Cult and Ritual Trauma Disorder

[ledmag]

>
> > Diagnostic Features
> >
> >
> >
> > The essential feature of Cult and Ritual Trauma Disorder is
clinically
> > significant distress or functional impairment with either: (1)
disturbing
> > or intrusive recollections of abuse, or (2) the presence of
involuntary
> > dissociated mental states, either or both of which are the result
of
> ritual
> > (circumscribed or ceremonial) abuse. Dissociated mental states may
take
> the
> > form of unwanted or intrusive dissociated alter identities, trance
states,
> > automatisms, catalepsy, stupor, or coma or coma-like states. These
> > dissociated mental states may appear in a spontaneous manner or
they may
> be
> > triggered by particular stimuli or cues or by the individual's
experience
> of
> > distress.
> >
> > Ritual abuse consists of traumatizing procedures that
are
> > conducted in a circumscribed or ceremonial manner. Such abuse may
include
> > the actual or simulated killing or mutilation of an animal, the
actual
or
> > simulated killing or mutilation of a person, forced ingestion of
real or
>
>
> > simulated human body fluids, excrement or flesh,
>
> The eucharist?
>
> forced sexual activity, as
> > well as acts involving severe physical pain
>
> self-flagellation?
>
> or humiliation. Frequently,
> > these abusive experiences employ real or staged features of deviant
occult
> > or religious practices, but this is not always the case. Some
reports
of
> > this phenomenon indicate that the abuse may occur outdoors, in a
> residence,
> > day care, laboratory or hospital setting as well as other
locations.
> Ritual
> > abuse may occur in a group setting, but occasionally it is
perpetrated
by
> an
> > individual.
> >
> >
> >
> > Associated Features and Disorders
> >
> >
> >
> > Associated descriptive features and mental disorders. Evidence of
> > psychological trauma is usually present and many individuals with
Cult
and
> > Ritual Trauma Disorder also exhibit some symptoms of Post-traumatic
Stress
> > Disorder, if not actually meeting the criteria for this diagnosis
as
well.
> > Intrusive and often fragmentary memories of abuse, alternating
terror
and
> > emotional numbing, nightmares, amnesia, anxiety, panic, flashbacks,
phobic
> > avoidance, and signs of increased arousal are often present. These
> > individuals typically report chronic depression, often with
cyclical
> > characteristics.
> >
> > Dissociation of identity is a feature of Cult and
Ritual
> Trauma
> > Disorder, and Dissociative Identity Disorder or Dissociative
Disorder
Not
> > Otherwise Specified, are frequently concurrently diagnosed.
> >
> > . Features of Borderline Personality Disorder are also
often
> > exhibited and occasionally individuals with Cult and Ritual Trauma
> Disorder
> > will also experience brief psychotic episodes, sometimes with
auditory
or
> > visual hallucinations. More commonly these individuals experience
or
act
> > out strong self-destructive urges including attempted or actual
suicide
> and
> > self-mutilation. Frequently there is a strong desire to injure the
self
> in
> > a manner that produces blood (e.g., "I have to see blood").
Sometimes
the
> > individual will report a desire to taste, touch, or smell their own
blood.
> > Chronic and unmodulated anger and sometimes rage alternate with
other
mood
> > states to create the impression that the individual is
unpredictable in
> mood
> > and unable to manage anger. Strong feelings of dependency
alternate
with
> > social aloofness. Narcissism and self-hatred are frequently
experienced
> > separately and together.
> >
> > In children (in addition to the above) motoric
hyperactivity,
> > impulsivity and problems in attention and concentration are seen at
a
rate
> > which exceeds the baseline for children without psychiatric
disorders.
> >
> >
> >
> > Associated laboratory findings. Individuals with Cult and Ritual
Trauma
> > Disorder typically show evidence of psychological trauma and
dissociation
> on
> > psychological testing.
> >
> > Associated physical examination findings and general medical
conditions.
> > There may be scars from self-inflicted injuries or physical abuse.
> Somatic
> > symptoms with or without objective medical findings typically
include
> > headaches, gastrointestinal, and genito-urinary complaints, but
other
> > reports of physical pain may be present. In some cases, physical
pain
> will
> > not reflect a current injury but will be a psychological component
of
> > implicit memories (e.g., "body memories") associated with previous
abuse.
> > These individuals also frequently show evidence of mild
neuropsychological
> > impairment that in some cases may result from a history of head
trauma.
> > Others have argued that psychological trauma in childhood may cause
mild
> > neuropsychological deficits in some individuals (e.g., van der
Kolk,
1987)
> > but further research is needed to clarify this question.
> >
> >
> >
> > Prevalence
> >
> >
> >
> > The prevalence of Cult and Ritual Trauma Disorder is unknown due to
a
lack
> > of reliable information. The alleged secrecy associated with
ritual
abuse
> > may make the accurate tabulation of such statistics difficult or
> impossible.
> >
> >
> >
> > Course
> >
> >
> >
> > The clinical course of these individuals is typically chronic with
> periodic
> > exacerbations and sometimes partial remission of symptoms. Some of
these
> > individuals report that they continue to participate in ritual
abuse
> either
> > as a victim, a perpetrator or both, typically while in a
dissociated
> state.
> >
> >
> >
> > Familial Pattern
> >
> >
> >
> > A history of sexual or ritual abuse is frequently reported among
family
> > members. In particular, transgenerational victimization is a
commonly
> > indicated pattern, consistent with the familial trends associated
with
> > non-ritual sexual abuse of children. However, the extent to which
ritual
> > abuse is a transgenerational phenomenon is presently unknown.
Features
of
> > dissociation are also frequently seen in family members.
> >
> >
> >
> > Differential Diagnosis
> >
> >
> >
> > Cult and Ritual Trauma Disorder must be distinguished from
Delusional
> > Disorder and other psychotic disorders where delusional beliefs are
better
> > able to account for the reports of abuse particularly when it can
be
> > demonstrated that the allegations of abuse are false. However,
there
are
> > also cases where these diagnoses can exist concurrently with Cult
and
> Ritual
> > Trauma Disorder, particularly when corroborating evidence of such
abuse
> > exists in an individual who is also exhibiting delusional or other
> psychotic
> > symptoms. Cult and Ritual Trauma Disorder must be distinguished
from
> > Malingering in situations where there may be forensic or financial
gain
> and
> > from Factitious Disorder where there may be a maladaptive pattern
of
> > help-seeking behavior. The possibility of suggestibility should
also be
> > evaluated and ruled out as a possible alternative explanation for
the
> > individual's reports of ritual abuse.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ? Diagnostic criteria for 309.82 Cult and Ritual Trauma
Disorder
> >
> >
> >
> > A. The presence of clinically significant distress or
> > functional impairment with either
(1) or
> (2):
> >
> >
> >
> > (1) disturbing or intrusive recollections
of
> abuse.
> >
> > (2) involuntary dissociated mental states
> > consisting of at least one of the following:
> >
> > (a) dissociated alter
identities
> >
> > (b) involuntary trance states
> >
> > (c) automatisms
> >
> > (c) catalepsy
> >
> > (d) stupor, coma or coma-like
states
> >
> >
> >
> > B. The disturbance described in A is the result of
ritual
> > (circumscribed or ceremonial) abuse.
> >
> >
> >
> > C. The disturbance described in A cannot be better
accounted
> > for by Delusional
> >
> > Disorder or another psychotic disorder in which
> delusions
> > are present, Malingering
> >
> > or Factitious Disorder or as a consequence of
the
> patient
> > 's suggestibility.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Many patients who report childhood ritual abuse
experiences
> also
> > allege lifelong revictimization. They frequently report being
crime
> > victims, particularly victims of rape and assault. It is sometimes
> unclear
> > whether their belief that they have been revictimized is a
consequence
of
> > intrusive recall, flashbacks, abreaction, or other phenomena, since
they
> may
> > not make a timely report to police or to submit to proper physical
> > examination in support of their claim.
> >
> > A patient claimed that she had been sexually assaulted
by
> > someone gaining access to her second floor bedroom via a window.
The
> > patient's house-mates denied the possibility that the patient could
have
> > been assaulted in such a manner and within the time-frame as she
reported
> it
> > since the house-mates were at home during the times the patient
reported
> the
> > attacks, and the bedroom was inaccessible from the outside. The
patient
> > held firm in her beliefs that she was being continually
revictimized
until
> > she came to recognize that she was actually experiencing vivid
recall of
> > what she believed to be past experiences.
> >
> > One of the most disturbing observations regarding the
language
> > of ritual abuse that has been developed thus far is that the
language
> > applied to such experiences has come almost exclusively from the
survivor
> > and backlash communities. The survivor community has provided such
> > terminology[2] as "ritual abuse," "programming," "triggering," and
> > "accessing." The backlash community has contributed such terms as
> > "recovered memory therapy," "false memory syndrome," and "parental
> > alienation syndrome," although these terms do not apply exclusively
to
the
> > area of ritual abuse. The treatment community has been dangerously
> reactive
> > and passive with respect to both their patient's claims and the
assault
on
> > their professions by backlash organizations. It has become
commonplace
> for
> > the media to report on unethical practices by "recovered memory
> therapists"
> > who routinely destroy families by implanting false memories of
horrific
> > experiences. The media, television, radio and print journalism,
serves
as
> > both arbiter and catalyst for the ongoing debate regarding the
veracity
of
> > ritual abuse allegations and claims of recalled accounts of
childhood
> abuse.
> > Unfortunately, the media appears to uncritically accept and
promulgate
the
> > version promoted by the most effective lobby, regardless of
evidence in
> its
> > support. Terms such as "recovered memory therapy," "false memory
> syndrome,"
> > and "parental alienation syndrome," permeate the scanty literature
on
> modern
> > day accounts of ritual abuse.
> >
> > Kenneth Lanning, an agent of the Federal Bureau of
> > Investigation, authored the monograph, Investigator's Guide to
Allegations
> > of "Ritual" Child Abuse, in which he wrote, "There is little or no
> evidence
> > for . . . organized satanic conspiracies," (1992, p.40.)
Individuals
and
> > organizations taking the position that ritual abuse allegations are
false
> > have subsequently adapted this claim. It is interesting to note
that
from
> > the time of its creation in 1908, the FBI was invested with the
> > investigation and prosecution of the elusive Mafia, to which a
large
> portion
> > of crimes ranging from extortion, to gambling, to bootlegging, to
murder
> > were attributed. Because of an extensive and effective lobby by a
> coalition
> > of Italian-American advocacy groups and other individuals and
> organizations,
> > the FBI was unable to substantiate the existence of the Mafia until
1989,
> > when a Mafia initiation ceremony was audio-taped by undercover
agents.
> > Previously, in order to facilitate prosecutions despite its
inability to
> > specifically identify a criminal entity called the Mafia, the FBI
> broadened
> > its focus by targeting "organized crime" as its primary agenda.
This
> raises
> > the question of why, when there are thousands of individuals
alleging
> ritual
> > abuse, some of which has resulted in arrests, confessions, criminal
> > convictions[3] and civil litigation, the FBI, or specifically Agent
> Lanning,
> > clings to the position that there is no evidence of widespread
satanic
> > ritual abuse. In truth, there may be no evidence of an "organized
satanic
> > conspiracy," but there is all manner of evidence in support of
crimes
> > against people and property that have occultic or ritualistic
elements[4].
> > If the FBI could alter its language in order to justify its
investigations
> > into the Mafia, it seems a small thing to reconsider the
terminology it
> > applies to investigations of crimes that contain ritualistic
elements.
> >
> > Considering the history of crimes against children and
the
> > traditional denial with which society has responded to such
allegations,
> it
> > is not surprising that reports of ritual abuse against children and
others
> > are frequently discounted. There appears to be a greater societal
> interest
> > in protecting the illusion that our children are safe, that
families are
> > inherently good and decent, and that danger comes infrequently and
only
> then
> > at the hands of demented strangers. In reality, most individuals
> reporting
> > histories of ritual abuse allege that the abuse occurred within the
> family.
> > And while there are periodic reminders that families do not always
protect
> > their own children and may, in fact, represent the greatest threat
to
> their
> > child's safety and life, it is evidently too painful for the public
