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— well, primal folks were often left in that liminal state. Having cleared their old selves from consideration, they lacked the spiritual or transpersonal insight or vision around which to build a newer better person. This might also have been due to the fact that Janov’s prescribed route of primal therapy eliminated, even ridiculed, transpersonal or spiritual experience. As I was saying above, it required my reconceptualization of Janov’s theory, as presented in my writing, for some to have the Primal framework that acknowledged their transpersonal experiences and supported them in going forward into them. What some of us, outside of Janov’s institute, discovered was that it was only when one accessed deeper experiences that were positive ... and it did require one to continue the process until those more positive experiences were accessed ... that one could have a basis for building a better life and making better decisions. Thus, this phase of the primal process amounted to “the second part of The Cure,” as I termed it.5 Keep in mind how this relates to the Veils. For as we peel away the overlying layers of obfuscation of truth, as we undo the blocking of Reality that the reducing-valve of the brain brings about, it is the early templates that provide better foundations for the choices one makes and the patterns of lifeway and life experience one can create. At any rate, along with these grids I proposed a revision to the… PROLOGUE: PRIMAL PSYCHOLOGY, FARTHER REACHES OF EXPERIENCE Page 34
3. THE FARTHER REACHES OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE Page 35 …primal therapy as advanced by Janov. Arthur Janov’s program involved only the experiencing of painful events from one’s past — the pain grids. Mine, however, included discovering and re-experiencing aspects of one’s life that were blissful and happy and workable — the joy grids. These were patterns and personal protocols, previously unimagined, which — once accessed and reclaimed — could be brought forward as workable alternatives to the client’s previous self-destructive and maladaptive strategies emanating out of the pain grids. As I like to quote, “The best way to combat evil is to make energetic progress in the good.” That advice from the I Ching, valuable enough in itself, can be applied to the primal process. As long as one was caught in the dynamic of old personality patterns — doing or not doing them, seen now as counterproductive, self-sabotaging or self- destructive, as anti-life, therefore “evil” as in the opposite of live — one made little progress. Yet when a template for what is truly “good” becomes available — is seen, understood, and is committed to ... in identification and “energetic progress” of it — one truly is lifted out of or past the old dynamic. Eventually the unhelpful patterns fade into insignificance for lack of interest in them.
THE SECRET LIFE OF STONES Page xvi …earlier perpetrated The Burning Times and the murder of nine million women at the stake. Not to be disregarded, flawed scientific understanding of consciousness and feeling awareness attributable to our youngest has resulted in modern high-tech obstetrical birthing procedures, which have brutalized neonates and laid a foundation of horror at the roots of modern personalities. This has had incalculable results, as we see for one thing only, in the random and thoughtless eruptions of violence in modern societies and the abilities of organized violence, by nations and terrorist groups, to perpetrate wars, genocides, and other atrocities. Only reluctantly and gradually are newborns not being brutalized, slapped, wrapped, and isolated — as “modern” practices have heretofore dictated — and humane birthing and infancy methods been implemented. The persistence of the notion that newborns are not conscious, supported as it was in the beginning by science, is hard dying. For its part, feeling awareness and memory in the prenate — established now beyond any question — fails to put to rest other archaic thinking such as mistaken speculations about a link between myelination and memory. So ideas about an unconscious existence for fetuses, convenient as they are in facilitating our nonchalance about nurturing our babies while still in their womb, simply refuse to die the death they are due.
