“It is you who are the real barbarians in Nature — actual abominations of Nature. It is you who are actually out-of-control, wild … and yes, bestial and animalistic … in ways we planetmates could never be.”

The Planetmates tell us about the Abominable Human … children as tools and as immortality projects: “You turned childhood into a nightmare…. The dragon of myth is you”:

“…seeing your children as things, and soulless, and as “wild” — after your fall into sedentary-hierarchical ways — you would seek, under the guise of child-“raising” or “rearing,” but also, we see, of “morality,” to make of them things of utility to serve you. You would, essentially, fashion tools of them. You pride yourselves as humans as being above Nature in your tool use; you say that fashioning tools is one of the things that makes you human. From this perspective, however, perhaps now you can see the roots of that urge to fashion tools, for tools magnify your power in controlling things. They expand your abilities to act upon and rearrange Nature and its ways. Just like your “technologies” and your rituals and recipes for bringing Nature and the Divine to heel, as mentioned above, human tool use is a manifestation of your controlling obsession. And children got swept up into that singular mania.

“So, just as you brutalized Nature, to extract from it what you wanted, and controlled it along ways to suit your ends, you did your “wild” children. But in fearful focus on the end-products of your efforts and the achievements to be wrought, you do not see the violence and torture you perpetrate on your own children. Even less do you see the way you wield that kind of barbarism on planetmates and all of the world outside your egos. 

 

For you use ruthless, unnatural methods of control and “fashioning” which planetmates could never imagine until your kind came along and to this day would never employ themselves. You seek to turn everything into a product of direct consumption or into a “tool” to aid your greedy over-accumulation … now or in the future. All your activities are directed toward those ends, including your family and community lives. 

With these ends of consumption or utility in mind, you provide the necessities of survival for your young and for your captive planetmates. Almost always it is the bare minimum which is given, for any more would cut into the return on investment you anticipate of them, along with, of course, it would be an extra bother on top of your already overworked sedentary self. 

 “Additionally, you train and mold them and us to be of use in your acquisitive aims. You physically constrain your planetmates and force them to fit in with your designs. Your captive planetmates also are trained, molded … oftentimes whipped and beaten … sometimes even tortured … to become the kind of things that you would see as useful. Not much differently, you invest much time teaching and beating these younger things — your children — into the kind of older things you need or can use. 

“Only recently have some of you even coined a term of child abuse. Whereas for most all children of the entirety of post-agrarian human history such a thing was not conceivable. Everything from physical constraint to violence and torture were seen as not just necessary, but prudent and laudable. These “parenting” practices were not simply economically justified, but your cultures managed to morally exalt them. You spanked and said it hurt you more than them. Seeing in them the devil of abomination that was in you, you told yourself and each other it was your “duty” to beat it out of them. We’ve already mentioned your pronouncement that the child would grow up “spoiled” — that is, like you, be selfish and demanding — if she or he was not forcefully and regularly beaten or caned. 

“Compared to the methods of child abuse and torture you devised to beat your children into tools, which came with sedentary ways and its work demands, your earlier infanticide and abandonment are seen as blessings for the child. In truth, you are only now awakening from a long dark reign of child abuse, which was the norm for parenting over the last ten or so thousand years for much of your species. So, childhood, just like birth and infancy, you turned into a nightmare. 

“For you, everything in Nature, including each other, is something to be either consumed/used immediately or to be invested in and nurtured for future consumption and/or use. You laud yourselves as compassionate in “training” and “teaching” your young and planetmates. Yet, sure enough, we watch you raise your dependent children, your vulnerable half-borns, using ways that often involve violence, torture, and many kinds of things Earth Citizens would never imagine doing to our young … not even to each other!

“It is you who are the real barbarians in Nature — actual abominations of Nature. It is you who are actually out-of-control, wild … and yes, bestial and animalistic … in ways we planetmates could never be. The wild beasts, dragons, ogres, and abominable snowman of Nature and legend are you. You are the Abominable Human. The dragon that, in myth, must have to it sacrificed virgins and children to keep the town from being destroyed is you. For you feel your economic survival, your sedentary ways — your “civilization” (the village) — depend upon sacrificing the soul of the child, exactly as Abraham sacrificed the ram — Isaac’s soul or “animal” nature — instead of the actual physical child. 

“So in your self-congratulation of your parenting and your denial of your ruthlessness, you hide your true agendas from even yourselves. Planetmates’ purpose for you is to amplify your ego in any way they can be used to, but the same is true for your children. 

“Indeed, ultimately the purpose of children to you is as palliative for your fear of death. Your grandiosity would have you continue the existence of your ego forever. To that end, children are invested in as immortality projects. They are only useful or desired to the extent they embody you. 

“It is for that reason, that of your blown-up fear of uncertainty and death … ultimately rooted in your birth trauma … that you deprive both children and planetmates of independent life by seeking to turn them into extensions or copies of yourself.

“This desire to control and fashion everything outside of yourselves — including your children — in order ultimately to flee the thought of death represents an abomination in Nature. 

“As you will see, no other planetmate has such a magnified fear of death….”

 [Pt 3 of 29th Prasad — Tool Use. More coming….

To see the entire book, to which this will be added eventually (book is two-thirds updated), go to  http://mladzema.wordpress.com/the-great-reveal-book-6/ …

Planetmates: The Great Reveal – Michael’s latest book — is now available in print and e-book format.  at https://www.createspace.com/4691119

and at Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Planetmates-Great-Reveal-Return-Grace/dp/1496083326/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1399084684&sr=1-1&keywords=michael+adzema 

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Your Map of Reality Was Written in the Womb: Falls from Grace, Chapter One — Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and the Phenomenon of Re-Experience

Everything You “Know” About Life You Learned as a Fetus: Foundations of Myth and Mind and my Personal Involvement with This Research into Our Actual “Human Nature”

Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and the Phenomenon of Re-Experience

Prenatal and perinatal psychology is the field that deals with the effects of events occurring prior to (prenatal) and surrounding (perinatal) the time of birth upon later life and personality. An ever increasing amount though certainly not all of the information we have about these periods of our lives and their effects is derived through the later and vivid remembering of these events in a phenomenon known as re-experience. Correspondingly, the two most frequently asked questions about this relatively new field, put by those initially encountering it, are those concerning the specific meanings of the terms perinatal and re-experience.

