All abuse is the result of | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 414 the repression of our emotions, not of the intelligent understanding of our emotional life. All abuse is anti–life, not pro–life. All abuse is a misun- derstanding of the human nature, a self–programming that can be made undone. All abuse is the result of taboos and restrictions in communication together with a denial of complexity, general complexity and specific, emotional and erotic complexity; in other words, all abuse is the result of a fascist worldview. Western society is thoroughly fascist; it needs abuse for allowing many of its implicit software features to function. Without abuse, this society’s consumerist worldview would crash like a cardhouse. When you study tribal cultures, you see that abuse is the exception while in mainstream dominator cultures, and especially in white Western culture, abuse is the rule. Q–03. What is your solution? My solution, if there is any, is not ‘my’ solution. There is no propri- etorship for solutions that benefit humanity. But there are solutions, and I found that some of them are effective. Working with our inner selves, dia- loguing with our inner mind, is one of them. I have made it an integral part of a more encompassing personal growth technique that I came to call Life Authoring. Q–04. What do you think about political solutions? As long as politicians are concerned about being voted instead of being concerned to find solutions for our problem, there can be no political solutions. Sounds logical? Hence, solutions come from another angle of society. Or in other terms, the solution to evil can be found within evil, not outside of it. The solution for healing abuse can be found when you exchange with abusers, instead of lobbying with ignorant politicians. I have done several years of free counseling to people who struggle with their unruly emotions, who Research FAQ | 415 were either at the point to commit crimes, and I could readily interfere and help changing their fatal course of conduct, or else they had commit- ted offenses and I have have tried to help them gaining self–awareness of their emotional life and needs. By so doing, I could gain much insight in the nature and the prob- lems of abuse and also the consequences in terms of self–condemnation and guilt. I found, for example, that without helping the person to get over that guilt, and to really quit with self–condemnation, the person cannot change, and the abuse pattern cannot be erased on the level of the inner mind, within the luminous body. However, our whole prison and correction system does the very con- trary, by labeling offenders as ‘abusers’ which is why it actually con- tributes to raise abuse in our society, instead of fighting effectively against it. Q–05. Why do some people feel uncomfortable about child sexuality? Every culture has its specific means of sexual conditioning, its own taboos, restrictions, repressions and prohibitions in order to ensure the closest adaptation of its newborn individuals to the ethical code of the community. In this process, societies tend to be particularly sensitive with regard to deviances from its sexual code of conduct. In Western culture, the child’s sexual life was not questioned before the industrial age. However, with the beginning of industrialization, it became a ques- tion of good mores to keep children ‘pure and innocent’ and the denial of the child’s sexuality became a societal concern. Within postindustrial culture, child sexuality while in the meantime being widely recognized in psychoanalytical research and practice, be- came even a matter of global concern because a free sexual child is a bad consumer. Hence, free child sexuality is not economically correct in the sense that the present consumer culture needs asexual children to function. Together with the denial of the child’s sexuality, brutality against chil- dren, justified as corporal punishment for the child’s best, and, worse, the | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 416 denial of the child’s unique personality, became part of the educational paradigm. At the same time, individual and collective aggression against childlovers, so–called pedophiles, raised, probably because they questioned the myth of the sexual purity of children. However, the notion of the pedophile is in itself a myth made up by consumer culture for various pur- poses. The problem barely existed in ancient cultures because girls could be married from early age, and pederasty with boys was tolerated in many tribal and also some of the larger civilizations of Antiquity such as Greece, Rome, old Egypt, Persia or Russia. Even today, in many of the more exotic island cultures, girls are mar- ried before they are ten years of age and nobody, in those cultures, would label a male a ‘pedophile’ because he marries a young virgin. In the Bible, which is notoriously the book of ‘good mores’ for exactly those who today persecute pedophiles, it is reported that King Solomon was sup- posed to gain new forces through intercourse with a young virgin that was put in his bed for testing his vitality and predicting his death. As he did not touch the girl, it was concluded he was going to die soon, and so it was. Needless to add that nobody called the mighty King ‘a pedophile’. In my view, the present public child sexual abuse and pedophilia de- bate, was it not a dangerous avatar of worldwide fascism to come, is the most ridiculous parade of imbeciles that world history has ever seen. The truth about it was clearly to be seen at the starting point of it all, that is, the Industrial Revolution. The repression of children’s sex life by the industrial bourgeoisie and the ruthless exploitation of children for industrial labor were namely the two sides of the same medal. Concern for the child’s best, then, is but a pretext that hides a total disconcern for the child as a person, as an individ- ual with his or her own desires and preferences. This is still today so, while children are no more, in industrialized nations, subjected to child labor; the exploitation has become more sub- tle. The consumer child is exploited as an economic force, spoken to by media publicity, and thus represents an important element for economic growth of all nations today. But as a human being, that same child is Research FAQ | 417 shunned, their emotions and sexual urges are denied or repressed, or the child is turned into an intellectual robot with a starved body and a forgot- ten soul. As a general rule, it can be stated that sexual repression and ex- ploitation always go together, whereas tolerant and comprehensive forms of educating children typically begin with sexual permissiveness. Wilhelm Reich and Françoise Dolto coincided in saying that sexual education al- ways comes too late. Any instruction of children has to take into account the emotional dimension sexuality has for children; any kind of instruc- tion that is not rooted in the emotional life of the child has no sense and will only engender confusion in the child’s psyche and behavior code. This means that sex education focused upon reproduction and com- plicated biological processes not only completely misses its goal, but cre- ates more damage than no sex education. A change in the traditional and still present attitudes toward child sexuality can only be effected by changing the education of the next generation of parents our present– day children, by introducing a consciousness–based and permissive edu- cation for all children, independently of gender and social status. Q–06. Why do adult–child sexual interactions have to be socially coded? Pedoemotions and the whole spectrum of sexual behavior between adults and minors must be coded socially. A social code – which is much more than a legal statute in that it judges certain forms of conduct as so- cially acceptable – is the only way to progress on the level of culture, while the present irresponsible attitude produces chaos, confusion, insecurity and, at worst, civil war. The late child therapist Françoise Dolto, when I in- terviewed her back in 1986 in Paris, was sharing my view and clearly emphasized the need to socially code adult–child sexual relations because, as she said, the very fact that children project their ‘Oedipal desires’ outside of the family was a good thing to happen as it helped avoid incest, but that those relations, as long as they are not socially coded, survive in a grey area of uncoded behavior and therefore are potentially chaotic because of fear, and psychological pressure through the secrecy they are sur- | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 418 rounded with. Besides chaos, confusion, anxiety and guilt, the fact these desires are largely repressed results in a high level of violence in our soci- ety. It has been shown by different research that there is a functional link between the repression of human sexual pleasure and the upsurge of vio- lence. It is first of all the repression of the child’s natural sexual function and the social disapproval of tactile pleasure for certain age groups that prepares the ground for societal violence. In our culture, violence serves a compensatory function for the frustration of body pleasure. The age–old collective denial of emotional and sexual freedom for children has greatly facilitat- ed the rise of authoritarian, totalitarian, fascist, violent and irresponsible forms of government. This is why the quest for liberalizing child sexuality in all its forms is a vital political issue! For it has to be seen that the reason why conservative circles do not wish the child to choose partners for love and sex freely is precisely that children then would also at times opt for an adult love mate, and that would then act counter to the pedophilia taboo. I encountered this contradiction even with authors and scientists who are by and large in favor of child sexuality; the moment one renders them aware that if children are to be granted free choice relations, this im- plies the child may choose an adult love mate at times, they are scandal- ized and shout and yell that such was a ‘typically pedophile’ argument. When that happens with a scientist, it renders us strangely aware of the irrationality of the human race. As Goethe said in his Faust drama, ‘what must not be cannot be’. Q–07. Is your sociopolitical agenda different from that of pedophile groups? Decidedly so. That is inter alia the reason I was shunned and imper- sonated, back in 1998, by group of boylovers, and messages were posted on their forums about me, where it was alleged I was a psychiatrist out to brainwash pedophiles, or else a police spy. As ridiculous as I found this when I first heard about it, it has shown me to what extent most of these Research FAQ | 419 people live in a world of fear, a world of depression and paranoia, a world of almost constant anguish. From their point of view, what they said made sense to me. They saw I was not signed up with joining their groupings, and at the same time they noticed I was not signed up for mainstream propaganda. So they wondered what kind of green frog I was? It seems to me that not only pedophiles, but generally many people in our society do not like self– thinkers, people like me, who do not join groupings and are single fight- ers. It has to be seen that I do not make money from this engagement. All what I have done with publishing since the fourteen years I am now on the Internet, was done with my own money invested, with no returns, and even with as good as no feedback. It also has to be seen that I have an agenda as a lawyer that dates back to my times in law school. This agenda can be called social reform, so this is actually an old idea of mine. I was about in the 3rd semester, and not yet twenty years old, that I joined a seminar on criminology and paid a visit to our local prison; and I was so scandalized that I talked to the prison director and tried to mobilize our criminal law professor to do a petition for improving the terrible condi- tions in that prison. In the coming years I have done prisoner care and have learnt much from it, and my conviction that criminal laws and law enforcement have to be thoroughly reformed was deepening still more. In addition, I have done my doctoral thesis in international law also on a subject that was highly controversial at the time, sovereign immunity litigation. I have actually never, in all my studies, worked on something that was mainstream, and not in some way controversial. It would simply not interest me. Q–08. What are the main points where you differ in terms of strategy? It’s dead simple. I am against the cause of pedophilia, period! It’s the wrong cause. The right cause is the cause of the child, to work for more | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 420 permissiveness in education, for parents, caretakers and society respecting the emotional and sexual integrity of the child. I am against any social cause where a sexual minority uses their sex- ual orientation as a hanger identity, thereby circumventing to build a real soul identity. It’s the same with the cause of homosexuality that suggests homosexuality was something inevitable, a fate people are born with, and other ideological nonsense. The truth is that homosexuality is an emo- tional distortion that is man–made, not nature–made; it’s the result of wrong education, wrong upbringing, specifically the consequence of some deci- sive events of a traumatic nature that have catapulted the child out of the nat- ural course of psychosexual growth and into introverting their bioenergy. 224 With pedophilia it is similar, there is a reason, or there are reasons why adults are sexually attracted to children. The etiology is not yet clear, much is still in research, but pedophilia surely is not something that is set as such by nature. One thing is certain, people are not born as pedophiles, as some politicians who play around with fascist and euthanasia ideas, as- sume it nowadays. By the same token, if the person wants to change their sexual attraction, which is just an outflow of their emotional predilection for the young, they can do so. In my Idiot Guide to Love (2010), I am show- ing effective ways to change one’s love map, and I address the concerned directly, showing them work tools for personal and emotional transforma- tion. But it’s of course a choice that must be made by the person herself, and here we see that sexual attraction is not an automatism, but is choice. There are reasons, good reasons, why adults choose to be around children, and these are valid reasons in a society that has pretty much lost its soul and its humanity. Children are our angels, they are our gods and goddesses, our princes and princesses, they can teach us so much, they are full of wisdom and love. I personally do not have relations with peo- ple who are indifferent to children or are violent against children as I know that these people are deeply ignorant about life and the destiny of humanity. I know since many years that those who are naturally religious, See, for example, Jeffrey Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth (1996). 224 Research FAQ | 421 sensitive and intelligent love children, if they talk about it or not. This is simply so. Q–09. Is there any message you would want to give to childlovers? Yes. Childlovers could be integrated socially in that they can take on important tasks in education and social welfare, especially in charity work for neglected or destitute children. This is one of the policies to be implemented in order to reduce vio- lence and aggression, and violent sexual crime involving children, in our society. But they would have to accept society’s social code, as it is for now, and thus would have to do some work on themselves, as I suggest it in my books, and as I practice it with two different coaching methods I have coined, that is, Pedoemotions Consulting (PEC), which is addressed to educators and will be proposed to governments as an effective alternative to law enforcement, and Emosexcoaching as a 1–2–1 life coaching method. I practically suggest that laws should be changed and pedophiles and among them convicted pedophiles should be made eligible for educational work with children after having passed a course in handling their Pedoemo- tions. I am convinced that after they have gained emosexual awareness, these people are the most valuable as educators we can find in society. They are the born educators, and society needs them badly! But for this change to happen, a lot of objective information has to be spread, as for now public opinion is very badly and wrongly informed about the real world of pedophiles. The ambience is one of bewilderment, secrecy and fear, and the myths about so–called ‘pedophile predators’ are really overshadowing reality. So the message I have for pedophiles is to remain positive, accept themselves, and help publishing objective information about their desire and their lives, their reality, instead of hiding, making depressions and indulging in a negative and fatalistic attitude. In my view, pedophiles have to seek out exchanges also with straight people and any kind of people, instead of just meeting and discoursing in their forums, for this will root | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 422 them more in reality and help them to live with their desire, as conflictual as that may be in our judgmental and actually very little rational society. In my view, pedophiles should eventually understand that it is futile and ineffective to indulge in so–called scientific explanations or justifica- tions for child sexuality and begin to act, wherever possible, for the digni- ty of children. As I put it in a slogan, we have to get away from child pro- tection in order to get to be at the service of children! The grand public is simply not interested in what a pedophile has to say about himself, about children or about his relationships with children. The grand public has no true interest in children and therefore no inter- est in those who love them! What matters is action! There are many fields of productive action for childlovers, for example in education, in youth work and generally in all areas where children can be benefited by love, patience and true understanding. This work should be oriented as a long– term goal to free children from the enslavement they are subjected to un- der the reigning paradigm and, as a result, at helping to change the old patriarchal authoritarian societal model into a viable modern paradigm of shared citizenship. I also repeat myself saying that childlovers should rather opt to be around children than breeding out depressions and suicidal ideas, and they should accept the social norm and hence, stay away from being sex- ual with children. The emotional relationship and closeness they can en- joy with children, for example in the sports setting, in the educational or the family setting, are so much more important and so much more re- warding than a haphazard and in our society outright dangerous sexual interaction with a child. While I do not deny or belittle the importance of sexual activeness, in such a negative situation as in our society right now regarding childlove, the better way is to use restraint but make sure to be around children as much as possible. The danger to lose one’s mind in such an obvious value conflict, or to attract a fatal disease such as cancer, is greater when the concerned close themselves up in their four walls and accumulate and pent–up their urges. Research FAQ | 423 Moreover, childlovers should be conscious of the drawbacks, but re- main persistent in their goal setting and motivation. They should always be on the watch for conservative and tradition oriented individuals or groups because extremist and ideological response almost always comes from those ranges of pluralistic society that preach ‘high morality’. Politi- cally conscious childlovers will be aware that they live on the edge of so- ciety without resenting this somewhat Herculean role. They understand that we must surpass child protection in order to really serve children. As a result, the politically conscious pedophile may be asked for a higher human investment than this can be expected from ordinary people in that he or she has to struggle against conservativism and fascism in poli- tics and release sustained effort in reforming or restructuring social, legal and political instruments that have proved to be damaging to the freedom and dignity of children. As long as children are regarded as possessions either of their parents or the state, anyone interested in freeing them from that bondage will meet with defensive social attitudes and a certain deeply rooted and often unconscious resistance. In the long run, politically conscious childlovers help bringing about a new society that is nurturing instead of controlling, understanding in- stead of judging and supportive instead of destructive, a society that fa- vors freedom and respect for intergenerational love and that does not condition sexual behavior but accepts sexual attraction in any form, pro- vided it is nonviolent and constructive. Q–10. Why are you against child protection? I am not against child protection, when this term is used as a general term and not a term loaded with a hidden ideological agenda. Most of the time, today, when people use that term, they connote the ideological vintage of child protection. The ideology behind this kind of child protection de- fends a worldwide business that was established over the last two decades by people situated rather on the right wing of society, and by people close | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 424 to churches and sects, among them many Christian fundamentalists and world puritans, that is, Oedipal Heroes, to use my terminology, people who have a persecutor mindset and who are emotionally immature if not in- fantile. This ideology of protecting children from life comes over to me, honestly, as a very blatant and stringent perversion in the sense that it’s a paranoid worldview, that puts life upside down in every respect. And it’s no fun for the children, to be true. The rose and blue world of modern civilization babies represents the plastic shell in which they are incarcerated for ‘their own good’; it is the clean façade of a culture that has lost the sense of birth and death and, as such, of living. The truth of childhood that child protectors tend to invoke authorita- tively to justify their paranoid assumptions is in fact a very relative con- cept; among hundred fifty cultures in a survey, ours showed to be one of the three most sexually restrictive. Thus, from a global perspective, such kind of statements are not only relative, they are simply invalid in their pretended universality. Research on sexual conduct over times shows that the only difference between now and the past is that since three hundred years sexuality has become a privilege for adults, whereas formerly it was a shared enjoyment of all members of the community, except within the family structure. Thus, it can be said that the task to liberalize the child’s sexual life is a truly democratic endeavor. By the same token, liberalizing adult–child sexual relations means to act counter to the devastating effects of incest and to free the child from widespread emotional and sexual abuse within the family. Mainstream society is well equipped to exploit children through keep- ing them innocent, that is, ignorant in matters of love. Authoritarian educa- tion together with emotional abuse set the ground state for incest as an insti- tutional collective perversion in modern society. In the sexually repressive and nuclear family structure the child is forcibly trapped into the Oedipal triangle, a problem that is nonexistent in sexually permissive cultures where children enjoy free sex with peers. The paradigm of total obedience in patriarchal society ensures that the child is unable to say no to an adult, a concept that really opens the Research FAQ | 425 gate for potentially unlimited emotional, physical and sexual abuse of the child by the tutelary adult or educator. The dimension of emotional exploitation of children is inevitable in the nuclear family because of the mutual ex- clusive emotional fixation of the members of the vicious triangle. Emo- tional incest is probably more damaging for the child’s healthy sexual de- velopment in that sexual behavior is proved to be a result of unconscious emotional patterns and not of physical (genital) contacts or experiences. Reported sexual incest cases where child trauma has been assessed all show the same pattern: a subtle or blunt submission of the child under the power of the tutelary adult for the exclusive gratification of the adult’s desire. Anoth- er factor for trauma is the child’s lasting guilt feelings that result from their knowledge that the tutelary adult, while having illicit sex, endangers the peaceful perpetuation of the family ensemble. The incest problem is above all a power problem. Overprotectiveness serves the hero culture in that it ensures the child to be available as the cheapest and most willing sex slave and dummy partner to ever think of. Fear of sexuality is to a large part fear of sexploitation. Sex, when it becomes a weapon for the stronger against the weaker, is perverted into a fascist terror in- strument. We can by no means combat sexual exploitation of children if we do not attack the larger framework of emotional exploitation of children that is part of the hidden agenda of all fanatic religions, fascist ideologies and undemocratic governments. Emotionally and sexually healthy and strong children cannot be vic- timized for they defy seduction and are not easily trapped by manipula- tive education. But this means to concede children the right for leading their own love life and to restrain from interfering in their personal power and decision making. Sexploitation of children is not a matter of choice nor of social conditions. It is the result of systematic manipulation and seduction of children by tutelary adults. This exploitation, while itself not being sexual in most cases, nonetheless entices children to become sexual slaves through putting on their back the welfare of the family; the market does the rest through its demand for fun sex with minors. In countries where sex- | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 426 ploitation is a part of tourism, the child sex market is part of a neo–colo- nial pattern. However, it has to be seen that exploiting children sexually is not in any way a result of permissiveness toward adult–child sexual rela- tions, but a pure money affair, a business, and it cannot be taken as a val- ue judgment for adult–child sexual relations in general. To confuse both leads to the same unwanted results as depriving girls from premarital sex. The mere fact that some people abuse of young girls if they can is not an argument against premarital sex, in the contrary. The fact that something is mishandled, exploited or done in a negative way, in a harmful way, cannot be taken as an argument against that mat- ter in its natural state. If smuggling alcohol is bad, if black markets are bad where youngsters can buy alcohol, it is not bad for an adult to drink a glass of wine with lunch or dinner. But this is how child protectors ar- gue, really, that dead–stupid is their rhetoric! They say that because child sex is a exploited somewhere, for some reasons, all child sex is a matter of the devil. To reason that way is childish, immature and sorry, in my view it borders mental derangement and cannot be taken into account by serious re- search on the matter. Mutual sexual attraction of children and adults are a historical fact; fixation of children upon their parents only came up as a result of the repression of the natural sexual play between children and adults not related to each other. The question of childlove is almost exclusively dis- cussed under the heading of the adult’s desire for young partners while the desire of the child for older partners is wiped under the flying carpet of socially institutionalized hypocrisy. Research on pederasty, for example, has shown that adolescent boys can exhibit a fervent emotional longing for male adult company, friend- ship and sexual gratification in which they like to constitute the passive and yielding partner in the relation. Our protectiveness toward children sadly results in depriving them of life and thus perpetuates fascism and tight social control. The main ar- gument against pederasty, i.e. that it turns boys into homosexual lovers, is a pure myth. Reality is that temporary love and sex relations that occur in Research FAQ | 427 adolescence have been shown to enhance stable heterosexual relations later in life. This was already the shared opinion in ancient times, and it is show- ing through all honest and non–manipulated interviews with men, pro- vided the love relations had been lived without coercion from the side of the adult and on a basis of mutual consent and respect. Child protectors would quickly be disqualified in public if the masses were informed about their most basic contradiction, namely their declar- ing war to what at the same time they declare as being nonexistent. I am talking about child sexuality. The child protectors, within their child sexual abuse rhetoric, argue that the child is basically non–sexual and that if a child shows signs of sexual interest, the child has invariably been molested or has spied out something that traumatized and thus psychically damaged him or her. At the same time however, these same child protectors become very inven- tive when it is about turning those asexual beings away from any poten- tial source of erotic interest. If a provincial and basically life–denying environment grants them their requested freedom of action, they will do as they did at the begin- ning of this century and attach every baby’s hands at the wooden frame of the cradle, to defend sinning, as they put it. To say it in modern language, they will inhibit the child from engag- ing in self–satisfaction through body pleasure. What they want to prevent, in fact, is not pleasure, but knowledge. Pleasure is harmless while knowledge is a weapon. Knowledge about the body is against the consumerist system. It is the only true danger of the manipulative system modern consumer society is based upon. A child who is free, happy and fulfilled does not need expensive treatments since their self–healing capacities are excellent. An erotically satisfied child does not develop high interest in plastic toys. Their body is their primary focus for play, and not a plastic ersatz, readily fabricated in the child toy industry that is the younger brother of the child protection industry and its foremost capitalizer. Thus, the eroti- | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 428 cally fulfilled child is per se a heretic in a system that feeds on the repres- sion of the child’s primary eroticism. That is why the modern debate about child sexuality and pedophilia is an absurd theatre where the actors are automatons that repeat formu- las. Those formulas have no root in real life since they grow from a hy- per–virtual moralistic life paradigm that is the production of a water– headed science. It is absurd to prohibit something that doesn’t exist. A parent or edu- cator who has never seen an expression of their children’s natural sexuali- ty should resign from parenthood or as an educator, because they are deeply ignorant. More generally put, people who deny child sexuality have their reasons to do so! People who try to prohibit child sexuality in reality try to prohibit their own pedoemotive desires that they project on oth- ers or a group they label pedophiles or else. People who have problems with their own adult sexuality or certain parts of it should seek profes- sional advice or counseling before they viciously attack or molest others for their pretended sexual problems. The only way out of this truly Minotaurean labyrinth of projections, absurd conclusions and publicly spread lies and myths is understanding. People who have problems when being in contact with natural sexual children or with childlovers should make serious efforts to understand their own repressed pedophilia – and the problems will