to
> > accept the probability that some children are regularly and
deliberately
> > abused within their family unit. Nevertheless, this is a harsh
reality
we
> > must all be willing to face if we are ever to be able to fully
protect
> > children or to comprehend and address the sequelae of such abuses.
> >
> > Several years ago, I was contacted by a woman in
another
state
> > requesting advice regarding her four foster children, siblings who
had
> been
> > removed from their family of origin by the state due to chronic
abuse
and
> > neglect. These children, ranging in age from 18 months to five
years,
> > demonstrated extremely maladaptive behaviors. They had poor
vocabulary
> and
> > limited capacity to communicate. They had no apparent experience
with
> > modern plumbing. They could not identify or manipulate eating
utensils.
> > They were fearful of water, certain foods, and the night. The
children
> were
> > violent with each other and other people. They had uncontrollable
rages
> > without apparent cause. They were all sexually self-abusive. Upon
> physical
> > examination, all four children were diagnosed with genital herpes.
The
> boys
> > suffered from impacted bowels and scarring of their rectums. All
four
> > children had scars all over their bodies, most of which appeared to
have
> > been the result of deliberate injury. The three older children
talked
> about
> > being tortured by people in black robes.
> >
> > None of this information had been revealed by the
Department
> of
> > Social Services caseworkers responsible for transferring the
children's
> care
> > from the state to the foster family. The foster parents were
frightened,
> > anxious, concerned and confused. They wanted to help these
extremely
> needy
> > children, but were at a loss as to how to accomplish this. They
contacted
> > me in my capacity as executive director of the International
Council on
> > Cultism and Ritual Trauma to obtain information about ritual abuse
and
to
> > gain some insight into its effects. This telephone conversation
evolved
> > into several more between the foster family and myself and
eventually, I
> was
> > able to assist the family in obtaining consultation from my
co-author,
> > psychologist James Randall Noblitt, who has had extensive
experience in
> the
> > area of evaluating and treating individuals with ritually abusive
> > backgrounds. Dr. Noblitt and I visited the family, interviewed
everyone
> > involved including the foster family, DHS caseworkers and
administrators,
> > and ancillary helping professionals. Dr. Noblitt evaluated the
children
> and
> > reviewed the records of their previous therapists. I researched
the
> > children's histories, the manner in which they came to the
attention of
> DHS
> > caseworkers and the mechanisms by which their care was being funded
by
the
> > state. What our investigations revealed was evidence of a
conspiracy
> > designed to shield various county and state agencies from liability
for
> > negligence and fraud.
> >
> > A review of the family history revealed that the children's mother
had
> been
> > the subject of investigations by the DHS as a victim of child abuse
and
> > neglect perpetrated against her by her parents. This child was
evaluated
> by
> > a DHS staff psychologist who diagnosed her as marginally retarded
and
> > disoriented to person, place and time. His notes from his meeting
with
> her
> > reflect her report of hearing voices in her head that directed her
> behavior.
> > She was under DHS supervision when she became pregnant with her
first
> child
> > at age 15. Between the ages of 15 and 20, this young woman had
four
> > children from four different fathers, at least one of whom is
likely to
> have
> > been a close family member. Despite this young girl's age and
legal
> > status at the time of her first pregnancy, no intervention was made
on
her
> > behalf to educate her in either birth control or child care, or to
assist
> > her in improving her living situation. This young woman continued
to
> reside
> > in the home of her parents along with her children, exposing this
new
> > generation to the same neglectful and abusive environment in which
she
was
> > raised. DHS caseworkers did continue to observe the family and did
> > intervene on the children's behalf as they observed neglectful
conditions,
> > including lice infestation in all the children, malnourishment,
unhygienic
> > conditions, etc. The children were removed from the mother's
custody on
> two
> > occasions during which they were placed in foster care while an
effort
was
> > made to educate the mother in order to repatriate the children.
These
> > attempts failed and the mother's parental rights were finally
terminated,
> at
> > which time the children were placed with their third foster family,
who
> had
> > an interest in adoption.
> >
> > The children's bizarre behaviors led to psychiatric
hospitalizations and
> > placement with therapists in the community to pursue outpatient
> > psychotherapy. During the course of their therapy, the children
revealed
> > more and more details of abuse, including sexual abuse in their
second
> > foster home and in their family of origin. However, the three
therapists
> > engaged in these children's care never made a report to law
enforcement
as
> > mandated child abuse reporters. Furthermore, the therapists
appeared
> > unqualified to address the children's behaviors and emotional
distress
and
> > the children subsequently deteriorated under their care. When the
foster
> > parents repeatedly complained about the failure of these mental
health
> > professionals to address the children's reports, the therapists
were
asked
> > to resign from the case by a supervising psychologist contracted by
DHS
to
> > supervise distribution of services. The therapists subsequently
wrote a
> > letter of termination in which they blamed the children's symptoms
and
> > deterioration on the foster mother's overprotective position.
> >
> > The children required additional supervision by paraprofessionals
called
> > High Risk Interventionists (HRI). The HMO charged with the
administration
> > and dispersal of Medicaid funds funded the children's psychotherapy
and
> > high-risk interventionists. Our investigations revealed that this
HMO
> also
> > operated the HRI program and in effect, subcontracted the
children's
care
> to
> > their own agency resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars paid
to
> > itself. In the meantime, few of the dollars allocated to the
foster
> family
> > and the children were actually delivered. Furthermore, the case
> supervisor
> > employed by the HMO was the same psychologist who years before had
worked
> > for DHS and had been the professional who evaluated the children's
> > biological mother.
> >
> > What we learned is that the professionals involved in
the
care
> > of the children were motivated more by self-interest than in
concern for
> the
> > well being of the children. In the meantime, the foster parents
engaged
> in
> > a concerted effort at recognizing and understanding their charges'
> > psychological, emotional, physical and educational concerns and
succeeded
> in
> > creating a highly effective integrated program to address these
concerns.
> > Now, several years have passed and the children have been adopted
by
their
> > foster family. But the effort to provide for these children's
therapy
and
> > safety needs continues to be a struggle between the adoptive
parents and
> the
> > county and state agencies controlling their funding. And for this,
we
> would
> > have to ask, "Why?"
> >
> > Why is there so much resistance to assisting these and
other
> > child victims? Why is there such a contentious environment when
victims,
> > children and adults abused as children, make an outcry? What
motivates
> > individuals to organize into lobbying groups with the intended
purpose
of
> > impeaching the testimony of abuse victims and vilifying their
advocates?
> > What are the politics behind such machinations? There are several
> possible
> > answers to explain this disturbing trend. One possibility is that
there
> is
> > truly a conspiracy of individuals and groups who perpetrate against
> children
> > and other vulnerable people using ritual abuse as a mechanism of
control
> and
> > containment. Some of these individuals are likely to have
infiltrated
> > various areas of society including child protection, the court
system,
law
> > enforcement, government, military, the media, etc., resulting in a
vast
> > cover-up. A second possibility could be that the reality that
children
> are
> > being systematically tortured and betrayed by their families and
trusted
> > others is so frightening and painful to the majority of people that
they
> are
> > in denial of this possibility. And in order to accommodate the
accounts
> > that allege that such things can and do happen, society has "killed
the
> > messenger" by blaming the epidemic of reports of child abuse on the
mental
> > health professionals and child advocates who attempt to intervene.
> >
> > The resulting attack on mental health professionals has
been
> > devastating to both the profession and to individuals desperately
in
need
> of
> > psychological services. Therapists under constant threat of
litigation
> have
> > been forced to amend their treatment style and even the manner in
which
> they
> > document patient claims. For example, in the interest of
protecting
> > patients from potential harm by recording claims that could be
> > self-incriminating if records were subpoenaed, therapists routinely
made
> > vague or sketchy notes, interpretable only by themselves. Now, to
protect
> > their own professional status, therapists are taking a more
> self-protective
> > stance. Fewer hospitals are providing inpatient programs that
address
the
> > special needs of this patient population, increasing the danger to
> patients
> > and society. In response to growing allegations against mental
health
> > professionals, licensing boards are altering and adjusting rules of
> > practice. As a consequence of civil suits brought against
therapists
for
> > "implanting false memories" of abuse, malpractice insurance
carriers are
> > increasingly limiting coverage for the treatment of certain types
of
> > psychological disorders. Consequently, fewer mental health
professionals
> > are willing to see patients alleging ritually abusive experiences
or
> > demonstrating symptoms of dissociative disorders.
> >
> > What is clear is that something is happening that results in
sometimes
> > disabling psychological illness that impacts on the individual, the
> family,
> > and society. How we respond to the resultant crisis is a measure
of our
> > collective character. Will we ignore the outcries of people in
pain in
> > order to embrace the comfort of denial? Or will we confront our
worst
> > nightmare, acknowledging the worst threat to children may be our
own
> > reluctance to admit that the dark secrets of our ancestors survive
today?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Bibliography / References
> > Gardner, R.A. (1991). Sex abuse hysteria: Salem witch trials
revisited.
> >
> > Cresskill, NJ: Creative Therapeutics.
> >
> > Goldstein, E. (1992). Confabulations: Creating false memories,
> destroying
> >
> > families. Boca Raton, FL: SIRS Books.
> >
> > Kahaner, L. (1988). Cults that kill: Probing the underworld of
occult
> > crime. New
> >
> > York: Warner Books.
> >
> > Lanning, K.V. (1992). Investigator's guide to allegations of
"ritual"
> child
> > abuse.
> >
> > Quantico, VA: National Center for the Analysis of
Violent
> > Crime.
> >
> > Newton, M. (1993). Raising hell: An encyclopedia of devil worship
and
> > Satanic crime. New York: Avon Books.
> >
> > Noblitt, J.R. (1998). Accessing dissociated mental states.
> [Self-published
> >
> > monograph available through the Center for Counseling
and
> >
> > Psychological Services, P.C., PO Box 820729, Dallas, TX
> 75382].
> >
> > Noblitt, J.R., & Perskin, P.S. (1995). Cult and ritual abuse: Its
> history,
> >
> > anthropology and recent discovery in contemporary
America.
> > Westport,
> >
> > CT: Praeger Publishers.
> >
> > Noblitt, J.R., & Perskin, P.S. (2000). Cult and ritual abuse: Its
> history,
> >
> > anthropology and recent discovery in contemporary America, revised
> edition.
> > Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.
> >
> > Ofshe, R., & Watters, E. (1994). Making monsters: False memories,
> >
> > psychotherapy and sexual hysteria. New York: Charles
> Scribner's
> > Sons.
> >
> > for the Study of Multiple Personality and Dissociation,
> Chicago.
> >
> > Raschke, C.A. (1990). Painted black. New York: HarperCollins.
> >
> > Terry, M. (1987). The ultimate evil. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
> >
> > Wassil-Grimm, C. (1995). Diagnosis for disaster. Woodstock, New
York:
> The
> >
> > Overlook Press.
> >
> > Waterman, J., Kelly, R.J., Olivieri, M.K., McCord, J. (1993).
Beyond
the
> >
> > playground walls: Sexual abuse in preschools. New
York:
> > Guilford
> >
> > Yapko, M.D. (1994). Suggestions of abuse: True and false memories
of
> >
> > childhood sexual trauma. New York: Simon & Schuster.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
> --
> > ----
> >
> > [1] From Noblitt and Perskin (1995, 2000)
> >
> > [2] I have no objection to the terminology introduced by the
survivor
> > community. My concern is that the professional community has not
> generated
> > adequate language to meet the requirements of science and law.
> >
> > [3] Newton, M.
> >
> > [4] Terry (1987), Raschke (1990), Newton (1993), Kahaner (1988).
> >