DANCE OF THE SEVEN VEILS II Page xx …and Your Real Self ... Adult to Toddler, Veils One-Three. This time, I focus on the ways the crucial events and experiences of our lives, particularly those around birth, the prenatal and the perinatal, create our assumptions about life, reality, religion, myth, and truth, as well as how they undergird and feed our motivations and actions. Hence, its title, Dance of the Seven Veils II: Prenatal/Perinatal Psychology, Mythology, and Your Divine Self ... Infant to Prenate, Veils Four-Six. In doing so, layer by layer, Veil by Veil, I continue bringing greater, truer perceptions into view of everything beyond and open up wider avenues of choice and greater fulfillment in one’s life. I show in particular how our ideas about other people, our environment, our own unconscious or “within” — about what is important in life, relevant to oneself, and what warrants action and of what sort — are founded within the perinatal and prenatal experiences we experienced coming into the world. What to believe — as linked to religion, God, spirituality, mythology, good and evil, and much else — are rooted in the patterns of experiences we universally experience over the course of our lives, leading up to adulthood. Importantly, in this book, we look at the self-sabotaging we all do, at why we cannot seem to change those patterns, and, finally, what will allow us to finally be the person we know we can be but which somehow always eludes us.
PREFACE Page xii …commitments, careers, causes, service are most likely to return happiness? These are questions we all need to address in our youth, yet throughout our lives as well. They come out again specifically during mid-life, and particularly during the mid-life crisis. Identity The primary question of human existence is, “Who am I?” It is the starting place of philosophy as well as one’s identity. The question following that ... number two in priority in a human’s life, since we are act-ors as well as be-ings ... is, then, “Who to be?” We seem to have an inbred knowing that these two are connected: That what one does should be at least somewhat related to who one is. While throughout human history those are the fundamental concerns of life, they have been taken care of quite readily through the mechanism of culture. Culture is your society’s way of being in the world, its way of thinking, its way of making a pattern out of the infinite possibilities of Reality to provide guidance and orientation in life and in relationship to all around us. It plays into one’s identity ... who to be ... in a huge way.
PSYCHOLOGY OF APOCALYPSE Page 2 Ecopsychology Clearly combining the meanings of the words ecology and psychology, he asked us to question the sanity of a world that would bring humanity to the brink of destruction. Clearly, our ideas of humanity and normality were estranged from the natural world in which we lived. How else could we think to destroy our own nest? He did an overview of psychology and philosophy in Western culture and showed how none of them gave us a conceptualization of humanity within Nature. All showed humans as divorced and separate, often urban, as intellectuals tend to be. Yet this is what we call “normal.” This is what we call sane. This is what our psychologies and psychologists wish to help us “adjust” to. And this is all rather questionable in light of where it has led us. Roszak called for a psychology that would start with humans as rooted in Nature, belonging to Gaia, as it were. With all due modesty, this is that book. This work, and my other pertinent works, in particular Planetmates and Prodigal Human, indeed provide such a psychology. It is an ecopsychology where we see humans within the context of the natural world, as another planetmate within Nature.
[Chapter 6 text begins:] The Fifties Generation was bordered by the World War II Generation and the Sixties Generation, and it partook of qualities of both of those generations. Some conformed to and followed the WWII Generation mentality and some others, a lesser number, were radically individualistic free-thinkers and social experimenters; they would be forerunners to the generation succeeding them, the Sixties Generation. Enter the Beats This generation is exemplified by “the Beats” (beatniks); activists such as Jerry Rubin, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, and Abbie Hoffman; political figures, such as Bernie Sanders, Jerry Brown, and Joe Biden; and literary figures such as Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and Lucien Carr. These free-thinking sorts were cast alongside the pervasive conforming mindset of the Fifties, which was embraced by the great majority of that generation. Yet this dual nature of the Fifties Generation was an influential template in creating the stark division that we see in America as the Culture War, today. Interestingly, the supreme American standout from that generation — Elvis Presley — would come down nicely on both… 6. FIFTIES GENERATION, MARIJUANA, AND CAFFEINE Page 89
EXPERIENCE IS DIVINITY Page 56 Most men they don’t need it, White man he kills for it. They took to the seas, Searching for a land That they could call paradise, Stealing the breeze that carried them toward the sun. With lust in their eyes, They found a land, And said “We found paradise, Think of the Lord, and look at the prize we’ve won.” We know who they were, They were the ones who killed their brothers to steal from others. We know who they were, They were the ones whose sons and daughters are doing it still. . . . And in their hearts, What did they feel? Did they think they had the right to steal Another man’s land Who had no name Oh, they didn’t think he’d feel the pain. So they sailed away from their own country To another man’s land far across the sea. And they stole that land from the people there, And they called that land Australia. Why did he do it, white man. . . . They sailed away, one winter’s day, To a sunlit land that was far away, And they stole that land from the people there, And they called that land America. Why did he do it, white man. . . .