At the outset, I wish to present an explanation of these two terms and of my unique personal relation to this topic as well as some of my background in exploring it. I will follow this with an historical overview of the field of prenatal and perinatal psychology, which will reveal the key concepts and understandings employed throughout this book.

Re-Experience and Reliving

For over forty years, beginning in 1972 when I was a senior undergraduate in college, I have been involved both personally and professionally in a comprehensive investigation into the phenomenon of re-experience. Also called reliving, this phenomenon is reported to consist of a full somato-cognitive remembering of previous events in a person’s life. Reliving involves experiential but also observable and measurable components, such as brain wave changes, characteristic physiological and neurological changes, and typical observable body movements.

This phenomenon can occur, to varying degrees, in many consciousness-altering modalities—including hypnosis, LSD psychotherapy, primal therapy, rebirthing, and holotropic breathwork; to a considerable degree in re-evaluation co-counseling and treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder; and, occasionally and spontaneously, even in mainstream forms of psychotherapy, counseling, and “growth seminars.”

Re-experience is a more vivid and more completely somatic catharsis than what has been described in psychotherapy in terms of abreaction. It is in such contrast to normal abreaction that when these seemingly bizarre yet healing events have spontaneously erupted in traditional or mainstream Western contexts they have usually been mistakenly labeled psychotic, been intervened upon, and then aborted—via drugs and other highly coercive measures—by the attending therapeutic authorities.

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However, with an increasing appreciation for their therapeutic value, these events are gradually becoming understood and accepted in therapeutic contexts and thus allowed to complete themselves and to instruct the participants and observers in their meanings. Therefore, they appear to represent something new in our culture in terms of both a way of approaching knowledge and in terms of the kinds of information that are discovered (Grof 1976, 1985; Hannig 1982; Janov 1971; Lake 1966/1986; Noble, 1993; Stettbacher, 1992).

My Relationship to the Phenomenon of Re-Experience

My interest in the phenomenon of reliving began forty-four years ago at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. As an undergraduate there I was most inspired by a course in religious studies titled “Religious and Psychological Approaches To Self-Understanding.” I was so inspired by the course that I constructed my major around its topic and initially even used the same title for my program’s name. This major in “self-understanding” would lead me, in a few years, to a profound interest in and exploration of primal therapy, as presented by Arthur Janov (1970) in his much-publicized book, The Primal Scream: Primal Therapy: The Cure for Neurosis.

By 1972, I had completed all but the one final semester for a B.A. That semester was to include the cumulative project—required of such a Special Studies (individually structured) major. However, since my project would focus on primal therapy and one of primal therapy’s basic premises is that knowledge cannot really be known except through experience, I could not in good conscience turn in a project describing primal therapy without first experiencing it. Consequently I withdrew from college, for what was supposed to be only a semester, with the intention of “going through” primal therapy and then returning to school to write my cumulative project on it. In those days, the entire process of primal therapy was reputed to take only three to six months.

But a lot was unknown about that modality in those early days. As it turned out, I would not return to school to complete that final project until 1978—at which point I had five years’ experience of primal therapy behind me and was living in Denver, Colorado.

In addition to these experiences, I have amassed a broad array of other experience and training over the years that have contributed to my understanding of re-experience and of this field in general. Besides my two decades and more of primal therapy … both formally and in “the buddy system” … I have received training as a primal therapist. I am also a trained rebirther, having explored that modality since 1986. I have been experientially exploring the modality of holotropic breathwork since 1987 and did training with Stanislav and Christina Grof in that technique.

Finally, I have been facilitating people in their journeys into deep inner primal and holotropic states since 1975. I’ve given individual sessions in all three modalities of primal therapy, rebirthing, and holotropic breathwork. And with my wife, Mary Lynn Adzema, I conducted three day workshops in something we called primal breathwork. I’ve conducted two-day group workshops in this modality at conferences, which were attended by as many as sixty experiencers at a time.

Thus, I have experience in my own process in these modalities; but in addition I have facilitated for others on many occasions, and at times, it was my main profession—though most of my life I have spent in writing, teaching, and research.

Pre- and Perinatal Re-Experience

Re-experience of birth and of the events immediately prior to and after birth are termed perinatal—from the Greek, literally “surrounding birth.” It has been widely described at this point by a number of authors but is most closely associated with the work of Stanislav Grof, Arthur Janov, and Frank Lake.

However, one significant and as yet little explored or understood phenomenon, arising also from the modalities mentioned, is that of prenatal re-experience. In this case, the experiencer reports … and observationally appears to be … experiencing events that happened en utero, sometimes going back as far as sperm, egg, and zygote states (Buchheimer 1987; Farrant 1987; Grof 1976, 1985; Hannig 1982; Janov 1983; Lake 1981, 1982; Larimore 1990a, 1990b; Larimore & Farrant, 1995).

These reports of remembering experiences that occurred before birth are at such variance with Western professional and popular paradigms that they are met with near-universal incredulity and, too often, premature dismissal. Yet the evidence from the mounting numbers of experiential reports and empirical studies attests that something which is at least unique and interesting is going on here.

Nevertheless, much of this prenatal information is thus far unformulated, untheorized, and unintegrated into a coherent structure for making sense of these experiences. This book will go a long way toward doing just that—making sense of prenatal experiences and exploring the implications and prospects of the knowledge gleaned from this fascinating new area of research and which arises from the vision that an exposure to this material induces.

The present work represents an attempt to bring this new information concerning our origins and our earliest experiences into such a coherent structure. After the initial overview of the field to be presented in this chapter, I deepen that review of the current understanding and findings in this area in making a case, in Chapter Two, for the legitimacy of prenatal spirituality.

First, let us take a closer look at what we know about the time before and around birth and what it means for us throughout our lives.

Overview of the Pre- and Perinatal Psychology Field—Early Theorists: Psychoanalysis and Birth

Sigmund Freud — Birth as Prototype for All Anxiety

While Freud (1927) disregarded major effects of birth on personality, he still saw the birth experience as the prototype of all later anxiety. His overall disregard of birth, however, was largely influenced by the belief—although discredited (see Chamberlain, 1988), still common in mainstream psychology and medicine today—that a newborn does not possess the neurological capacity for consciousness at birth.