 

[lizard]

not at the disorder itself but at your post, ledmag! that's the longest post I've ever seen!

 

[ledmag]

I haev a bigger one. Ill dig it up. I posted newrly all of DOUG ADAMS 1st installement to the HITCH-HICKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY trilogy

REad this thread though.

 

[ledmag]

Dammnit, they must have deleted. I actually sut the forum down for a while after i posted that book. SHit. Ill do an advanced search later.

 

[lizard]

man, that's some deep and dark shit.

 

[ledmag]

yeah hahahha

I stumble onto that sort of shit a lot.

I dont post this sort of stuff as much as used to. Ppl just dont seem to dig it, or take the time to read it. I love thi sstuff hahahha.

 

[REBIRTH]

The Value of Psychotic Experience
by Alan Watts
I think most of you know from the announcement of this series of seminars and workshops during the summer, they're entitled 'The Value of Psychotic Experience.' And many people who are interested in an entirely new approach to problems of what have hitherto been called mental health are participating in these seminars and workshops, and doing something which is extremely dangerous and in a way revolutionary. For this reason:

We are living in a world where deviant opinions about religion are no longer dangerous, because no one takes religion seriously, and therefore you can be like Bishop Pike and question the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the reality of the virgin birth, and the physical ressurection of Jesus, and still remain a bishop in good standing. But what you can't get away with today, or at least you have great difficulty in getting away with is psychiatric heresy. Because psychiatry is taken seriously, and indeed, I would like to draw a parallel between today and the Middle Ages in the respect of this whole question.

When we go back to the days of the Spanish Inquisition, we must remember that the professor of theology at the University of Seville has the same kind of social prestige and intellectual standing that today would be enjoyed by the professor of pathology at Stanford Medical School. And you must bear in mind that this theologan, like the professor of pathology today, is a man of good will. Intensely interested in human welfare. He didn't merely opine; that professor of theology KNEW that anybody who had heretical religious views would suffer everlasting agony of the most apalling kind. And some of you should read the imaginative descriptions of the sufferings of Hell, written not only in the Middle Ages, but in quite recent times by men of intense intellectual acumen. And therefore out of real merciful motivation, the Inquisitors thought that it was the best thing they could do to torture heresy out of those who held it. Worse still, heresy was infectious, and would contaminate other people and put them in this immortal danger. And so with the best motivations imaginable, the used the thumbscrew, the rack, the iron maiden, the leaded cat-of-nine-tails, and finally the stake to get these people to come to their senses, because nothing else seemed to be available.