Birthing Into Everyday Life Whether these images are indicative of a healing crisis or are the opening of a Pandora’s box — that is to say, Earth rebirth or apocalypse — will be something for us to consider further on. Meanwhile, let us look at how these elements, not only show up in our collective media dreams, but fashion the very furniture of our everyday reality. MICHAEL ADZEMA Page 41, 42
Biological Foundations of Myths Paul Brenner (1991), a biologist and obstetrician, has presented at conferences and in workshops on the idea of the biological foundations of myth. For example, he relates basic biological, cellular events to biblical events described in Genesis. He also links male and female adult behavior to basic patterns of sperm and egg behavior and to events prior to and surrounding conception. He has said that male and female behavior are just sperm and egg activity grown up! Elizabeth Noble — Cellular Consciousness and Spirituality, Empirical Underpinnings Elizabeth Noble (1993) is an educator in the field of pregnancy and childbirth and is a student of Farrant’s. She published a comprehensive overview of this new field, titled Primal Connections, in which she does not hesitate to stress the issues of cellular consciousness and the spirituality that appears to coincide with the re-experience of these earliest events. She provides empirical and theoretical avenues for understanding how memory can occur at such early times. Some of these are consistent with mainstream physicalist… Your map of reality was drawn when you were but a cell. CELLS WITH A VIEW Page 71
This indicates that when one does not really deal with evil or unconscious materials and merely whacks away at its most visible (and indirect and symbolic) elements, if it, like the Hydra, does not sprout another head, then it is substituted for with an illusory and fantasy creation. This is a lot like the “positive” thinking one hears so many people espousing. They do not seem to know that in going to war with all their “negative” thoughts they are creating a fantasy world to live in, one that is built up of all the Pegasuses of thought that are born from going after only the most obvious aspects of darkness and evil as represented by thoughts (not feelings). The movie, Brazil, shows us other intriguing elements. The “hero” in these dreams is shown with wings of metal. Tellingly, while he flies like a bird, his garb is also metallic; he is protected completely by armor. Armor expresses the defensive quality of this “hero’s” quest. It is a substitute quest, divorced from reality, and keeping him from dealing with the real evils in his life and society and with the real shortcomings of his life and in his character and spiritual development. It is a rather good depiction of the Jungian approach I detailed above, where one, as if in some kind of Plato’s cave of reflected realities, struggles and contends with the reflected images of reality. And in doing so, one is doomed to failure. There is, in actuality, no carrying over of hocus pocus into any real world. Perpetual ritual act… FUNNY GOD Page 76
THE FOURTH DESCENT — FETAL MALNUTRITION Page 41 Blank Slate and Forgetting The upshot of all this is that humans, unlike all other species, experi- ence a forgetting, caused by trauma, at our very roots and even before birth. We forget our connection to the Universe, to Nature, and to the Divine. We forget our past lives, even. We are beginning to become that blank slate we will say afterwards that we were at our birth. However, at the time it is not experienced as a blank slate or nothingness, as we experience ourselves as riddled through with fear and negativity. We feel ourselves to be a victim of our surroundings and begin doing the opposite of what all other species and even our earliest ancestors did during their times in late gestation: We split off from our rootedness in the mother and we cast that unyielding surround of the womb and placenta — and the mother, by proxy — into “the enemy,” needing to be fought. We create a duality between us and Nature, us and other people ... and in terms of how this comes out later in rampant misogyny, between us and women, if we are male.