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.

Nandor Fodor — Dreamwork, Birth and Prenatal Processing and Relivings, Prenatal Origins of Consciousness and Trauma

Also a psychoanalyst, Nandor Fodor (1949) focused on the reflections of birth and prenatal material in dreams. He also designed interventions in therapy to release the negative effects of birth and to process prenatal memories. He was the first to mention actual relivings of birth, in which veridical memories were recovered. He agreed with Rank on many points, but he stressed the origins of consciousness and of trauma being in the prenatal period.

Donald W. Winnicott — First Primal Therapist? Birth Relivings, Importance of Birth—Negative Imprints but Positive Effects, Too

Another psychoanalyst, and pediatrician as well, Winnicott (1958) also held that birth is remembered and is important. He insisted that the birth trauma is real, but he disagreed with Rank and Fodor that it is always traumatic. He suggested that a normal, nontraumatic, birth has many positive benefits, particularly for ego development. Still, he contended that traumatic birth is permanently etched in memory and leaves a lifetime psychological scar. Winnicott (1958) also suggested the possibility of prenatal trauma.

He has been called the first primal therapist in that he described the first birth primals—actual observable relivings of birth—spontaneously occurring by some of his patients during their sessions with him. Thus he was beginning the trend beyond mere talking association or dream analysis as ways of accessing and integrating this material.

Overview of the Pre- and Perinatal Psychology Field — Later Research and Theorists: Hypnosis, Primal Therapy, and Birth

David Cheek and Leslie LeCron — Hypnosis, Birth Memories and Imprints on Personality and Relation to Psychiatric Disorders

Cheek and LeCron (1968) used hypnosis to retrieve early memories in their patients. They discovered that memories earlier than what they expected, going back to birth, were possible. Importantly, a relief of symptoms seemed to follow from the re-experience of these birth memories. They came to the conclusion that a birth imprint occurs, which is induced by the extreme stress of that time and is resistant to fading from later experience. Further they asserted that this imprint could be the cause of a wide spectrum of psychiatric and psychosomatic disorders.

Leslie Feher — Psychoanalysis, Birth, Cutting of Umbilical Cord, Separation Trauma

Leslie Feher (1980) sought to extend the Freudian tradition farther back into areas that, she asserts, were until only recently unknowable. Thus, she describes a natal theory and therapy that includes experiences of cutting the umbilical cord, birth, and even prebirth. In fact, she considers the cutting of the umbilical cord to be central in her theory of trauma, calling it the “crisis umbilicus,” and echoes Fodor in claiming that it is the true origin of the castration fears made so much of in psychoanalysis. This is so because, according to Feher, the cord and placenta is an object of security and is considered by the fetus to be part of him- or herself. Thus, this cutting represents a supreme threat in being a separation from a total life support system, a major organ, a part of oneself. In these ways, she also brings forward for renewed appreciation Rank’s speculations on the element of separation trauma as a crucial element of the birth trauma.

Arthur Janov — Primal Therapy, Traumas of Birth and Early Life and Healing Them, Empirical Foundations and Neurophysiology of Early Events and Healing

Perhaps the major theorist and popularizer of the phenomenon of re-experience (which he termed primaling), Janov was reluctant to acknowledge the pervasiveness of pre- and perinatal re-experience and trauma. Yet when he did, it was in a major work on birth trauma, which remains as a touchstone in the field in its depth and detail. Imprints: The Lifelong Effects of the Birth Experience, published in 1983, among other things places birth as the determining factor in creating basic personality constructs, called sympathetic and parasympathetic, which roughly coincide with the more common terms introversion and extroversion.

This work is more empirical and neurophysiologically rooted than most in the field. While the book is recognized in the field, Janov and his work have not gotten anywhere near the respect and attention that they deserve. He remains the unfortunate kicking-boy of a movement that is itself scapegoated by the academy and the larger scientific community.

Thomas Verny — Primal Therapy, Birth, Especially Womb Life and Relation to Personality … Prenatal Mother-Infant Bonding

The actual stimulus for a new field of pre- and perinatal psychology and the Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health—APPPAH was Thomas Verny’s (1981) The Secret Life of the Unborn Child. His work brought together a good deal of the new empirical research that had opened the doors to us on the events in the womb. While himself a practitioner of “holistic primal therapy,” he integrated the accumulating data from the phenomenon of re-experience with the new information from the more traditional, “objective,” scientific research into the prenatal—made possible by the latest advances in technology.

One of his conclusions from this combination of lines of inquiry was that “birth and prenatal experiences form the foundations of human personality” (1981, p. 118). His other conclusions center around the importance of intrauterine bonding in that his research strongly suggests that the prenate, via pathways hormonal and unknown, picks up on the thoughts, feelings, and attitudes of the mother. More importantly, he asserted, the imprint of these factors on the fetus predetermines the later mother-child relationship. He emphasized that positive thoughts and feelings toward the fetus—”maternal love”—acts to cushion the new individual against the normal stresses and unavoidable harshness inherent in birth and early infancy. Yet all of this cannot be completely avoided. “Birth is like death to the newborn,” writes Verny (1984, p. 48).

David Chamberlain — Hypnosis, Confirmed Validity of Birth Memories

David Chamberlain (1988), for many years the president of APPPAH (the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health), has further substantiated the claim of consciousness at birth and the accuracy of pre- and perinatal memory in the phenomenon of re-experience. He reported one study he did in which he compared hypnotically retrieved memories of birth from mother and child and found an astonishing degree of conformity in their responses. Of note was the degree of inner consistency and originality in these memories as reported by the former neonate. They often contained technical details of the delivery and labor unlike what would be expected of the medically unsophisticated, a perceptive critique of the way the birth was handled, and other details of the event that could not have been known through normal conscious channels.

Overview of the Pre- and Perinatal Psychology Field — Later Theorists: Societal Implications, Psychohistory, Birth and Prenatal

Lloyd deMause — Psychohistory, Prenatal and Poisonous Placenta, Sociohistorical Implications of Gestational and Birth Events

Lloyd deMause (1982, 1987) was instrumental in establishing the new interdisciplinary field of psychohistory. In his study of historical happenings he discovered that stages in the progression of events related to stages in the progression of gestation and birth … which stages happened to correspond, by the way, remarkably well with Stanislav Grof‘s four stages of birth, his Basic Perinatal Matrices.