Today, serious heresy, and rather peculiarly in the United States, is a deviant state of consciousness. Not so much deviant opinions as having a kind of experience which is different from 'regular' experience. And as Ronald Lang, who is going to participate in this series, has so well pointed out, we are taught what experiences are permissable in the same way we are taught what gestures, what manners, what behavior is permissable and socially acceptable. And therefore, if a person has so-called 'strange' experiences, and endeavors to communicate these experiences--because naturally one talks about what one feels--and endeavors to communicate these experiences to other people, he is looked at in a very odd way and asked 'are you feeling all right?' Because people feel distinctly uncomfortable when the realize they are in the presence of someone who is experiencing the world in a rather different way from themselves. They call in question as to whether this person is indeed human. They look like a human being, but because the state of experience is so different, you wonder whether they really are. And you get the kind of--the same kind of queasy feeling inside as you would get if, for the sake of example, you were to encounter a very beautiful girl, very formally dressed, and you were introduced, and in order to shake hands, she removed her glove, and you found in your hand the claw of a large bird. That would be spooky, wouldn't it?
Or let's suppose that you were looking at a rose. And you looked down in the middle where the petals are closed, and you suddenly saw them open like lips, and the rose addressed you and said 'good morning.' You would feel something uncanny was going on. And in rather the same way, in an every day kind of circumstance, when you are sitting in a bar drinking, and you find you have a drunk next to you. And he tells you, 'undistinguishable drunken ranting' and you sort of move your stool a little ways away from this man, because he's become in some way what we mean by nonhuman. Now, we understand the drunk; we know what's the matter with him, and it'll wear off. But when quite unaccountably, a person gives representation that he's suddenly got the feeling that he's living in backwards time, or that everybody seems to be separated from him by a huge sheet of glass. Or that he's suddenly seeing everything in unbelievably detailed moving colors. We say, 'well that's not normal. Therefore there must be something wrong with you.' And the fact that we have such an enormous percentage of the population of this country in mental institutions is a thing we may have to look at from a very different point of view, not that there may be a high incidence of mental sickness, but that there may be a high incidence of intolerance of variations of consciousness.

Now in Arabic countries, where the Islamic religion prevails, a person whom we would define as mentally deranged is regarded with a certain respect. The village idiot is looked upon with reverence because it is said his soul is not with his body, it is with Allah. And because his soul is with Allah, you must respect this body and care for it, not as something that is to be sort of swept away and put out of sight, but as something of a reminder that a man can still be living on Earth while his soul is in Heaven. Very diffent point of view. Also in India, there is a certain difference in attitude to people who would be called nuts, because there is a poem--an ancient poem of the Hindus-- which says 'sometimes naked, sometimes mad, now's a scholar, now's a fool, thus they appear on Earth as free men.'

But you see, we in our attitude to this sort of behavior, which is essentially in its first inception harmless, these people are talking what we regard to be nonsense. And to be experienced in nonsense. We feel threatened by that, because we are not secure in ourselves. A very secure person can adapt himself with amazing speed to different kinds of communciation. In foreign countries, for example, where you don't speak the language of the people you are staying with, if you don't feel ashamed of this, you can set up an enormous degree of communication with other people through gesture and even something most surprising, people can communicate with each other by simply talking. You can get a lot across to people by talking intelligent nonsense, by, as it were, imitating a foreign language; speaking like it sounds. You can communicate feeligns, emotions, like and dislike of this, that and the other; very simply. But if you are rigid and are not willing to do this type of playing, then you feel threatened by anybody who communicates with you in a funny way. And so this rigidity sets up a kind of vicious circle. The minute, in other words, someone makes an unusual communciation to you about an unusual state of consciousness, and you back off, the individual wonders 'is there something wrong with me? I don't seem to be understood by anyone.' Or he may wonder 'what's going on? Has everybody else suddenly gone crazy?' And then if he feels that he gets frightened, and to the degree that he gets more frightened, he gets more defensive, and eventually land up with being catatonic, which is a person who simply doesn't move. And so then what we do is we whiffle him off to an institution, where he is captured by the inquisitors. This is a very special priesthood. And they have all the special marks that priesthoods have always had. They have a special vestment. Like the Catholic priest at mass wears a *, the mental doctor, like every physician, wears a long white coat, and may carry something that corresponds, shall we say, so a stole, which is a stethescope around his neck. He will then, under his authority, which is often in total defience of every conceivable civil liberty, will incarcerate this incomprehensible person, and as Lang has pointed out, he undergoes a ritual of dehumanization. And he's put away. And because the hospitals are so crowded with people of this kind, he's going to get very little attention. And it's very difficult to know, when you get attention, how to work with it.

You get into this Kafka-esque situation which you get, say, in the state of California, if you are sent to such an institute as Vacaville prison, which is as you drive on the highway from San Francisco to Sacramento, you will encounter Vacaville about halfway between. You will see a great sign which will say 'California State Medical Facility.' The state of California is famous for circumlocution. When you go underneath a low bridge, instead of saying 'Low Bridge,' it says 'Impaired Vertical Clearance.' Or when you're going to cross a toll bridge, instead of saying, plainly, 'Toll Bridge,' it says 'Entering Vehicular Crossing.' And when it should be saying, plainly, 'Prison,' it says either 'California State Medical Facility,' or 'California State Correctional Facility,' as it does as Soledad. Now Vacaville is a place where people get sent on what they call a one- to ten-year sentence. And there is a supervising psychiatric medical sort of social service staff there, who examine the inmates once in a while because they have such a large number. It's a maximum security prison, much more ringed around with defences than even San Quentin. I went there to lecture to the inmates some time ago. They wanted someone to talk to them about meditation and yoga, and one of the inmates took me aside--a very clean-cut all-American boy. And he had been put in there probably for smoking pot; I'm not absolutely sure in my memory what the offense was. He said 'You know, I am very puzzled about this place. I really want to go straight and get out and get a job and live like an ordinary person.' He said 'I think they don't know how to go about it. I've just been refused release; I went up before the committee; I talked to them. But I don't know what the rules of the game are. And incidentally, the members of the committee don't either.'

So we have these situation, you see, of confusion. So that when a person goes into a mental hospital and feels first of all perhaps that he should try to sort himself out and talk reasonably with the physician. There is introduced into the communications system between them a fundamental element of fear and mistrust. Because I could talk to any individual if I were malicious and interpret every sane remark you make as something deeply sinister; that would simply exhibit my own paranoia. And the psychiatrist can very easily get paranoid, because the system he is asked to represent, officially is paranoid. I talked with a psychiatrist in England just a few weeks ago. One of the most charming women I've come across, an older woman, very intelligent, quite beautiful, very reasonable. And she was discussing with me the problem of the LSD psychosis. I asked her what sort of treatments they were using, and all sorts of questions about that, and she appeared at first to be a little on the defensive about it. We got onto the subject of the experience of what is officially called 'depersonalization,' where you feel that you and your experience--your sensory experience--that is to say all that you do experience: the people, the things, the animals, the buildings around you--that it's all one. I said 'do you call this a hallucination? After all,' I said, 'it fits the facts of science, of biophysics, of ecology, of biology, and much better than our ordinary normal experience fits it.' She said 'that's not my problem.' She said 'that may be true, but I am employed by a society which feels that it ought to maintain a certain average kind of normal experience, and my job is to restore people to what society considers normal consciousness. I have no alternative but to leave it at that.'

So, then. When someone is introduced into this situation, and it's very difficult to get attention, you feel terrified. The mental hospital, often in its very architecture, suggests some of the great visions of madness, of-- You know that feeling of-- The corridors of the mind. If you got lost in a maze and you couldn't get back. You're not quite sure who you are, or whether your father and mother are your real father and mother, or whether in the next ten minutes you're still going to remember how to speak English. You feel very lost. And the mental hospital in its architecture and everything represents that situation. Endless corridors, all the same. Which one are you in? Where are you? Will you ever get out? And it goes on monotonously, day after day after day after day after day. And someone who talks to you occasionally doesn't have a straight look in his eye. He doesn't see you as quite human. He looks at you as if you're weird. What are you to do? The best thing to do is get violent, if you really want to get out. Well then they say that's proof that you're crazy. And then as you get more violent, they put you off by yourself, and the only alternative you have, the only way of expressing yourself is to throw shit at the walls. Then they say, 'well, that's conclusive. The person isn't human.'

Well, the question has been raised a great deal in the last few days on the television, as to whether this is a sick society. And I have listened to a perfectly beautiful pschoanalyst with a thick German accent. Oh, marvelous things! 'Eet ees quite obvious dat society is quite hopeless, you zee.' And I have listened to four red-blooded Americans saying 'most people in this society are good people, and it's a GOOD society, but we have a very sick minority.'

Now, what I want to do in--certainly this first part of the seminar--is to call in question, very fundamentally, all of our basic ideas about what is sickness, what is health, what is sanity, what is insanity. Because I think we have to begin from this position of humility; that we really don't know. It's reported that shortly before he died, Robert Oppenheimer, looking at the picture of technology, especially nuclear technology, said 'I'm afraid it's perfectly obvious that the world is going to hell.' It's going to destroy itself, it's on collision course. The only way in which it might not go to hell is that we do not try to prevent it from doing so. Think that one over. Because it can well be argued that the major troublemakers in the world today are those people with good intentions. Like the professor of theology, University of Seville, professor of psychiatry at wherever you will. The idea that we know who is sick, who is wrong. Now, we are living in a political situation right now where a most fantastic thing is occuring. Everybody knows what they're against; nobody knows what they're for. Because nobody is thinking in terms anymore of what would be a great style of life. The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There's no earthly reason; there's no physical, technical reason for there being any poverty at all anywhere. But you see, there are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money. They don't know how to use it, they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.