disappear. Of course, if a whole society reacts hysterically, the only conclusion is that such a society is intrinsically pedophile. As absurd as it sounds, it is only logical that as long as a society is in itself pedophile, it will not be ready to accept or to tolerate pedophilia. Societies, like individuals, react hysterically, aggressive and violent only if feeling attacked at their most sensitive, most vulnerable points and in their most secret engagements and desires. Only in deeply pedophile societies, pedophilia is met with hyste- ria, public outrage, aggression, violence and prohibition. In tribal cul- tures, for example, pedophile attraction may be a matter of ridicule and joke, but never one of aggression and violence. Research FAQ | 429 Typically, in those cultures pedophilia is tolerated as a random phe- nomenon of possible, while marginal, sexual human conduct. Q–11. Do you opt for modernizing laws of consent or for abolishing them? Abolish them completely. They are useless. They are counterproduc- tive and have proven to be completely ineffective for preventing violent sex crimes against children, child abduction, child rape and child murder. So once an attempt of modernizing laws of consent is made, legislators should consider if we need sex laws at all. The aggression and humilia- tion of another as part of forced sex is punishable under general criminal law. Why, beyond that, sex as such should be penalized is questionable. Responsible lawmaking must understand that nobody is inclined to follow legal rules that are outmoded, arbitrary and persecutory. The present situation does not prevent crime in that sex laws are no more part of a moral behavior code that once made sense, at least for a majority. Laws that are not rooted in a basic code of conduct are felt as oppression; they produce black markets and thus more crime and as such they are simply counterproductive. Aggression against children as part of strict education is part of a scheme of structural violence that supports the strong and pow- erful and oppresses the weak and dependent members of the community. Denying children tactile pleasure is a logical add–on in the oppres- sion scheme that results in manipulating children’s emotions so as to comply to the oppressors’ expectations. The sexless child is the ideal con- sumer in a fake culture, for the sexually experienced child would not be satisfied with a fake life, but prefer real life. An industry that lives from producing fake goods needs consumers that are alienated from their body and their true identity. In a system that holds sex being some form of violence, it is not surprising that violent child battery, on one hand, and a tender ca- ress of the child’s genitalia, on the other, would be punished in pretty much the same way. | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 430 The perversity of this situation stems from the premise. It is a form of perversion from nature to regard sexuality as a form of assault what- ever be the age of the people involved in the sex game. The fake culture is a killing culture. It kills life. That is why it hates the sexy child with its highly vibrant and sensitive organism. The fake culture needs consumer puppets, not living humans, not vibrant sexual children who have a strong self–identity because they have real knowl- edge of their body and their emotional and sexual response. Only art can draw a slightly accurate picture of the child’s beautifully lively and mar- velously formed body; no scientific study can render that picture. To write about questions of love in scientific readers is an attempt to render respectable publications that otherwise would be treated as mar- ginal. However, this trick does not work in that the truly interested reader already knows and the rest does not want to know. Only art and art pub- lishing can transform a human soul and open barred minds and hearts. It is a waste of time to reform laws that have no basis in the natural moral structure of a democratic society. The best way to deal with such laws is to abolish them. Q–12. It is often argued sex was dangerous for children. Do you agree? Life is risk. When a child plays in a busy street, the child is in danger, that is, to be run down by a car, and that danger is probably higher than having sex with an adult. We cannot live without danger, for we would have to live in a shell, and no sun would reach us, and we would starve. So this argument is per se a tricky one. I would say, it’s a paranoid argu- ment most of the time issued by paranoid people, while these people may look very normal in real life. To be paranoid in a paranoid society does look very normal, to be true, as a matter of logic! Sexual development is much more a question of factual life experi- ences than of biological events. For the sexually healthy child, having sex with peers or adults is merely a result of emotional bonding, as a prolon- gation of that bonding into the tactile realm. It’s all about giving and tak- Research FAQ | 431 ing, caressing, expressing love in a physical way. Most of the time when adults talk about child sex, they project their own notion of sexuality upon the life and play of children. This can only lead to a distorted view. Children truly perceive sexuality in a different way, without any compulsion, more as something to be tried out, not something that needs to be done. There is no must about it, while for many adult males, for example, there is well a must about being sexual, and frequently sexual, and sexual with females, in order to prove to oneself that one is a man. While all such reasoning is of course non–sexual, it’s purely intellectual. And the child, the normal child, is not in that intellectual overdrive and thus perceives sexuality as something one may do, or not do, without be- ing judgmental in any way about it. If a child does want to engage in it, it’s because it feels good, and feels good when one loves the partner. That’s about all there is to say about it. The inherent dangers in sex are not different from the inherent dan- gers in living! Those who fear sexploitation of children experience their own sexu- ality in a childish way, lacking sexual aggressiveness so as to live their love and to enjoy life to its fullest. All of us carry a part of the responsibility for every child raped by our consenting to the perpetuation of laws that kill children emotionally from birth and transform them into sexless pup- pets. An obedient puppet invites rape while a lively human is in control of all their relations, including sexual ones. It is our duty, then, as parents or educators to help children assume their sexual desire and to handle sexual encounters of every possible kind. This is done better through non–action than through action since the natural self–regulation has prepared the child to grow early into sexual exchange as part of emotional bonding so as to satisfy the narcissistic ego. Nature has provided the right way if only we could become sensitive enough to perceive this truth again! | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 432 Q–13. How then to cope responsibly with children’s sexual life? The answer is non–interference and permissiveness. It is part of a true understanding of democracy to work for more autonomy for children and more respect of their privacy and their friendships. As emotionally mature adults, we are bound to not interfere in the child’s emotional and sexual life in- stead of perpetuating persecution and control. Strangely, while people agree that persecution and tyranny are undemocratic measures, they nonetheless practice them with their own children, unaware that in doing this they maintain archaic and highly destructive forms of control that impede humankind from progressing into a new age of peace and en- lightenment. A child’s consent to sex, even though such consent may be the result of seduction or financial compensation, is still consent. Hence, if a child accepts favors, gifts or money in return for consenting to sex with an adult, it cannot be said the child has been raped or otherwise forced into sex if intercourse has taken place. The present state of the law that declares the consent of the child as legally invalid implicitly states that the life of the child is legally invalid, for if the will of the child is legally not valid, their will to live is neither. Hence, the high incidence of child rape and murder in societies that maintain such laws is not a mere coincidence. It is a direct consequence of the lacking social code. As a result, we need to change or abolish these laws and find better ways to handle our emotions. I have proposed those changes in a draft bill that is published in my Idiot Guide to World Peace (2010) and in my monograph Love or Morality (2010). Other important contributions are made, as already mentioned, in the Idiot Guide to Love (2010), and my views for transforming our educa- tional system are expressed in the Idiot Guide to Sanity (2010). How to han- dle our emotions is explained in detail in the Idiot Guide to Emotions (2010), and in the Idiot Guide to Soul Power (2010) I show how important it is for our young people to build a personal identity that is based on their true soul values. Research FAQ | 433 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 434 Part Two Myths and Reality About Adult–Child Erotic Attraction Myth One The history of childhood is written with the blood of children. It was invariably a history of abuse, slavery, rape and torture. Reality To conclude from the great number of child abuse reports over writ- ten history that childhood has always been abusive is a manner of jump- ing to conclusions that is not scientific, and rather serves to corroborate the inner program of the researcher. First of all, it is obvious that abusive or forced sex is more easily re- ported and made a matter of statistics than loving and mutually consent- ing sex relations. Who, other than poets and nowadays anthropologists, would have an interest in documenting mutually consenting and lavishly positive love relations? Historians are looking for descriptions! If there had been letters, documents, written from boys or girls that clearly indicated their love and respect for adult lovers while being explicit about their sexual love play, historians would have more ease to admit as biased the present research that depicts the child being invariably damaged, mutilated, abused, raped or killed when being exposed to sexual contact with adults. At present, in our postmodern times adult–child sex is starting to be discussed in public, however not as a matter of love, but as a form of crime! Postmodern so- ciety obviously is unable to perceive love in a pure dimension without adding a distorted value system to this perception, thus forming a general picture that is perverted by its projected rather than by its original content. Research FAQ | 435 Finally, I say that the material at hand is incomplete. I guess there is a lot that was simply suppressed because it is not politically correct. A lot was burnt during the Church’s holocaust of witches, because witches, as newer research shows, were usually not old and lame elder ladies, but young and sexually attractive girls who defied the norm and did not let the clergy tell them what they had to do sexually, and not to. If they 225 had any love diaries or books, these were of course burnt with them on the stake. Myth Two Children always say the truth when interrogated about sexual experi- ences, especially with adults. They can be trusted in what they say and their evidence can be used in court against adults without thoroughly testing the child’s psychological integrity and honesty. Reality Depending on the cultural conditioning they are submitted to, chil- dren will either say the truth, or lie, or just keep silent. In my experience, the reactions of children in this respect are quite predictable for the rea- son of the overwhelmingly strong influence of conditioning in sexual matters. Let’s look at the following examples. – Children from sexually repressive, punitive and highly religious (in the sense of mass doctrine) cultures will keep silent or lie. They are not likely to tell the truth about their feelings and experiences or they have repressed them to such an extent that they do not even know what they feel or experienced. Example: Orthodox upbringing – Children from non–repressive yet patriarchal cultures tend to make up stories about early sex, especially the boys. They tend to make believe See, for example, Florence Rush, The Best Kept Secret: Sexual Abuse of Children (1980). 225 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 436 to have had all the girls (and even smaller boys) in their neighborhood which may be true to the extent that both heterosexual and homosexual play is frequent among children in those cultures although it is hidden to the foreign observer. Example: Latin–American culture – Children from non–repressive modern societies are likely to tell the truth, in a straightforward, unashamed manner. Example: Denmark, Sweden, Norway This is only a general structure, of course, and there are great varia- tions within one cultural model or another, depending on other factors, such as religious belonging of the family (father), provincial setting or metropolis, low–class environment or middle or upper class setting. To summarize, the matter is so complex that it cannot responsibly be dealt with by naively assuming a child would say invariably the truth when the matter is a sexual experience with an adult. Many factors are in play here, and with small children the fantasy world cannot be neglected or discarded out, because at that age (before seven years of age), myth and reality, dream and waking state are not yet very clearly separated and distinct. Myth Three Pedophilia is a modern–day kind of thing that shows the decadence of moral standards in Western society. In good old times such things nev- er happened. Reality Most people, I guess, think that now the time has come to either ex- terminate childlove completely or get a turn in installing it, like a new sex software, in human society. The exterminators are very busy. The whole state machinery is at their disposition. The installers are fearful and their actions are ineffective for the most part. The good news is that this soft- Research FAQ | 437 ware does not need to be installed nor reinstalled on the human comput- er because it has always been running as a silent (and hidden) software kit all through the millennia of human existence. Grown–up people have always been attracted to the young. Adoles- cents always were emotionally and sexually attracted to pre–pubescent ones. What today is called heterosexual pedophilia is a true non–sense since, historically, the ages of consent were such that a man could enjoy the young female in just the same way as he could enjoy the grown–up fe- male. For both application needs, appropriate software was available. Myth Four People are invariably negative about pedophilia. It is clear that the pedophiles themselves speak pro domo and thus are the only positive ones about it. No responsible citizen can be positive about adult–child sex. Reality The most given responses to the question of childlove are: ‣ Love with children, and sex, possible, I don’t know. Emotional attitude: Positive indifference ‣ I don’t care, I’m not aroused by small stuff. Emotional attitude: Negative indifference ‣ I have lived through that myself when I was a child. I liked it very much. It has enriched me emotionally. Emotional attitude: Positively subjective ‣ I had such experience. I felt like a stone, powerless, to say the least. It was ugly. I was victimized, abused. Emotional attitude: Negatively subjective ‣ I abhor it. People who do that have to be killed. Children are sacred. Emotional attitude: Moralistic, judgmental, projective, defensive, idealistic, pseudo–objective, negative, generalizing ‣ I think we have to distinguish violence and love. I affirm it and do it sometimes with children who are close to me, where there is bonding and care over a considerable period of time and where I have a clear affirmative response from | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 438 the child. Emotional attitude: Positively affirmative, subjective, conscious Myth Five Pedophiles are per se evil because they seek to fulfill their sick desires through abuse. In addition, Judeo–Christian morality is against the sexual abuse of children. Reality What could possibly be the psychoanalysis of the current pedophilia witch hunt paradigm? The answer to this question is quite complex, but some of the more obvious reasons is our past that favors male supremacy, monotheism and what Joseph Campbell called the Murder of the Goddess. What could possibly be the tactics of a society that is deeply involved in exploiting children as objects for material and immaterial possessiveness rather than valuing them as subjects to relate to on a level of equality? The emotional and sexual control that is inflicted upon children in this society is obviously in contradiction with society’s claim to care for their best and to be concerned with their growth. From this schizoid split between motivation and real results, on a group level, a very defensive if not intransigent attitude results with regard to opin- ions and evidence that validates children’s power and lucidity regarding their self–protection and personal power for love choices. To secure the paradigm of parental control that is the exact pendant to an all–pervasive punitive and jealous male God, a set of values is in- flicted upon the community that publicly and legally denies children’s rights and power to decide for their own bodies and pleasures as far as love is concerned – while icecream is allowed! Ice cream and plastic toys, in- dustrially produced for the child that is not allowed to accept his or her body as a pleasure organ – that it of course originally is – are among the most powerful conditioning devices of modern society. They ensure that Research FAQ | 439 the early human is being transformed into a consumerist robot that is needed for the functioning of a robot society. An abuse–centered culture needs abuse to happen. It will uncon- sciously turn events in such a way that what it silently and openly predicts is really going to happen. I am convinced that much of the abuse today happening is the result of self–fulfilling prophecies and a generally very negative outlook upon modern life – and the lack of creativity that results from such a stiffening point of departure. And not to forget, the abuse– centered culture needs abuse to happen, and to happen repeatedly, be- cause it makes a lot of money on abuse, and this in the meantime on a global scale. That means if we find today a way to stop all abuse, this would go against the interests of many power people in our society, which is why they do all they can to perpetuate abuse, because they earn money with abuse, not with the absence of abuse! That is why they tend to sup- press all research that shows how abuse can be prevented, avoided and coped with, and uphold the persecutor system that uses the myth of the sex traveling world pedophile as its latest construct and projection device. In the modern–day battlefield of fake–values, the pedophiles serve a witch–function, just as people with shamanic knowledge back in the dark age. They have become projection–containers for a majority of hypocrites who deny their own natural Pedoemotions for fear of discovery of their ut- ter falseness and brutality, and their inherent moral corruption. Where morality preaches holy wars and slaughters children as unavoidable war– victims, it has since long become immorality. And where such moral cor- ruption is the order of the day, it is a well–known fact that those with the roaring voice of righteousness have the most of reasons to hide their mul- tiple abuses. | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 440 Myth Six Pedophiles invariably are sex offenders. Reality The expression is typical in its associating sexual heresy. Offending – what or whom? If I have offended a person sexually I am still not a sex offender and remain a person offender. I cannot offend sexuality, can I? Can you offend the sun? The expression targets at persons who actually offend the reigning paradigm of sexuality which is exactly the Church’s traditional view of heresy. The very notion of ‘offending’ comes from witchhunt times and it is no wonder that those masses of neo–witchhunters today use it again. Abusers and abused are sitting in the same boat and they are caught in the same trap. That is why healing for both groups is very similar in that it must deal with the same scars. These scars are neither physical, nor sexual, nor emotional in the first place. They are related to the problem of accepting self and the some- times karmic inability to live one’s power and natural aggressiveness in a way that is positive and integrative. To love the abused and hate the abusers is a common dichotomy that comes from not understanding the complexities of love and abuse; it shows the utter helplessness of most people to face the human nature; in addition it is often a cover–up of the true roots of abuse. Social mores are such that the true and unsentimental emotions that cause us to desire a child are covered–up with a smear of hypocrisy that is the worst form of abuse since it kills the child as a sexual being without even touching them. It’s the most common and most widespread form of child murder in our culture. What moralistic child rearing brings about is death, not life, cripples, not powerful humans and ill–responsive citizens instead of healthy and sexually responsive ones. The core message I get from most people who publicly spread their abuse story it not very different from what was Research FAQ | 441 formerly called confessions, with the difference only that the priest has been replaced by the psychiatrist and the term ‘sin’ by the expression ‘abuse’. The Church punished the victim for having let it happen, modern culture punishes the victim for not being aggressive enough to defend herself. Accordingly, the Church admonished sinners to comply with Church morals and repress most if not all of their sexual wishes; modern culture admonishes victims to get into therapy to boost up their aggres- siveness – in order to comply to modern society’s paradigm of ‘violence is better than sex’. Essentially, nothing has changed. It is often the punishment or the therapy more than the initial abuse that triggers the guilt that erodes self– esteem, especially in cases where this alleged abuse was nothing but con- senting sex between a minor and an adult. However, society’s hypocrisy and the pinkish foam of sentimentality as well as the black mask of panic and mass hysteria that surrounds this whole subject renders it almost im- possible to leave what happened how it happened – without making it up, sensationalizing it or falsifying it in the most absurd way. Myth Seven Judeo–Christian culture was always more caring than animistic or pagan cultures in that it gives women and children, as the weaker ele- ments, a special place, trying to protect them against abuse. This is one of the reasons why modern sex laws are getting tighter as ever before. Reality The present hero culture as the last vintage of the patriarchal rut recognizes women and children first of all in their quality as passive vic- tims and somewhat stupid yet enduring assault–objects. The reigning paradigm classifies their rights as derived from the adult male as the pri- mary power holder. | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 442 The Hero–Yahweh culture postulates that God–Yahweh created the female as a derivative of the male’s body, a feat that contradicts all and every other creation myth as showed an eminent expert on the matter, Joseph Campbell. Women in our culture are encouraged to be helpless and to play the role of the eternal victim. This is an old hat in patriarchal culture and society, but it has been given new life in the run of the child–abuse hyste- ria. Instead of validating abuse as a symptom for a disease to be found out and healed, they take it for the disease itself and begin to fight on a social, community level. These self–declared victims were institutionalized within the abuse culture. The special place they have in Judeo–Christian culture is exactly the place that, during Colonial times, slaves was given. Slavery never has been justified openly by the hypocrite slave holders, but in a hidden way, precisely in the way women and children are given their place. They are given the place of slaves. The argument of slavery always was protection. A slave must be protected from evil, it was said, since they are ‘too stupid’ to decide about their fate, because they are ‘too primitive’ to know what civilization is about, because they are ‘too brute’ to know what sensitivity is, because they ‘have no soul’ and thus ‘cannot understand’ what distin- guishes a master–Christian. The same hypocrite sentimental foam is smeared around our mouths to- day regarding women and children. It is argued they were too weak to protect themselves, and that therefore they had to be protected by the hero, the archetypal male protector who acts like ‘a true Christian’ in holding evil far from them, in taking them under his protective umbrella and in watching over them. Golden slavery! That is their status within the hero culture. The truth is that in all of human history, it was only tribal, shamanic cultures that have treated the female and the child as equals, on all levels. But this is something the hero culture takes much care to hide, and obvi- ously succeeds in hiding since most people eat what they are given to eat and do not watch over the fence. Research FAQ | 443 Myth Eight Hating pedophiles is normal since we cannot expect a majority to like what only few people like, even if we have a tolerant mindset. That was always so. People mistrust what they cannot feel. Reality A large part of this hatred may be nothing but disguised jealousy. This may be the reason that, while pedophilia is brutally smashed down in recent years to a point that there is virtually no more child sex on the Internet, incest seems to be on the rise in those same cultures, especially father–daughter incest. Myth Nine Pedophiles not only attack individual children; by their doing they attack society itself, the holy family, the institution of marriage and family order that defends other adults to intrude into the harmony between fa- ther, mother and child. As such, they are state–offenders and their doc- trine in some way represents a strange new form of communism. Reality Really? If the holy family is so easily upset, so easily torn down and destroyed, it can’t be so holy after all, it can’t be so strong after all, and it can’t be so firmly rooted in nature after all, as otherwise it would surely be more resilient. We should consider why, by contrast, highly repressive and abusive governments are so successful in subduing large masses of people under the pseudo–protective umbrella of the holy family as the breeding cell of all fascist attitudes. It is simply because those governments tend to be | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 444 highly emotional, irrational and very little intellectual. Hence, the base layer of the population is attracted toward their message even though they may know that the people behind the screens are nothing but mafia in uniform. We should be careful with projections. The family is surely impor- tant, as the earth, the plant realm and other planets in our galaxy. To render the family holy in a Biblical sense is to project a content on it that it originally doesn’t bear. Or formulated as a question, is my penis holy when it enters the vagina of an adult spouse? Research FAQ | 445 Part Three Selfhelp and Life Authoring Q–01. What is the basic technique of Life Authoring? Life Authoring is a set of tools helping rewrite inner scripts through es- tablishing a feedback–loop within the person’s psyche. The feedback– loop strengthens the relationship of the inner selves to one another, specifically between the lower and higher selves and thus triggers re- sponses from the person’s own inherent intelligence. Those responses have been identified to benefit healing and self–healing in a very effective way. One technique of several is getting in touch with our inner selves through the feedback loop, a kind of inner dialogue that triggers a process of self–healing and that leads to integration. In practice, this technique can be drafted in a way to be done online, using basic interactive media. Q–02. What are the main benefits of Life Authoring? The integration of conflicting emotions, inner harmony, and a fun- damental balance between intellect and emotions. Other benefits are in- creased integration of the inner shadow and emotions related to it, such as perverse desires and hard–to–control violent sexual urges, rape desires, the desire to control another or to subdue others, that is, sexual and non– sexual sadism, but also dependence on pornography and/or consciousness–altering drugs, alcohol or tranquilizers. | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 446 Q–03. Can Life Authoring change evolutionary or karmic patterns? Contrary to what many spiritualists believe, karmic patterns are not eternally inscribed into humanity’s evolutionary memory. They can be changed at any time. However, in order for us to do this, we need to at- tain a certain amount of purity and inner clarity, just for getting in touch with our inner source. Consciousness can alter DNA patterns and it can alter evolutionary patterns. This has been demonstrated scientifically. Now, what Life Authoring does is to open the channel to the higher form of consciousness that is an inherent part of the life code. The amaz- ing thing is, then, that the change comes by itself. There is nothing need- ed to trigger the change since consciousness changes instantly. Q–04. How does Life Authoring handle asocial emotions or urges? The surprising fact is that emotions are integrated and part of our conscious control once we have faced them, expressed them and accepted them. Any kind of moralistic approach, theory or dogma acts counter to this to happen. Life Authoring does therefore not operate from any moralis- tic or judgmental point of departure, but from a paradigm of total accep- tance. Once conflicting or controversial or asocial emotions are totally ac- cepted they are integrated and can do no harm any more. Q–05. Does Life Authoring alter consciousness? Life Authoring does not alter consciousness. However, doing the com- plete set of techniques requires to temporarily alter our awareness level. This is done with full permission of the client, or it is not done at all. This part of the program is a relaxation that combines music with suggestions. During this phase of the work, the client’s consciousness will indeed be altered. If they do not want this to happen, they are free to skip it. But they may not get the full range of benefits from the work. Emotions and Research FAQ | 447 subconscious desires cannot be changed as long as a person remains on their level of wake consciousness. Q–06. Does Life Authoring impact positively on our emotions? It is important to note that Life Authoring doesn’t willfully change any- thing within the client. Any impact it has on a person’s emotions is brought about not through the work itself, but will be the result of the person’s enhanced consciousness. If done correctly, Life Authoring results in a spontaneous change of consciousness that, in turn, has an integrative effect on the client’s split–off emotional residues. Q–07. Is Life Authoring a subtle form of brainwashing? Part of Life Authoring is indeed an inner cleansing process. It is what I call ‘throwing out the garbage’. This is washing not only of mind, but also of the client’s emotional body and their complete mindbody unity. If they do not want that, they are free to turn their back to it. So if they think anybody is washing their brain, it is well they themselves! That in- sight may turn down the fears that this ugly word certainly creates in many people. Q–08. How to reach the deeper levels of the mind? I may turn the question around and ask ‘How do the deeper levels of my mind reach us?’ Consciousness is active and there is a drive in the split–off parts of our residual civilized consciousness to reconnect with us, so as to achieve the primordial unity within us. Thus the desire for establishing inner harmony and unity is not a one–way street, but a powerful motor for achieving a higher form of unified con- sciousness. There is no need to worry; this result is quite automatically trig- gered when doing Life Authoring work. It can’t be different. However, this | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 448 is a gradual process, until consciousness jumps up to a higher level. The person may not feel any progress at first and may not be aware that they are already connected. It is pretty much an involuntary thing to happen. But one triggers the outcome by simply doing the work. Q–09. How do I get in touch with my inner voices? Voice dialogue is an essential part of the Life Authoring work. There is a roadmap to get in touch with our inner voices. This roadmap is a detailed list of instructions. Clients do not need to worry about this outside of the work itself; they do the work and they are in touch! Q–10. What are the dangers of Life Authoring or its side–effects? So far no side–effects have been reported. There are no dangers oth- er than the ones inherent in living. In all what we do we need to keep a balance. If we exaggerate things, effectiveness may not increase; instead, our efforts may become counter–productive. It is part of Life Authoring instructions to tell clients how often the work should be done in order to be effective. They are supposed to follow those rules, or better not do the work. Dangers could come from the person’s own interference into the work with manipulative habits such as the use of alcohol, drugs or tran- quilizers. This is prohibited and against the rules of the work! If clients do that, they do it in their own responsibility and are hereby expressly warned! Q–11. What is the minimum amount of Life Authoring work to get results? This is individually very different and no general rule can be estab- lished. Regularly, results show up for most candidates after the first and before the third month of the work. But many people need longer and Research FAQ | 449 some achieve the complete change in just one week. Human beings are very different, that’s a fact of life. Q–12. Does Life Authoring enhance creativity? Yes, definitely, creativity boosting was one of the first results observed when developing Life Authoring. Q–13. How long should Life Authoring be done? No general rule can be given. Most candidates will not do less than one week or more than one year in a one–time effort. The rule is rather doing several cycles of let’s say one month, and have a time lapse in be- tween to let ‘the seed settle down’. That’s perhaps the most effective way of doing the work. But again, we’re all different and people should use their discretion to get to know themselves to a point to decide what is best for them! Q–14. Is Life Authoring a psychological treatment or a therapy? No. Definitely not. I am not a therapist or psychologist. While I have worked through my own inner hangups and emotional stuckness, I have discovered that voice dialogue, inner child healing and spontaneous art are effective ways for self–healing and for enhancing vitality and creativi- ty. Q–15. Is there is difference between self–improvement and Life Authoring? There is a whole new branch of literature, trying to help us strengthen our contact with the higher self; subjects such as self–empowerment, holistic or accelerated learning, healing with bioenergy, vegetarianism, awaken- ing the child within, talking with flowers, and so on are covered. | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 450 Life Authoring is a term that intentionally draws a line to mere self–im- provement. What is the difference? Most people in our industrialized so- cieties have lost their center. They live almost entirely outside of their continuum, their original shell. Therefore they are cut off from the center of their inner and original powers. This is why, in turn, they can so easily be manipulated and dominated, for example by advertising, false political rhetoric, violent ideologies or what I call the hero culture. They live second hand lives and have not even the slightest idea what it feels like to live one’s original first hand life. Life Authoring was established to guide people back to their original continuum, enabling them to lead a first hand life, a life that is their own unique creation. The method provides a set of practical tools to achieve this goal with simple means and by accomplishing simple tasks, tasks that every- body, even of mediocre intelligence, can carry out. The difference be- tween Life Authoring and self–improvement is perhaps that I do not believe that we can really improve ourselves. We are perfect creatures. But we are full of garbage, cultural garbage, verbal garbage, intellec- tual garbage, and all we have picked up from others, in order to make it on the social ladder. Life Authoring is more of a cleansing process, a purge than a teaching, or a new learning. More and more structural transformations change the world pres- ently and we all know that in only ten years from now the world will be more different compared to today than it was a hundred years ago com- pared to yesterday. The acceleration of human evolution on a personal and collective level is a fact of life that even non–intellectuals today are aware of – or made aware of by the mass media. Facing this situation on a worldwide scale, it is one of the most irresponsible attitudes of school systems around the world to go on with teaching stuff instead of teaching learning skills and holistic intelligence. Needless to say that the present situation and inflexible political atti- tudes will surely lead to social upheaval and unrest. On an individual lev- el we are called upon to work for a consciousness transformation, or, as Krishnamurti called it, a psychological revolution, and this without negatively Research FAQ | 451 affecting others, but by granting others their own freedom and letting them do their own choices. This transformation can only be individual, but it is nonetheless a sacred way, the only Way there is that is peaceful and that brings about true and lasting change. Q–16. Does Life Authoring enhance flexibility? Yes. Flexibility is a form of intelligence, perhaps the highest manifes- tation of emotional intelligence? Flexibility is the highest virtue simply because life is unendingly flexi- ble and adaptable. Survival is right that: being able to adapt. The di- nosaurs disappeared because they could not adapt to macro–climatic changes. And many people today are jobless because they were unable to anticipate structural changes in the world economy or are unable to re- learn after having found out about those changes. Relying on what we have learnt in school is among the most silly ideas we can think of in these days. Among all what makes out a modern society, the primary school system is still the end where we are with one leg in the dark age. Flexibility is thus a form of intelligence and indeed Life Authoring helps the mind become more flexible and more creative. It also helps us recognize patterns in our behavior, repetitive patterns, neurotic ticks, phobias, habits and generally all that is impeding high flexibility from unfolding. ANNEX 1 Life Authoring Samples In this first annex, I publish a FAQ as well as inner dialogue samples taken from The Life Authoring Manual (2010). This material may give you an idea what the inner dialogue or voice dialogue is about in practice. In addition, I shall publish here, en première, some of the spontaneous artwork I did when I first worked with Inner Child Recovery & Healing, during a two–year sabbatical that was primarily intended for self–transformation and for making the shift from a bread–job to a real mission or vocation. I also sought psychotherapy during that period, which was for me an im- portant process of soul–clearing or soul–cleansing, helping me to leave an abusive childhood behind and focus on my innate gifts and talents. All the artwork is published in a full–color volume entitled The Spon- taneous Artist: A Short Guide to Immediate Creation (2010). My spontaneous music is published in form of a collection of audio CDs, under my music label SCM, and shall be referenced together with this present volume as well as the Idiot Guide to Creativity & Career (2010) and The Life Authoring Manual (2010). Life Authoring Samples | 453 Life Authoring FAQ Q–01. What is the basic technique of Life Authoring? Life Authoring is a set of tools helping rewrite inner scripts through es- tablishing a feedback–loop within the person’s psyche. The feedback– loop strengthens the relationship of the inner selves to one another, specifically between the lower and higher selves and thus triggers re- sponses from the person’s own inherent intelligence. Those responses have been identified to benefit healing and self–healing in a very effective way. One technique of several is for getting in touch with our inner selves through the feedback loop, a kind of inner dialogue that triggers a process of self–healing and that leads to integration. In practice, this technique can be drafted in a way to be done online, using basic interactive media. Q–02. What are the main benefits of Life Authoring? The integration of conflicting emotions, inner harmony, and a fundamental balance between intellect and emotions. Other benefits are increased in- tegration of the inner shadow and emotions related to it, such as perverse desires and hard–to–control violent sexual urges, rape desires, the desire to control another or to subdue others, that is, sexual and non–sexual sadism, but also the dependence on pornography or consciousness–alter- ing drugs, alcohol or tranquilizers. Q–03. Can Life Authoring change evolutionary or karmic patterns? Contrary to what many spiritualists believe, karmic patterns are not eternally inscribed into humanity’s evolutionary memory. They can be changed at any time. However, in order for us to do this, we need to at- | Annex 1 454 tain a certain amount of purity and inner clarity, just for getting in touch with our inner source. Consciousness can alter DNA patterns and it can alter evolutionary patterns. This has been demonstrated scientifically. Now, what Life Authoring does is to open the channel to the higher form of consciousness that is an inherent part of the life code. The amazing thing is, then, that the change comes by itself. There is nothing needed to trigger the change since consciousness changes instantly. Q–04. How does Life Authoring handle asocial emotions or urges? The surprising fact is that emotions are integrated and part of our conscious control once we have faced them, expressed them and accepted them. Any kind of moralistic approach, theory or dogma acts counter to this to happen. Life Authoring does therefore not operate from any moralis- tic or judgmental point of departure, but from a paradigm of total accep- tance. Once conflicting or controversial or asocial emotions are totally ac- cepted they are integrated and can do no harm any more. Q–05. Does Life Authoring alter consciousness? Life Authoring does not alter consciousness. However, doing the com- plete set of techniques requires to temporarily alter our awareness level. This is done with full permission of the client, or it is not done at all. This part of the program is a relaxation that combines music with suggestions. During this phase of the work, the client’s consciousness will indeed be altered. If they do not want this to happen, they are free to skip it. But they may not get the full range of benefits from the work. Emotions and subconscious desires cannot be changed as long as a person remains on their level of wake consciousness. Life Authoring Samples | 455 Q–06. Does Life Authoring impact positively on our emotions? It is important to note that Life Authoring doesn’t willfully change any- thing. Any impact it has on a person’s emotions is brought about not through the work itself, but will be the result of the person’s enhanced consciousness. If done correctly, Life Authoring results in a spontaneous change of consciousness that, in turn, has an integrative effect on the client’s split–off emotional residues. Q–07. Is Life Authoring a subtle form of brainwashing? Part of Life Authoring is indeed an inner cleansing process. It is what I call ‘throwing out the garbage’. This is washing not only of mind, but also of the client’s emotional body and their complete mindbody unity. If they do not want that, they are free to turn their back to it. So if they think anybody is washing their brain, it is well they themselves! That in- sight may turn down the fears that this ugly word certainly creates in many people. Q–08. How to reach the deeper levels of the mind? I may turn the question around and ask ‘How do the deeper levels of my mind reach us?’ Consciousness is active and there is a drive in the split–off parts of our residual civilized consciousness to reconnect with us, so as to achieve the primordial unity within us. Thus the desire for establishing inner harmony and unity is not a one–way street, but a powerful motor for achieving a higher form of unified con- sciousness. There is no need to worry; this result is quite automatically trig- gered when doing Life Authoring work. It can’t be different. However, this is a gradual process, until consciousness jumps up to a higher level. The person may not feel any progress at first and may not be aware that they are already connected. It is pretty much an involuntary thing to happen. But one triggers the outcome by simply doing the work. | Annex 1 456 Q–09. How do I get in touch with my inner voices? Voice dialogue is an essential part of the Life Authoring work. There is a roadmap to get in touch with our inner voices. This roadmap is a detailed list of instructions. Clients do not need to worry about this outside of the work itself; they do the work and they are in touch! Q–10. What are the dangers of Life Authoring or its side–effects? So far no side–effects have been reported. There are no dangers oth- er than the ones inherent in living. In all what we do we need to keep a balance. If we exaggerate things, effectiveness may not increase; instead, our efforts may become counter–productive. It is part of Life Authoring instructions to tell clients how often the work should be done in order to be effective. They are supposed to respect and follow these rules, or better not do the work. Dangers could come from the person’s interference into the work with manipulative habits such as the use of alcohol, drugs or tranquilizers. This is prohibited and against the rules of the work! If clients do that, they do it in their own responsibility and are hereby ex- pressly warned! Q–11. What is the minimum amount of Life Authoring work to get results? This is individually very different and no general rule can be estab- lished. Regularly, results show up for most candidates after the first and before the third month of the work. But many people need longer and some achieve the complete change in just one week. Human beings are very different, that’s a fact of life. Life Authoring Samples | 457 Q–12. Does Life Authoring enhance creativity? Yes, definitely, creativity boosting was one of the first results observed when developing Life Authoring. Q–13. How long should Life Authoring be done? No general rule can be given. Most candidates will not do less than one week or more than one year in a one–time effort. The rule is rather doing several cycles of let’s say one month, and have a time lapse in be- tween to let ‘the seed settle down’. That’s perhaps the most effective way of doing the work. But again, we’re all different and people should use their discretion to get to know themselves to a point to decide what is best for them! Q–14. Is Life Authoring a psychological treatment or a therapy? No. Definitely not. I am not a therapist or psychologist. While I have worked through my own inner hangups and emotional stuckness, I have discovered that voice dialogue, inner child healing and spontaneous art are effective ways for self–healing and for enhancing vitality and creativi- ty. Q–15. Is there is difference between self–improvement and Life Authoring? There is a whole branch of literature trying to help us strengthen our contact with the higher self; subjects such as self–empowerment, holistic or accelerated learning, healing with bioenergy, vegetarianism, awaken- ing the child within, talking with flowers, and so on are covered. Life Authoring is a term that intentionally draws a line to self–improvement. What is the difference? Most people in our industrialized societies have lost their center. They live almost entirely outside of their continuum, | Annex 1 458 their original shell. Therefore they are cut off from the center of their inner and original powers. This is why, in turn, they can so easily be ma- nipulated and dominated, for example by advertising, false political rhetoric, violent ideologies or what I call the hero culture. They live second hand lives and have not even the slightest idea what it feels like to live one’s original first hand life. Life Authoring was established to guide people back to their original continuum, enabling them to lead a first hand life, a life that is their own unique creation. The method provides a set of practical tools to achieve this goal with simple means and by accomplishing simple tasks, tasks that every- body, even of mediocre intelligence, can carry out. The difference be- tween Life Authoring and self–improvement is perhaps that I do not believe that we can really improve ourselves. We are perfect creatures. But we are full of garbage, cultural garbage, verbal garbage, intellec- tual garbage, and all we have picked up from others, in order to make it on the social ladder. Life Authoring is more of a cleansing process, a purge than a teaching, or a new learning. More and more structural transformations change the world pres- ently and we all know that in only ten years from now the world will be more different compared to today than it was a hundred years ago com- pared to yesterday. The acceleration of human evolution on a personal and collective level is a fact of life that even non–intellectuals today are aware of – or made aware of by the mass media. Facing this situation on a worldwide scale, it is one of the most irresponsible attitudes of school systems around the world to go on with teaching stuff instead of teaching learning skills and holistic intelligence. Needless to say that the present situation and inflexible political atti- tudes will surely lead to social upheaval and unrest. On an individual lev- el we are called upon to work for a consciousness transformation, or, as Krishnamurti called it, a psychological revolution, and this without negatively affecting others, but by granting others their own freedom and letting them do their own choices. Life Authoring Samples | 459 This transformation can only be individual, but it is nonetheless a sacred way, the only Way there is that is peaceful and that brings about true and lasting change. Q–16. Does Life Authoring enhance flexibility? Yes. Flexibility is a form of intelligence, perhaps the highest manifes- tation of emotional intelligence? Flexibility is the highest virtue simply because life is unendingly flexi- ble and adaptable. Survival is right that: being able to adapt. The dinosaurs disappeared because they could not adapt to macro– climatic changes. And many people today are jobless because they were unable to anticipate structural changes in the world economy or are un- able to relearn after having found out about those changes. Relying on what we have learnt in school is among the most silly ideas we can think of in these days. Among all what makes out a modern society, the prima- ry school system is still the end where we are with one leg in the dark age. Flexibility is thus a manifestation of intelligence. Life Authoring helps the mind become more flexible and more creative. It also helps us recog- nize patterns in our behavior, repetitive patterns, neurotic ticks, phobias, habits and generally all that is impeding high flexibility from unfolding. | Annex 1 460 Inner Dialogue Samples This is an inner child personal diary. It is an intermezzo and you should read it in a relaxed, detached mood. This was a personal dialogue with my inner child, and it should give some hints as to the relationship of our inner child with our other inner entities or psychic energies, namely our inner adult and our inner parent. Our inner adult represents the logical part in us, the part that is the grown–up, that sees things on a maturity–scale. The inner parent is the en- tity that tries to guide others, that judges, that evaluates, that sees things on a morality–scale. The inner child, by contrast, is the entity that creates, invents and changes things, evaluating life on a creativity–scale. How do these entities relate to each other on a daily basis? Well, this can be shown in many different ways. I chose the way we are practicing here or try to learn and that is called voice dialogue. I named the voices: – Inner Child: Peter – Inner Adult: Pierre – Inner Parent: Walter Peter You are again caught in those routines! It’s awful how many hours you spend on the computer every day. And what are you doing? Fixing bugs. You are a bug–fixer, not a writer. Pierre But I have to get that straight. Otherwise the whole software won’t work. And people cannot use it. So all my work will be for nothing, and your work, too. For we may be as creative as Picasso and as smart as Einstein, but all would be garbage if one single bug effects the media package not to work. Peter Strange how much you focus on the negative side of life. Imagine if Picasso had thought every day about the quality of the oil color he was painting with! Could he ever have done something of value if his thought had been obsessed with such stupid little details? Life Authoring Samples | 461 Pierre Those ‘stupid little details’ make out ninety percent of life, unfortunately, and this is the same for Picassos and for normal people. Walter Let’s say that life bears different depth levels. Peter No, no, and no. I’m not talking about aspects or depth of life. I am talking about creativity, and nothing less. Pierre is caught in routines, for sure. Yes- terday he spent two hours with changing all those meta tags in all his web pages. Stupid, he’s not looking for somebody to help him with that or a ma- chine or robot that can do it. Pierre My web editor does not allow to automate this process. I wish it could. I do not know any software that can batch–process meta tags. Walter Perhaps, if you searched on the Internet you’d find one? Pierre Perhaps. Peter Well, this is what is commonly called a pretext. Pierre knows very well that he can look for it on the Web and that he might find something. But he does not do it. Why? Because he’s kind of enjoying routines. They comfort him and keep him from feeling the challenge to be unique and productive. This challenge, he has never faced. He’s never done the step into total acceptance of himself. Pierre Are you talking about me or with me? You are going to be annoying again! | Annex 1 462 Peter Why the hell do you find me annoying if the only thing I do is to open your eyes to the reality of life? Pierre But I am myself very much aware of that reality. That reality namely con- sists of routines also. I am my own publisher and also your publisher. I pub- lish your ideas since they are so daring most of the time that nobody until now wanted to publish them. So I am working for both of us when I self– publish our stuff. And that involves routines, I can’t help. That’s life! Peter Okay, but you could reduce those routines to a strict minimum. Instead you indulge in all–and–nothing. Web design, hosting, publishing, promotion, free mail and free homepages, there is almost nothing you are not doing. And for what? Pierre There is a strategy behind all that. Perhaps you don’t get it, but it’s there. I have to build a whole universe where your unique thoughts and opinions can fit in. Because they do not fit in the existing one, as you know very well your- self. Walter I think, Pierre, you want to prepare the ground for later prosperity. Is that right? Pierre You can indeed put it that way. You see, if you try to see things in a kind of rational way, it’s clear that to be successful one day with publishing, we need to build our own publishing empire. I am not a big boy on the Net but I perhaps must become one in order to reach out to people. And I am sure about one thing: there are people out there who are searching for exactly what Peter has to say and what he produces. Walter It seems that mainstream culture does not want our productions. I mean, we have abundant proof for that. How many rejects did we get from publishers, Life Authoring Samples | 463 for our writings and our music? And this since twenty years and with pub- lishers from different countries and cultures. Pierre Oh yes! True. And it’s truly Peter’s music. It’s absolutely not my music. I am unable to produce that. I am completely out of the game when he engages in that. That’s why we can’t remember anything after he’s played something. It’s truly inspirational. Peter Well, you see, there’s something unique about it. The secret is to not control it, to not interfere with the natural flow. It’s to give it over to a direction that is of a higher origin. I believe I receive the music from a secret galaxy … Pierre Well, you may believe that or whatever. It does not raise sales. Nobody ever sent an email or showed any reaction to all this music published on the Web. It’s so sad. And that after all the rejects from music publishers in Germany, Holland and England. It’s so sad because our great hope was the Web after all. Peter Stop it, or I am going to cry! Stop it, damned! Do you think I understand why people are so ignorant, so insensitive? I can’t figure why they don’t like it. I think they’re just stupid and primitive. How can they like all this shit on TV every day? How can they want to pay for this stuff, for those mediocre, utterly stupid productions? Walter Peter, you are getting overly obnoxious again, overly critical. You don’t leave a door open to them. You make them lose face. That’s not good taste, and not wise. Peter The hell with your wisdom! Are they going to reply to your wistful articles about Feng Shui? They shit on it! Do you remember that bitch from Cana- da who said that your writings were parental lectures for her and that she felt as if there was a ‘wagging finger in her face’ when she was reading your stuff ? | Annex 1 464 Walter Yes. I am very touched by this and try to see the truth in it. What’s wrong with us? What is it that makes people reject us constantly? I am really con- cerned about how we come over to others. Pierre That’s again where routines come in. You see, people are naturally attracted to what is shared by a majority. Once something is going to be in, once there is a group however small who are excited about it, then more and more people will accept it. To get there, hard work is needed, promotion, fixing all the bugs and so on. This is not achieved with childish hit–your–head– against–the–wall nor with parental care–about–all. Here we are talking about getting through, we are talking about hard work, toughness, persis- tence … Peter Exactly. For one time you’re right. And I even tend to agree with you re- garding fixing the bugs. I see it now more clearly. But you should not overdo with it. That’s what I am saying. You are sometimes too tough and you sup- press me, you just make me down, you push me in a corner! Pierre When, for example? Peter Now, tell me what happened to the piano recently. Pierre You make me ashamed talking about it. I’m so sorry I sold it. Walter And for sooooooooo cheap – too cheap! Pierre Yes, I have to admit it. It was a mistake. I thought we needed money. Life Authoring Samples | 465 Walter But Peter has no other way to produce music. That’s very hard for him to bear with, very hard. Are you aware of that? Pierre I was a bit aware of that, but perhaps not enough. It’s true. I feel bad about it. But on the other hand, I sold it with the afterthought to buy another one. I think Peter has grown so much in his talent that he needs a better instru- ment. We’re going to buy an 88–key one, a wonderful thing. Because you can even play piano concertos on it. Peter Who the hell is playing those piano concertos? You know very well that we don’t have the technique to play this difficult stuff and I have no sense to practice twenty more years in order to play one Rachmaninov concerto or only the Grieg concerto which is perhaps the easiest one of all. Walter I love this concerto! Peter But how much have we exercised that already! And then listening to Richter’s recording again …; it’s deafening. We can never keep up with that. Walter True. Pierre Yes, I would like so much to play this concerto, note by note. It’s wonderful. But I’m afraid you’re right, Peter, that we would simply waste our time with that. Your productions are so much more original! It’s a big difference be- tween playing something that another has composed or come up with some- thing completely new. Even though Grieg was a genius and the concerto is truly unique, your productions or whoever is the originator, extra–terrestrials, UFO’s or the Holy Ghost, or simply our higher spirit, are of equal level. Who would dare to say that they are inferior? | Annex 1 466 Walter Some of Peter’s pieces have moved me in exactly the same way as the great- est music. I was in tears and thought I could see the angels singing. There is something so unique in this music, something beyond–earth, something truly innocent. It’s absolutely mysterious. Peter I have no merit in this. It all comes to me. It goes through me. I just receive it. Pierre Yes, but nobody appreciates that so far. No response, just icy silence. That’s what we get. And this already for almost ten years now. That’s why I insist so much that we must make a kind of promotion, a kind of marketing, adver- tising. I am going to use the Internet for that. I build the platform for it to happen. I build the ground for it. Peter Thanks, Pierre. I understand you now much better, and kind of see the ne- cessity of your work. It couldn’t do it alone. It’s true. Walter Yes, it seems Pierre is doing a good job. And we should trust him more. He’s our public relations manager, isn’t he? Pierre Well, if you don’t mind my many hours on the computer… Sometimes I really think I’m getting mad about the horrid amount of work. But Peter pushes me; he drives me into a frenzy at times. He’s just so productive, new ideas every day. I don’t know how to catch up with all those exciting ideas? It seems there is only one way, forward! Walter He passes a lot of ideas to me, too. I have many new projects for the science pages, the spiritual sites and for my new writings. I would not have the courage to come up with those issues that are hot or controversial if Peter had not convinced me about it, and also our higher self, the entity that for- merly appeared in our dialogues as Lux. The dreams that Lux sent us were Life Authoring Samples | 467 so clear, so complete, that there is no doubt about the necessity for this to happen. Pierre I try to help realizing all of this. It’s almost superhuman. I hope we’ll get some help one day. I can’t keep up with a 24–hours day. You see, of our almost fifty projects perhaps ten are realized, and we are going to revise these, too. How do you think we can ever manage to tackle all the others? Peter Don’t give up. Try to be more creative on a day–to–day basis. When we are talking about creativity, we are talking about the primary domain of the inner child! Some of us, because of early conditioning, tend to ignore this fact. What we do, then, is to imply the inner parent or the inner adult when we are challenged to be creative. The results are poor and dissatisfying. Most of the time we do not figure why this is so, and is necessarily so. This is because it’s not very common in our culture to talk about inner energies and the subtle process that is involved in being tuned in to our inner selves. This is truly a lack of culture, a lack of significance in our social inter- action. It has its roots in an education that is primarily manipulative and compulsive instead of informational and supportive. Of course, those who are driven to be creative, our true artists, do it instinctively. But what about those who are not primarily artists, can they learn about being more creative? My view is that they certainly can learn it. But what is needed for this to happen is not just the will to learn or the capacity to store and digest information. We are talking here about emotional processes or emotional awareness. This awareness has to be created first, and this is a subtle process that involves time and constant fine–tuning. Our culture is absolutely hostile to this kind of learning. It is far off the way we are trained to behave and to function. I even go as far as say- ing that learning about our inner child means to definitely turn the back to this society with its ignorance and its brutality! It means to open the door to a new | Annex 1 468 world of sensitivity, a poetic world that is unknown to most of our con- temporaries. It’s to open the way to innocence. Life Authoring Samples | 469 Spontaneous Artwork Samples 1986 1987 | Annex 1 470 1988 1989 Life Authoring Samples | 471 1990 1991 | Annex 1 472 Spontaneous Composing Samples Piano Solo http://ipublica.com/audio/piano-solo-music/ New Age http://ipublica.com/audio/new-age-music/ Relaxation http://ipublica.com/audio/relaxation-music/ ANNEX 2 The Personal Coach | Annex 2 474 The Yelloway Guide General Instructions The Yelloway Guide is a short guide to personal success built upon deal- ing with basic life issues that most coaching clients somehow are dealing with. In order to achieve results you should relax, using my own relax- ation module, or else music or soft breathing, and you need to focus in- side. Then, visualize a beam of light between your eyes. Become still and listen to yourself. Connect to the I AM force in the center of your heart. This force is pure love! It is still, pure light. It is your center, the origin of all being, of all life. It is the spark of the Divine in you. Some people believe that the center of this force is not the heart, but the hara, a point about one finger below your navel. There is your 226 supreme power. Once you feel connected to this source, there is nothing that cannot be, and you will be radiant, joyful, powerful, wonderfully suc- cessful and blessed with all the good that life can offer. For working on the fulfillment of your desires, stop running around on the outside level, stop to believe in outer circumstances, stop to listen to the black magic of gossip and of the 1001 limitations of the mass spirit and only connect to this supreme power! Working on each specific answer given the the Eight Loaded Questions below, you change your mindset which is now a mindset of limitation, to a mindset of infinite possibilities. Your destination as a human being is to be infinitely happy, powerful, joyful and blessed. The only limitations are those that you set for yourself. Therefore, it is essential that you build awareness of the ‘black magic’ of negative thinking; it is negative thinking, and only negative thinking, which has created all the limitations, all the illnesses, all the hurts or de- privations you are suffering from right now. See, for example, Karlfried Graf Dürckheim, Hara: The Vital Center of Man (2004). 