He found that natal imagery especially predominates in societies during times of crisis and war, when national purpose and state of affairs are construed as a need to escape or break free from an enclosing and constricting force. He also noted the suffering fetus and the poisonous placenta as sources of these later metaphors and imagery. In fact, in studying the imagery in the national media of various countries he has been able to predict political, social, and economic events such as wars and invasions, recessions, and political downfalls.

His work begins to look at the prenatal influences and imprints and how they related to macrocosmic issues of politics, history, social movements, and issues of war and peace.

Later Theorists — Dream Analysis

Francis Mott — Conception and Gestational Basis of Myth, Archetype, all Patterns of Macrocosmic and Microcosmic Realities and the Nature of Reality, Devolutional Model of Development

Francis Mott’s work is less well known even by this field’s standards, yet it is undeniably impressive. Mott’s (1960, 1964) major contribution lies in his focusing on basic patterns of mind and cosmos that correlate with prenatal feelings and states. He traced consciousness back to events around conception and saw these events as instituting patterns affecting all later experience and conceptual constructions. Through dream analysis he elicited these “configurations,” and he demonstrated their manifestation as seemingly universal archetypes in myths and universal human assumptions about the nature of reality.

In fact, through his study of womb and conception patterns he claimed to have discovered patterns that underlie and unite all of reality at all levels of manifestation—astronomical, social, personal, cellular, and even nuclear. While this may seem rather grandiose, his work was highly regarded and admired by Carl Jung.

Mott also carried forward the intimations of earlier prenatal theoreticians, notably Rank and Fodor, on the gestational basis of archetypes. While he does not address or seek to discredit the range of, supposedly genetic, archetypes postulated by Jung, his work is highly suggestive of an experiential, specifically, pre- and perinatal, as opposed to genetic basis for many of these.

Denial and Incest Taboo

Mott (1960) also helped us to understand why if these prenatal memories are possible they are not more prevalent by suggesting denial is necessary in order to protect against incestuous feelings that might arise around feelings remembered from being inside one’s mother.

Devolutional Model of Consciousness Development

Finally, he made the postulation—hugely relevant to the theme of this work—that our original expanded capacity to feel is diminished, as he says, “divided,” by experience not increased by it. The idea is that there is a reduction in awareness as a result of early traumatic events, beginning around conception and then on, and not the buildup of consciousness and feeling that we assume from the mechanistic paradigm that sees consciousness as a byproduct of increasing physical, specifically brain, activity during our early years. (See, for example, The Doors of Perception: Each of Us Is Potentially Mind At Large… When Perception Is Cleansed, All Kinds of Nonordinary Things Happen and Occupy Science … A Call for a Scientific Awakening: In Tossing Away Our Species Blinders, We Approach a Truth Far Beyond Science.)

Later Theorists — Breathwork

Stanislav Grof — Breathwork, LSD, Birth and Prenatal, Myth and Archetype, Spiritual and Consciousness

A pioneer in this prenatal area is Stanislav Grof (1976, 1980, 1985, 1990, to name a few). His many works, providing a framework for conceptualizing perinatal and transpersonal experiences, are a profound and useful starting point for an investigation into this area.

In his use of LSD beginning in 1956 for psychotherapy, called psycholytic therapy, he discovered four levels of experience of the unconscious: the sensory, the biographical, the perinatal, and the transpersonal. He noted a tendency for growth and healing to occur in a progressive way through these levels. The sensory band is the level of expanded sensory awareness and is usually initially encountered by participants. The biographical band is the realm of the personal unconscious wherein unintegrated and traumatic memories and material from childhood and one’s personal history are retrieved, often relived, and integrated. The perinatal level of experience usually follows after dealing with the biographical material and involves the remembering, re-experiencing, and integrating of material that is related to the time prior to and surrounding birth. The transpersonal band, the level of spiritual experience, is usually reached after dealing with the other three levels.

Four Modes of Experiencing—the Basic Perinatal Matrices

Grof has also delineated four matrices of experience, four general experiential constructs, which he called basic perinatal matrices (BPMs). He discovered that experiences at all levels of the unconscious often group themselves in four general ways that are roughly related to the four stages of birth. Thus, Basic Perinatal Matrix I (BPM I) is related to the generally blissful or “oceanic” feelings that often characterize the fetus’s state in the womb in early and middle pregnancy. BPM II is characterized by “no exit,” hellish feelings that are related to the situation of the fetus in late pregnancy when the confines of the womb become ever more apparent but there is as yet no indication of any possibility of relief. BPM III relates to the birth process itself, the birth struggle, which is still characterized by feelings of compression and suffering but in which there is movement and change and thus hope of relief through struggle. If BPM II can be compared to hell, where there is no hope, BPM III is more like purgatory. Finally, BPM IV relates to the actual entry into the world, the termination of the birthing process, and is characterized by feelings of triumph, relief, and high, even manic, elation.

In his descriptions of the levels of experience and the matrices of perinatal experience, Grof has provided useful maps of the unconscious and experience in nonordinary states, which have incredible heuristic value in our understanding of cross-cultural religious and spiritual experience, psychopathology, personal growth, and consciousness and personality in general. And they have been utilized successfully in providing a context and guide for many tens of thousands of participants in his psycholytic and holotropic therapies.

However, while Grof is exhaustive in his descriptions of fetal and perinatal experience, he says less about the earlier experiences in the womb—the first trimester—and even less about conception and the experiences of sperm and egg—what is known as cellular consciousness. Still, this area is beginning to be discussed among his followers. And through his current nondrug modality, called holotropic breathwork, people are accessing these areas and beginning to give word to them (e.g., Carter, 1993).

Frank Lake—Breathwork, First Trimester, Early Experience as Foundation for Myths

Frank Lake, though less well-known again, has probably been the premier theoretician on the topic of prenatal events during the first three months of gestation. Just prior to his death in the early eighties, he wrote a culmination of his thirty-year investigation into pre- and perinatal influence in two works titled Tight Corners in Pastoral Counselling and The First Trimester. In these works he goes beyond his other works (for example, 1966) in placing the roots of all later experience, and in particular, distress, at the first three months of physical existence.