I'm announcing not the date, but the intention of conducting a seminar for extremely rich people entitled 'Are You Rich and Miserable?' because you very probably are. Some aren't, but most are. Now the thing is that we are living in this situation where everybody knows what they're against, even if they say 'I'm against the war in Vietnam. I am against discrimination against colored people, or against any different race than the discolored race,' and so on. Yeah, so what? But it's not enough to feel like that; that's nothing. You must have some completely concrete vision of what you would like, and therefore I'm making a serious proposition that everybody who goes into college should as an entrance examination have the task of writing an essay on his idea of heaven, in which he is asked to be absolutely specific. He is not allowed, for example, to say 'I would like to have a very beautiful girl to live with.' What do you mean by a beautiful girl? Exactly how, and in what way? Specifically. You know, down to the last wiggle of the hips, and down to every kind of expression of character and socialbility and her interests and all. Be specific! And about everything like that. 'I would like a beautiful house to live in.' Just what exactly do you mean by a beautiful house? Well you've suddenly got to study architecture. You see, and finally, this preliminary essay on 'My Idea of Heaven' turns into his doctoral dissertation. So in a situation where we all know what we're against, and we don't know what we're for, then we know WHO we're against. We're defining all sorts of people as nonhuman. We say they're totally irrational. They're totally stupid. People will say, 'oh, those my pals, they're completely uneducated, they'll never learn a thing, there's nothing you can do about it, they're hopeless, get rid of them.' The Birchers are saying the same sort of thing. Other people, the liberals are saying the same thing about the Birchers. 'They're stupid, get rid of them.' The only result, then, the only thing anybody can think of in this sort of situation is 'get your gun.' And this sets up a vicious circle, because everybody else gets his gun. And the point from which we have to begin, then, is that we don't know who is healthy and who is sick. Who is right and who is wrong. And furthermore, we have to start, I think, from the assumption that because we don't know, there isn't anything we can do about it.

There's a Turkish proverb that I like to quote: 'He who sleeps on the floor cannot fall out of bed.' Therefore, we should make it a beginning--a basic assumption about life that even supposing you could improve society, and you could improve yourself, you were never sure that the direction you moved it in would be an improvement.

A Chinese story, kind of a Taoistic story about a farmer. One day, his horse ran away, and all the neighbors gathered in the evening and said 'that's too bad.' He said 'maybe.' Next day, the horse came back and brought with it seven wild horses. 'Wow!' they said, 'Aren't you lucky!' He said 'maybe.' He next day, his son grappled with one of these wild horses and tried to break it in, and he got thrown and broke his leg. And all the neighbors said 'oh, that's too bad that your son broke his leg.' He said, 'maybe.' The next day, the conscription officers came around, gathering young men for the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. And the visitors all came around and said 'Isn't that great! Your son got out.' He said, 'maybe.'

You see, you never really know in which direction progress lies. And this is today a fantastic problem for geneticists. They genetecists, you know, because they think they are within some degree of controlling the DNA and RNA code, believe that it is really possible perhaps to breed the kind of human beings that we ought to have. And they say 'hooray!' But they think one moment and they think 'ah-ah-ah-ah-ah, but what kind of human being?' So they're very worried. And just a little while ago, a national committee of graduate students and geneticists had a meeting at the University of California and the asked a group of psychologists, theologans and philosophers to come and reason with them about this and give them some insight. And I was included. That means that they are REALLY desperate. So I said 'I'll tell you what, the only thing you can do is to be quite sure that you keep a vast variety of different kinds of human beings, because you never know what's going to happen next. And therefore we need an enormous, shall I say, varied battery of different kinds of human intelligence and resources and abilities. So that there will always be some kind of person available for any emergency that might turn up. So you see, there's a total fallacy in the idea of preaching to people. This is why I abandoned the ministries, I've often said, not because the church didn't practice what it preached, but because it preached. Because you cannot tell people what sort of pattern of life they ought to have, because if they followed your advice, you might have a breed of monsters. Look at it from the point of view that the human race is a breed of monsters.

I was thinking about it this afternoon, driving down from Monterey to here, and looking at the freeways, and all these little cars going along them, and I was wondering if I considered that the planet was a physical body like my own, whether I might not feel that this was some sort of an invasion of weird bacteria that were eating me up. Whether it may be that the birds and the bees and the flowers--animals in general--were a kind of healthy bacteria. You know, bees and birds sort of wander about, generally mix in with the forest and the fields and carry on a rather disorganized but very interesting pattern of life, whereas human beings cut straight lines across everything. Railways. They cover themselves with junk. A bird may have a little nest, but it doesn't have to surround itself with automobiles and books and buildings and phonograph records and universities and clutter up the whole landscape with a lot of bric- a-brac. Human beings pride themselves on this. 'You see, this is culture!' This is a great achievement. Build a building, you know? It's all you can get money for. You can't get money for professors, but you can get them for new buildings. So we cover the Earth with clutter. And so the Earth might feel as if we might feel if suddenly we got a disease which instead of leaving us soft-skinned, covered us with crystalline scabs, and this would be proliferating all over the place--a pox! Are we a pox on the planet? Don't be too sure that we're not. Consider simply this:

There is a good argument--keep in mind I'm saying these things to provoke you, to make you a little insane by being in doubt of all the assumptions which you think are firmly true. It is quite possible, you see, that the whole enterprise of man to control events on the Earth by his conscious intelligence, by his language, by his mathematics, and by his science is a disaster. We say look at his successes, look how much disease we have cured. Look how much hunger has been abolished. Look how we have raised the standard of living. Yeah. But in how long a time?

 

[ledmag]

Good Job Rebirth........well done

 

[Karmic]

The first thing to be understood is what ego is. A child is born. A child is born without any knowledge, any consciousness of his own self. And when a child is born the first thing he becomes aware of is not himself; the first thing he becomes aware of is the other. It is natural, because the eyes open outwards, the hands touch others, the ears listen to others, the tongue tastes food and the nose smells the outside. All these senses open outwards.

That is what birth means. Birth means coming into this world, the world of the outside. So when a child is born, he is born into this world. He opens his eyes, sees others. 'Other' means the thou. He becomes aware of the mother first. Then, by and by, he becomes aware of his own body. That too is the other, that too belongs to the world. He is hungry and he feels the body; his need is satisfied, he forgets the body.

This is how a child grows. First he becomes aware of you, thou, other, and then by and by, in contrast to you, thou, he becomes aware of himself.

This awareness is a reflected awareness. He is not aware of who he is. He is simply aware of the mother and what she thinks about him. If she smiles, if she appreciates the child, if she says, "You are beautiful," if she hugs and kisses him, the child feels good about himself. Now an ego is born.

Through appreciation, love, care, he feels he is good, he feels he is valuable, he feels he has some significance.

A center is born.

But this center is a reflected center. It is not his real being. He does not know who he is; he simply knows what others think about him. And this is the ego: the reflection, what others think. If nobody thinks that he is of any use, nobody appreciates him, nobody smiles, then too an ego is born: an ill ego; sad, rejected, like a wound; feeling inferior, worthless. This too is the ego. This too is a reflection.

First the mother - and mother means the world in the beginning. Then others will join the mother, and the world goes on growing. And the more the world grows, the more complex the ego becomes, because many others' opinions are reflected.

The ego is an accumulated phenomenon, a by-product of living with others. If a child lives totally alone, he will never come to grow an ego. But that is not going to help. He will remain like an animal. That doesn't mean that he will come to know the real self, no.

The real can be known only through the false, so the ego is a must. One has to pass through it. It is a discipline. The real can be known only through the illusion. You cannot know the truth directly. First you have to know that which is not true. First you have to encounter the untrue. Through that encounter you become capable of knowing the truth. If you know the false as the false, truth will dawn upon you.

Ego is a need; it is a social need, it is a social by-product. The society means all that is around you - not you, but all that is around you. All, minus you, is the society. And everybody reflects. You will go to school and the teacher will reflect who you are. You will be in friendship with other children and they will reflect who you are. By and by, everybody is adding to your ego, and everybody is trying to modify it in such a way that you don't become a problem to the society.

They are not concerned with you.

They are concerned with the society.

Society is concerned with itself, and that's how it should be.

They are not concerned that you should become a self-knower. They are concerned that you should become an efficient part in the mechanism of the society. You should fit into the pattern. So they are trying to give you an ego that fits with the society. They teach you morality. Morality means giving you an ego which will fit with the society. If you are immoral, you will always be a misfit somewhere or other. That's why we put criminals in the prisons - not that they have done something wrong, not that by putting them in the prisons we are going to improve them, no. They simply don't fit. They are troublemakers. They have certain types of egos of which the society doesn't approve. If the society approves, everything is good.