226 The Personal Coach | 475 How Can I Be More Useful? After having followed the general instructions so that you got some basic experience in connecting to your inner power, please get relaxed and fo- cus within you. Affirm that Infinite Wisdom in you wants your best and finds now your true place, the place in space and time where you can and will be supremely useful to all beings and the best of humanity. Repeat the following affirmation about twenty times, in the morning after waking up, and in the evening when you go to sleep. Infinite intelligence guides me now to the place, and with the people and circumstances where I am truly useful in that all my wonderful gifts and talents will be serving others and humanity at their highest possible level. I give thanks for the joy of the answered prayer. Be confident, after having done this for about three weeks every day, that your affirmation will come true. Do not doubt it! Do not fear any- thing. Fear and doubt hold your wishes from coming true. Every time you feel fearful, every time you doubt, repeat the affirmation quietly in your mind, at least ten times. How Can I Lose Weight? After having followed the general instructions so that you got some basic experience in connecting to your inner power, please get relaxed and fo- cus within you. Affirm that Infinite Wisdom in you has created you once with a perfect body and mind, and a perfect shape of this body. Affirm that this supreme wisdom in you cannot fail and will now rebuild your body shape in the most perfect and the most beautiful way possible. Visualize as you would like to see yourself when looking in the mir- ror. Find the ideal picture of yourself and imprint it on your mind while | Annex 2 476 affirming that the infinite love in you wants your best and wants you to be beautiful, attractive, joyful and fulfilled in your love and your desire. Repeat the following affirmation about twenty times, in the morning after waking up, and in the evening when you go to sleep. Infinite intelligence knows my ideal body image. This image is part of my essential life pattern and it is imprint- ed and coded in my cells. I will gradually remember this original image and shall listen to the promptings and monitions of my higher self that guide me toward the right diet. I give thanks for the joy of the answered prayer. Be confident, after having done this for about three weeks every day, that your affirmation will come true. Do not doubt it! Do not fear any- thing. Fear and doubt hold your wishes from coming true. Every time you feel fearful, every time you doubt, repeat the affirmation quietly in your mind, at least ten times. How Can I Stop Smoking? After having followed the general instructions so that you got some basic experience in connecting to your inner power, please get relaxed and fo- cus within you. Affirm that Infinite Wisdom in you has created you once with a body and mind that did not know the need for smoking. Connect to this supreme power within you and affirm that from now on your desire to smoke will decrease every day until it will vanish completely. Do not punish you for smoking, do not blame you for it, do not criti- cize yourself or others to have this need. All punishing, blaming and criti- cizing will keep you away from giving up smoking. In the contrary what it does is to subtly justify your attachment. Letting go your desire to smoke goes along with letting go any justifica- tion of it and any rejection of it. Just quietly affirm that you are now com- The Personal Coach | 477 pletely free of a desire to smoke and that your body and mind will com- pletely heal from the damage you have done to it. Repeat the following affirmation about twenty times, in the morning after waking up, and in the evening when you go to sleep. Infinite intelligence knows my primary body condition. When I was a small child, I was happy without smoking. There is absolutely no problem with smoking; my prob- lem is that I abuse of it which is why I wish to curtail it down. My higher self now reveals me the reason why I am smoking and I shall understand it intuitively. After receiving this knowledge, I shall easily quit with the habit, as this is my intention. Be confident, after having done this for about three weeks every day, that your affirmation will come true. Do not doubt it! Do not fear any- thing. Fear and doubt hold your wishes from coming true. Every time you feel fearful, every time you doubt, repeat the affirmation quietly in your mind, at least ten times. How Can I Be Happy Sexually? After having followed the general instructions so that you got some basic experience in connecting to your inner power, please get relaxed and fo- cus within you. Affirm that Infinite Wisdom in you has created you with sexual desire and that this desire is good and healthy. Affirm that the infinite love in you wants you to be happy and fulfilled sexually and that it now attracts to you the ideal partner for a complete union that brings you and your partner supreme fulfillment of love and sexual desire. Do not punish you for having strong sexual wishes or urges, do not blame you for it, do not criticize yourself or others to have this need. All punishing, blaming and criticizing will keep you away from giving up smoking. In the contrary what it does is to subtly justify your attachment. | Annex 2 478 Repeat the following affirmation about twenty times, in the morning after waking up, and in the evening when you go to sleep. Infinite intelligence is my constant guide and counselor. This wisdom in me knows all my longings and desires and it wants me to be happy and fulfilled in my love. I am open now for its wistful guidance, and positively stimu- lated to meet the ideal and loving partner who will cross my way. I know that, when this happens, I remember this prayer, to be sure it is the mate I have attracted through this prayer. This is wonderful. Be confident, after having done this for about three weeks every day, that your affirmation will come true. Do not doubt it! Do not fear any- thing. Fear and doubt hold your wishes from coming true. Every time you feel fearful, every time you doubt, repeat the affirmation quietly in your mind, at least ten times. How Can I Lead A Life of Fulfillment? After having followed the general instructions so that you got some basic experience in connecting to your inner power, please get relaxed and fo- cus within you. Affirm that the Infinite Wisdom in you has created you to lead a life of abundance. Observe nature all around you and become aware that life equals abundance, fullness, riches and variety. Detect your limiting beliefs and write them down. Then visualize that divine light dissolves all those beliefs in you. Affirm that Infinite Wisdom that has created you with your longing to live joyfully and abundantly, in accordance with Divine law and order. Affirm that all your wishes and desires do not hurt anybody and bring riches and abundant life and prosperity not only to yourself but to all beings. Repeat the following affirmation about twenty times, in the morning after waking up, and in the evening when you go to sleep. The Personal Coach | 479 Life is sheer abundance. I know that during intercourse, for fertilizing one single egg, nature provides millions of sperm cells in one single ejaculation. If I follow the scarcity paradigm as so many others, I do this because of conditioning, not because I know better. I do know better on my subtle, subconscious level. On this innate level of intelligence, and in my body, I know that life equals abundance. I thus can only be abundant, and more abundant. I can only attract more and more of the good I wish to see in my life, money, riches, variety of experience, and surplus. The divine order secures a surplus for my material and spiritual riches at all times, and I give thanks that this is true. Every time now I have a thought that affirms anything else but abundance, I immediately affirm that I am henceforth following the life principle, which is surplus, ever more surplus, every day, ever more abundance every day. I feel very happy that this is so. Be confident, after having done this for about three weeks every day, that your affirmation will come true. Do not doubt it! Do not fear any- thing. Fear and doubt hold your wishes from coming true. Every time you feel fearful, every time you doubt, repeat the affirmation quietly in your mind, at least ten times. How Can I Solve Financial Problems? After having followed the general instructions so that you got some basic experience in connecting to your inner power, please get relaxed and fo- cus within you. Become still and grow in awareness that all your problems are your own creations, the fruit of past thought and actions which were based on erroneous beliefs, the mass spirit or limitations that you have set for your- self. | Annex 2 480 Connect to the source within and affirm that all your financial prob- lems are dissolved this very moment. Affirm that the Infinite Love & Wis- dom that has created you wishes you to live a life of prosperity, joy and abundance and to grow in consciousness. This consciousness is within you and it is free of any limitation and any struggle. It is but harmony and peace! Feel united with this immense harmony and peace within you and visualize your problems wiped out from the screen of your mind, one by one. Repeat the following affirmation about twenty times, in the morning after waking up, and in the evening when you go to sleep. I am here not for suffering endless constraints, but for living a life of abundance, in accordance with the life principle, which is positive and life–giving, attracting to me prosperity, and ever more prosperity. I look upon money as a divine substance, for everything is made by one spiritual force. I know matter and spirit are one. Money is constantly circulating in my life, and I use it wisely and constructively. Money flows to me freely, joy- ously, and endlessly. Money is an idea in the mind of the universe, and it is good, and very good. Be confident, after having done this for about three weeks every day, that your affirmation will come true. Do not doubt it! Do not fear any- thing. Fear and doubt hold your wishes from coming true. Every time you feel fearful, every time you doubt, repeat the affirmation quietly in your mind, at least ten times. How Can I Become Independent? After having followed the general instructions so that you got some basic experience in connecting to your inner power, please get relaxed and fo- cus within you. Become still and become aware that as an adult human you should not depend on anybody, neither your partner nor your parents, nor on The Personal Coach | 481 any artificial enrichments such as drugs, medicaments, alcohol, obsessions or anything else that limits your freedom. Connect to the Infinite Peace & Joy within you and affirm that you are now, and forever, entirely and joyfully free from all that keeps you chained, and affirm freedom to all the people or things that represent those chains for you. Become aware that your inner wisdom and power can only work for your best once you are independent from all and every bondage. This independence is the condition for your true interdependence and con- nectedness to all–that–is.. Affirm that your true destiny is a free, unlimited human being, full of joy and growing every day in riches of all kinds. Repeat the following affirmation about twenty times, in the morning after waking up, and in the evening when you go to sleep. I am free, unconditionally and joyfully free from all chains and from all bondage. It is my birthright as a human be- ing to be free and to be a being of choice. I can only choose when I am free, which is why freedom is the very condition human life is based upon. As a volitional being, I do my choices every day, and I am choosing peace, happiness, abundance, love, fulfillment and prosperity. I choose freedom. I choose emotional sanity, I choose mutually fulfilling relationships, I choose all that is of good report. My life is directed by my choices, and I am choosing right now, I am choosing what is in accordance with the life principle and what brings me and all around me true freedom and abundance with every day to come. This is wonderful. Be confident, after having done this for about three weeks every day, that your affirmation will come true. Do not doubt it! Do not fear any- thing. Fear and doubt hold your wishes from coming true. Every time you | Annex 2 482 feel fearful, every time you doubt, repeat the affirmation quietly in your mind, at least ten times. How Can I Become and Remain Healthy? After having followed the general instructions so that you got some basic experience in connecting to your inner power, please get relaxed and fo- cus within you. Become still and grow in awareness that Infinite Energy has created you according to its perfect image and that all your illness is the fruit of your own destructive thought patterns and the perpetuation, in your thought and feelings, of negative or traumatic life experiences. Affirm that the perfect image is you is becoming manifest now every day more in your mind, psyche and body, that the divine in you cannot be sick and that you are one forever with this divine image in you that is perfect, unspoiled, pure, healthy and radiant of joy and life. Affirm that your true destiny is perfect health, joy and growing vitali- ty, strength and riches of all kinds. Repeat the following affirmation about twenty times, in the morning after waking up, and in the evening when you go to sleep. The Personal Coach | 483 Health is my natural condition, the natural condition of all life in the cosmos. Health is balance, a balance of yin and yang in me, a balance in my actions, in all my be- havior, in my thoughts, in my emotions, and in my rela- tionships. Health is radiance, vibrant strength and power. Health is the nature in me at full blossom. I am healthy by nature. This natural force in me grows stronger with every day and it gradually dissolves all that is unhealthy in me. Health is my birthright and I affirm it now and every coming day when I wake up in the morning and before I go to bed. I am healthy now, and remain healthy, and this is wonderful. Be confident, after having done this for about three weeks every day, that your affirmation will come true. Do not doubt it! Do not fear any- thing. Fear and doubt hold your wishes from coming true. Every time you feel fearful, every time you doubt, repeat the affirmation quietly in your mind, at least ten times. | Annex 2 484 The Two Powers Breathing and Eating I’ve derived the Two Powers philosophy from the Taoist ‘Three Pow- ers’ philosophy. The three powers in Taoist philosophy are heaven (tien), earth (dee), and humans (ren). The two essential powers of life are breathing and eating. Why should we talk about breathing or eating? Is that important at all? I would say it is all–important. Maybe it’s not important for you that you breathe and eat because you may say that this is natural and no matter to think about. Okay. But what about how we breathe and how we eat? Is that not important? The Taoist sages said that it is of such importance that nothing else in life had more importance in fact than this: to breathe and to eat in the right way. The one who masters these two essential powers of life, they said, attains longevity, happiness and genuine good health. If I want to be consequent in my analogy, I should, according to Taoist wisdom, also assume a threefold way to health. Thus, there should be consciousness and mastership of breathing, eating and sexual activity. For those of you who’d like to learn and practice Sexual Ch’i Gung, I refer you to the following erudite publications, written by Daniel Reid, an American doctor living in Thailand who became world famous through his books on Chinese medicine and Taoist health practice; his merit is in my opinion not only his excellence and mastership in his field, but also his remarkable talent to write and to explain complex topics in an amaz- ingly simple way. Furthermore, his competent criticism of the traditional Western health system is among the best what has ever been said from the perspective of a medical doctor on this highly controversial subject. ‣ Daniel Reid, The Tao of Health, Sex and Longevity (1989) ‣ Daniel Reid, Guarding the Three Treasures (1993) The Personal Coach | 485 Power One Breathing The power of breathing has been known by the old Taoist masters as Ch’iGung (in English also spelled as ‘Chee Gung’). It is not a secret that many of us have lost our natural ability to breathe. How can one unlearn something so deeply fundamental to human life? The astonishment you may experience while going into that intriguing question may open the door to your finding your own way to a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle. Since ancient times breath or the idea of cosmic breath was seen directly related to life. In Europe, it was called pneuma, and meant the life force, the vital energy. Ancient and present masters affirm the possibility to heal every kind of disease, even cancer, heart disease or immune deficiency syndrome simply by repeated breathing exercises. Let me first give you some references: ‣ Daniel Reid, Guarding the Three Treasures (1993), pp. 175 ff., and Ap- pendix C with further references. ‣ Mantak Chia, Chi Nei Tsang: Internal Organs Chi Massage, New York: Healing Tao Books, 1990. The Essential Philosophy of Ch’i Gung Ch’i Gung is a very old science. It has been founded by Taoist masters many centuries ago. In accordance with the Chinese health system, Ch’i Gung explains how to positively influence the life energy or essence, called ch’i by the Chinese, ki or hado by the Japanese, prana in India and mana or wakonda with most native cultures, as I have extensively researched it and published about it in my monograph Energy Science and Vibrational Healing (2010). Etymologically, as Daniel Reid explains, ch’i (or chee) means breath or air, and gung means skill or work. We can thus translate it with ‘energy work’ or ‘energy control’. | Annex 2 486 Ch’i Gung can be said to be midway between meditation and the martial arts. It combines essential stillness with slow movements and con- scious breathing. In the following little report of my own personal experience, I would like to include what Mantak Chia calls Tao Yoga or the inner smile, despite the fact that this technique is similar to meditation. However, it is actually more. For Taoists, meditation means just sitting still, concentrating on your breathing. There is no control, no work in Taoist meditation. How- ever, in Tao Yoga or the technique of the inner smile, the exercise con- sists of building acute awareness of the body’s energy flow. My Personal Experience First of all, thanks again to Lorraine Dey for having drawn the graphics you see here on the left, after I had sent her a photo of mine showing me in the typical Tao Yoga posture. I practice Ch’i Gung and Tao Yoga since a number of years. It began with a little red–covered exercise booklet that I discov- ered in a friend’s library. I took a vivid interest in the exercises, mainly because since my childhood I was suffering from the problem that my feet and lower legs were ice–cold. Since I’m sitting most of the time at my desk, writing, the feeling to be a block of ice became sometimes so strong that I had to interrupt my work and go for a walk, yet after being back, about half an hour later, I felt the warmth in my legs and feet quickly dissipating. I tried different kinds of sport and exercises, such as jogging, running, body building, playing table tennis, but nothing of this helped against my energy problem. In the contrary, I invariably hurt my body which was not well trained, and repeatedly had to see the doctor who advised me to be more careful with exercises. Wisely, he pointed out that for example my back muscles were rather weak from my sitting occupation, as well as my The Personal Coach | 487 leg and knee muscles, so that my impetuous getting out for sport once in a while was more hurting my body than doing good. A thorough exam of my spine resulted in my orthopedist diagnosing an undiscovered vertebral problem resulting from my abusive childhood and youth, called Scheuer- man’s Disease. In fact, some vertebrae were not outgrown because of lack- ing minerals in my food. The problem could be compensated, if ever, he said, only by building up strongly the spine musculature so that the verte- brae were discharged. He gave me a list of exercises and a whole lot of instructions. I listened carefully to him and agreed, seriously starting with Tao Yoga and Kung Fu exercises. I avoided every movement that provoked a tension or pain in my body and really went on slowly, bit by bit. It seemed that this approach was welcomed by my organism and I made quick progress. A few months later, when I went again to my orthopedist for a routine check, he was astonished after having examined my spine. – It’s much better, he said, happily. Your muscles begin to really support your spine and therefore also your general posture has improved a lot. I did not tell him that it was not the exercises he gave me that had helped so much, but the new Kung Fu and Tao Yoga exercises, but from this moment, I was relieved from years and years continuous visits to the special shoemaker, the spine treatment, massages, fango packages, ultra– wave radiations, spine stretching and all the rest that I had to go through since my youth. In addition, I had the impression that the work was grounding me in reality, and that my mindbody was becoming more flexible. Furthermore, my breathing became deeper and slower, I was less nervous, my body felt warm up until my feet, all day long, my sleep was better, my eyesight im- proved, my color vision dramatically improved, and everything seemed to be brighter, more vivid, more splendid, more vibrant, and besides and to my great astonishment, my digestion and my overall wellbeing improved. After that time, I began to engage in a new business while continuing my art activities and writings. My schedule was full and, to my regret to- day, I abandoned my exercises for quite a while. What happened? My | Annex 2 488 body metabolism quickly fell back into the old habits with cold feet, fa- tigue, hay fever, extreme sensitivity towards computer radiation, need of lots of sleep (8 to 10 hours a night), and recurring pain in lower part of my spine when the weather was cold or cloudy. This was during about two years. My fatigue became such that I sev- eral times lost consciousness while driving at more than 100 miles/h on the highway. I can only thank my inner guide that always woke me up when I had fallen asleep for one or two seconds or, who knows, more? I don’t know. Not that I did not sleep during the night, no. I slept between six and eight hours regularly. But my stress level was very high because my business went wrong and I lost much money. In the evenings, coming home often very late from my office, and no money for a house maid, I had to cook for myself – which is something very common in Europe since social security costs are so high that service of any kind has become a luxury! I always found excuses for not continuing my Tao Yoga and Ch’i Gung exercises. I was lacking time, energy and inner peace. True. But perhaps, continuing the exercises would have given me new ideas to get out this awkward and stressing situation which, at the end, absorbed only my energy without producing anything but debts. But at that time I didn’t see it that way. This time passed and, of course. I had to give up this unproductive trading business and reorient myself. So I went back to Germany, making up my mind with new plans going oversees. During this time, I restarted meditation and the Tao Yoga exercises, completing them with something new that I found in a book, crossing exercises. Crossing is a technique con- sisting of slight exercises that are designed to engage always two members belonging to different sides of the body, for example left arm and right leg. The left arm would be directed by the right brain hemisphere, the right leg by the left brain hemisphere. The special thing about crossing is that the effect desired is one of brain coordination, not primarily physical fitness. Engaging the ‘crossing’ of body limbs leads to an equal engage- ment of the brain thus coordinating the two hemispheres of the brain and getting The Personal Coach | 489 them more in synch, with the result that thought becomes more congru- ent, more ecological, more holistic. Soon I left for Bangkok, Saigon and Jakarta where I had appoint- ments with business leaders in the hotel industry to whom I wanted to talk about my training services. At that time, my concept was but a vague idea, but at least I continued my exercises on a regular basis. In the tropi- cal climate, I really needed it since I suffered much from stomach pain, diarrhea and feverish disorders in the beginning. Now, surprisingly for me, the chronic fatigue completely vanished and I felt more energized than ever before. How could? I did regular Tao Yoga exercises, but it was not yet the real Ch’i Gung. I think it’s time to tell the difference between the two, Tao Yoga, on one hand, and Ch’i Gung, on the other. I ask the expert readers of you now for your patience with me, and count on your understanding of my being perhaps mistaken in distinguishing the two. I’m far from being a master and actually nothing but a bloody beginner – so this is conveyed to you from my limited perspective. Well, Tao Yoga is for me a technique where you, sitting on a chair (as on the graphics at the top of this report) try to focus your attention at your breathing and the circulation of your ch’i. Thus you try to establish a small circle of energy flow which is the whole of the meditation. There’s nothing more and nothing less to do. And it’s enough, I tell you! The first time, I needed about six months to get there. You really need patience for that. Ch’i Gung is different! It’s much more movement which supports correct breathing. You’re not just sitting on a chair but you do real body exercis- es, while the principle is the same. I think it’s not actually the movements, but the breathing which is the most important part of it. The postures help you to breath deeply inside certain inner organs. Now, at that time, I only took up the Tao Yoga part. I did not follow up on the exercises, simply because, stupidly, I had forgotten the right order and remembered only a few of them. Now what happened next? In Asia I followed up only on the crossing and discovered a new technique in Indonesia which is called Orhiba. The name is derived from | Annex 2 490 Olah Raga Hidup Baru which is Bahasa Indonesia and means New Life Gym- nastics. This technique which consists of one single quite energetic move- ment and corresponding deep breathing is very well–known in Indonesia. It has been invented by a Javanese doctor but was popular only from the moment it came to Bali because a group of Balinese people seriously practiced it and recorded their benefits from it throughout many years. Gradually they reported about their experience to the public. Some years ago, Orhiba became very respected since the media in Indonesia reported the complete healing of a young Australian hiv patient who came to the Orhiba group in Bali and left the island about six months later, having practiced the exercise throughout all those months. His doctors in Australia reported him complete cured! My next step was to draft a health program as part of my training. This program which is still part of my services, is divided into three parts. Part One is Orhiba, Part Two is Crossing and Part Three is Ch’i Gung. How did I come to take up Ch’i Gung again? It was funny how wisdom follows us, even if we travel around the world. I had continued with some Kung Fu exercises throughout the years, and those were also part of my train- ing program. But I was aware of the fact that Kung Fu was a martial art and to teach it I should have studied it with a master. Since I was lacking this qualification I thought of replacing it by something softer, like Tai Chi Chuan. However, I had no knowledge of it. Then, in a bookstore in Den- pasar, Bali, I found what I had been searching for, the two manuals by Daniel Reid that I referenced above. Now, I practiced Ch’i Gung again but this time with much more in- sight into the workings of the vital energy and the correct practice. Here are the results of eight months of assiduous work. ‣ No more back pain or spine problems ‣ The energy flow in my body is stable and continuous ‣ I have no more fatigues and can drive for hours The Personal Coach | 491 ‣ I’ve no more influenza ‣ I can concentrate better to be really absorbed by a project ‣ I’m much more organized