“This, in total disregard of the billions of generations of your species and others on this planet that set entire lives to making this home of ours the best that it could be. For even that whom you deem as mere creatures or animals, all have had a part in that Divine Perfection and a mission of some small or large part in sustaining and maintaining it. We did this all without your forcing us to or controlling us. “But with these tendencies of your kind to be uncaring of everything except your getting relief from your fears, and in so doing, we hear that a mass extinction of nearly half of the species on this planet, in the next few decades the way I understand it, is what we are to expect, and it, of course, has already begun and is picking up momentum even as I speak. “Those of you who know this, even those who are trying to awaken others to it, and doing something to educate others about what is causing it.... Well, heck, how can your species be so utterly vain and self-centered and stupid as to not see ... and if it is seen, why is it not said then ... to not comprehend… PLANETMATES: THE GREAT REVEAL Page 18
These factors in the third trimester, including placental insuffi- ciency, extreme compression, and hypoxia (low oxygen) — which is a consequence of both the insufficiency and the compression — create a set of peculiarly human experiences prenatally, which I term the prenatal matrices of human evil, the PMEs. Such events perinatally comprise our distinction from the rest of Nature. They are what makes humans to be humans. And the simmering suffocation from this time in the womb is one of them. Additionally, this seemingly endless time is characterized by that crowdedness I mentioned. This compression and frustrating inability to move freely causes the no-exit feelings that Grof describes as characterizing BPM II. My difference from him is in showing how this important and pervasive feeling of adults, which creates claustrophobia and panicky feelings of stuckness and being trapped, is not merely a product of a relatively short period of time just before birth and prior to the opening of the cervix. Indeed, the preeminence in human personality of feelings of frustrating inability to move and hellacious entrapment is a result of the fact that this was an experience, prenatally, going on for up to three months before birth. PROLOGUE: PRIMAL PSYCHOLOGY, FARTHER REACHES OF EXPERIENCE Page 60
2. DESTROYING WORLDS Page 17 However, remember that experiment with the particle and wave, where what we look for ends up being what we see. Ponder that and its implications. Now, think again for a minute, and you will realize that when science uncovers discrepancies or anomalies, incongruent with their abiding theories, the most they will acknowledge is that their concepts of the elements of the Cosmos are open to reinterpretation and re- inclusion in some other, some grander scheme which, they assume, at some point will validate them in some way they do not see right now. Nowhere do scientists concede their galaxies, black holes, atoms, matter, space, Big Bang, et al, are realities relative only to humans, for all we know. Or, for that matter, that they might not be existing outside of human perception. When it comes to that tree in the forest, there is never any question about it making a sound for scientists. It just does. Indeed, these are the assumptions scientists all make; except, that is, for a few remarkable ones like Einstein, whose vast perspective on it all led him to conclude there is a spiritual reality for it all beyond and outside of what science can know. Or Roger Jones, the author of Physics as Metaphor (1982) who pulled the blinds to the side on the ultimately empty and insubstantial nature of the concepts assumed in science, specifically its most substantial one, physics.