Lake began his investigation of re-experience in 1954. Like Stanislav Grof, he did this using LSD, initially, in the psycholytic therapy that was being developed at that time to facilitate therapeutic abreaction. Later he, again like Grof, developed a nondrug modality to accomplish the same thing. His method of “primal therapy” employed a type of fast breathing—again, like Grof’s later technique—to access theta-wave brain levels, which are levels of consciousness that he saw as crucial to accessing and integrating these memories.

His thirty-year research led him to the realization of the importance of ever earlier experience. Thus his earlier stress on the importance of birth gave way to his later emphasis on the first trimester in 1981 (Tight Corners in Pastoral Counselling) and in 1982 (The First Trimester).

He stressed the maternal-fetal distress syndrome, beginning at around implantation, as a major time of trauma. He also described a blastocystic stage of relative bliss just prior to that.

His one other major disagreement with Grof was his belief that the mythological and symbolical elements described by Grof were a product of LSD and that the first trimester events were the actual roots of much of such symbolism and supposed transpersonal/mythological scenarios (1981, p. 35).

Later Theorists — Myth and Sacred Text/Mysticism

S. Giora Shoham — Devolutional Model of Development, Falls from Grace

While not strictly a pre- and perinatal psychologist, I include this too little-known theoretician and criminologist because of the close relationship and influence his work has had upon my own work regarding these Falls from Grace. Falls from Grace and other devolutional models of consciousness postulate that during life and over time, beginning at conception, we actually are reduced in consciousness and awareness, not increased in it, and it corresponds to a “brain as reducing valve” theory of consciousness. (Again, See The Doors of Perception and Occupy Science.)

While I initially constructed and wrote down my devolutional theory of consciousness—Falls from Grace—without the benefit of Shoham’s work, upon discovering it I could not help but be both confirmed and reinspired by the astounding resonance his understanding has with my own.

Shoham (1979, 1990) starts his devolutional model in the womb and carries it through birth, weaning, and the oedipal periods of development. Though, as I delineate in Part Two, I disagree with his model by beginning mine at the creation of sperm and egg—as does other devolutional theorists like Francis Mott and David Wasdell—in virtually all other major instances his model corresponds to my own if one simply … in keeping with a normal trend in child development in general as it begins to integrate the new pre- and perinatal evidence … places everything back a little farther in time—in this case, specifically, one stage back.

Later Prenatal Psychology Theorists — Cellular Memory and Conception, Foundations of Myth and Personality, Spirituality and Soul

Lietaert Peerbolte — Conception and Cellular Memory, Soul, Spirituality

Peerbolte (1954) was one of the earliest theorists to relate spirituality to conception and sperm/egg dynamics. In addition to claiming that a regression to conception is the inevitable result of all prenatal states, he traced the sense of “I” — the “I-function” — back to the egg, existing even in the mother’s ovaries. He further postulated that the spiritual self was invisibly present within the field of attraction between the egg and the sperm. Correspondingly, he was the first to point out that the existence of conception, preconception, and even ovulation symbolism in dreams indicates the existence of a soul. For, he asked, what mind records these events otherwise?

I wrote the article, “A Primal Perspective on Spirituality,” which later became the next chapter in this book before I knew about Peerbolte’s work. Yet, once again the conclusions I came to, especially about the existence of soul being established by the fact of these memories and especially those at the cellular levels of sperm and egg existence, are very much in line with his.

Michael C. Irving — Primal Therapy, Birth, Sperm, Egg, Myth, Dragon Symbolism, Prehistoric Cult and Ritual

Michael C. Irving is a primal therapist whose contributions include his relation of these earliest events from sperm and egg through the birth experience to fundamental mythological motifs and images across cultures. The originator of a way of interpretation that he calls natalism, he has brought together a host of artistic and artifactual images from a wide range of time periods and cultures which relate, with an astonishing degree of accuracy, to actual pre- and perinatal events.

In particular, he has traced the universal serpent/dragon motifs and mythology to birth and sperm experience, noting, among other things, that the serpent/dragon shape represents the birth canal or tunnel, that the fire-spewing characteristics of dragons relate to consuming pain, and that the constricting characteristics of snakes correspond to the constriction of the birth canal. Of great interest is his deduction that the widely prevalent snake and dragon cults, which were especially popular in prehistory, indicate an attempt to deal with such unfinished birth trauma material as we are only now, in modern times, rediscovering the importance of doing.

Graham Farrant — Primal Therapy; Sperm, Egg, Cellular Consciousness; Soul and Spirituality

Graham Farrant (1987; Buchheimer 1987), a psychiatrist and primal therapist from Australia, is probably the most influential and well-known of those discussing the phenomena that occur at the earliest times of our lives. In addition to echoing Frank Lake in describing fetal, implantation, and blastocyst feelings, he has been able to elicit and describe sperm and egg imprints. He has found trauma from these earliest events to influence lifelong patterns of personality and behavior. He produced a notable video in which segments from the widely acclaimed movie “The Miracle of Life,” which shows actual footage of gamete and zygote events, are juxtaposed via a split-screen with actual footage of a person reliving the exact same events in primal therapy, which occurred before such cellular events were ever able to be seen and recorded. The effect is astounding in the detail in which the relivings replicate the actual cellular happenings.

In addition to his emphasis on cellular consciousness, Farrant has stressed the spiritual aspects of these earliest events. He relates incidents of spiritual trauma at the cellular level in which the individual splits off from Divinity—thus setting up a lifelong feeling of loss and yearning and a desire to return to Unity and the Divine.

Paul Brenner — Sperm, Egg, Cellular Consciousness and Biological Foundations of Myths

Paul Brenner (1991), a biologist and obstetrician, has been presenting 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 relates 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 doesn’t 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 science while others coincide with the cutting-edge, new-paradigm discoveries in fields such as biology, physics, and neuroscience.

David Wasdell — Sperm/Egg and First Trimester Imprints, Devolutional Model of Development, Social and Historical Implications

One of the more recent theoreticians in this area is David Wasdell. Wasdell’s (1979, 1985a, 1985b, 1990) major contribution lies in his relating these earliest events to social and cultural patterns. He describes a process of devolution of consciousness beginning at around conception and proceeding through other reductions caused by traumas at implantation, in the womb, and at birth.