and focused ‣ My sexual life is more vivid and much more joyful ‣ I’ve no more depressions ‣ I’ve no more food allergies ‣ I’ve no more hay fever ‣ I’ve more success and better relationships ‣ I can forgive others and myself more easily ‣ I think bigger and more positively ‣ I’m more understanding and compassionate ‣ I’m more aware of my true desires and powers ‣ I feel I’m closer to my birth vision I am not sure that all these results are due to Ch’i Gung? Actually, in my life when I try new things, it’s always kind of a bundle at a time, sel- dom one isolated thing. Now since my consciousness for a healthier life style has risen, I also take in two times a day a herbal drink and food sup- plements like Gingko Biloba. Now I would like to report about the practice part. First, I must ad- mit that I’ve again modified my Tao Yoga work recently. Since a long time I wonder why the Chinese and Tibetans seem to like more to medi- tate sitting on a stool whereas people in India use to sit cross–legged on the floor or on a cushion. I was never dogmatic in my choice of techniques, | Annex 2 492 and find we are all special and individual in our preference for the tech- niques that work best for us. To begin with, engaging in a rigid practice of Zen meditation some years ago, I found sitting in the Yogi position being a torture. However, at that time of my life I liked torturing myself if only the thing I did was considered ‘spiritual’. Today, I think quite different about that. Actually, I mastered the position so well that my friends could not believe their eyes. But well, I needed about one year to get there. If you try to shorten this process, you may end up in hospital or with an orthopedist. So please be careful! When, after that time, I restarted with Tao Yoga, I found the position that you see on the graphic at the top of this report, that is, sitting at the edge of a chair, quite comfortable. But only in the beginning! What hap- pened? From school times it was quite traumatic for me to sit for a longer time on wooden benches or chairs. When I did, I got terrible pain in the middle of my spine and could hardly bend it anymore. Also my breathing got more or less congested or obstructed by this position and the pain and tension connected to it. I know this is not the case with many people and it’s in my case just a residue from my childhood and some slight deforma- tion of my entire spine resulting from bad nutrition and, perhaps, mis- treatments I suffered in homes during early childhood. Now I thought, why not combining the yogi position with the Tao Yoga and inner smile exercises? So at the end of my Ch’i Gung session, I use to sit on the sofa using a neck roll under my bottom. I found that this position was ideal and that I fell almost automatically in deep abdominal breathing. Actually, the Yogi position seems to favor abdominal breathing. At the same time, my mind seemed to be more collected, more fo- cused with this position than with sitting on the chair. There was no pain in the spine, neither during nor after the meditation session. Instead there was a feeling of deep rest and powerful new energy I was loaded with. Despite the fact that I had abandoned the Yogi position for several years, the elasticity of my legs came back almost instantly. The Personal Coach | 493 Now I joined another little exercise to this session, an exercise that I’d found somewhere in a book about traditional Tibetan health practice. When you sit in yogi, you simply put your hands palms upwards on your legs, close to your belly, while slowly, very slowly breathing in. Then you stretch your arms out while the palms of your hands still show upwards. The next movement is to raise your arms upwards in a half circle until your palms touch while you slowly breath out. The third part is to lower your arms in front of your face and chest while still keeping palms upwards and while breathing in again. What hap- pens? If you do it right you will feel warm energy around your hands that gets stronger and stronger the closer you get down to your navel. This is amazing because you can begin to really feel the flow of your energy around your hands and arms doing this simple movement. It’s ideal to finish the whole morning session with it. You will feel charged like a battery and ready for fight! To finish, let me summarize the whole session which takes about one hour every morning: 1) Ch’i Gung 1 Stand upright, legs slightly bent, arms relaxed at sides of your body. Breathe in while lifting arms, palms of your hands showing upwards, until your chest. Begin to breathe out while lifting your arms further up and turning your palms up to the ceiling. Your head follows the movement and you look straight up to the back of your hands. Stretch the tendons of your wrists as much as you can but don’t force it. Now Begin to breathe in while your arms swing gradually down at the sides of your body while the palms of your hands show away from your body and are still under tension. Release the tension once your arms are completely down at the side of your legs. Begin new cycle. Do six to ten cycles. 2) Orhiba Feet in eagle position (like a V), raise your arms in front of your body while fingers of both hands slightly touch. Breathe in. Raise your feet up | Annex 2 494 until standing on your toes once your arms are up. Look straight. Bend your arms down in a half circle backwards while palms of your hands show uncompromisingly upwards. (This is in the beginning quite painful but don’t force it. It will come gradually). Breathe out while arms go down. Feel the energy around your arms and hands. The down movement is the most important of the cycle. While your arms swing down and you breathe out, lower your body gradually from your toes back to standing on your feet once your arms are down at the sides of your body. Repeat cycle at least ten times. Orhiba strengthens the energy triangle sitting at the bot- tom of the spine and activates the energy metabolism of the organism. It is very important that you are straight all the time during the exercise, oth- erwise severe damage can be caused to the spine. So please be careful! 3) Ch’i Gung 2 Stand with knees bent, in the horse rider position, palms flat on top of your legs. Put head in your neck, look up to the ceiling and breathe in Bend your spine inwards as much as you can without forcing it. Bend your spine outwards while breathing out looking down onto your navel. Re- peat cycle at least six times. 4) Ch’i Gung 3 Stand with knees bent, in the horse rider position, palms flat on top of your legs. Put head in your neck, bend your spine inwards, begin breathing in and turn your head to the left, as much as you can without forcing it. Look behind you. Come back with your head while breathing out and bend your spine outwards looking down to your navel. Do the same movement while turning your head to the right. Repeat cycles at least six times. 5) Ch’i Gung 4 Stand with knees bent, in the horse rider position, and bend down forward until your fingers touch the floor. Breathe in and out three times. Slowly and gradually lift up your spine while breathing in. Spread your The Personal Coach | 495 arms out as you get up as if you greeted the sun and the stars and wel- comed them. Begin to breathe out while bending your arms in a half circle back and bending your spine inwards. Put your head into your neck, your face directed to the skies. You can keep your eyes closed all the time, if you wish. Put your hands into your hips to support yourself while breathing in and out three times. You can breath into vulnerable points or organs of your body, visualize them and charge them with ch’i. Lift your arms again gradually up above your head while breathing in. As your arms are above your head, let them flexibly bend over in front of you as if your hands wanted to water the flowers in front of you. Breathe out while moving gradually down with your arms and, at the same time, bending forward until your fingers touch again the floor. Re- peat cycle at least six times. 6) Ch’i Gung 5 Stand with knees bent, in the horse rider position, and hold your arms as if you embraced a tree. Breathe in and out three times. Feel re- laxed and quiet. Repeat six times. 7) Tao Yoga Practice Tao Yoga and inner smile as described above in the main text. Note: All breathing should be abdominal and very slow. Accordingly, all movements should be gradual and slow, never brusque or abrupt. Never force anything and give time to your organism to learn and develop. Be patient! | Annex 2 496 Power Two Eating Better a non–Spartan vegetarian than a Spartan non–vegetarian. Better a non–Spartan non–vegetarian than a Spartan vegetarian. – PIERRE F. WALTER The power of eating has not been given a special name in Taoism; however this art of cooking well exists and is based upon the balance of yin and yang in every food or dish. Some call it the Tao of Cooking. In fact, the old Chinese sages have set many rules about cooking. For example, onions and garlic are predominantly yang, meaning that their energetic impact is such that when consumed they activate the hot yang energy in us. On the other hand, milk products are predominantly yin. They impact on the cold yin energy in our body and reinforce it. The goal is always to maintain the two energies in balance. Thus, if I suffer from high body heat, I should eat a diet that is more yin, such as, for example, more milk products, cheese, and fruits. If how- ever, I suffer from cold hands or feet, I should avoid yin food and eat more yang food, as for example food spiced with onions and/or garlic. I think we should refrain from sterilizing life until a point that every- thing becomes a duty. As Lao Tzu’s Tao Teh Ching states, balance in life comes from caring for both the body and the essence. And caring for both body & soul means to do things out of a genuine joy of living. Many people associate a healthy lifestyle and rich healthy food with a Spartan way of life. However, this a a misunderstanding. We do not need to be Spartan or cherish scarcity philosophies in order to live healthily. It is simply not true that we are sick because we are rich, that we would live The Personal Coach | 497 more healthily if we were poor. This is a myth. Everybody who like me has lived for years in developing countries, knows that there, people are not more healthy. Yet perhaps they are more resistant to sickness. Why? One reason is that they can’t afford modern medicine and thus re- main free from intoxicating their organisms with allopathic chemistry, the other is that most old cultures have a set of wistful dietary rules which are followed by poor people because these diets are not only healthy but also cheap whereas modern processed food is very expensive in those coun- tries. Another blessing for poor people is that they stay away from the second source of intoxication in modern civilizations, which is processed food, fast food and junk food! Please forget all what you heard about rigid and dogmatic vegetari- anism, as it destroys our basic joy of living. I create all my dishes sponta- neously, in the same serendipitous way I paint or compose music. Fanatic attitudes, in caring for your health, are as damaging as they are politically. Punishing, chastising the organism because of one or the other modern spiritual (?) philosophy is foolish and leads either to sick- ness or falling back into old (bad) habits. Thus it is wise to combine rich taste and ingredients that are highly nourishing, and not just flatly reduc- ing appetite, with plants, nuts and nut oils so that the meals are abundant enough to cut off ‘snacking’ in between them. Here are just some sam- ples, more will be published in the form of cook books, and those will be shown on ipublica.com, once they are published. | Annex 2 498 A simple salad made from fresh pumpkin, mushroom and carrots The Personal Coach | 499 Super–simple vegetable soup with green beans and tofu, and a fresh egg Tortilla and vegetable consommé with fried tofu | Annex 2 500 Author Your Life Support My Author Your Life Support videos are published here: http://www.youtube.com/authoryourlife http://ipublica.com/tv/author-your-life/ Here, I would like to publish the introduction to each video. Session One : Accept Yourself In this very first session, I express a preliminary warning against the greatest pitfall in self–development, which is the striving for perfection. The hero cult which is based upon the scarcity paradigm and ruthless competition hides the fact that you are unique. When you are unique, you have nobody to compete with but yourself. But this is exactly the pitfall. Even those who have got to the point to see that they do not need to compete with others for realizing themselves, still are prone to the trap to compete with themselves in never being satisfied with their achievements, with their attitude, with their behavior, with their income, their status, their personal power, their relationships, and so on and so forth. When you strife for perfection you cannot really develop yourself because you will be stuck in a pattern that in the long run destroys you. Perfectionism is suicide. So don’t judge yourself. Instead you have to give yourself a lot of tol- erance, you have to be patient with yourself first of all, and welcome all progress you make and on the other hand, you should never punish your- self for any progress that you don’t make. It is natural to progress, but very often in life we are not aware of the steps we make and of the progress we make. This feeling may be just an impression and objectively not true. This is very important for the whole work on yourself, that you always The Personal Coach | 501 think of giving yourself tolerance, and give it to others, too; but you can’t give it to others if you don’t give it to yourself first. Think of that only: be yourself your first friend! This is the start of your true life, and nothing else. And the second point logically is how to get in touch with yourself, how to communicate with yourself ? Every communication with others is based upon how you communicate with yourself. Session Two : Develop Vision Developing a vision is essential for attracting what you want. If you don’t really know what it is that you want to attract, how can you ever trigger that attraction? You need to have a precise image in your mind of what you want, be it things, be it relation- ships or a partner, be it prosperity, be it happiness, be it fulfilled love or a wonderful functional healthy body, for all of this you need to build a specific vision, a focus, and mental im- ages that represent it in your mind. Ideally, the mental images should be associated with happy, positive feelings, and a joyful expectancy of what you wish to happen will happen! This is the trigger for attracting it into your life. And for knowing what it is that you really want, you need to commu- nicate with yourself, with your inner mind – which is true religio. Session Three : Be Different Your strength lies in your difference, not in your con- formity, in your original solution, not in your com- plying with solutions others have provided. There is no way around the need for you to build a true identity, which is built on your difference, on your unique- ness. When you begin to dialogue with your inner selves, you will notice how daringly original your in- ner life is, and that our outside world is a low–level copy of it. So when | Annex 2 502 you focus on your inner life, you will see the real beauty of life, and its grandiose creativity. Session Four : Communicate Communication is inner and outer, for as it is in- side, so will it be outside. The more you improve your inner dialogue, the better you will communicate with other people, in the group also, in the organization. For attracting what you wish to attract, you need to communicate your wish to the world around you in an appropriate way, a way that does not hurt others, that does not offend others; this is how you integrate your desires in a greater group, community or society as a whole. One of the best ways to learn this is to do creative writing; write down your dreams in the morning, and write little stories about your daily ex- periences, a journal or dialogues that either reflect content exchanged in specific relationships, or that are made up in your mind. At the same time, doing this, you will greatly improve your writing skills! Session Five : Program Yourself It is a fact that if you don’t systematically program yourself, you shall be programmed by others, by groups or by society with all its religious and political ideolo- gies. For programming yourself, you first must be- come conscious, and precisely so, of your needs, personal needs, biological needs, emotional and sex- ual needs, and your needs for social recognition and professional reward. The Personal Coach | 503 Session Six : Forgive Forgiving is essential for clearing your inner space, and for being able to also forgive yourself for any past mistakes and hurtful experiences you have triggered. There is a connection between your inner voices and the voices you hear around you, and in society. So when you begin to forgive people who are hos- tile to you, or who reject or harshly criticize you, you will be better able to cope with your inner critic, your controller instance, because this inner voice is the one single greatest obstruction to success and happiness. Most people are unhappy not because of antagonism with others, but because they are their own enemy! When you learn to forgive others on a regular basis, you will get into a very loving and tolerant relationship with yourself, and that is the start- ing point for really effective self–development! Session Seven : Assume Power As I have shown in my audio book Power or De- pression (2010), what brings about violence and abuse both inside people, and in society, is not power, but powerlessness. There is a reason why life coaches stress empowerment so much; they do this because they know that nothing is more destructive on the human level than lacking power, and constant depressions. When you are powerless, you are easily trapped by others, manipu- lated and pushed around, and this will in the long run build up strong negative feelings and aggression in you, which risk to destroy you. So you must take responsibility for your power, and consciously build power. This does not mean you are going to dominate others, in the con- trary. It means you begin to be aware of how power is assumed, and what power does in relationships and in the whole of the social game. When you reject power in others, you will be pretty unable to develop your own | Annex 2 504 power, so accept power as something necessary; and don’t confuse power with violence. Violence is abusive power, while power as such is not abusive. Abuse comes about through powerlessness, not through power. This also means you have to see that your inner team becomes func- tional so that not one of the entities is going to constantly dominate or blind out the others. You have to bring about an integration, an interplay of the inner ener- gies, so that they are harmonious with each other. This is the best exercise for learning to exert power in society, power that is socially acceptable and that brings about good! The Personal Coach | 505 CombiRel for Managers Relaxation or Meditation? Should we practice relaxation or meditation? The question is mis- leading. The answer is there is no either–or, as the methods are comple- mentary and serve different purposes. I learnt first–hand transcendental meditation back in 1996 from Professor Dr. Luh Ketut Suryani, psychiatrist and traditional healer (Balian), and the first expert on meditation in Bali, Indonesia. Dr. Suryani is the founder of the Suryani Institute for Mental Health in Bali. 227 Together with Dr. Suryani, I was teaching meditation and knowledge about our inner selves to hotel managers in Bali, in 1997/1998, but after a while we had to realize that many Western managers faced major difficul- ties with learning and practicing meditation. Meditation comes tradition- ally from the Eastern world and philosophy whereas relaxation has been developed and tested in the Western culture, especially the United States. Both techniques have their value. Meditation builds consciousness and attention whereas relaxation is known as a powerful tool against stress and stress–related disorders or illness. Benefits of Combirel Prof. Dr. Luh Ketut Suryani, M.D., Ph.D. is professor of psychiatry and chair person 227 of the Department of Psychiatry of Udayana University School of Medicine in Bali. She has a unique background having combined her experience as a traditional healer with her ca- reer in Western medicine, psychiatry and psychotherapy. Dr. Suryani has a private prac- tice where she utilizes a special meditation therapy. She initiated and directed The Elder People Movement and Program in Bali, and has taught her own method of meditation to thou- sands in Bali and abroad. She initiated the International Congress of Psychotherapy. She was exchange researcher in psychiatry at the University of California and has conducted re- search in Bali, the U.S.A. and Australia. Her two books are entitled The Balinese People, A Reinvestigation of Character and Trance and Possession in Bali. In the latter book, she described a culture specific syndrome of possession in Bali. Dr. Suryani lectures and conducts work- shops internationally. She has been invited to Asia, Australia, the United States and a number of European countries. | Annex 2 506 CombiRel, a deep relaxation technique I have created, combines the posi- tive benefits of both the Eastern and Western approach; it represents as such a unique synthesis of Eastern and Western wisdom, but at the same time a very practical tool for us to increase our potential and capacity to focus, to concentrate and to increase holistic attention. Many people to- day face difficulties to let go and to accept themselves as they are. We are eager to make us better than we are, and to value ourselves through achieve- ment, be it in knowledge or practice. Many of us tend to put stress on themselves and get caught in a net- work of self–imposed challenges and obligations. Challenge is important and a life without any stress would be boring and dull. Yet we can only achieve high if we use our own power, our deep–down potential, and not some or the other projection made on us by others, by parents, partner, friends, colleagues or others that we silently accept. We have access to this power only from the moment we let go all pro- jections and see ourselves as we are. This means in practice that we stop improving ourselves which namely most often results from guilt–feelings, and accept us just as we are, hic–et–nunc! Worn out? Recent research has corroborated the old insight that our level of achievement is closely linked to the level of interest and motivation we have for a particular field or affair. Moreover, researchers have found that when we are bored, part of our brain simply switches off. This can hap- pen when we listen to a boring speech or when we have to accomplish routines over and over, without getting any pleasurable feeling out of it. Unfortunately, even most creative humans equally have to deal with routines. We have to work out an idea, to market or sell a product, to arrange, to improve, to train, to repeat, to work over. As a general rule, working out our ideas takes much more time and needs more endurance than producing ideas. Handle Your Brain The Personal Coach | 507 For avoiding our brain to switch, and thus to operate on a reduced energy and intelligence level, we can do crossing, simple but effec- tive exercises that involve both brain hemispheres so that they become more coordinated. Our brain is functionally asymmetric. Crossing exercises, done regularly, help us to use our brain as a whole, and in a way that both brain hemi- spheres work in synch. They namely act counter to an overuse of the left brain hemisphere, which is a result of primarily intellectual activities. In addi- tion, they sustain the brain’s natural functioning in an asymmetric man- ner, that is not right and right and left and left, but right and left, and left and right. Functionally speaking real asymmetry is the highest form of symme- try, which is an insight great visual artists and also great musicians know about. A striking example is Pablo Picasso whose asymmetrical lines in his mature art works shock many non–receptive citizens, logically so, because ordinary people are conditioned to system–conformity which is but a dis- tillation of symmetrical thinking! While both nature and the genius think asymmetrically! | Annex 2 508 One of Pablo Picasso’s most famous paintings They also refresh and stimulate and act counter to fatigue when done after meetings, conferences, and during coffee breaks. People report to be more calm and concentrate better after having done crossing. The Brain Gym Method Here are two of the 26 Brain Gym Movements created by Paul E. Dennison, Ph.D., a pioneer in the field of educational kinesiology. They involve moving your arms and legs in opposition across the body’s mid- line. As natural as a baby’s crawl, these integrative movements help dis- solve the stress of daily life and keep us in balance physically and mental- ly. Dennison’s research has shown a relationship between asymmetrical movement and asymmetrical thinking, reflecting an imbalance between the intuitive and logical sides of the brain. His Brain Gym moves, includ- ing these four, can help you activate the nervous system to promote bal- anced activity between the hemispheres. See: Brain Gym for Business: Instant Brain Boosters for On–The–Job Success, by Paul E. Dennison, PhD, New York: Edu Kinesthetics,1994. The fol- lowing two exercises are taken from this book. Cross Crawl Stand with your feet slightly apart, arms at your sides. Lift your right knee toward your chest as you cross your left hand over the midline of your body, placing the hand, palm open, to the outside of the right knee. Return to the starting position, and repeat with the right hand and left knee to complete 1 set. Do at least 12 sets. You can perform this move quickly and rhythmically to build energy, or very slowly to emphasize balance. Benefit: Synchronizes both brain hemispheres, and promotes balance. The Personal Coach | 509 Cross–Crawl Crunch Lie face–up on the floor with knees bent and feet flat on the floor. Place your fingertips, unclasped, behind your head. Pull your abdominals in so your spine is in contact with the floor. Bend the left knee in toward your chest as you cross your body’s mid- line to bring the right elbow toward the left knee. Lower the left foot to the floor, and repeat on the opposite side (left elbow to right knee). Con- tinue alternating elbow to knee rhythmically for 30 seconds to 1 minute. Benefit: Synchronizes both brain hemispheres, and tones the abdomi- nal oblique muscles. | Annex 2 510 Focusing This focusing session was inspired by the following book: Eugene T. Gendlin, PhD Focusing 2d ed., New York: Bantam Books, 1981 ©1978–1981 Eugene T. Gendlin, PhD What is Focusing? Focusing is a method for getting in touch with our body wisdom, our deep–down feelings, our intuitions, our sixth sense. It is a unique way of receiving holistic answers from the totality of our be- ing. The method has been drafted in the 1970s by Eugene T. Gendlin, Ph.D., from the University of Chicago, USA. Focusing gets close to Eastern meditation methods, however better suits the Western mindset than most meditation methods. In the begin- ning, the simplicity of this method was not quite understood and focusing was reserved to the therapeutic setting or used for coping with anxiety or drug abuse. Only later people found how similar focusing is meditation. With this insight, focusing became a widely accepted and practiced method in self– experience groups and an activity for company seminars or staff excur- sions, not to mention its adaptation for boy scouts meetings or special classes in gifted children workshops and alike. This are the six steps: • 1/6 Clear & Claim Inner Space • 2/6 Feel & Sense • 3/6 Put Handle • 4/6 Get Feedback • 5/6 Ask Question • 6/6 Receive Answer The Personal Coach | 511 1/6 Claim a Space This first step is just getting ready. Most of us have lost touch with the source of power inside and need to get tuned, step by step, to sense again the monitions coming from that source. You can remain in the position you are or you can sit quietly on a chair, if you prefer. Turn off all sources of distraction, radio, television, and your phone and sit a moment in silence. If silence is very unusual to you or if it creates anxiety (this can happen if you are really out of your continuum and shows that you badly need to begin working on your inner selves), you may put some soft music such as slow classical tunes (preferably baroque music) or Jazz ballads. Now you clear a space and claim a space. What does that mean? Without your own inner space, you are utterly dependent on your outside world and events. Moving from the periphery of your being to your center, you need to claim an inner space first. Claim your space by quietly affirming that an inner space containing all the wisdom of the universe exists right now within you! Clearing this space is the next step. This space can never be spoiled and is pure. Clearing the space is a metaphor for your directing your awareness inside. This means that you are passively watchful to all what is going on inside of you, at least for the time of this exercise. How to do this? You may find it hard in the begin- ning. Thoughts come and go, or, if you are of a visual type, inner images keep changing. Accept your inner cinema, accept the contradictory thoughts, accept the emotions that come up, including anger, hate, feelings of anger, and even of revenge, destructive thought, sexual arousal, the urge to possess another person, depression, the painful remembrance of humiliation. Accept all of that quietly and totally. Give up any judgment, any moral stigma, any evaluation if any of this is good or bad! Because all of this is both you and not you. It is you as far as you ac- cept it to be part of you. It is not you as far as you possess enough de- tachment to decide that it is not part of you. All this is truly under your control, believe it or not! You are the master of this inner world and you are free to rule it. You are neither good nor bad. You are I AM, your own | Annex 2 512 space, your own universe, your own powerful entity, spark of light and divine cell. 2/6 Feel & Sense This second step was originally named Felt Sense by Eugene Gendlin. This step is usually the most difficult to master because of the detach- ment you need to reach regarding your problem. If you go too deep into it you are overwhelmed and lack the necessary distance to proceed fur- ther in focusing. If you are too much detached from it, you will not be able to sense it. It is really an art to not go inside of your problem but get the whole feeling of it. Now you focus on the point in your body where you usually feel things. This is for most of us the belly, for others the solar plexus. Now let yourself feel the quite vague sense of all of your problem, all that communi- cates it to you. How to do this? If you are the rational type of person, you may find this rather un- usual. If you are highly intuitive, you may know already what I am talk- ing about. Please find the ideal posture for this part of the exercise. For me it’s sitting with a straight spine yet relaxed. If your back is curved and your position sluggish, I found, it’s much harder. But if you are tense in your belly, it’s not working well either. Your diaphragm should be relaxed but your spine muscles firm so that your posture is upright, a bit like in yoga or in meditation. Now just sit still for a moment and focus inside on that point where you feel there is the whole of the problem. This may feel awkward, anx- ious or irritated, or insecure. Note that I am not talking about a medical problem or health problem but something in your life that needs a deci- sion, an act or commitment, a let–go or firm grasp. That can be a rela- tionship, a financial situation, an acquisition, a difficult family decision, a partnership or something you have done and regret, and so on, in one word, any problem that really moves you. The Personal Coach | 513 Focusing is to imply your body wisdom in your decisions so as to get about a more holistic decision making in which your inner or hidden wisdom is equally involved. Now get the felt sense, identify the completeness of this feeling that your body or an inner part of you communicates now to your conscious mind. And just stay with this and don’t do anything about it. In this part of the focusing process you just had to get this felt sense and that’s it. Take a moment of rest before continuing, but not more than about five minutes. 