Humans are the ones who suffer. Homo sapiens is the traumatized species ... the one with birth pain and fetal malnutrition. Thus, it is the neurotic one. Are you beginning to see how we might be the deluded one? The suicidal one, even? Yes, we are different. We are different; and what we find out is how that difference is what creates all our “advances” of “civilization” ... but also is resulting in an ecocidal, humanicidal plunge at the moment that will end all life on this planet within decades. In Wounded Deer and Centaurs (2016), I went deeply into the specific experiences that commonly occur in the late stages of gestation. I showed how they have created the “matrix of human events.” I made clear just exactly why we have engaged in holocausts; wars; witch burnings; bigotry; greed and the creation of a dominant, moneyed elite; and environmental destruction. This perspective and these findings of that work, continued here in this one, I believe are the missing element and the key to understanding the ills of the world and the human condition and to finally doing something about them. VEIL FOUR. PERINATAL SHOCK ... BIRTH TRAUMA Page 6
THE DESCENTS OF MAN Page 11 …up magnified that constriction of blood vessels. By contrast, the fetuses of our four-legged primate cousins hang loosely below the mother, not impeding the blood flow. Because of this reduction in the supply of nutrients to the fetus, the arc of growth, at the end of gestation, flattens out and does not catch up and begin retracing the curve established earlier in gestation until after birth. In the accompanying graph, the solid line represents our actual arc of growth, both before and after birth, and is contrasted with the dotted line indicating what a gradual and not impeded growth would be. You can see the discrepancy, or inhibited growth, beginning at around thirty-two weeks and not catching up until about twenty weeks after birth. The space between the two lines is attributed to fetal malnutrition. Thus, the prenate’s growth, measured by its weight, as well as body length, slows significantly beginning in the third trimester and especially during the last four weeks of gestation and resumes its spurt only when it is no longer in the womb. By comparison, our ape relatives, not to mention other planetmates, do not have that prenatal arrest of development.
MICHAEL ADZEMA Page 30 Unfortunately, they are taking ALL the rest of us, planetmates, indeed everything alive on this planet, down with them. Many of our fellow planetmates, in light of this, are questioning our compassion for their sorry half-born asses and our tolerance over the past twenty-five millennia. You don’t believe our planetmates? Natch. Didn’t expect you to — sprung on you like that. But if what the planetmates say just for a moment pisses you off enough to say “NO, We are not stupid ape! We are rational!” Then you cannot be consistent without using some of that, ahem, ahem, so-called “reason.” For before you can say NO to Apocalypse you have to let yourself KNOW Apocalypse. Now, how many of you have the cajonies or ovaries for that?! David Bowie sang, “We could be heroes ... just for one day.” Wow, that just occurred to me. It also occurred to me that being heroes just for one day never made any sense to me until just about, oh, like two seconds ago Well, I’m no hero. I just fucking care.
FALLS FROM GRACE Page 12 Otto Rank Psychoanalysis, Birth Trauma, Foundations of Personality and Some Myth, Separation Anxiety Other early psychoanalysts disagreed with Freud on this. Otto Rank is the most notable of these. Following Freud’s basic psychoanalytic reasoning for personality patterns in early infancy, he asserted basic patterns of experience and ideas that are rooted in even earlier experience. Rank (1929) claimed the deepest, most fundamental patterns of these personality constructs originated at the time of birth, which Freud thought was not possible. Based upon the dream, fantasy, and other patterns of associations arising in his patients in psychoanalysis, Rank postulated a birth trauma, which he saw as a critical event in laying down in each of us particular patterns of thinking, motivation, and emotion for the rest of our lives. Notable among these prototypes was a feeling of a paradise once known but somehow lost, a separation anxiety caused by the separation at birth, and a resulting futile and lifelong struggle to re-unite with that golden age and that early beloved because of a desire to return to the womb.
TRANSCENDING WORLDS Page 27 …minute and attempt to view all other species as simply other problem-solving beings who, as measured by their success, were employing either better or worse paradigms (that is to say, including more or less experiential “facts”), we might say that this is one way of appreciating the force behind continual evolution for all species. So science has a claim to validity in relation to our species’s biological survivability. But as emphasized earlier it has no claim in relation to anything other than that. Its truth is but a limited one. Its truth is relative to a biological context, a specific one, that of Homo sapiens. A Challenge to Know More Indeed, this fact of limitation needs to be emphasized more heartily in science today. Anthropological thinking has created a legacy where we have been made fully aware of the relativity of culture and the limitations of culturally constituted facts — those “institutional facts” referred to earlier. It seems an equal and parallel effort is warranted — from the ranks of ecosophists, consciousness researchers, tranpersonalists, and others in the know — to point out the limitations and relativity of our species’s biologically constituted facts — those (not so) “brute facts” of Anscombe and D’Andrade.
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