Most importantly, he delineates how the result of this diminution of potentiality is projected outwards into the problems and crises of violence, wars, and the mediocrity of modern personality on the scale of the masses and the macrocosms of the group, society, and global events.

In describing the problems of “normality” as rooted in a deprivational and deformational series of traumas from our earliest biological history, Wasdell emphasizes that this gives us the possibility to change that tragic social and personality outcome by focusing on the prevention and healing of such traumas. Thus, he holds out the vision of a new person and new society as an outcome of the efforts directed at the earliest laying down of human experience.

The Importance of the Intrauterine for Understanding Our Times and the Goal of This Book

Despite this long legacy of work and thought in this pre- and perinatal area, much of it, especially the prenatal, remains ignored by mainstream psychology and is largely unavailable to the public. Within the field itself, in addition, the prenatal information, in relation to the more widely accepted and circulated perinatal evidence, seems to be analogous to Otto Rank’s (1929) ideas of birth trauma were to Sigmund Freud’s concerning early infancy in that they are cast under an extra cloud of suspicion and disbelief and disregarded accordingly. Yet, like Rank’s findings also, their main problem may lie with unfamiliarity and prejudice rather than validity or scientific viability; and these findings, like his were, may end up harkening the outlines of future endeavors and being confirmed by subsequent research.

Thus, I believe that this prenatal area in particular is ripe for reaping what it can teach us about what is human, about “human nature.”

Therefore, this book will put forth the possible relationship between our earliest ontogenetic experiences as humans and the structure of human consciousness and stages of human “development.”

I build a model that seeks an initial formulation of this information, teasing out its implications, and integrating it with relevant thinking and theoretical perspectives in anthropology, philosophy, psychology, and others.

However, before proceeding, it seems important to establish this pursuit within the logical-empirical framework that validates it. To do this, let us now turn to the re-experience movement I am most familiar with and feel to be the most important, primal therapy, and discuss its relation to the phenomenon of prenatal re-experience and spirituality.

Continue with How Valid Are Spiritual Experiences? Psychedelic Research and Deep Experiential Psychotherapy Have Intensified the Exploration of Spiritual Aspects of the Unconscious

Return to Falls from Grace, Introduction — The Radical Rational View of Us and It: “Normal” Truth Is Convenient Truth … and Is Anything But True

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The Vision of Ourselves Arising from This New Research Is the Most Important One for Understanding Our Humanicidal, Ecocidal Plunge and for Doing Something to Reverse It

We Are a Fever, Part One: Perinatal Psychology, the Phenomenon of Re-Experience, and my Personal Involvement with This Research into Our Actual “Human Nature”

How do we go about changing the patterns of millennia? How do we change, and change radically … and soon? How do we bring about the consciousness transformation that will allow us to avert the humanicidal, indeed ecocidal, scenario we are currently bringing about at breakneck speed.

Well, it is pretty clear that it is ignorance pushing these trends, along with unconscionable doses of denial and ignore-ance. So, reversing this means learning why it is humans can be so self-destructive. Ignorance must be replaced with awareness and understanding. Looking at our problems must be happening more than our current denial is. And we must trace our current ecocidal tendencies to their roots, and we must do something about them there.

This is something I have been doing for over forty years. I sought the answers to our most important questions. I did not know that someday these questions would be as pressing as they are currently. I thought we would have turned the corner on these problems a long time ago, as indeed we should have done if we were to give ourselves any real chance.

Be that as it may, I have researched and studied in this area. I have undergone many years of deep experiential psychotherapy to trace the roots of these human tendencies within my own mind and psyche. (See, for example, Wounded Deer and Centaurs, Prologue: Sure It’s Hard).

And I have studied humanity—it’s mind and it’s culture—in depth.

What I have discovered is that our current humanicidal tendencies are rooted in a particular birth that characterizes humans. Elsewhere  I have delineated how we humans, among all species, have come to be unique in this manner. In another book, I have laid out how and why these unconscious traumas from our birth—our perinatal unconscious—are rising more than ever before, whether to our detriment or in some uncanny method of healing.

In this book, Wounded Deer and Centaurs: The Perinatal Zeitgeist of Postmodern Times and the Necessary Hero, we look deeper. We trace those tendencies further, to even deeper roots. We find patterns even more profound; we see possibilities even more promising.

But before going deeper even than birth, in teasing out our patterns and predilections, we need understand birth. We must review the perinatal imprints on our personality and remember how we are affected, indeed, pushed and pulled by forces those early events have set in motion.

Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and the Phenomenon of Re-Experience

Pre- and perinatal psychology is the field that deals with the effects of events occurring prior to (prenatal) and surrounding the time of birth (perinatal) upon later life and personality. An ever increasing amount though certainly not all of the information we have about these periods of our lives and their effects is derived through the later and vivid remembering of these events in a phenomenon known as re-experience. Correspondingly, the two most frequently asked questions about this relatively new field, put by those initially encountering it, are those concerning the specific meanings of the terms perinatal and re-experience.

At the outset, I wish to present an explanation of these two terms and of my unique personal relation to this topic as well as some of my background in exploring it. I will follow this with an historical overview of the field of prenatal and perinatal psychology, which will reveal the key concepts and understandings employed throughout this book.

Re-Experience and Reliving

For over forty years, beginning in 1972 when I was a senior undergraduate in college, I have been involved both personally and professionally in a comprehensive investigation into the phenomenon of re-experience. Also called reliving, this phenomenon is reported to consist of a full somato-cognitive remembering of previous events in a person’s life. Reliving involves experiential but also observable and measurable components, such as brain wave changes, characteristic physiological and neurological changes, and typical observable body movements.

This phenomenon can occur, to varying degrees, in many consciousness-altering modalities—including hypnosis, LSD psychotherapy, primal therapy, rebirthing, and holotropic breathwork; to a considerable degree in re-evaluation co-counseling and treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder; and, occasionally and spontaneously, even in mainstream forms of psychotherapy, counseling, and “growth seminars.”