3/6 Put a Handle Putting a handle simply means that you try to identify the quality of this unclear feeling that your body has communicated to you. Further- more, you try to put this quality in words or one word, or a word cluster, a composition of words like this strange–scary–all–around–problem– that–feels–hot–belly or this stuck–heavy–jumpy–thing–inside. You can also describe it with an image. How to do this? Now you should keep changing this description several times until you feel you have hit the point and got a description that quite fits the situation or inner feeling. Sometimes we get it immediately and it feels right, sometimes we have to change it until some kind of inner wisdom tells us ‘Okay, that quite fits it, let’s keep that for the moment!’ Please bear in mind that nothing in life is rigid and that all keeps changing. What you feel now as a handle of your problem may tomorrow feel different already. Accept this fact and your life will be more beautiful and more energetic because change is the driving force of life. 4/6 Get Feedback This step of the focusing process was originally called Resonating by Gendlin. I do not use this term since for most people it sounds strange or unusual although this expression is actually very nice and descriptive. How to do this? | Annex 2 514 This step is just to make sure that the handle you have put really fits. So you silently ask your body to give you feedback about that and practi- cally you do this by letting that vague total feeling and the handle you have put resonate with each other. Then you passively watch what fits and what odds. So you keep changing the words, the word composition or the image until you find what just feels right in capturing the quality of what you sense inside. You may write down the different words or draw the different images on a paper that you have previously put on the table for that purpose or you may just do it without any further help. Both methods work for dif- ferent kinds of people. Try to identify the one that works best for you! Be flexible and try different ways of doing. Play with it and have fun that way. You can’t destroy anything by doing wrong. It may only take a little longer to get the felt sense or the feedback. 5/6 Ask Question The next step in the focusing process is quite decisive. You have to take an initiative. Until now you were rather passive in the process, rather watching or observing, rather still with focusing inside. Now you are called upon to take an action. This action consists in asking your body a specific question. Before you ask, make sure you are really connected to this vague and complete feeling, not just remember- ing it, that you are really with it. Then ask. The question sounds as fol- lows, and please repeat it in exactly this way: – What is it that makes the whole problem feel so .... [here you put your quality or handle] and what is in this sense? The right answer is not the one that you get quickly without feeling a shift in the feeling you sense. It is the one that is accompanied by a real shift in the feeling. Something in the feeling or the way you experience this feeling will shift, will change, will really transform. If that happens you know you have found the key, that your question was the right one. How to do this? The Personal Coach | 515 If nothing happens or your intellect just gives you ideas and you ask questions without having this feeling of a shift in your body sensation, then please be patient and quietly ask again, and again. Not more than about five times. Respect your body! If it does not feel like cooperating today, it will tomorrow or later. Your body has its own unique intelligence and it knows why it behaves this or that way. There is always a deep logic in its behavior, a logic you may not understand at once, but which is real. So if after about five times you feel your question has not provoked any shift in your total felt sense, give up for this time and click through to the next step. If you feel your question was right since it was accompanied by a shift or change in your bodily sensation of the problem, you can proceed to receiving an answer. 6/6 Receive Answer The last step in the focusing process is called Receiving. You will get an answer from your body if your body feels like answering and if you are ready to receive. This is not always the case. It usually happens if the previous step was successful, if you have felt a shift while asking. Receiving is often felt like a reward we get from the body and it may be a mind–opening experience. However, it cannot be forced upon. Your body does not like to be forced and it tends to block if you try to force it. The answer will come on its own and insofar we do not have control. How to do this? The art of focusing is to be serious and committed while going through the steps yet not tense and not greedy, but open to anything that might happen. Do not expect an answer or reward coming, and the chance is so much higher that it comes! This means that with all involvement needed, you have to keep a portion of detachment in the process. You may object that this really doesn’t sound easy and I reply to you that I did not promise you it was easy. But I tell you also that it will be much easier after a few attempts. If focusing inside was something very unusual in your previous life, it will of course be harder for you than for | Annex 2 516 somebody who has always lived in accordance with their body and was used to carefully listen to its feedback. So please keep trying and also keep in mind that if your body does not want to give you an answer today, it is likely to give you the answer tomorrow, provided you are really serious to get an answer. And you will be rewarded if you continue on a regular basis, for sure! The Personal Coach | 517 Some Truths About Life Growth is Nonlinear Growth processes are nonlinear. They cannot be described with the tool box of conventional mathematics; in fact, a special non–Euclidian mathematics had to be created for this purpose. Growth processes can only be observed in living systems, not, as it was the case with conven- tional biology, in dead organisms. In the living organism, all is interrelat- ed and there is a communication structure within the whole system, in which the totality of the system participates. Living Systems are Self–Regulatory Self–regulation is a major functional key element in living systems. Self– regulation can be understood like the system of check and balances in the modern state constitution. It means that all regulatory functions are part of the system itself, or inside of it, and not coming from outside. This means also that a living system possesses a certain amount of autonomy. I have found that besides biological self–regulation, there is a form of human self–regulation as a pattern of behavior that is modeled after the insights from observing nature. In my audio book Eight Dynamic Patterns of Living (2010), I point out that self–regulation is one of the eight fundamental dynamic patterns tribal populations obey to that are positive and dynamic regulatory factors in their lifestyle, value system and behav- ior, with the result that natives are particularly well adapted and adjusted to their environment, instead of destroying it, like civilized man does by imposing characteristics upon nature. Intelligence is Self–Organizing Intelligence has been found to possess a single most important char- acter that clearly distinguishes it, and lets us recognize that we have to deal with something or an entity that is intelligent. This key element is | Annex 2 518 self–organization. A good example to demonstrate this is human percep- tion. As I have shown in my audio book Patterns of Perception (2010), the human perception matrix is actively and passively self–organizing, per- ceiving life not by the grasp of single elements, but whole patterns that are, if necessary, added to the human memory surface as patterns, and not as single elements. Let me give an example. When a small child learns their first lan- guage, the child is not learning the language as we learn it in school, that is by grasping single elements such as verbs, substantives, syntax and gram- mar, but whole patterns of the language spoken by the people around the child, that is usually the parents. That means that for example the syntax rules and grammar are not learnt separately and are not needed to be learnt at all because they are contained within the patterns that are, as such, stored in the memory surface. Observing this natural process of holistic learning, Dr. Georgi Lozanov, a psychiatrist from Bulgaria, created a novel lan- guage learning technique called Superlearning® that allows to learn foreign languages in a revolutionary short time, like three months, and without any accent being present when the learner speaks it. Emotions are Intelligent Emotions possess their own intelligence, which is different from the intelligence of the rational mind. While the mind uses through thought, our emotional intelligence expresses itself on the subconscious level, for example, through automatisms, habits, dreams, body language, and through rela- tionships. It is primarily by observing human relations that we can make out to what extent a person is emotionally intelligent, because typically emo- tional intelligence translates in excellent communication ability and gen- eral good relational abilities. When we see somebody who understands well the functionality of love, for example, being a lover rather than a fighter, we can make out that the person has a high level of emotional intelligence which makes for people around him or her responding easily to messages sent out by that person. The Personal Coach | 519 Coaching Objective My focus in One 2 One is to help clients realize their unique potential, to develop their identity, and empower them to realize their mission. This sounds like a commonplace, as these days everybody wants to be a coach and pretends, for in the most cases pure profit reasons, that helping others to grow was his or her motivation. I have met many of these so–called coaches who are often brilliant online marketers, and have tested their products. In nine of ten cases I was not only disappoint- ed but felt I had been cheated and fooled. This is the reality we have to face in today’s Internet world. On the other hand, I clearly see after ten years of sustained effort to offer my services on the Internet that I was not given even a slight chance to succeed! To the contrary, my successes were coming from local marketing and personal contacts, and never from any exposure on the Internet. So, you may wonder why I continue, then? Well, let’s see things from a realistic perspective. I am not a marketer and do not have the slippery talent of most of these scam artists to throw my weight around and fill people’s minds with well–sounding promises. From my former lawyer’s career I have kept a critical mind toward miracle searching and guruism that now pervades (and perverts) the pri- vate fantasies and hopes of otherwise rational–minded people, especially in the United States, Britain, and Australia. This being said, I have developed my coaching focus and techniques in long years of struggling with my own problems, trying out dozens of methods on myself, to see for their effectiveness. After a while, I began to realize that not every method fits every person and that after all I had to find my own mix. What worked best became an ingredient of my own coaching soup and was distilled and processed thoroughly within my open consciousness. To this purpose, my second career as a pre–school educator allowed me to test some of my insights in human growth processes in the kinder- garten environment. | Annex 2 520 This experience taught me that what is traditionally done in child education is rather destructive to help unfolding the human potential and that a true revolution in early child education is a stringent necessity for the near future. My Coaching Soup My Zen soup, so to say, for coaching, is not the result of an academic effort, nor is it a greedy reaching out for short–term successes. After hav- ing tested the techniques that I am now offering to corporate and private clients over a period of more than twenty years, and having seen some of them working for children as well, I would like to summarize them here: ‣ Daily exposure to high–quality music; ‣ Study of biographies of great artists, politicians and business people; ‣ Least possible planning and greatest possible creative freedom; ‣ Listening to the body’s own intelligence in all matters of life; ‣ Building your life around your love; ‣ Realizing your intrinsic love wishes and sexual attraction; ‣ Learning through the deliberate use of our subconscious mind; ‣ Keeping a dream journal; ‣ Developing the inner mind through awareness of our inner entities; ‣ Developing inner power through voice dialogue; ‣ Developing awareness of the past, thus overcoming its dominance; ‣ Developing literary self–expression through self–publishing; ‣ Daily meditation, relaxation and fitness program; The Personal Coach | 521 ‣ Active integration of our emotions, and our shadow; ‣ Facing the impossible by realizing that all is possible; ‣ Active development of right–brain qualities such as – • associative and imaginative thinking; • vision building; • building of faith through positive prayer; • building anticipation through joyful involvement; • spontaneous creation and serendipity art; • building the inner actor, the inner artist, the inner child; • involving chaos principle and awareness of decay processes; • recycling the mind through meditation and forgiveness; • building critical and political thinking, and discrimination; • building a truthful, honest, vigilant and uncorrupt mind; • building innocence as the power of love and understanding. After having gone through this list, you will have to acknowledge that no quick fix however cunningly invented and presented will ever help you develop your true potential. What on the other can help you is potential astrology. I have prac- ticed astrology since my student years, but as a matter of focus special- ized in one field of this immensely wide science, potential astrology. This esoteric technique helps very effectively to get to know your karma and dharma. It has helped me overcome a totally alienating and traumatic childhood and youth and find my true mission. Emosexcoaching Emosexcoaching begins where culture ends, where culture fails, start- ing with giving meaning to that urge. By putting words on things. By learning to say them. To express them. And by doing so, to humanize them. Be- cause culture is language, And a culture where language is banned is not culture but a primal horde. | Annex 2 522 Hence, to put words on your most violent sexual urges is not only a form of therapy, but a matter of culture! It’s a no–nonsense kind of nonsense. The nonsense to give sense to what is non, To what is odd. When you fantasize about rape, and raping another, that is odd enough. Our culture does not help you to give meaning to that urge to rape. And without giving meaning to that urge, there is a certain probability that this urge will be either acted out or suffered as the victim of rape. Rape is a chaotic form of behavior. Chaotic because not coded. It’s mute. Emosexcoaching is an emotions–focused progressive and alternative coaching approach that encompasses Pedoemotions Consulting (PEC), emo- sexual integration, and healing of split–patterns in the communication structure of our inner selves. My personal approach to coaching clients is a form of reality coaching in the sense that it’s based upon what Sigmund Freud called the reality principle. The reality principle means that libido has been consciously accepted and integrated so that the natural pleasure function can fully play out its beneficial self–regulatory effects upon psyche and soma. You can find more about this in my Idiot Guide to Emotions (2010). This is your other half, your anima. Do you know it? It’s what you most probably have deeply repressed. If you are a conscious pedophile or to avoid this ugly word, a self–aware childlover, you will have accepted your yin nature, the female half in you, which are all the values associated with your right brain, such as for example creative imagination, associative thinking, tenderness, tactile pleasure, love for art and spontaneity, and a longing for inner The Personal Coach | 523 and outer peace. Those of you, however, and you are in the majority worldwide, who have repressed all this, the macho men, those who are vio- lently opposed against loving children, and whom I call the Oedipal Heroes, you, as a group, have a problem while you suppose those who call them- selves pedophiles had this problem. It’s not those who are conscious of difficult–to–handle longings, but those who repress them and thus have dis- owned the inner selves associated with those longings who run a greater risk for stepping over the line once in a while and become abusers. It’s you, the pedophile haters, the persecutors, that need therapy, that need support; it’s you who bring war and destruction to this world, it’s you, the false heroes, who most need the kind of counseling I am offering here. What is Emosexcoaching? Emosexcoaching pretty much is finding out about the mysterious woman in you, when you are a man, and about the mysterious man in you when you are a woman. You have to integrate the other half if you want to become whole. Otherwise you re- main fragmented. Rape is the urge to get con- nected with the other half by a not–so–nice form of communication. You can get there by means that are socially accepted, just to avoid trouble. At the same time, you have to begin to love that rapist in you. Otherwise you will stay on the hate–side of the world, and will never know the love–side of it. This love you wish to experience, you have to give it to yourself first. Is Emosexcoaching only for Pedophiles? By no means. Most men who long for sensual, tactile, emotional or sexual closeness with children do not label themselves as pedophiles. And yet they may have once in a while or constantly strong urges for experi- encing outercourse, or interfemoral, oral, anal or vaginal intercourse with | Annex 2 524 those considered, by definition, in modern societies, as children, boys, or girls, or both. You may go on and hide yourself behind a façade of docile adaptation to society, but is that where your bliss resides? What is your bliss? Have you ever inquired about it? Have you ever thought what made you love children so fervently, beautifully, passionately, so joyfully and against any reason? Have you ever been aware of the beauty, or felt the intrinsic joy, the overwhelming creative madness in your love? Have you ever felt how abundant this love is, how full of riches and what immense wealth it can create for children in this child–hating world? Have you ever inquired about the bliss to be a childlover? Have you ever seen the incredible sparkling beauty in your love, and in yourself ? If you are a novice to loving children or have discovered already that you are not really attracted to adult sexual partners, you are called upon to be more encompassing as you were any time before, and to be more outgo- ing. You are unique in your love and your beauty as an angel for children in this world where children are conditioned to being consumer puppets in our insane postmodern global consumer industry that I came to call Oedipal Culture. You are called upon to make the difference! Stop paranoia, stop fear, stop accusing yourself, stop self–destruction altogether and contact me if you need help with living your love peacefully and constructively, of if it causes you ongoing depressions. Self–Coaching Rules When I accept reality, I vibrate in unison with all–that–is. Then the universe will support the realization of my soul desires and longings. When I vibrate, I move and change, as life itself. When I reject reali- ty, I block the flow within me and all around me, and my feeling of isola- tion will then gradually transform into real isolation. When I am immersed in what–is, I have no time and energy to make up beliefs and projections. When I am fully aware of what is, and at the same time of all the limitations of perception, I am at peace. To maintain this peace, I refrain from making up opinions about this–and–that. I re- The Personal Coach | 525 frain from finding this ‘good’ or that ‘bad’. I refrain from loving this and hating that. I refrain from dividing life into opposites. I take great care to not interfere with the flow of life by projecting rigid beliefs upon it. It is then for me very important to live in harmony with all–that–is. To walk on in this state of harmony, I try to be at peace with myself first. I resolve conflicts within myself through inner dialogue, helping my inner voices to communicate with each other. As a result, I will do this on the outside level as well, and experience constructive relationships. I let go all other relationships, those that are conflictual, seeing that I do not need them and that they obstruct the flow of my life and that they bring upon me strain and sorrow. I stay away from people who fight with reality and project their blind spots upon others, groups, races, cultures, societies. I unite with people who contemplate the beauty of a flower, or a little girl, art, or a design pattern, with people who see that life is detail as love is detail. This results in realizing my soul values, integrity, the awaken- ing of my original gifts and talents, a deep joy from within and ultimate personal self–realization. For achieving this goal, I need to refrain from imitating or modeling others, from over–protecting my partner or children, from adoring them or hating them, from ridiculing others or admiring them, from the plague of fault–finding others, from blaming others, from rejecting or shunning others, from being exclusive in my life, shutting others out from my love of one single partner, but also from blindly accepting others or being false or artificial. In addition, I need to encourage naturalness and self–re- liance and I need to give others freedom, to accept their difference, and build synergy with them and cooperate with them. I also need to be in peace, first of all with myself and then with others as well. Building Trust When I realize that as a small child I was not able to build trust, and as a result could not build a sufficient amount of self–confidence, I see that when I criticize others harshly, I do this because I am feeling insecure. | Annex 2 526 There is probably no greater and more expansive feeling than trust. Trusting others at a high level is like living in paradise. On the other hand, mis- trusting others at a high level equals living in hell. Trusting others can be learnt by trusting them. It begins with your bag on the restaurant table when you go to the restroom, and it ends with letting your little girl spend the night with an adult male friend she just got to know and that she fell in love with. It means to trust not only your- self, but equally trust others. That your little girl trusts this man means something! If it doesn’t mean anything for you, you do not really respect your daughter and rather tend to control her life by rigid patterns that suffo- cate her in the long run. Trusting the world means trusting more and more individuals, including yourself. You cannot trust half–heartedly. You trust or you trust not. You can build trust with yourself by building trust in your intuition, in your promptings and monitions, your foreknowledge, your sixth sense, your inner wisdom, your hunches. And you begin to trust others by be- ginning to trust their basic goodness, their soul–nature, their wisdom and their good intentions and needs similar to yours. You can build trust with the world by trusting life, its deep metara- tional intelligence, its growth pattern, its supportive nature, its resonance pattern and responsiveness, and its invisible hands that help you realize your real nature and your real self. Our ‘Musical’ Self I think that original and intelligent people have a much harder stand because society is out to kick them harder; it’s not actually society but the mainstream middle streak of it, all those who move not by their own voli- tion but by going along with the energy of some strong leaders and cre- ators. You have the potential, once you get a handle on your problems – which are actually your strengths – to be one of the leaders or creators. We are all celli, violins and pianos. We are cigars, handmade, not ciga- rettes; we are nature, not clocks and machines. The human is a complex patterned unit of relationships, a vibrational organism, composed of resonance pat- The Personal Coach | 527 terns. Any mechanistic, reductionist and Cartesian approach to human resource development must inevitably fail. That is why so many people are ultimately deceived by our great and popular life coaches who are but out to present their narcissistic hangups to a naive credulous audience of basically ignorant people – held ignorant by consumer education, but by birth ignorant! This is important to know. For most, then, it’s enough to help the client connecting back to their innate wisdom, instead of piling up their intellectual insights and the eternal self–analysis that is inherent in our thought structure. Pablo Casals All successful coaching must begin at the roots of life, not at the intel- lect, which is a superposition of all of that. The basic roots of life are birth, sexuality and death. These are the (only) really important issues in life. All the rest is important, too, as every detail counts, but all must be seen in the right perspective. Pablo Casals | Annex 2 528 People who are mentally and emotionally sane have this in common that they have the right perspective of life and relationships, while those, the majority, of consume–trained adult toddlers have this in common that they run around with a more or less distorted worldview that is the result of conditioning, if not of systematic brainwashing as it’s an inher- ent part of Oedipal Culture. Without constancy, your time and input will be wasted! All needs time and patience in matters of growth! A tree does not grow in one day, nor does a child. Changing long–standing beliefs and inner or outer behavior patterns can take decades, and only dishonest coaches try to suggest that there are quick fixes that can change humans in days or even hours! Please believe me that after forty years of working on self–development by work- ing on my own problems, I can assure you that there are no quick fixes around in this world! And please believe me also that no coach has grown from academic studies or book knowledge and that it’s by overcoming problems, solving problems and not get stuck in problems that one be- comes a facilitator, that one can become useful for others or a communi- ty, and not by proudly affirming that one has solved all the problems in the world and has become a so–called saint. So please use your discrimi- nation to see what’s true and what is not. BIBLIOGRAPHY General Bibliography | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 530 A Abrams, Jeremiah (Ed.) Reclaiming the Inner Child New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1990 Die Befreiung des Inneren Kindes Die Wiederentdeckung unserer ursprünglichen kreativen Persönlichkeit und ihre zentrale Bedeutung für unser Erwachsenwerden München: Scherz Verlag, 1993 Adrienne, Carol The Numerology Kit New American Library, 1988 Agni Yoga Society COEUR : Signes de l’Agni Yoga Toulon: Sté Edipub, 1985 Publication originale date de 1932 Albrecht, Karl The Only Thing That Matters New York: Harper & Row, 1993 Alston, John P. / Tucker, Francis The Myth of Sexual Permissiveness The Journal of Sex Research, 9/1 (1973) Appleton, Matthew A Free Range Childhood Self–Regulation at Summerhill School Foundation for Educational Renewal, 2000 Summerhill Kindern ihre Kindheit zurückgeben Demokratie und Selbstregulierung in der Erziehung Hohengehren: Schneider Verlag, 2003 Arcas, Gérald, Dr Guérir le corps par l’hypnose et l’auto–hypnose Paris: Sand, 1997 Ariès, Philippe L’enfant et la famille sous l’Ancien Régime Paris, Seuil, 1975 Centuries of Childhood New York: Vintage Books, 1962 Geschichte der Kindheit Frankfurt/M: DTV, 1998 Bibliography | 531 Arntz, William & Chasse, Betsy What the Bleep Do We Know 20th Century Fox, 2005 (DVD) Down The Rabbit Hole Quantum Edition 20th Century Fox, 2006 (3 DVD Set) Bleep An der Schnittstelle von Spiritualität und Wissenschaft Verblüffende Erkenntnisse und Anstösse zum Weiterdenken Berlin: Vak Verlag, 2007 Arroyo, Stephen Astrology, Karma & Transformation The Inner Dimensions of the Birth Chart Sebastopol, CA: CRSC Publications, 1978 Astrologie, Karma und Transformation Die Chancen schwieriger Aspekte Frankfurt/M: Heyne Verlag, 1998 Relationships and Life Cycles Astrological Patterns of Personal Experience Sebastopol, CA: CRCS Publications, 1993 Handbuch der Horoskop–Deutung Berlin: Rowohlt, 1999 Atlee, Tom The Tao of Democracy Using Co–Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All North Charleston, SC: Imprint Books / WorldWorks Press, 2003 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 532 B Bachelard, Gaston The Poetics of Reverie Translated by Daniel Russell Boston: Beacon Press, 1971 Poetik des Raumes Frankfurt/M: Fischer Verlag, 2001 Bachofen, Johann Jakob Gesammelte Werke, Band II Das Mutterrecht Basel: Benno Schwabe & Co., 1948 Erstveröffentlichung im Jahre 1861 Baggins, David Sadofsky Drug Hate and the Corruption of American Justice Santa Barbara: Praeger, 1998 Bagley, Christopher Child Abusers Research and Treatment New York: Universal Publishers, 2003 Balter, Michael The Goddess and the Bull Catalhoyuk, An Archaeological Journey to the Dawn of Civilization New York: Free Press, 2006 Bandler, Richard Get the Life You Want The Secrets to Quick and Lasting Life Change With Neuro–Linguistic Programming Deerfield Beach, Fl: HCI, 2008 Barbaree, Howard E. & Marshall, William L. (Eds.) The Juvenile Sex Offender Second Edition New York: Guilford Press, 2008 Barnes, A. James, Dworkin, Terry and Richards Eric L. Law for Business, 9th Edition New York: McGraw–Hill, 2006 Barnes, J. (Ed.) The Complete Works of Aristotle, Vol. 1 Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971 Bibliography | 533 Barron, Frank X., Montuori, et al. (Eds.) Creators on Creating Awakening and Cultivating the Imaginative Mind (New Consciousness Reader) New York: P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1997 Bateson, Gregory Steps to an Ecology of Mind Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000 Originally published in 1972 Beaulieu, John Music and Sound in the Healing Arts An Energy Approach New York: Station Hill Press, 1987 Bender Lauretta & Blau, Abram The Reaction of Children to Sexual Relations with Adults American J. Orthopsychiatry 7 (1937), 500–518 Benkler, Yochai The Wealth of Networks How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007 Bennion, Francis Statutory Interpretation London: Butterworths, 1984 Bernard, Frits Paedophilia A Factual Report Amsterdam: Enclave, 1985 Pädophilie ohne Grenzen Theorie, Forschung, Praxis Frankfurt/M: Foerster Verlag, 1997 Kinderschänder? Pädophilie, von der Liebe mit Kindern 3. Auflage Frankfurt/M: Foerster Verlag, 1982 Bertalanffy, Ludwig von General Systems Theory Foundations, Development, Applications New York: George Brazilier Publishing, 1976 Besant, Annie An Autobiography New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2005 Originally published in 1893 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 534 Karma 4e édition Paris: Adyar, 1923 Bettelheim, Bruno A Good Enough Parent New York: A. Knopf, 1987 The Uses of Enchantment New York: Vintage Books, 1989 Kinder brauchen Märchen Frankfurt/M: DTV, 2002 Beutler/Bieber/Pipkorn/Streil Die Europäische Gemeinschaft Rechtsordnung und Politik 2. Auflage Baden–Baden: Nomos, 1982 Block, Peter Stewardship Choosing Service Over Self–Interest San Francisco: Berrett–Koehler, 1996 Blofeld, J. The Book of Changes A New Translation of the Ancient Chinese I Ching New York: E.P. Dutton, 1965 Blum, Ralph H. & Laughan, Susan The Healing Runes Tools for the Recovery of Body, Mind, Heart & Soul New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995 Boadalla, David Wilhelm Reich, Leben und Werk Frankfurt/M: Fischer, 1980 Bodin, Jean On Sovereignty (1576) Six Books of the Commonwealth Edited by Professor Julian Franklin New York: Seven Treasures Publications, 2009 Böhm, Wilfried Maria Montessori 2. Auflage Bad Heilbrunn: Julius Klinkhardt, 1991 Bibliography | 535 Bohm, David Wholeness and the Implicate Order London: Routledge, 2002 Die implizite Ordnung Grundlagen eines dynamischen Holismus München: Goldmann Wilhelm, 1989 Thought as a System London: Routledge, 1994 Quantum Theory London: Dover Publications, 1989 La plénitude de l’univers Paris: Rocher, 1992 La conscience de l’univers Paris: Rocher, 1992 Boldt, Laurence G. Zen and the Art of Making a Living A Practical Guide to Creative Career Design New York: Penguin Arkana, 1993 How to Find the Work You Love New York: Penguin Arkana, 1996 Zen Soup Tasty Morsels of Zen Wisdom From Great Minds East & West New York: Penguin Arkana, 1997 The Tao of Abundance Eight Ancient Principles For Abundant Living New York: Penguin Arkana, 1999 Das Tao der Fülle Vom Reichtum, der uns glücklich macht Mittelberg: Joy Verlag, 2001 Bordeaux–Szekely, Edmond Teaching of the Essenes from Enoch to the Dead Sea Scrolls Beekman Publishing, 1992 Gospel of the Essenes The Unknown Books of the Essenes & Lost Scrolls of the Essene Brotherhood Beekman Publishing, 1988 Gospel of Peace of Jesus Christ Beekman Publishing, 1994 Gospel of Peace, 2d Vol. I B S International Publishers Das Friedensevangelium der Essener | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 536 Saarbrücken: Neue Erde/Lentz, 2002 Évangile essénien de la paix La vie biogénique Genève: Éditions Soleil, 1978 Die unbekannten Schriften der Essener Saarbrücken: Neue Erde/Lentz, 2002 Branden, Nathaniel How to Raise Your Self–Esteem New York: Bantam, 1987 Die 6 Säulen des Selbstwertgefühls Erfolgreich und zufrieden durch ein starkes Selbst München: Piper Verlag, 2009 Brant & Tisza The Sexually Misused Child American J. Orthopsychiatry, 47(1)(1977) Brassai Conversations with Picasso Chicago: University of Chicago Publications, 1999 Brennan, Barbara Ann Hands of Healing A Guide to Healing Through the Human Energy Field New York: Bantam, 1988 Brongersma, Edward Aggression against Pedophiles 7 International Journal of Law & Psychiatry 82 (1984) Loving Boys Amsterdam, New York: GAP, 1987 Das verfemte Geschlecht Berlin: Lichtenberg Verlag, 1970 Bruce, Alexandra Beyond the Bleep The Definite Unauthorized Guide to ‘What the Bleep Do we Know!?’ New York: Disinformation, 2005 Bullough & Bullough (Eds.) Human Sexuality An Encyclopedia New York: Garland Publishing, 1994 Sin, Sickness and Sanity A History of Sexual Attitudes New York: New American Library, 1977 Bibliography | 537 Burgess, Ann Wolbert Child Pornography and Sex Rings New York: Lexington Books, 1984 Burwick, Frederick The Damnation of Newton Goethe’s Color Theory and Romantic Perception New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1986 Butler–Bowden, Tom 50 Success Classics Winning Wisdom for Work & Life From 50 Landmark Books London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2004 50 Klassiker des Erfolgs Die wichtigsten Werke von Kenneth Blanchard, Warren Buffet, Andrew Carnegie, Stephen R. Covey, Spencer Johnson, Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon Hill, Nelson Mandela, Anthony Robbins, Brian Tracy, Sun Tsu, Jack Welch und vielen anderen Frankfurt/M: MVG Verlag, 2005 50 Lebenshilfe Klassiker Frankfurt/M: MVG Verlag, 2004 50 Klassiker der Psychologie Die wichtigsten Werke von Alfred Adler, Sigmund Freud, Daniel Goleman, Karen Horney, William James, C.G. Jung, Jean Piaget, Viktor Frankl, Howard G d er, Alfred Kinsey, Abraham Maslow, Iwan Pawlow, Stanley Milgram, Martin Seligman und vielen anderen Frankfurt/M: MVG Verlag, 2004 50 Klassiker der Spiritualität Die wichtigsten Werke von Augustinus, Khalil Gibran, Mahatma Ghandi, Dag Hammarskjölkd, Hermann Hesse, C. G. Jung, Eckhart Tolle, J. Krishnamur- ti, Thich Nhat Hanh, Mutter Teresa, Dan Millman und vielen anderen Frankfurt/M: MVG Verlag, 2006 Buxton, Richard The Complete World of Greek Mythology London: Thames & Hudson, 2007 C Cain, Chelsea & Moon Unit Zappa Wild Child New York: Seal Press (Feminist Publishing), 1999 Calderone & Ramey Talking With Your Child About Sex New York: Random House, 1982 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 538 Campbell, Herbert James The Pleasure Areas London: Eyre Methuen Ltd., 1973 Der Irrtum mit der Seele München: Scherz Verlag, 1973 Les principes du plaisir Paris: Stock, 1974 Campbell, Jacqueline C. Assessing Dangerousness Violence by Sexual Offenders, Batterers and Child Abusers New York: Sage Publications, 2004 Campbell, Joseph The Hero With A Thousand Faces Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973 (Bollingen Series XVII) London: Orion Books, 1999 Der Heros in Tausend Gestalten München: Insel Verlag, 2009 Occidental Mythology Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973 (Bollingen Series XVII) New York: Penguin Arkana, 1991 The Masks of God Oriental Mythology New York: Penguin Arkana, 1992 Originally published 1962 Mythologie des Ostens Die Masken Gottes Bd. 2 Basel: Sphinx Verlag, 1996 The Power of Myth With Bill Moyers ed. by Sue Flowers New York: Anchor Books, 1988 Die Kraft der Mythen Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 2007 Cantelon, Philip L. (Ed.) The American Atom A Documentary History of Nuclear Policies from the Discovery of Fission to the Present With Richard G. Hewlett (Ed.) and Robert C. Williams (Ed.) Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992 Bibliography | 539 Capacchione, Lucia The Power of Your Other Hand North Hollywood, CA: Newcastle Publishing, 1988 Capra, Bernt Amadeus Mindwalk A Film for Passionate Thinkers Based Upon Fritjof Capra’s The Turning Point New York: Triton Pictures, 1990 Capra, Fritjof The Turning Point Science, Society And The Rising Culture New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987 Original Author Copyright, 1982 Wendezeit Bausteine für ein neues Weltbild München: Droemer Knaur, 2004 Le temps du changement Science, société et nouvelle culture Paris: Rocher, 1994 The Tao of Physics An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism New York: Shambhala Publications, 2000 (New Edition) Originally published in 1975 Das Tao der Physik Die Konvergenz von westlicher Wissenschaft und östlicher Philosophie Neue und erweiterte Auflage München: O.W. Barth bei Scherz, 2000 Ursprünglich erschienen 1975 bei Droemersche Verlagsanstalt in Hamburg Le tao de la physique Paris: Sand & Tchou, 1994 The Web of Life A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems New York: Doubleday, 1997 Author Copyright 1996 Lebensnetz Ein neues Verständnis der lebendigen Welt München: Scherz Verlag, 1999 The Hidden Connections Integrating The Biological, Cognitive And Social Dimensions Of Life Into A Science Of Sustainability New York: Doubleday, 2002 Verborgene Zusammenhänge München: Scherz, 2002 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 540 Steering Business Toward Sustainability New York: United Nations University Press, 1995 Uncommon Wisdom Conversations with Remarkable People New York: Bantam, 1989 The Science of Leonardo Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance New York: Anchor Books, 2008 New York: Bantam Doubleday, 2007 (First Publishing) Complete List of Publications http://www.fritjofcapra.net/publishers.html Cassou, Michelle & Cubley, Steward Life, Paint and Passion Reclaiming the Magic of Spontaneous Expression New York: P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1996 Castaneda, Carlos The Teachings of Don Juan A Yaqui Way of Knowledge Washington: Square Press, 1985 Journey to Ixtlan Washington: Square Press: 1991 Tales of Power Washington: Square Press, 1991 The Second Ring of Power Washington: Square Press, 1991 Castel, Robert L’ordre psychiatrique, l’âge d’or de l’aliénisme Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1977 Cayce, Edgar Modern Prophet Four Complete Books ’Edgar Cayce On Prophecy’ ’Edgar Cayce On Religion and Psychic Experience’ ’Edgar Cayce On Mysteries of the Mind’ ’Edgar Cayce On Reincarnation’ By Mary Ellen Carter Ed. by Hugh Lynn Cayce New York: Random House, 1968 Chaplin, Charles My Autobiography New York: Plume, 1992 Originally published in 1966 Bibliography | 541 Chevalier, Jean & Gheerbrant, Alain A Dictionary of Symbols Translated from the French by John Buchanan–Brown New York: Penguin, 1996 Cho, Susanne Kindheit und Sexualität im Wandel der Kulturgeschichte Eine Studie zur Bedeutung der kindlichen Sexualität unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des 17. und 20. Jahrhunderts Zürich, 1983 (Doctoral thesis) Chopra, Deepak Creating Affluence The A–to–Z Steps to a Richer Life New York: Amber–Allen Publishing (2003) Life After Death The Book of Answers London: Rider, 2006 Leben nach dem Tod Das letzte Geheimnis unserer Existenz Berlin: Allegria Verlag, 2008 Synchrodestiny Discover the Power of Meaningful Coincidence to Manifest Abundance Audio Book / CD Niles, IL: Nightingale–Conant, 2006 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 542 The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams Audio Book / CD New York: Amber–Allen Publishing (2002) Die Sieben Geistigen Gesetze des Erfolgs Berlin: Ullstein Verlag, 2004 The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence New York: Random House Audio, 2003 Cicero, Marcus Tullius Selected Works New York: Penguin, 1960 (Penguin Classics) Clarke, Ronald Einstein: The Life and Times New York: Avon Books, 1970 Clarke–Steward, S., Friedman, S. & Koch, J. Child Development, A Topical Approach London: John Wiley, 1986 Cleary, Thomas The Taoist I Ching Translated by Thomas Cleary Boston & London: Shambhala, 1986 Constantine, Larry L. Children & Sex New Findings, New Perspectives Larry L. Constantine & Floyd M. Martinson (Eds.) Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1981 Treasures of the Island Children in Alternative Lifestyles Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1976 Where are the Kids? in: Libby & Whitehurst (ed.) Marriage and Alternatives Glenview: Scott Foresman, 1977 Open Family A Lifestyle for Kids and other People 26 FAMILY COORDINATOR 113–130 (1977) Cook, M. & Howells, K. (Eds.) Adult Sexual Interest in Children Academic Press, London, 1980 Bibliography | 543 Coudenhove–Kalergi, Richard N. Paneuropa Wien–Leipzig: Paneuropa Verlag, 1926 Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Powerful Lessons in Personal Change New York: Free Press, 2004 15th Anniversary Edition First Published in 1989 Die 7 Wege zur Effektivität Prinzipien für persönlichen und beruflichen Erfolg Offenbach: Gabal Verlag, 2009 The 8th Habit From Effectiveness to Greatness London: Simon & Schuster, 2004 Der 8. Weg Von der Effektivität zur wahren Grösse 6. Auflage Offenbach: Gabal Verlag, 2006 Covitz, Joel Emotional Child Abuse The Family Curse Boston: Sigo Press, 1986 Cox, Geraldine The Home is Where the Heart is Sydney: Macmillan, 2000 Craze, Richard Feng Shui Feng Shui Book & Card Pack London: Thorsons, 1997 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 544 Cross, Sir Rupert Cross on Evidence 5th ed. London: Butterworths, 1979 Introduction to Criminal Law 10th Edition London: Butterworths, 1984 Currier, Richard L. Juvenile Sexuality in Global Perspective in : Children & Sex, New Findings, New Perspectives Larry L. Constantine & Floyd M. Martinson (Eds.) Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1981 D Daco, Pierre Les triomphes de la psychanalyse de Pierre Daco Bruxelles: Éditions Gérard & Co., 1965 (Marabout) Dalai Lama Ethics for the New Millennium New York: Penguin Putnam, 1999 David–Neel, Alexandra Magic and Mystery in Tibet New York: Dover Publications, 1971 The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects New York: Secrets of Light Publishers, 1981 Initiations and Initiates in Tibet New York: Dover Publications, 1993 Immortality and Reincarnation Wisdom from the Forbidden Journey New York: Inner Tradition, 1997 Davidson, Gustav A Dictionary of Angels Including Fallen Angels New York: Free Press, 1967 Davis, A. J. Sexual Assaults in the Philadelphia Prison System and Sheriff's Van Trans–Action 6, 2, 8–16 (1968) Dean & Bruyn–Kops The Crime and the Consequences of Rape New York: Thomas, 1982 Bibliography | 545 De Bono, Edward The Use of Lateral Thinking New York: Penguin, 1967 The Mechanism of Mind New York: Penguin, 1969 Sur/Petition London: HarperCollins, 1993 Tactics London: HarperCollins, 1993 First published in 1985 Taktiken und Strategien erfolgreicher Menschen Frankfurt/M: MVG Verlag, 1995 Serious Creativity Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create New Ideas London: HarperCollins, 1996 Delacour, Jean–Baptiste Glimpses of the Beyond New York: Bantam Dell, 1975 Deleuze, Gilles, Guattari, Felix L’Anti–Oedipe Capitalisme et Schizophrénie Nouvelle Édition Augmentée Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1973 DeMause, Lloyd The History of Childhood New York, 1974 Foundations of Psychohistory New York: Creative Roots, 1982 DeMeo, James Heretic’s Notebook Emotions, Protocells, Ether–Drift and Cosmic Life Energy with New Research Supporting Wilhelm Reich Pulse of the Planet, #5 (2002) Ashland, Oregon: Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratories, Inc., 2002 Nach Reich, Neue Forschungen zur Orgonomie Sexualökonomie / Die Entdeckung der Orgonenergie Herausgegeben zusammen mit Professor Bernd Senf, Berlin Frankfurt/M: Zweitausendeins Verlag, 1997 Saharasia The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex–Repression, Warfare and Social Vio- lence in the Deserts of the Old World Ashland, Oregon: Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratories, Inc., 1998 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 546 Deshimaru, Taisen Zen et vie quotidienne Paris: Albin Michel, 1985 Diamond, Stephen A., May, Rollo Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic The Psychological Genesis of Violence, Evil and Creativity New York: State University of New York Press, 1999 DiCarlo, Russell E. (Ed.) Towards A New World View Conversations at the Leading Edge Erie, PA: Epic Publishing, 1996 Dicta et Françoise Tarot de Marseille Paris: Mercure de France, 1980 Dolto, Françoise La Cause des Enfants Paris: Laffont, 1985 Mein Leben auf der Seite der Kinder Ein Plädoyer für eine kindgerechte Welt Hamburg: Lübbe Verlagsgruppe, 1993 Psychanalyse et Pédiatrie Paris: Seuil, 1971 Psychoanalyse und Kinderheilkunde Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1997 Séminaire de Psychanalyse d’Enfants, 1 Paris: Seuil, 1982 Séminaire de Psychanalyse d’Enfants, 2 Paris: Seuil, 1985 Séminaire de Psychanalyse d’Enfants, 3 Paris: Seuil, 1988 Praxis der Kinderanalyse. Ein Seminar. Hamburg: Klett–Cotta, 1985 Alles ist Sprache Kindern mit Worten helfen Berlin: Quadriga, 1996 Über das Begehren Die Anfänge der menschlichen Kommunikation 2. Auflage Hamburg: Klett–Cotta, 1996 Kinder stark machen Bibliography | 547 Die ersten Lebensjahre Berlin: Beltz Verlag, 2000 L’évangile au risque de la psychanalyse Paris: Seuil, 1980 Dover, K.J. Greek Homosexuality New York: Fine Communications, 1997 Dreher & Tröndle Strafgesetzbuch und Nebengesetze 42. Aufl. München: Beck, 1985 Dürckheim, Karlfried Graf Hara: The Vital Center of Man Rochester: Inner Traditions, 2004 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 548 Hara Die Erdmitte des Menschen Neuausgabe München: O.W. Barth bei Scherz, 2005 Zen and Us New York: Penguin Arkana 1991 The Call for the Master New York: Penguin Books, 1993 Absolute Living The Otherworldly in the World and the Path to Maturity New York: Penguin Arkana, 1992 The Way of Transformation Daily Life as a Spiritual Exercise London: Allen & Unwin, 1988 Der Alltag als Übung Vom Weg der Verwandlung Bern: Huber, 2008 The Japanese Cult of Tranquility London: Rider, 1960 Kultur der Stille Frankfurt/M: Weltz Verlag, 1997 E Eden, Donna & Feinstein, David Energy Medicine New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1998 The Energy Medicine Kit Simple Effective Techniques to Help You Boost Your Vitality Boulder, Co.: Sounds True Editions, 2004 The Promise of Energy Psychology With David Feinstein and Gary Craig Revolutionary Tools for Dramatic Personal Change New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2005 Edmunds, Francis An Introduction to Anthroposophy Rudolf Steiner’s Worldview London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 2005 Edwardes, A. The Jewel of the Lotus New York, 1959 Bibliography | 549 Einstein, Albert The World As I See It New York: Citadel Press, 1993 Mein Weltbild Berlin: Ullstein, 2005 Out of My Later Years New York: Outlet, 1993 Ideas and Opinions New York: Bonanza Books, 1988 Einstein sagt Zitate, Einfälle, Gedanken München: Piper, 2007 Albert Einstein Notebook London: Dover Publications, 1989 Eisler, Riane The Chalice and the Blade Our history, Our future San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1995 Kelch und Schwert, Unsere Geschichte, unsere Zukunft Weibliches und männliches Prinzip in der Geschichte Freiburg: Arbor Verlag, 2005 Sacred Pleasure: Sex, Myth and the Politics of the Body New Paths to Power and Love San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1996 The Partnership Way New Tools for Living and Learning With David Loye Brandon, VT: Holistic Education Press, 1998 The Real Wealth of Nations Creating a Caring Economics San Francisco: Berrett–Koehler Publishers, 2008 Eliade, Mircea Shamanism Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy New York: Pantheon Books, 1964 Ellis, Havelock Sexual Inversion Republished New York: University Press of the Pacific, 2001 Originally published in 1897 Analysis of the Sexual Impulse Love and Pain | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 550 The Sexual Impulse in Women Republished New York: University Press of the Pacific, 2001 Originally published in 1903 The Dance of Life New York: Greenwood Press Reprint Edition, 1973 Originally published in 1923 Elwin, V. The Muria and their Ghotul Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1947 Emerson, Ralph Waldo The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987 Emoto, Masaru The Hidden Messages in Water New York: Atria Books, 2004 Die Botschaft des Wassers Burgrain: Koha Verlag, 2008 The Secret Life of Water New York: Atria Books, 2005 Die Heilkraft des Wassers Burgrain: Koha Verlag, 2004 Encyclopédies d’Aujourd’hui Encyclopédie de la Franc–Maçonnerie Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 2000 (La Pochothèque) Erickson, Milton H. My Voice Will Go With You The Teaching Tales of Milton H. Erickson by Sidney Rosen (Ed.) New York: Norton & Co., 1991 Complete Works 1.0, CD–ROM New York: Milton H. Erickson Foundation, 2001 Erikson, Erik H. Childhood and Society New York: Norton, 1993 First published in 1950 Erman/Ranke Ägypten und Ägyptisches Leben im Altertum Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1981 Bibliography | 551 Evans–Wentz, Walter Yeeling The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries London: Frowde, 1911 Republished by Dover Publications (Minneola, New York), 2002 F Farson, Richard Birthrights A Bill of Rights for Children Macmillan, New York, 1974 Feinberg, Joel Harmless Wrongdoing The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, Vol. 4 New York: Oxford University Press, 1990 Fensterhalm, Herbert Don’t Say Yes When You Want to Say No With Jean Bear New York: Dell, 1980 Fericla, Josep M. Al trasluz de la Ayahuasca Antropología cognitiva, oniromancia y consciencias alternativas Barcelona: La Liebre de Marzo, 2002 Finkelhor, David Sexually Victimized Children New York: Free Press, 1981 Finkelstein, Haim N. (Ed.) The Collected Writings of Salvador Dali Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998 Flack, Audrey Art & Soul Notes on Creating New York: E P Dutton, Reissue Edition, 1991 Forte, Robert (Ed.) Entheogens and the Future of Religion Council on Spiritual Practices, 2nd ed., 2000 Fortune, Mary M. Sexual Violence New York: Pilgrim Press, 1994 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 552 Foster/Freed A Bill of Rights for Children 6 FAMILY LAW QUARTERLY 343 (1972) Foucault, Michel The History of Sexuality, Vol. I : The Will to Knowledge London: Penguin, 1998 First published in 1976 The History of Sexuality, Vol. II : The Use of Pleasure London: Penguin, 1998 First published in 1984 The History of Sexuality, Vol. III : The Care of Self London: Penguin, 1998 First published in 1984 Fourcade, Jean–Michel Analyse transactionnelle et bioénergie Paris: Delarge, 1981 Foxwood, Orion The Faery Teachings Arcata, CA: R.J. Steward Books, 2007 Franz Anton Mesmer Franz Anton Mesmer und die Geschichte des Mesmerismus Beiträge zum internationalen wissenschaftlichen Symposium anlässlich des 250. Geburtstages von Mesmer Stuttgart, 1985 Freud, Anna War and Children London: 1943 Freud, Sigmund Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality in: The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud London: Hogarth Press, 1953–54 Vol. 7, pp. 130 ff (first published in 1905) Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie Frankfurt/M: Fischer, 1991 The Interpretation of Dreams New York: Avon, Reissue Edition, 1980 and in: The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (24 Volumes) ed. by James Strachey New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1976 Die Traumdeutung Frankfurt/M: Fischer, 2005 Bibliography | 553 Totem and Taboo New York: Routledge, 1999 Originally published in 1913 Totem und Tabu Einige Übereinstimmungen im Seelenleben der Wilden und der Neurotiker Frankfurt/M: Fischer Verlag, 1972 Freund, Kurt Assessment of Pedophilia in: Cook, M. and Howells, K. (eds.) Adult Sexual Interest in Children Academic Press, London, 1980 Frisch, Max Biedermann und die Brandstifter München: Suhrkamp, 1996 Erstmals 1955 als Hörspiel veröffentlicht Fromm, Erich The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness New York: Owl Book, 1992 Originally published in 1973 Anatomie der menschlichen Destruktivität Berlin: Rowohlt, 1977 Escape from Freedom New York: Owl Books, 1994 Originally published in 1941 Die Furcht vor der Freiheit München: DTV Verlag, 1993 To Have or To Be New York: Continuum International Publishing, 1996 Originally published in 1976 Haben oder Sein Die seelischen Grundlagen einer neuen Gesellschaft München: DTV Verlag, 2005 The Art of Loving New York: HarperPerennial, 2000 Originally published in 1956 Die Kunst des Liebens Berlin: Ullstein, 2005 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 554 G Gates, Bill The Road Ahead New York, Penguin, 1996 (Revised Edition) Bibliography | 555 Gawain, Shakti Creative Visualization Use the Power of Your Imagination to Create What You Want Novato, CA: New World Library, 1995 Creative Visualization Meditations (Reader) Novato, CA: New World Library, 1997 Geldard, Richard Remembering Heraclitus New York: Lindisfarne Books, 2000 Gerber, Richard A Practical Guide to Vibrational Medicine Energy Healing and Spiritual Transformation New York: Harper & Collins, 2001 Geller, Uri The Mindpower Kit Includes Book, Audiotape, Quartz Crystal And Meditation Circle New York: Penguin, 1996 Gesell, Izzy Playing Along 37 Group Learning Activities Borrowed from Improvisational Theater Whole Person Associates, 1997 Ghiselin, Brewster (Ed.) The Creative Process Reflections on Invention in the Arts and Sciences Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985 First published in 1952 Gibson, Ian The Shameful Life of Salvador Dali New York: Norton, 1998 Gil, David G. Societal Violence and Violence in Families in: David G. Gil, Child Abuse and Violence New York: Ams Press, 1928 Gimbutas, Marija The Language of the Goddess London: Thames & Hudson, 2001 Glucksmann, André, Wolton, Thierry Silence On Tue Paris: Grasset, 1986 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 556 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von The Theory of Colors New York: MIT Press, 1970 First published in 1810 Goethes Farbenlehre Leipzig: Seemann–Henschel Verlag, 1998 Goldenstein, Joyce Einstein: Physicist and Genius (Great Minds of Science) New York: Enslow Publishers, 1995 Goldman, Jonathan & Goldman, Andi Tantra of Sound Frequencies of Healing Charlottesville: Hampton Roads, 2005 Tantra des Klanges Mehr Liebe und Intimität in der Partnerschaft Mit CD Hanau: Amra Verlag, 2009 Healing Sounds The Power of Harmonies Rochester: Healing Arts Press, 2002 Klangheilung Die Schöpferkraft des Obertongesangs Hanau: Amra Verlag, 2008 Healing Sounds Principles of Sound Healing DVD, 90 min. Sacred Mysteries, 2004 Goldstein, Jeffrey H. Aggression and Crimes of Violence New York, 1975 Bibliography | 557 Goleman, Daniel Emotional Intelligence New York, Bantam Books, 1995 EQ. Emotionale Intelligenz München: DTV Verlag, 1997 Goodwin, Matthew O. The Complete Numerology Guide New York: Red Wheel/Weiser, 1988 Gordon, Rosemary Pedophilia: Normal and Abnormal in: Kraemer, The Forbidden Love London, 1976 Gordon Wasson, R. The Road to Eleusis Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries With Albert Hofmann, Huston Smith, Carl Ruck and Peter Webster Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2008 Goswami, Amit The Self–Aware Universe How Consciousness Creates the Material World New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1995 Das Bewusste Universum Wie Bewusstsein die materielle Welt erschafft Stuttgart: Lüchow Verlag, 2007 Gottlieb, Adam Peyote and Other Psychoactive Cacti Ronin Publishing, 2nd edition, 1997 Grant Grant’s Method of Anatomy 10th ed., by John V. Basmajian Baltimore, London: Williams & Wilkins, 1980 Greene, Liz Astrology of Fate York Beach, ME: Red Wheel/Weiser, 1986 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 558 Saturn A New Look at an Old Devil York Beach, ME: Red Wheel/Weiser, 1976 The Astrological Neptune and the Quest for Redemption Boston: Red Wheel Weiser, 1996 The Mythic Journey With Juliet Sharman–Burke The Meaning of Myth as a Guide for Life New York: Simon & Schuster (Fireside), 2000 Die Mythische Reise Die Bedeutung der Mythen als ein Führer durch das Leben München: Atmosphären Verlag, 2004 The Mythic Tarot With Juliet Sharman–Burke New York: Simon & Schuster (Fireside), 2001 Originally published in 1986 Le Tarot Mythique Une nouvelle approche du Tarot Paris: Solar, 1988 The Luminaries The Psychology of the Sun and Moon in the Horoscope With Howard Sasportas York Beach, ME: Red Wheel/Weiser, 1992 Sonne und Mond Die Bedeutung der grossen Lichter in der Mythologie und im Horoskop Saarbrücken: Neue Erde/Lentz, 2000 Greer, John Michael Earth Divination, Earth Magic A Practical Guide to Geomancy New York: Llewellyn Publications, 1999 Grinspoon, Lester Marihuana The Forbidden Medicine With James B. Bakalar New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997 First published in 1971 Groeben/Boeckh/Thiesing/Ehlermann Kommentar zum EWG–Vertrag Band 2, Dritte Auflage Baden–Baden: Nomos, 1983 Grof, Stanislav Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science New York: State University of New York Press, 1984 Bibliography | 559 Beyond the Brain Birth, Death and Transcendence in Psychotherapy New York: State University of New York, 1985 LSD: Doorway to the Numinous The Groundbreaking Psychedelic Research into Realms of the Human Uncon- scious Rochester: Park Street Press, 2009 Psychologie transpersonnelle Paris: Rocher, 1984 Realms of the Human Unconscious Observations from LSD Research New York: E.P. Dutton, 1976 The Cosmic Game Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness New York: State University of New York Press, 1998 The Holotropic Mind The Three Levels of Human Consciousness With Hal Zina Bennett New York: HarperCollins, 1993 When the Impossible Happens Adventures in Non–Ordinary Reality Louisville, CO: Sounds True, 2005 Wir wissen mehr als unser Gehirn Die Grenzen des Bewusstseins überschreiten Freiburg: Herder, 2007 Groth, A. Nicholas Men Who Rape The Psychology of the Offender New York: Perseus Publishing, 1980 Grout, Pam Art & Soul New York: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2000 Gunn, John Violence New York/Washington, 1973 Gurdjieff, George Ivanovich The Herald of Coming Good London: Samuel Weiser, 1933 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 560 H Hall, Manly P. The Pineal Gland The Eye of God Article extracted from the book: Man the Grand Symbol of the Mysteries Kessinger Publishing Reprint The Secret Teachings of All Ages Reader’s Edition New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2003 Originally published in 1928 Hameroff, Newberg, Woolf, Bierman et al. Consciousness 20 Scientists Interviewed Director: Gregory Alsbury 5 DVD Box Set, 540 min. New York: Alsbury Films, 2003 Hargous, Sabine Les appeleurs d’âmes L’univers chamanique des Indiens des Andes Paris: Albin Michel, 1985 Harner, Michael Ways of the Shaman New York: Bantam, 1982 Originally published in 1980 Der Weg des Schamanen Das praktische Grundlagenbuch zum Schamanismus Genf: Ariston, 2007 Chamane Les secrets d’un sorcier indien d’Amérique du Nord Paris: Albin Michel, 1982 Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi Racing the Enemy Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006 Henkin/Pugh/Schachter/Smit International Law Cases and Materials St. Paul (West): American Casebook Series, 1980 Herman, Dean M. A Statutory Proposal to Prohibit the Infliction of Violence upon Children 19 FAMILY LAW QUARTERLY, 1986, 1–52 Bibliography | 561 Hermes Trismegistos Corpus Hermeticum New York: Edaf, 2001 Héroard, J. Journal de Jean Héroard sur l’Enfance et la Jeunesse de Louis XIII Paris: Soulié/Barthélemy, 1868 Herrigel, Eugen Zen in the Art of Archery New York: Vintage Books, 1999 Originally published in 1971 Hicks, Esther and Jerry The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent Living the Art of Allowing Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2006 Hobbes, Thomas Leviathan (1651) New York: Longman Library, 2006 Hofmann, Albert LSD, My Problem Child Reflections on Sacred Drugs, Mysticism and Science Santa Cruz, CA: Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, 2009 Originally published in 1980 LSD, Mein Sorgenkind Die Entdeckung der ‘Wunderdroge’ München: DTV Verlag, 1999 Holmes, Ernest The Science of Mind A Philosophy, A Faith, A Way of Life New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1998 First Published in 1938 Holstiege, Hildegard Montessori Pädagogik und soziale Humanität Freiburg: Herder, 1994 Hood, J. X. Scientific Curiosities of Love, Sex and Marriage A Survey of Sex Relations, Beliefs and Customs of Mankind in Different Countries and Ages New York, 1951 Houston, Jean The Possible Human A Course in Enhancing Your Physical, Mental, and Creative Abilities New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1982 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 562 Howells, Kevin Adult Sexual Interest in Children Considerations Relevant to Theories of Aetiology in: Cook, M. and Howells, K. (eds.): Adult Sexual Interest in Children Academic Press, London, 1980 Huang, Alfred The Complete I Ching The Definite Translation from Taoist Master Alfred Huang Rochester, NY: Inner Traditions, 1998 Hunt, Valerie Infinite Mind Science of the Human Vibrations of Consciousness Malibu, CA: Malibu Publishing, 2000 Huxley, Aldous The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell London: HarperCollins (Flamingo), 1994 (originally published in 1954) The Perennial Philosophy San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1970 I Innocenti Declaration Declaration on the Protection, Promotion and Support of Breastfeeding http://www.innocenti15.net/inno.htm J Jackson, Nigel The Rune Mysteries With Silver RavenWolf St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn Publications, 2000 Jackson, Stevi Childhood and Sexuality New York: Blackwell, 1982 Jaffe, Hans L.C. Picasso New York: Abradale Press, 1996 James, William Writings 1902–1910 The Varieties of Religious Experience / Pragmatism / A Pluralistic Universe / The Meaning of Truth / Some Problems of Philosophy / Essays Bibliography | 563 New York: Library of America, 1988 Jampolsky, Gerald Aimer c’est se libérer de la peur Genève: Éditions Soleil, 1986 Janov, Arthur Primal Man The New Consciousness New York: Crowell, 1975 Das Neue Bewusstsein Frankfurt/M: Fischer Verlag, 1988 Urausgabe 1975 Johnson, Paul A History of the Jews New York: Harper & Row, 1987 Johnston & Deisher Contemporary Communal Child Rearing: A First Analysis 52 PEDIATRICS 319 (1973) Jones, W.H.S., Litt, D. Pliny Natural History Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980 Jung, Carl Gustav Archetypen München: DTV Verlag, 2001 Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious in: The Basic Writings of C.G. Jung New York: The Modern Library, 1959, 358–407 Collected Works New York, 1959 Dialectique du moi et de l’inconscient Paris, Gallimard, 1991 On the Nature of the Psyche in: The Basic Writings of C.G. Jung New York: The Modern Library, 1959, 47–133 Psychological Types Collected Writings, Vol. 6 Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971 Psychologie und Religion München: DTV Verlag, 2001 Psychology and Religion | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 564 in: The Basic Writings of C.G. Jung New York: The Modern Library, 1959, 582–655 Religious and Psychological Problems of Alchemy in: The Basic Writings of C.G. Jung New York: The Modern Library, 1959, 537–581 Symbol und Libido Freiburg: Walter Verlag, 1987 Synchronizität, Akausalität und Okkultismus Frankfurt/M: DTV, 2001 The Basic Writings of C.G. Jung New York: The Modern Library, 1959 The Development of Personality Collected Writings, Vol. 17 Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954 The Meaning and Significance of Dreams Boston: Sigo Press, 1991 The Myth of the Divine Child in: Essays on A Science of Mythology Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press Bollingen Series XXII, 1969. (With Karl Kerenyi) Traum und Traumdeutung München: DTV Verlag, 2001 Two Essays on Analytical Psychology Collected Writings, Vol. 7 Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972 First published by Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1953 Zur Psychologie westlicher und östlicher Religion Fünfte Auflage Olten: Walter Verlag, 1988 K Kahn, Charles (Ed.) The Art and Thought of Heraclitus Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008 Kaiser, Edmond La Marche aux Enfants Lausanne: P.