One man kills somebody - he is a murderer.

And the same man in wartime kills thousands - he becomes a great hero. The society is not bothered by a murder, but the murder should be commited for the society - then it is okay. The society doesn't bother about morality.

Morality means only that you should fit with the society.

If the society is at war, then the morality changes.

If the society is at peace, then there is a different morality.

Morality is a social politics. It is diplomacy. And each child has to be brought up in such a way that he fits into the society, that's all. Because society is interested in efficient members. Society is not interested that you should attain to self-knowledge.

The society creates an ego because the ego can be controlled and manipulated. The self can never be controlled or manipulated. Nobody has ever heard of the society controlling a self - not possible.

And the child needs a center; the child is completely unaware of his own center. The society gives him a center and the child is by and by convinced that this is his center, the ego that society gives.

A child comes back to his home - if he has come first in his class, the whole family is happy. You hug and kiss him, and you take the child on your shoulders and dance and you say, "What a beautiful child! You are a pride to us." You are giving him an ego, a subtle ego. And if the child comes home dejected, unsuccessful, a failure - he couldn't pass, or he has just been on the back bench - then nobody appreciates him and the child feels rejected. He will try harder next time, because the center feels shaken.

Ego is always shaken, always in search of food, that somebody should appreciate it. That's why you continuously ask for attention.

You get the idea of who you are from others.

It is not a direct experience.

It is from others that you get the idea of who you are. They shape your center. This center is false, because you carry your real center. That is nobody's business. Nobody shapes it.

You come with it.

You are born with it.

So you have two centers. One center you come with, which is given by existence itself. That is the self. And the other center, which is created by the society, is the ego. It is a false thing - and it is a very great trick. Through the ego the society is controlling you. You have to behave in a certain way, because only then does the society appreciate you. You have to walk in a certain way; you have to laugh in a certain way; you have to follow certain manners, a morality, a code. Only then will the society appreciate you, and if it doesn't, you ego will be shaken. And when the ego is shaken, you don't know where you are, who you are.

The others have given you the idea.

That idea is the ego.

Try to understand it as deeply as possible, because this has to be thrown. And unless you throw it you will never be able to attain to the self. Because you are addicted to the center, you cannot move, and you cannot look at the self.

And remember, there is going to be an interim period, an interval, when the ego will be shattered, when you will not know who you are, when you will not know where you are going, when all boundaries will melt.

You will simply be confused, a chaos.

Because of this chaos, you are afraid to lose the ego. But it has to be so. One has to pass through the chaos before one attains to the real center.

And if you are daring, the period will be small.

If you are afraid, and you again fall back to the ego, and you again start arranging it, then it can be very, very long; many lives can be wasted.

I have heard: One small child was visiting his grandparents. He was just four years old. In the night when the grandmother was putting him to sleep, he suddenly started crying and weeping and said, "I want to go home. I am afraid of darkness." But the grandmother said, "I know well that at home also you sleep in the dark; I have never seen a light on. So why are you afraid here?" The boy said, "Yes, that's right - but that is MY darkness." This darkness is completely unknown.

Even with darkness you feel, "This is MINE."

Outside - an unknown darkness.

With the ego you feel, "This is MY darkness."

It may be troublesome, maybe it creates many miseries, but still mine. Something to hold to, something to cling to, something underneath the feet; you are not in a vacuum, not in an emptiness. You may be miserable, but at least you ARE. Even being miserable gives you a feeling of 'I am'. Moving from it, fear takes over; you start feeling afraid of the unknown darkness and chaos - because society has managed to clear a small part of your being.

It is just like going to a forest. You make a little clearing, you clear a little ground; you make fencing, you make a small hut; you make a small garden, a lawn, and you are okay. Beyond your fence - the forest, the wild. Here everything is okay; you have planned everything. This is how it has happened.

Society has made a little clearing in your consciousness. It has cleaned just a little part completely, fenced it. Everything is okay there. That's what all your universities are doing. The whole culture and conditioning is just to clear a part so that you can feel at home there.

And then you become afraid.

Beyond the fence there is danger.

Beyond the fence you are, as within the fence you are - and your conscious mind is just one part, one-tenth of your whole being. Nine-tenths is waiting in the darkness. And in that nine-tenths, somewhere your real center is hidden.

One has to be daring, courageous.

One has to take a step into the unknown.

For a while all boundaries will be lost.

For a while you will feel dizzy.

For a while, you will feel very afraid and shaken, as if an earthquake has happened. But if you are courageous and you don't go backwards, if you don't fall back to the ego and you go on and on, there is a hidden center within you that you have been carrying for many lives.

That is your soul, the self.

Once you come near it, everything changes, everything settles again. But now this settling is not done by the society. Now everything becomes a cosmos, not a chaos; a new order arises.

But this is no longer the order of the society - it is the very order of existence itself.

It is what Buddha calls Dhamma, Lao Tzu calls Tao, Heraclitus calls Logos. It is not man-made. It is the VERY order of existence itself. Then everything is suddenly beautiful again, and for the first time really beautiful, because man-made things cannot be beautiful. At the most you can hide the ugliness of them, that's all. You can decorate them, but they can never be beautiful.

The difference is just like the difference between a real flower and a plastic or paper flower. The ego is a plastic flower - dead. It just looks like a flower, it is not a flower. You cannot really call it a flower. Even linguistically to call it a flower is wrong, because a flower is something which flowers. And this plastic thing is just a thing, not a flowering. It is dead. There is no life in it.

You have a flowering center within. That's why Hindus call it a lotus - it is a flowering. They call it the one-thousand-petaled-lotus. One thousand means infinite petals. And it goes on flowering, it never stops, it never dies.

But you are satisfied with a plastic ego.

There are some reasons why you are satisfied. With a dead thing, there are many conveniences. One is that a dead thing never dies. It cannot - it was never alive. So you can have plastic flowers, they are good in a way. They are permanent; they are not eternal, but they are permanent.

The real flower outside in the garden is eternal, but not permanent. And the eternal has its own way of being eternal. The way of the eternal is to be born again and again and to die. Through death it refreshes itself, rejuvenates itself.

To us it appears that the flower has died - it never dies.

It simply changes bodies, so it is ever fresh.

It leaves the old body, it enters a new body. It flowers somewhere else; it goes on flowering.

But we cannot see the continuity because the continuity is invisible. We see only one flower, another flower; we never see the continuity.

It is the same flower which flowered yesterday.

It is the same sun, but in a different garb.

The ego has a certain quality - it is dead. It is a plastic thing. And it is very easy to get it, because others give it. You need not seek it, there is no search involved. That's why unless you become a seeker after the unknown, you have not yet become an individual. You are just a part of the crowd. You are just a mob.

When you don't have a real center, how can you be an individual?

The ego is not individual. Ego is a social phenomenon - it is society, its not you. But it gives you a function in the society, a hierarchy in the society. And if you remain satisfied with it, you will miss the whole opportunity of finding the self.

And that's why you are so miserable.

With a plastic life, how can you be happy?

With a false life, how can you be ecstatic and blissful? And then this ego creates many miseries, millions of them.

You cannot see, because it is your own darkness. You are attuned to it.

Have you ever noticed that all types of miseries enter through the ego? It cannot make you blissful; it can only make you miserable.

Ego is hell.

Whenever you suffer, just try to watch and analyze, and you will find, somewhere the ego is the cause of it. And the ego goes on finding causes to suffer.

You are an egoist, as everyone is. Some are very gross, just on the surface, and they are not so difficult. Some are very subtle, deep down, and they are the real problems.

This ego comes continuously in conflict with others because every ego is so unconfident about itself. Is has to be - it is a false thing. When you don't have anything in your hand and you just think that something is there, then there will be a problem.

If somebody says, "There is nothing," immediately the fight will start, because you also feel that there is nothing. The other makes you aware of the fact.

Ego is false, it is nothing.

That you also know.

How can you miss knowing it? It is impossible! A conscious being - how can he miss knowing that this ego is just false? And then others say that there is nothing - and whenever the others say that there is nothing they hit a wound, they say a truth - and nothing hits like the truth.

You have to defend, because if you don't defend, if you don't become defensive, then where will you be?

You will be lost.

The identity will be broken.

So you have to defend and fight - that is the clash.

A man who attains to the self is never in any clash. Others may come and clash with him, but he is never in clash with anybody.

It happened that one Zen master was passing through a street. A man came running and hit him hard. The master fell down. Then he got up and started to walk in the same direction in which he was going before, not even looking back.

A disciple was with the master. He was simply shocked. He said, "Who is this man? What is this? If one lives in such a way, then anybody can come and kill you. And you have not even looked at that person, who he is, and why he did it."

The master said, "That is his problem, not mine."