Re-experience is a more vivid and more completely somatic catharsis than what has been described in psychotherapy in terms of “abreaction.” It is in such contrast to normal abreaction that when these seemingly bizarre yet healing events have spontaneously erupted in traditional or mainstream Western contexts they have usually been mistakenly labeled psychotic, been intervened upon, and then aborted—via drugs and other highly coercive measures—by the attending therapeutic authorities.

However, with an increasing appreciation for their therapeutic value, these events are gradually becoming understood and accepted in therapeutic contexts and thus allowed to complete themselves and to instruct the participants and observers in their meanings. Therefore, they appear to represent something new in our culture in terms of both a way of approaching knowledge and in terms of the kinds of information that are discovered (Grof 1976, 1985; Hannig 1982; Janov 1971; Lake 1966/1986; Noble, 1993; Stettbacher, 1992).

My Relationship to the Phenomenon of Re-Experience

My interest in the phenomenon of reliving began forty-three years ago at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. As an undergraduate there I was most inspired by a course in religious studies titled “Religious and Psychological Approaches To Self-Understanding.” I was so inspired by the course that I constructed my major around its topic and initially even used the same title for my program’s name. This major in “self-understanding” would lead me, in a few years, to a profound interest in and exploration of primal therapy, as presented by Arthur Janov (1970) in his much-publicized book, The Primal Scream: Primal Therapy: The Cure for Neurosis.

By 1972, I had completed all but the one final semester for a B.A. That semester was to include the cumulative project—required of such a Special Studies (individually structured) major. However, since my project would focus on primal therapy and one of primal therapy’s basic premises is that knowledge cannot really be known except through experience, I could not in good conscience turn in a project describing primal therapy without first experiencing it. Consequently I withdrew from college, for what was supposed to be only a semester, with the intention of “going through” primal therapy and then returning to school to write my cumulative project on it. In those days, the entire process of primal therapy was reputed to take only three to six months.

But a lot was unknown about that modality in those early days. As it turned out, I would not return to school to complete that final project until 1978—at which point I had five years’ experience of primal therapy behind me and was living in Denver, Colorado.

In addition to these experiences, I have amassed a broad array of other experience and training over the years that have contributed to my understanding of re-experience and of this field in general. Besides my two decades and more of primal therapy … both formally and in “the buddy system” … I have received training as a primal therapist. I am also a trained rebirther, having explored that modality since 1986. I have been experientially exploring the modality of holotropic breathwork since 1987 and did training with Stanislav and Christina Grof in that technique.

Finally, I have been facilitating people in their journeys into deep inner primal and holotropic states since 1975. I’ve given individual sessions in all three modalities of primal therapy, rebirthing, and holotropic breathwork. And with my wife, Mary Lynn Adzema, I conducted three day workshops in something we called primal breathwork. I’ve conducted two-day group workshops in this modality at conferences, which were attended by as many as 60 experiencers at a time.

Thus, I have experience in my own process in these modalities; but in addition I have facilitated for others on many occasions, and at times, it was my main profession—though most of my life I have spent in writing, teaching, and research.

Pre- and Perinatal Re-Experience

Re-experience of birth and of the events immediately prior to and after birth are termed perinatal—from the Greek, literally “surrounding birth.” It has been widely described at this point by a number of authors but is most closely associated with the work of Stanislav Grof, Arthur Janov, and Frank Lake.

However, one significant and as yet little explored or understood phenomenon, arising also from the modalities mentioned, is that of prenatal re-experience. In this case, the experiencer reports … and observationally appears to be … experiencing events that happened en utero, sometimes going back as far as sperm, egg, and zygote states (Buchheimer 1987; Farrant 1987; Grof 1976, 1985; Hannig 1982; Janov 1983; Lake 1981, 1982; Larimore 1990a, 1990b; Larimore & Farrant, 1995).

These reports are at such variance with Western professional and popular paradigms that they are met with near-universal incredulity and, too often, premature dismissal. Yet the evidence from the mounting numbers of experiential reports and empirical studies attests that something which is at least unique and interesting is going on here.

Nevertheless, much of this prenatal information is thus far unformulated, untheorized, and unintegrated into a coherent structure for making sense of these experiences. This book will go a long way toward doing just that—making sense of prenatal experiences and exploring the implications and prospects of the knowledge gleaned from this fascinating new area of research and which arises from the vision that an exposure to this material induces.

Indeed, the earliest indications are that the implications from including the prenatal and primal perspective are vast—one might even say revolutionary, in the true sense of the word. For indeed this new perspective, this new information seems to call for an overthrow, or at least a reversal, of many of the aspects of the dominant paradigms in child-caring, child development, psychotherapy, and spiritual growth. Not the least important, these findings and insights have direct bearing on our current ecocidal and humanicidal plunge to oblivion. So, the vision is the most important one for understanding why we are doing what we are doing and then how we might do something to actually reverse our course.

To begin, then, let us review what has so far been conceived in relation to our life and our worldview in the arena of pre- and perinatal psychology.

Continue with We Are a Fever, Part Two — The Evidence That Life’s Blueprint Is Written at Birth: Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology Overview — Early Theorists, Psychoanalysis, and Birth

Return to The Sins of the Fathers: I have This Sense of Brother/ Sisterhood — That We Are Engaged in an Immense Undertaking … Necessary for the Survival of This Planet.

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Funny God, Part Three: Why God Creates Darkness. Why We Are Human. (peek-a-boo!)

Pain Ain’t Such a Pain and Peek-a-Boo

Part Three of Facebook…. Funny…. God(dess?)…. Experience

So, there you have it. Pain is the teacher. But it’s not pain that’s being imposed, or, you remember, is punishment. In fact, we’re the dumb asses that are pickin’ pain. God didn’t ever pick pain for us, except to bring us back to happiness and that’s what I’m getting at…God is so good, it’s amazing that…well, no, it’s not so amazing because, as you’ll see, it’s all perfect.

Horror Comes from What’s Kept in Darkness

Anyway, let me get back to what I was saying. I was saying that it just occurred to me about that whole lewdness thing that there is a kind of a universal that what’s ever kept in the darkness, is, well…the darkness is where we project all the things inside that we don’t know yet. And that’s where all the horror comes from, ok? It’s basically from darkness.