–M. Favre, 1979 Kalweit, Holger Shamans, Healers and Medicine Men Boston and London: Shambhala, 1992 Originally published with Kösel Verlag, Munich, in 1987 Bibliography | 565 Kant, Immanuel Kant’s Werke Band VIII, Abhandlungen nach 1781 (Neudruck) Berlin und Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1923 Kapleau, Roshi Philip Three Pillars of Zen Boston: Beacon Press, 1967 Karagulla, Shafica The Chakras Correlations between Medical Science and Clairvoyant Observation With Dora van Gelder Kunz Wheaton: Quest Books, 1989 Die Chakras und die feinstofflichen Körper des Menschen Mit Dora van Gelder–Kunz Grafing: Aquamarin Verlag, 1994 Karremann, Manfred Es geschieht am helllichten Tag Die Verborgene Welt der Pädophilen und wie wir unsere Kinder vor Missbrauch Schützen Köln: Dumont, 2007 Kerner Justinus F.A. Mesmer aus Schwaben Frankfurt/M, 1856 Kiang, Kok Kok The I Ching An Illustrated Guide to the Chinese Art of Divination Singapore: Asiapac, 1993 Kiesewetter, Carl Franz Anton Mesmer’s Leben und Lehre Leipzig, 1893 Kingston, Karen Creating Sacred Space With Feng Shui New York: Broadway Books, 1997 Kinski, Klaus Kinski Uncut: The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski New York: Penguin, 1997 Klein, Melanie Love, Guilt and Reparation, and Other Works 1921–1945 New York: Free Press, 1984 (Reissue Edition) Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946–1963 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 566 New York: Free Press, 2002 (Reissue Edition) Klimo, Jon Channeling Investigations on Receiving Information from Paranormal Sources New York: North Atlantic Books, 1988 Koestler, Arthur The Act of Creation New York: Penguin Arkana, 1989. Originally published in 1964 Kraemer The Forbidden Love London, 1976 Krafft–Ebing, Richard von Psychopathia sexualis New York: Bell Publishing, 1965 Originally published in 1886 Krause, Donald G. The Art of War for Executives London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 1995 Krishnamurti, J. Freedom From The Known San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1969 The First and Last Freedom San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1975 Education and the Significance of Life London: Victor Gollancz, 1978 Commentaries on Living First Series London: Victor Gollancz, 1985 Commentaries on Living Second Series London: Victor Gollancz, 1986 Krishnamurti's Journal London: Victor Gollancz, 1987 Krishnamurti's Notebook London: Victor Gollancz, 1986 Beyond Violence London: Victor Gollancz, 1985 Beginnings of Learning Bibliography | 567 New York: Penguin, 1986 The Penguin Krishnamurti Reader New York: Penguin, 1987 On God San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1992 On Fear San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1995 The Essential Krishnamurti San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1996 The Ending of Time With Dr. David Bohm San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985 Kwok, Man–Ho The Feng Shui Kit London: Piatkus, 1995 L Labate, Beatriz Caluby Ayahuasca Religions A Comprehensive Bibliography and Critical Essays Santa Cruz, CA: Maps, 2009 Laing, Ronald David Divided Self New York: Viking Press, 1991 R.D. Laing and the Paths of Anti–Psychiatry ed., by Z. Kotowicz London: Routledge, 1997 The Politics of Experience New York: Pantheon, 1983 Sagesse, déraison et folie Paris: Seuil, 1986 Lakhovsky, Georges La Science et le Bonheur Longévité et Immortalité par les Vibrations Paris: Gauthier–Villars, 1930 Le Secret de la Vie Paris: Gauthier–Villars, 1929 Secret of Life New York: Kessinger Publishing, 2003 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 568 L'étiologie du Cancer Paris: Gauthier–Villars, 1929 L'Universion Paris: Gauthier–Villars, 1927 Lanouette, William Genius in the Shadows A Biography of Leo Szilard, the Man behind the Bomb With Bela Silard Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994 Laszlo, Ervin Holos. Die Welt der neuen Wissenschaften Petersberg: Via Nova Verlag, 2002 Science and the Akashic Field An Integral Theory of Everything Rochester: Inner Traditions, 2004 Macroshift Die Herausforderung Frankfurt/M: Insel Verlag, 2003 Bibliography | 569 Quantum Shift to the Global Brain How the New Scientific Reality Can Change Us and Our World Rochester: Inner Traditions, 2008 Science and the Reenchantment of the Cosmos The Rise of the Integral Vision of Reality Rochester: Inner Traditions, 2006 The Akashic Experience Science and the Cosmic Memory Field Rochester: Inner Traditions, 2009 The Chaos Point The World at the Crossroads Newburyport, MA: Hampton Roads Publishing, 2006 Laud, Anne & Gilstrop, May Violence in the Family A Selected Bibliography on Child Abuse, Sexual Abuse of Children & Domestic Viol n e June 1985 University of Georgia Libraries Bibliographical Series, No. 32 Lauterpacht, E., Q.C. International Law Reports Cambridge: Grotius Publishers Lauterpacht, Hersch International Law Ed. By E. Lauterpacht, Q.C. Vol. 3 London: Cambridge University Press, 1977 LaViolette, Paul A. Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion: Tesla, UFOs, and Classified Aerospace Tech- nology New York: Bear & Company, 2008 The U.S. Antigravity Squadron In: Thomas Valone, Ed., Electrogravitics Systems, Reports on a New Propulsion Methodology Washington, D.C.: Integrity Research Institute, 1993, 78–96 Leadbeater, Charles Webster Astral Plane Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena Kessinger Publishing Reprint Edition, 1997 Dreams What they Are and How they are Caused London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1903 Kessinger Publishing Reprint Edition, 1998 The Inner Life Chicago: The Rajput Press, 1911 Kessinger Publishing | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 570 Leary, Timothy Our Brain is God Berkeley, CA: Ronin Publishing, 2001 Author Copyright 1988 Über die Kriminalisierung des Natürlichen Löhrbach: Werner Pieper Verlag, 1990 Leboyer, Frederick Birth Without Violence New York, 1975 Pour une Naissance sans Violence Paris: Seuil, 1974 Geburt ohne Gewalt München: Kösel 1981 Cette Lumière d’où vient l’Enfant Paris: Seuil, 1978 Inner Beauty, Inner Light New York: Newmarket Press, 1997 Weg des Lichts München: Kösel, 1991 Loving Hands The Traditional Art of Baby Massage New York: Newmarket Press, 1977 Sanfte Hände Die Kunst der indischen Baby–Massage München: Kösel, 1979 The Art of Breathing New York: Newmarket Press, 1991 Le Crapouillot Les pédophiles Nouvelle série, n°73, Janvier 1984 Vincent Acker, Le Vilain Manège du Coral, pp. 36–42 LeCron, Leslie M. L’auto–hypnose 8e édition Genève: Ariston, 1984 Leggett, Trevor P. A First Zen Reader Rutland: C.E. Tuttle, 1980 Originally published in 1972 Bibliography | 571 Lenihan, Eddie Meeting the Other Crowd The Fairy Stories of Hidden Ireland With Carolyn Eve Green New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2004 Authors Copyright 2003 Leonard, George, Murphy, Michael The Live We Are Given A Long Term Program for Realizing the Potential of Body, Mind, Heart and Soul New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1984 Leopardi, Angelo (Hrsg.) Der Pädosexuelle Komplex Frankfurt/M: Foerster Verlag, 1988 Licht, Hans Sexual Life in Ancient Greece New York: AMS Press, 1995 Liedloff, Jean Continuum Concept In Search of Happiness Lost New York: Perseus Books, 1986 First published in 1977 Auf der Suche nach dem verlorenen Glück Gegen die Zerstörung der Glücksfähigkeit in der frühen Kindheit München: C.H. Beck Verlag, 2006 Lip, Evelyn The Design & Feng Shui of Logos, Trademarks and Signboards Singapore: Prentice Hall, 1995 Lipgens, Walter Europa–Föderationspläne der Widerstandsbewegungen 1940–1945 München, 1968 Lipton, Bruce The Biology of Belief Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles Santa Rosa, CA: Mountain of Love/Elite Books, 2005 Intelligente Zellen Wie Erfahrungen unsere Gene steuern Burgrain: Koha Verlag, 2006 Liss, Jérôme Débloquez vos émotions Lausanne: Éditions Far, 1988 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 572 Locke, John Some Thoughts Concerning Education London, 1690 Reprinted in: The Works of John Locke, 1823 Vol. IX., pp. 6–205 Gedanken über Erziehung Ditzingen: Reclam Verlag, 1986 Long, Max Freedom The Secret Science at Work The Huna Method as a Way of Life Marina del Rey: De Vorss Publications, 1995 Originally published in 1953 Geheimes Wissen hinter Wundern Die Entdeckung der HUNA–Lehre Darmstadt: Schirner Verlag, 2006 Growing Into Light A Personal Guide to Practicing the Huna Method, Marina del Rey: De Vorss Publications, 1955 Bibliography | 573 Lowen, Alexander Angst vor dem Leben Über den Ursprung seelischen Leides und den Weg zu einem reicheren Dasein München: Goldmann Wilhelm, 1989 Bioenergetics New York: Coward, McGoegham 1975 Bioenergetik Therapie der Seele durch Arbeit mit dem Körper Berlin: Rowohlt, 2008 Depression and the Body The Biological Basis of Faith and Reality New York: Penguin, 1992 Fear of Life New York: Bioenergetic Press, 2003 Honoring the Body The Autobiography of Alexander Lowen New York: Bioenergetic Press, 2004 Joy The Surrender to the Body and to Life New York: Penguin, 1995 Liebe und Orgasmus Persönlichkeitserfahrung durch sexuelle Erfüllung München: Goldmann Wilhelm, 1993 Love and Orgasm New York: Macmillan, 1965 Love, Sex and Your Heart New York: Bioenergetics Press, 2004 Narcissism: Denial of the True Self New York: Macmillan, Collier Books, 1983 Narzissmus Die Verleugnung des wahren Selbst München: Goldmann Wilhelm, 1992 Pleasure: A Creative Approach to Life New York: Bioenergetics Press, 2004 First published in 1970 The Language of the Body Physical Dynamics of Character Structure New York: Bioenergetics Press, 2006 Luna, Luis Eduardo & Amaringo, Pablo Ayahuasca Visions North Atlantic Books, 1999 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 574 Lusk, Julie T. (Editor) 30 Scripts for Relaxation Imagery & Inner Healing Whole Person Associates, 1992 Lutyens, Mary Krishnamurti: The Years of Fulfillment New York: Avon Books, 1983 Krishnamurti: Die Biographie München: Aquamarin Verlag, 1997 The Life and Death of Krishnamurti Chennai: Krishnamurti Foundation India, 1990 Lutzbetak, Louis J. Marriage and the Family in Caucasia Vienna, 1951, first reprinting, 1966 M Machiavelli, Niccolo The Prince New York: Soho Books, 2009 Written in 1513 First posthumous publishing 1531 Der Fürst Frankfurt/M: Insel Verlag, 2009 Mack, Carol K. & Mack, Dinah A Field Guide to Demons, Fairies, Fallen Angels, and Other Subversive Spirits New York: Owl Books, 1998 Maharshi, Ramana The Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi New York: Sri Ramanasramam, 2002 The Essential Teachings of Ramana Maharshi A Visual Journey New York: Inner Directions Publishing, 2002 by Matthew Greenblad Sei was du bist! München: O.W. Barth, 2001 Nan Yar? Wer bin ich? München: Kamphausen, 2002 Maisel, Eric Fearless Creating A Step–By–Step Guide to Starting and Completing Work of Art Bibliography | 575 New York: Tarcher & Putnam, 1995 Malachi, Tau Gnosis of the Cosmic Christ A Gnostic Christian Kabbalah St. Paul: Llewellyn Publications, 2005 Malinowski, Bronislaw Crime und Custom in Savage Society London: Kegan, 1926 Sex and Repression in Savage Society London: Kegan, 1927 The Sexual Life of Savages in North West Melanesia New York: Halycon House, 1929 Das Geschlechtsleben der Wilden in Nordwest–Melanesien Liebe, Ehe und Familienleben bei den Eingeborenen der Trobriand Inseln, Britisch–Neuguinea Eschborn: Klotz Verlag, 2005 Mallet, Carl–Heinz Das Einhorn bin ich Das Bild des Menschen im Märchen Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe Verlag, 1982 Untertan Kind Nachforschungen über Erziehung München: Max Hueber Verlag, 1987 Mann, Edward W. Orgone, Reich & Eros Wilhelm Reich’s Theory of Life Energy New York: Simon & Schuster (Touchstone), 1973 Mann, Sally At Twelve Portraits of Young Women New York: Aperture, 1988 Immediate Family New York: Phaidon Press, 1993 Marciniak, Barbara Bringers of the Dawn Teachings from the Pleiadians New York: Bear & Co., 1992 Boten des Neuen Morgens Lehren von den Pleiaden Freiburg: Hermann Bauer Verlag, 1995 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 576 Martinson, Floyd M. Sexual Knowledge Values and Behavior Patterns St. Peter: Minn.: Gustavus Adolphus College, 1966 Infant and Child Sexuality St. Peter: Minn.: Gustavus Adolphus College, 1973 The Quality of Adolescent Experiences St. Peter: Minn.: Gustavus Adolphus College, 1974 The Child and the Family Calgary, Alberta: The University of Calgary, 1980 The Sex Education of Young Children in: Lorna Brown (Ed.), Sex Education in the Eighties New York, London: Plenum Press, 1981, pp. 51 ff. The Sexual Life of Children New York: Bergin & Garvey, 1994 Children and Sex, Part II: Childhood Sexuality in: Bullough & Bullough, Human Sexuality (1994) Pp. 111–116 Master Lam Kam Chuen The Way of Energy Mastering the Chinese Art of Internal Strength with Chi Kung Exercise New York: Simon & Schuster (Fireside), 1991 Master Liang, Shou–Yu & Wu, Wen–Ching Tai Chi Chuan 24 & 48 Postures With Martial Applications Roslindale, Mass.: YMAA Publication Center, 1996 Masters, R.E.L. Forbidden Sexual Behavior and Morality New York, 1962 McCarey, William A. In Search of Healing Whole–Body Healing Through the Mind–Body–Spirit Connection New York: Berkley Publishing, 1996 McCormick McCormick on Evidence by Edward W. Cleary, 3d ed. Lawyers Edition (Homebook Series) St. Paul: West, 1984 McKenna, Terence The Archaic Revival Bibliography | 577 San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1992 Food of The Gods A Radical History of Plants, Drugs and Human Evolution London: Rider, 1992 Die Speisen der Götter Berlin: Synergia/Syntropia, 1996 The Invisible Landscape Mind Hallucinogens and the I Ching New York: HarperCollins, 1993 (With Dennis McKenna) True Hallucinations Being the Account of the Author’s Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil’s Paradise New York: Fine Communications, 1998 McLeod, Kembrew Freedom of Expression Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007 McNiff, Shaun Art as Medicine Boston: Shambhala, 1992 Art as Therapy Creating a Therapy of the Imagination Boston/London: Shambhala, 1992 Trust the Process An Artist’s Guide to Letting Go New York: Shambhala Publications, 1998 McTaggart, Lynne The Field The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe New York: Harper & Collins, 2002 Mead, Margaret Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies New York, 1935 Meadows, Donella H. Thinking in Systems A Primer White River, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008 Mehta, Rohit J. Krishnamurti and the Nameless Experience A Comprehensive Discussion of J. Krishnamurti’s Approach to Life | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 578 Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2002 Méric, de, Philippe Le Yoga sans postures Paris: Livre de Poche, 1967 Merle, Roger & Vitu, André Traité de Croit Criminel Droit Pénal Spécial Vol. II, par André Vitu Paris: Editions Cujas, 1982 Merleau–Ponty, Maurice Phenomenology of Perception London: Routledge, 1995 Originally published 1945 Phénoménologie de la perception Paris: Gallimard, 1945 Metzner, Ralph (Ed.) Ayahuasca, Human Consciousness and the Spirits of Nature ed. by Ralph Metzner, Ph.D New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1999 The Psychedelic Experience A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead With Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert New York: Citadel, 1995 Miller, Alice Four Your Own Good Hidden Cruelty in Child–Rearing and the Roots of Violence New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1983 Am Anfang war Erziehung München: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2008 Erstmals publiziert im Jahre 1986 Pictures of a Childhood New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986 The Drama of the Gifted Child In Search for the True Self translated by Ruth Ward New York: Basic Books, 1996 Das Drama des Begabten Kindes Und die Suche nach dem wahren Selbst München: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1983 Der gemiedene Schlüssel München: Suhrkamp, 2007 Bibliography | 579 Das verbannte Wissen Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 1988 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 580 Thou Shalt Not Be Aware Society’s Betrayal of the Child New York: Noonday, 1998 Du Sollst Nicht Merken Variationen über das Paradies–Thema Neuauflage München: Suhrkamp, 2005 The Political Consequences of Child Abuse in: The Journal of Psychohistory 26, 2 (Fall 1998) Miller, Mary & Taube, Karl An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya London: Thames & Hudson, 1993 Moll, Albert The Sexual Life of the Child New York: Macmillan, 1912 First published in German as Das Sexualleben des Kindes, 1909 Monroe, Robert Ultimate Journey New York: Broadway Books, 1994 Monsaingeon, Bruno Svjatoslav Richter Notebooks and Conversations Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002 Richter Écrits, conversations Paris: Éditions Van de Velde, 1998 Richter The Enigma / L’Insoumis / Der Unbeugsame NVC Arts 1998 (DVD) Montagu, Ashley Touching The Human Significance of the Skin New York: Harper & Row, 1978 Körperkontakt 8. Auflage Stuttgart: Klett/Cotta, 1995 Monter, E. William Witchcraft in France and Switzerland Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1976 Montessori, Maria The Absorbent Mind Bibliography | 581 Reprint Edition New York: Buccaneer Books, 1995 First published in 1973 Das Kreative Kind Der absorbierende Geist Freiburg: Herder, 2007 Moody, Raymond The Light Beyond New York: Mass Market Paperback (Bantam), 1989 Moore, Thomas Care of the Soul A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life New York: Harper & Collins, 1994 Die Seele Lieben Tiefe und Spiritualität im täglichen Leben München: Droemer Knaur, 1995 Moser, Charles Allen DSM–IV–TR and the Paraphilias: an argument for removal With Peggy J. Kleinplatz Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality 17 (3/4), 91–109 (2005) Munro, Wendy Journey into a New Millennium Transmissions from Sirius A Cosmic Account of the Millennial Transformation for Humanity and Planet Earth Cairns: Triad Publishers, 1997 Murdock, G. Social Structure New York: Macmillan, 1960 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 582 Murphy, Joseph The Power of Your Subconscious Mind West Nyack, N.Y.: Parker, 1981, N.Y.: Bantam, 1982 Originally published in 1962 Die Macht Ihres Unterbewusstseins München: Hugendubel, 2000 La puissance de votre subconscient Genève: Ramón Keller, 1967 The Miracle of Mind Dynamics New York: Prentice Hall, 1964 Miracle Power for Infinite Riches West Nyack, N.Y.: Parker, 1972 The Amazing Laws of Cosmic Mind Power West Nyack, N.Y.: Parker, 1973 Secrets of the I Ching West Nyack, N.Y.: Parker, 1970 Think Yourself Rich Use the Power of Your Subconscious Mind to Find True Wealth Revised by Ian D. McMahan, Ph.D. Paramus, NJ: Reward Books, 2001 Das Erfolgsbuch Wie sie alles im Leben erreichen können Hamburg: Heyne Verlag, 2002 Wahrheiten die ihr Leben verändern Dr. Joseph Murphys Vermächtnis München: Hugendubel, 1996 Murphy, Michael The Future of the Body Explorations into the Further Evolution of Human Nature New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1992 Der Quanten–Mensch München: Ludwig Verlag, 1996 Bibliography | 583 Myers, Tony Pearce The Soul of Creativity Insights into the Creative Process Novato, CA: New World Library, 1999 Myss, Caroline The Creation of Health The Emotional, Psychological, and Spiritual Responses that Promote Health and Healing New York: Three Rivers Press, 1998 N Naparstek, Belleruth Your Sixth Sense Unlocking the Power of Your Intuition London: HarperCollins, 1998 Staying Well With Guided Imagery New York: Warner Books, 1995 Narby, Jeremy The Cosmic Serpent DNA and the Origins of Knowledge New York: J. P. Tarcher, 1999 Die Kosmische Schlange Auf den Pfaden der Schamanen zu den Ursprüngen modernen Wissens Stuttgart: Klett–Cotta, 2007 Nau, Erika Self–Awareness Through Huna Virginia Beach: Donning, 1981 Selbstbewusst durch Huna Die magische Weisheit Hawaiis 2. Auflage Basel: Sphinx Verlag, 1989 Neill, Alexander Sutherland Neill! Neill! Orange–Peel! New York: Hart Publishing Co., 1972 Neill! Neill! Birnenstiel! Berlin: Rowohlt, 1973 Summerhill A Radical Approach to Child Rearing New York: Hart Publishing, Reprint 1984 Originally published 1960 Theorie und Praxis der Antiautoritären Erziehung Das Beispiel Summerhill | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 584 Berlin: Rowohlt Verlag, 1969 Summerhill School A New View of Childhood New York: St. Martin's Press Reprint 1995 Das Prinzip Summerhill Berlin: Rowohlt, 1971 Neuhaus, Heinrich The Art of Piano Playing London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1973 Reprinted 1997, 2001, 2002, 2006 First published in 1958 Neumann, Erich The Great Mother Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955 (Bollingen Series) Die Grosse Mutter Die weiblichen Gestaltungen des Unterbewussten Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 2003 Newton, Michael Life Between Lives Hypnotherapy for Spiritual Regression Woodbury, Minn.: Llewellyn Publications, 2006 Ni, Hua–Ching I Ching The Book of Changes and the Unchanging Truth 2nd edition Santa Barbara: Seven Star Communications, 1999 Esoteric Tao The Ching The Shrine of the Eternal Breath of Tao Santa Monica: College of Tao and Traditional Chinese Healing, 1992 The Complete Works of Lao Tzu Tao The Ching & Hua Hu Ching Translation and Elucidation by Hua–Ching Ni Santa Monica: Seven Star Communications, 1995 Nichols, Sallie Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey New York: Red Wheel/Weiser, 1986 Die Psychologie des Tarot Interlaken: Ansata Verlag, 1996 Bibliography | 585 Nin, Anaïs The Diary of Anaïs Nin (7 Volumes) New York, 1966 Volume 1 (1931–1934) New York: Harvest Books, 1969 Volume 2 (1934–1939) New York: Harvest Books, 1970 O O’Brian, Shirley Child Pornography 2nd edition New York: Kendall/Hunt, 1992 Odent, Michel Birth Reborn What Childbirth Should Be London: Souvenir Press, 1994 The Scientification of Love London: Free Association Books, 1999 Die Wurzeln der Liebe Wie unsere wichtigsten Emotionen entstehen Olten: Walter Verlag, 2001 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 586 Primal Health Understanding the Critical Period Between Conception and the First Birthday London: Clairview Books, 2002 First Published in 1986 with Century Hutchinson in London La Santé Primale Paris: Payot, 1986 Die sanfte Geburt Die Leboyer–Methode in der Praxis Bergisch–Gladbach: Lübbe Verlag, 2001 The Functions of the Orgasms The Highway to Transcendence London: Pinter & Martin, 2009 Ollendorf–Reich, Ilse Wilhelm Reich, A Personal Biography New York, St. Martins Press, 1969 Wilhelm Reich Vorwort von A.S. Neill München, Kindler, 1975 Ong, Hean–Tatt Amazing Scientific Basis of Feng–Shui Kuala Lumpur: Eastern Dragon Press, 1997 Oppenheim, Lassa International Law 4th Edition, by Sir Arnold D. McNair New York, 1928 Ostrander, Sheila & Schroeder, Lynn Superlearning 2000 New York: Delacorte Press, 1994 Superlearning Die revolutionäre Lernmethode München: Scherz Verlag, 1979 Supermemory New York: Carroll & Graf, 1991 Bibliography | 587 SuperMemory Der Weg zum optimalen Gedächtnis München: Goldmann, 1996 Ouspensky, Pyotr Demianovich In Search of the Miraculous New York: Mariner Books, 2001 First published in 1949 P Papus (Dr Gérard Encausse) Traité de Magique Pratique 16e édition St. Jean de Braye: Éditions Dangles, 1989 Patridge, Burgo History of Orgies New York, 1960 Pearce, John A. II and Robinson B. Jr. Strategic Management Formulation, Implementation and Control Tenth Edition New York: McGraw–Hill, 2007 Pearce Myers, Tony (Editor) The Soul of Creativity Insights into the Creative Process Novato: New World Library, 1999 Pert, Candace B. Molecules of Emotion The Science Behind Mind–Body Medicine New York: Scribner, 2003 Petrash, Jack Understanding Waldorf Education Teaching from the Inside Out London: Floris Books, 2003 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 588 Phipson Phipson on Evidence 13th ed., by John Huxley Buzzard Richard May and M. N. Howard London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1982 Plato Complete Works Ed. by John M. Cooper New York: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997 Plummer, Kenneth Pedophilia Constructing a Sociological Baseline in: in: Cook, M. and Howells, K. (Eds.): Adult Sexual Interest in Children Academic Press, London, 1980, pp. 220 ff. Plutarch Plutarch’s Lives The Dryden Translation New York: Bantam Books, 2006 Ponder, Catherine The Healing Secrets of the Ages Marine del Rey: DeVorss, 1985 Porteous, Hedy S. Sex and Identity Your Child’s Sexuality Indianapolis: Bobbs–Merrill, 1972 Prescott, James W. Affectional Bonding for the Prevention of Violent Behaviors Neurobiological, Psychological and Religious/Spiritual Determinants in: Hertzberg, L.J., Ostrum, G.F. and Field, J.R., (Eds.) Violent Behavior Vol. 1, Assessment & Intervention, Chapter Six New York: PMA Publishing, 1990 Alienation of Affection Psychology Today, December 1979 Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 10–20 (1975) Deprivation of Physical Affection as a Primary Process in the Development of Physical Violence A Comparative and Cross–Cultural Perspec- tive, in: David G. Gil, ed., Child Abuse and Violence New York: Ams Press, 1979 Early somatosensory deprivation as an ontogenetic process in the abnormal development of the brain and behavior, Bibliography | 589 in: Medical Primatology, ed. by I.E. Goldsmith and J. Moor–Jankowski, New York: S. Karger, 1971 Genital Mutilation of Children Failure of Humanity and Humanism Unprinted Essay (2005) http://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/CIRC_CONGRESS_MON- TAGUE_9.30.05.html Genital Pain vs. Genital Pleasure Why the One and not the Other The Truth Seeker, July/August 1989, pp. 14–21 http://www.violence.de/prescott/truthseeker/genpl.html How Culture Shapes the Developing Brain and the Future of Humanity A Brief Summary of the research which links brain abnormalities and violence to an absence of nurturing and bonding very early in childhood, in: Touch the Future: Optimum Learning Relationships for Children & Adults Spring 2002 (Ed. by Michael Mendizza) Nevada City, CA, 2002 Invited Commentary: Central nervous system functioning in altered sensory envi- ronments, in: M.H. Appley and R. Trumbull (Eds.), Psychological Stress, New York: Appleton–Century Crofts, 1967 Our Two Cultural Brains: Neurointegrative and Neurodissociative http://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/Our_Two_Cultural_Brains.pdf Phylogenetic and ontogenetic aspects of human affectional development, in: Progress in Sexology, Proceedings of the 1976 International Congress of Sexol y, ed. by R. Gemme & C.C. Wheeler New York: Plenum Press, 1977 Prevention or Therapy and the Politics of Trust Inspiring a New Human Agenda in: Psychotherapy and Politics International Volume 3(3), pp. 194–211 London: John Wiley, 2005 | The Idiot Guide to Consciousness 590 Sex and the Brain Midcontinent & Eastern Regions, June 13–16, 2002 Big Rapids, MI: Society for Cross–Cultural Research, 32nd Annual Meeting, 2005 http://www.violence.de/archive.shtml Sixteen Principles for Personal, Family and Global Peace The Truth Seeker, March/April 1989 http://www.violence.de/prescott/letters/Sixteen_Principles.pdf Somatosensory affectional deprivation (SAD) theory of drug and alcohol use, in: Theories on Drug Abuse: Selected Contemporary Perspectives, ed. by Dan J. Lettieri, Mollie Sayers and Helen Wallenstien Pearson, NIDA Research Monograph 30, March 1980 Rockville, MD: National Institute on Drug Abuse, Department of Health and Hu- man Services, 1980 The Origins of Human Love and Violence Pre– and Perinatal Psychology Journal Volume 10, Number 3: Spring 1996, pp. 143–188 The Origins of Love and Violence Sensory Deprivation and the Developing Brain Research and Prevention (DVD) http://violence.de http://ttfuture.org/violence http://montagunocircpetition.org Pritchard, Colin The Child Abusers New York: Open University Press, 2004 R Radin, Dean The Conscious Universe The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1997 Entangled Minds Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality New York: Paraview Pocket Books, 2006 Raknes, Ola Wilhelm Reich and Orgonomy Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1970 Wilhelm Reich und die Orgonomie Eine Einführung in die Wissenschaft von der Lebensenergie Frankfurt/M: Nexus, 1983 Randall, Neville Life After Death London: Robert Hale, 1999 Bibliography | 591 Rank, Otto Art and Artist With Charles Francis Atkinson and Anaïs Nin New York: W.W. Norton, 1989 (1932) The Significance of Psychoanalysis for the Mental Sciences New York: BiblioBazaar, 2009 First published in 1913 Rausky, Franklin Mesmer ou la révolution thérapeutique Paris, 1977 Redfield, James The Tenth Insight Holding the Vision New York: Warner Books, 1996 The Celestine Prophecy New York: Warner Books, 1995 Die Vision von Celestine Berlin: Ullstein, 2004 Reich, Wilhelm A Review of the Theories, dating from The 17th Century, on the Origin of Organic Life by Arthur Hahn, Literature Assistant at the Institut für Sexualökonomische Lebensforschung, Biologisches Laboratorium, Oslo, 1938 ©1979 by Mary Boyd Higgins as Director of the Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust XEROX Copy from the Wilhelm Reich Museum Children of