You can clash with an enlightened man, but that is your problem, not his. And if you are hurt in that clash, that too is your own problem. He cannot hurt you. And it is like knocking against a wall - you will be hurt, but the wall has not hurt you.

The ego is always looking for some trouble. Why? Because if nobody pays attention to you, the ego feels hungry.

It lives on attention.

So even if somebody is fighting and angry with you, that too is good because at least the attention is paid. If somebody loves, it is okay. If somebody is not loving you, then even anger will be good. At least the attention will come to you. But if nobody is paying any attention to you, nobody thinks that you are somebody important, significant, then how will you feed your ego?

Other's attention is needed.

In millions of ways you attract the attention of others; you dress in a certain way, you try to look beautiful, you behave, you become very polite, you change. When you feel what type of situation is there, you immediately change so that people pay attention to you.

This is a deep begging.

A real beggar is one who asks for and demands attention. And a real emperor is one who lives in himself; he has a center of his own, he doesn't depend on anybody else.

Buddha sitting under his bodhi tree...if the whole world suddenly disappears, will it make any difference to Buddha? -none. It will not make any difference at all. If the whole world disappears, it will not make any difference because he has attained to the center.

But you, if the wife escapes, divorces you, goes to somebody else, you are completely shattered - because she had been paying attention to you, caring, loving, moving around you, helping you to feel that you were somebody. Your whole empire is lost, you are simply shattered. You start thinking about suicide. Why? Why, if a wife leaves you, should you commit suicide? Why, if a husband leaves you, should you commit suicide? Because you don't have any center of your own. The wife was giving you the center; the husband was giving you the center.

This is how people exist. This is how people become dependent on others. It is a deep slavery. Ego HAS to be a slave. It depends on others. And only a person who has no ego is for the first time a master; he is no longer a slave. Try to understand this.

And start looking for the ego - not in others, that is not your business, but in yourself. Whenever you feel miserable, immediately close you eyes and try to find out from where the misery is coming and you will always find it is the false center which has clashed with someone.

You expected something, and it didn't happen.

You expected something, and just the contrary happened - your ego is shaken, you are in misery. Just look, whenever you are miserable, try to find out why.

Causes are not outside you. The basic cause is within you - but you always look outside, you always ask:

Who is making me miserable?
Who is the cause of my anger?
Who is the cause of my anguish?
And if you look outside you will miss.
Just close the eyes and always look within.
The source of all misery, anger, anguish, is hidden in you, your ego.


And if you find the source, it will be easy to move beyond it. If you can see that it is your own ego that gives you trouble, you will prefer to drop it - because nobody can carry the source of misery if he understands it.

And remember, there is no need to drop the ego.

You cannot drop it.

If you try to drop it, you will attain to a certain subtle ego again which says, "I have become humble."

Don't try to be humble. That's again ego in hiding - but it's not dead.

Don't try to be humble.

Nobody can try humility, and nobody can create humility through any effort of his own - no. When the ego is no more, a humbleness comes to you. It is not a creation. It is a shadow of the real center.

And a really humble man is neither humble nor egoistic.

He is simply simple.

He's not even aware that he is humble.

If you are aware that you are humble, the ego is there.

Look at humble persons.... There are millions who think that they are very humble. They bow down very low, but watch them - they are the subtlest egoists. Now humility is their source of food. They say, "I am humble," and then they look at you and they wait for you to appreciate them.

"You are really humble," they would like you to say. "In fact, you are the most humble man in the world; nobody is as humble as you are." Then see the smile that comes on their faces.

What is ego? Ego is a hierarchy that says, "No one is like me." It can feed on humbleness - "Nobody is like me, I am the most humble man."

It happened once:

A fakir, a beggar, was praying in a mosque, just early in the morning when it was still dark. It was a certain religious day for Mohammedians, and he was praying, and he was saying, "I am nobody. I am the poorest of the poor, the greatest sinner of sinners."

Suddenly there was one more person who was praying. He was the emperor of that country, and he was not aware that there was somebody else there who was praying - it was dark, and the emperor was also saying:

"I am nobody. I am nothing. I am just empty, a beggar at our door." When he heard that somebody else was saying the same thing, he said, "Stop! Who is trying to overtake me? Who are you? How dare you say before the emperor that you are nobody when he is saying that he is nobody?"

This is how the ego goes. It is so subtle. Its ways are so subtle and cunning; you have to be very, very alert, only then will you see it. Don't try to be humble. Just try to see that all misery, all anguish comes through it.

Just watch! No need to drop it.

You cannot drop it. Who will drop it? Then the DROPPER will become the ego. It always comes back.

Whatsoever you do, stand out of it, and look and watch.

Whatsoever you do - humbleness, humility, simplicity - nothing will help. Only one thing is possible, and that is just to watch and see that it is the source of all misery. Don't say it. Don't repeat it - WATCH. Because if I say it is the source of all misery and you repeat it, then it is useless. YOU have to come to that understanding. Whenever you are miserable, just close the eyes and don't try to find some cause outside. Try to see from where this misery is coming.

It is your own ego.

If you continuously feel and understand, and the understanding that the ego is the cause becomes so deep-rooted, one day you will suddenly see that it has disappeared. Nobody drops it - nobody can drop it. You simply see; it has simply disappeared, because the very understanding that ego causes all misery becomes the dropping. THE VERY UNDERSTANDING IS THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE EGO.

And you are so clever in seeing the ego in others. Anybody can see someone else's ego. When it comes to your own, then the problem arises - because you don't know the territory, you have never traveled on it.

The whole path towards the divine, the ultimate, has to pass through this territory of the ego. The false has to be understood as false. The source of misery has to be understood as the source of misery - then it simply drops.

When you know it is poison, it drops. When you know it is fire, it drops. When you know this is the hell, it drops.

And then you never say, "I have dropped the ego." Then you simply laugh at the whole thing, the joke that you were the creator of all misery.

I was just looking at a few cartoons of Charlie Brown. In one cartoon he is playing with blocks, making a house out of children's blocks. He is sitting in the middle of the blocks building the walls. Then a moment comes when he is enclosed; all around he has made a wall. Then he cries, "Help, help!"

He has done the whole thing! Now he is enclosed, imprisoned. This is childish, but this is all that you have done also. You have made a house all around yourself, and now you are crying, "Help, help!" And the misery becomes a millionfold - because there are helpers who are also in the same boat.

It happened that one very beautiful woman went to see her psychiatrist for the first time. The psychiatrist said, "Come closer please." When she came closer, he simply jumped and hugged and kissed the woman. She was shocked. Then he said, "Now sit down. This takes care of my problem, now what is your problem?"

The problem becomes multifold, because there are helpers who are in the same boat. And they would like to help, because when you help somebody the ego feels very good, very, very good - because you are a great helper, a great guru, a master; you are helping so many people. The greater the crowd of your followers, the better you feel.

But you are in the same boat - you cannot help.

Rather, you will harm.

People who still have their own problems cannot be of much help. Only someone who has no problems of his own can help you. Only then is there the clarity to see, to see through you. A mind that has no problems of its own can see you, you become transparent.

A mind that has no problems of its own can see through itself; that's why it becomes capable of seeing through others.

In the West, there are many schools of psychoanalysis, many schools, and no help is reaching people, but rather, harm. Because the people who are helping others, or trying to help, or posing as helpers, are in the same boat.

...It is difficult to see one's own ego.

It is very easy to see other's egos. But that is not the point, you cannot help them.

Try to see your own ego.

Just watch it.

Don't be in a hurry to drop it, just watch it. The more you watch, the more capable you will become. Suddenly one day, you simply see that it has dropped. And when it drops by itself, only then does it drop. There is no other way. Prematurely you cannot drop it.

It drops just like a dead leaf.

The tree is not doing anything - just a breeze, a situation, and the dead leaf simply drops. The tree is not even aware that the dead leaf has dropped. It makes no noise, it makes no claim - nothing.

The dead leaf simply drops and shatters on the ground, just like that.

When you are mature through understanding, awareness, and you have felt totally that ego is the cause of all your misery, simply one day you see the dead leaf dropping.

It settles into the ground, dies of its own accord. You have not done anything so you cannot claim that you have dropped it. You see that it has simply disappeared, and then the real center arises.

And that real center is the soul, the self, the god, the truth, or whatsoever you want to call it.

It is nameless, so all names are good.

You can give it any name of your own liking.

 

[ledmag]

This trhead is getting good.

Well done chainsaw guy hahaha. Well done.

 

[Karmic]

chainsaw guy?

 

[Guerrilla]

It was in the 19th Century, when capitalism was developing and the first great struggles of the working class were taking place - and to be more precise it was within the First International (1861 - 1871) - that a social doctrine appeared called 'revolutionary socialism' (as opposed to reformist or statist legalist socialism). This was also known as 'anti-authoritarian socialism' or 'collectivism' and then later as 'anarchism', 'anarchist communism' or 'libertarian communism'.

This doctrine, or theory, appears as a reaction of the organised socialist workers. It is at all events linked to there being a progressively sharpening class struggle. It is an historical product which originates from certain conditions of history, from the development of class societies - and not through the idealist critique of a few specific thinkers.

The role of the founders of the doctrine, chiefly Bakunin, was to express the true aspirations of the masses, their reactions and their experiences, and not to artificially create a theory by relying on a purely ideal abstract analysis or on earlier theories. Bakunin - and with him James Guillaume, then Kropotkin, Reclus, J. Grave, Malatesta and so on - started out by looking at the situation of the workers associations and the peasant bodies, at how they organised and fought.

That anarchism originated in class struggles cannot be disputed.

How is it then that anarchism has very often been thought of as a philosophy, a morality or ethic independent of the class struggle, and so as a form of humanism detached from historical and social conditions?

We see several reasons for this. On the one hand, the first anarchist theoreticians sometimes sought to trust to the opinions of writers, economists and historians who had come before them (especially Proudhon, many of whose writings do undoubtedly express anarchist ideas).

The theoreticians who followed them have even sometimes found in writers like La Boetie, Spencer, Godwin, Stirner, etc. ideas which are analogous to anarchism - in the sense that they demonstrate an opposition to the forms of exploitative societies and to the principles of domination they discovered in them. But the theories of Godwin, Stirner, Tucker and the rest are simply observations on society - they don't take account of History and the forces which determine it, or of the objective conditions which pose the problem of Revolution.

On the other hand, in all societies based on exploitation and domination there have always been individual or collective acts of revolt, sometimes with a communist and federalist or truly democratic content. As a result, anarchism has sometimes been thought of as the expression of peoples' eternal struggle towards freedom and justice - a vague idea, insufficiently grounded in sociology or history, and one that tends to turn anarchism into a vague humanism based on abstract notions of 'humanity' and 'freedom'. Bourgeois historians of the working class movement are always ready to mix up anarchist communism with individualist and idealist theories, and are to a great extent responsible for the confusion. These are the ones who have attempted to bring together Stirner and Bakunin.

By forgetting the conditions of anarchism's birth, it has sometimes been reduced to a kind of ultraliberalism and lost its materialist, historical and revolutionary character.

But at any rate, even if revolts previous to the 19th Century and ideas of certain thinkers on the relations between individual people and human groups did prepare the way for anarchism, there was no anarchism and doctrine until Bakunin.

The works of Godwin for example express the existence of class society very well, even if they do so in an idealist and confused way. And the alienation of the individual by the group, the family, religion, the state, morality, etc. is certainly of a social nature, is certainly the expression of a society divided into castes or classes.

It can be said that attitudes, ideas and ways of acting of people we could call rebels, non-conformers, or anarchists in the vague sense of the term have always existed.

But the coherent formulation of an anarchist communist theory dates from the end of the 19th Century and is continued each day, perfecting itself and becoming more precise.

So anarchism could not be assimilated to a philosophy or to an abstract or individualist ethic.

It was born in and out of the social, and it had to wait for a given historic period and a given state of class antagonism for anarchist communist aspirations to show themselves clearly for the phenomenon or revolt to result in a coherent and complete revolutionary conception.

Since anarchism is not an abstract philosophy or ethic it cannot address itself to the abstract person, to the person in general. For anarchism there does not exist in our societies the human being full stop: there is the exploited person of the despoiled classes and there is the person of the privileged groups, of the dominant class. To speak to the person is to fall into the error or sophism of the liberals who speak to the 'citizen' without taking into account the economic and social conditions of the citizens. And to speak to the person in general while, neglecting the fact that there are classes and there is a class struggle, while satisfying oneself with hollow rhetorical statements on Freedom and Justice - in a general sense and with capital letters - is to allow all the bourgeois philosophers who appear to be liberals but are in fact conservatives or reactionaries to infiltrate anarchism, to pervert it into a vague humanitarianism, to emasculate the doctrine, the organisation and the militants. There was a time, and to be honest this is still the case in some countries within certain groups, when anarchism degenerated into the tear-shedding of absolute pacifism or of a kind of sentimental Christianity. It had to react to this and now anarchism is taking up the attack on the old world with something other than woolley thoughts.

It is to the robbed, the exploited, the proletariat, the worker and peasants that anarchism, as a social doctrine and revolutionary method, speaks - because only the exploited class, as a social force, can make the revolution.

Do we mean by this that the working class constitutes the messiah-class, that the exploited have a providential clear-sightedness, every good quality and no faults? That would be to fall into idolising the worker, into a new kind of metaphysics.

But the class that is exploited, alienated, conned and defrauded, the proletariat - taken in its broad sense and made up of both the working-class as properly defined (composed of manual workers who have a certain common psychology, a certain way of being and thinking) and other waged people such as clerical workers; or to put it another way the mass of individuals whose only function in production and in the political order is to carry out orders and so who are removed from control - this class alone can overthrow power and exploitation through its economic and social position. The producers alone can bring about workers control and what would the revolution be if it were not the transition to control by all the producers?

The proletarian class is therefore the revolutionary class above all, because the revolution it can bring about is a social and not just a political revolution - in setting itself free it frees all humanity; in breaking the power of the privileged class it abolishes classes.

Certainly nowadays there aren't precise boundaries between the classes. It is during various episodes of the class struggle that division occurs. There are not precise boundaries but there are two poles - proletariat and bourgeoisie (capitalists, bureaucrats etc.); the middle classes are split in periods of crisis and move towards one pole or the other; they are unable to provide a solution by themselves as they have neither the revolutionary characteristics of the proletariat, nor real control of contemporary society like the bourgeoisie as properly defined. In strikes for example you may see that one section of the technicians (especially those who are specialists, those in the research departments for example) rejoins the working class while another (technicians who fill higher staff positions and most people in supervisory roles) moves away from the working-class, at least for a time. Trade Union practice has always relied on trial-and-error, on pragmatism, unionising certain sectors and not others according to their role and occupation. In any case, it is occupation and attitude that distinguish a class more than salary.

So there is the proletariat. There is its most determined, most active part, the working class as properly defined. There is also something wider than the proletariat and which includes other social strata that must be won over to action: this is the mass of the people, which comprises small peasants, poor artisans and so on as well as the proletariat.

It's not a question of falling for some kind of proletarian mystique but of appreciating this specific fact: the proletariat, even though it is slow to seize awareness and despite its retreats and defeats, is ultimately the only real creator of Revolution.

Bakunin: 'Understand that since the proletarian, the manual worker, the common labourer, is the historic representative of the worlds last slave-system, their emancipation is everyones emancipation, their triumph the final triumph of humanity...'

Certainly it happens that people belonging to privileged social groups break with their class, and with its ideology and its advantages, and come to anarchism. Their contribution is considerable but in some sense these people become proletarians.

For Bakunin again, the socialist revolutionaries, that is the anarchists, speak to 'the working masses in both town and country, including all people of good will from the upper classes who, making a clean break with their past, would join them unreservedly and accept their programme in full.'

But for all that you can't say that anarchism speaks to the abstract person, to the person in general, without taking into account their social status.

To deprive anarchism of its class character would be to condemn it to formlessness, to an emptiness of content, so that it would become an inconsistent philosophical pastime, a curiosity for intelligent bourgeois, an object of sympathy for people longing to have an ideal, a subject for academic discussion.

So we conclude: Anarchism is not a philosophy of the individual or of the human being in a general sense.

Anarchism is if you like a philosophy or an ethic but in a very specific, very concrete sense. It is so by the desires it represents, by the goals that it gets: as Bakunin says - '(The proletarians) triumph is humanity's final triumph...'

Proletarian, class based in origin, it is only in its goals that it is universally human or, if you prefer, humanist.

It is a socialist doctrine, or to be more accurate the only true socialism or communism, the only theory and method capable of achieving a society without castes and classes, of bringing about freedom and equality.

Social anarchism or anarchist communism, or again libertarian communism, is a doctrine of social revolution which speaks to the proletariat whose desires it represents, whose true ideology it demonstrates - an ideology which the proletariat becomes aware of through its own experiences.

___________________
HAMMER SMASHED FACE

 

[ledmag]

Im printing this shit out. All of it.

Good job Guerrilla.

 

[ledmag]

Originally posted by Karmic
chainsaw guy?

Ok then, just Karmic hahahha

 

[Karmic]

call me what you want, rather "chainsaw guy" than some weird name that would come from Guerilla or rebirth or such....

 

[Karmic]

no offense

 

[ledmag]

I know man, i was playin with ya as well.

 

[famousamoswillkillyou]

AUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH!

MAKE IT STOP!

Goddamnit, Ledmag. I was scrolling for, like, 15 fucking minutes. The pain of it all. At first, I tried reading it... It's a good thing I gave up within the first paragraph...

 

[dreaming neon darkspot]

So everyone's just into posting the longest fucking articles they can find?Alright...

 

[famousamoswillkillyou]

If I weren't such a lazy ass, I'd post the Bible...