Training in faith, in not fearing

And, like I said, y’know, even in peek-a-boo that’s the case. But later, it’s God that teaches us, right? And basically, what we’re trying to be taught, in peek-a-boo with God, is not to fear, that when something is not in plain sight, basically not to project our own inner horrors on what always comes down to being no-thing…no thing at all!

The Purpose of the Human Form

The darkness makes a wonderful screen for projecting imaginary, truly mental, and fleeting as thought non-realities.

It is the reason for choosing the human form…in fact…. That is, to be completely ignorant of your identity with divinity. To be utterly ignorant of your identity with divinity is the purpose of the human form.

Well…to throw yourself, completely, into such a darkness, with the foreknowledge that God is good, and that you will always be in His, Her presence…. In fact you will be literally moving and thinking in total God immersion, and the only difference between people will be the degree to which they know that, or don’t.

Becoming human is God’s trippiest game.

So it is the trippiest game that God plays. Imagine, just imagine…it would be like any of us throwing ourselves onto another planet with complete total amnesia. And the game would not even be known to be a game! I mean you don’t know it’s a game, you just show up! That’s what’s so much different from us and the animals.

So, but, God plays this game…and we as God choose it because it is the most fraught with…well, let us say…let us simply call it peek-a-boo. By that I mean it is the most fraught with totally and sincerely believing the most horrible and hideous and terrifying things which can happen, because of that total amnesia…that lack of any link to truth.

Life Is a Dark Screen

Life is come into and without any remembrance of our true nature, right? Now, life is essentially, then, a dark screen! Because we have no sense of our true nature. It’s essentially a dark screen upon which anything can be found! Wow!

So the human form has its purpose in being a kind of a…well…the human form has its purpose in kinda being a purging. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with it, but just like a projecting out, so that it could be seen, of all the things that one would conceive as a unique divine actor.

Animals remember it is just a movie, unlike us.

But when in the presence of the divine or even, say, taking on an animal or other form where there is never that total amnesia only the kind of pretend that an actor has when performing a role in a play. See that’s what, that’s what theirs is. They always remember, so they’re always pretending…even when it’s like something horrible that’s in the script. And they never confuse the role with their own true essence.

How Can God Be Devilish?

So it is only us humans that can conceive the incredible horror and act out the most hideous things that can occur. How could God act devilish and murderous unless He allowed Himself? Think about it.

And I know you’re saying, why would God want to act devilish and murderous? Ok, alright, maybe I’m ahead of myself, but just hold that thought.

How ’bout if He allowed Himself to forget?

But say there was a reason. And I know you think there’s no reason—God is good, blah blah blah lightness and light and all that but just check, check this out now.

How could God act devilish and murderous if He needed to, unless He allowed Himself, willingly, to totally forget who He was. You still don’t get it. I see.

Well, for starters, let’s remember that there is no such thing as death, ok? It’s another impossibility. When you know the truth, there’s no such thing as death, it’s an utter impossibility. For God is All, and always existing, and all things that seem to be actual things and therefore separate are actually only variations on the One and Only Reality…I won’t even say thing or form, for they are illusions, too. Illusory props of the game.

It’s all so simple when you know. But knowing requires seeing or apprehending accurately. And the point of this game as humans is that it is impossible, as we are filled with the illusory. Totally wiping the God consciousness of knowledge, of its foundation, source, whatever, allows a kind of vacuum into which anything can crawl, in which anything can respond…in which the most obvious untruths are allowed to dominate the play of the game as if they were more than just the smoke they are.

It Is the Greatest Adventure

So it is the greatest adventure, fraught with the greatest possibilities of extreme fear, terror, and so on.

Still, aren’t getting it? In this…just listen…in this way God, who is not darkness, creates darkness. Now why would He want to do that?

Alright, first of all remember, that the darkness He creates is only fake darkness. Remember that. Remember peek-a-boo? The baby’s alarmed…but he was wrong. Ok?

And I think I’m gonna, I think I’m gonna tell you a little bit more. But if you think, if you’re starting to get that, you’re starting to get it.

God Playing Peek-a-Boo with Himself

So you see He creates…He cannot possibly be darkness, but in this way He does create it. Now, you ask, why would He do that? I’ll get to that. It’s kind of allowing a game of peek-a-boo in which one does not recognize one’s mother even when she’s in plain sight. So imagine the baby’s cries and traumas then. Imagine: mommy’s not there, mommy’s there, and the baby still thinks mommy’s not there!

So, it is this total amnesia that creates the possibility of not even knowing that.—not knowing God is actually there—impossible to be anywhere else—even even when not seen. This amnesia creates the possibilities of even more extreme, oh, how can I say, more intense pain. The baby becomes totally convinced that indeed momma is gone forever…and that he is totally alone, and must live without love…so surely he will die.

Indeed this does describe the state of many a human when in a state of total forgetfulness if you think about it. For, staring directly into the face of God, so to speak, he can be so overcome with fear as to only see the unique attributes that he, as God, has decided to adopt for this particular game of being in the world.

Alright, maybe that’s not really clear.

It was in front of you the whole time!

What I’m saying is this total amnesia unique to humans allows for the possibility, unlike any other game, where such fear can be held, that you can totally forget the face of God even when it’s right in front of you. The source of comfort is right in front of you, and all you can see is yourself.

And by that I mean, not you as God, but you as the unique creation that you created yourself as to try an experiment, y’know. Cause every, every living thing is an experiment in creation…and so it’s those little things, things that make us different, that might be the only thing we’d see. So that’s another part of it.

So, it’s such a fascinating game. For it allows darkness and hideousness, and war…murder…torture!…all that we abhor…that we abhor it is a sign that we are finding some roots in our true nature which is light and goodness. Still wondering why, huh?

Why We Create Hell and Satan

Ok, just a little more slack. This game even allows the creation of a belief in the opposite of truth…truth being no thing, except goodness, light, and bliss. It allows that humans, in their forgetfulness, and in their fear, existing without a glimmer of real truth, to conjure the opposite! So, a hell is concocted, and even an opposite of God, a Satan.

Rx for game of humanness: Take equal parts emptiness and stupidity…

So we’ve got a game that has components…I know it’s not all coming together, but it will…we’ve got a game that has components of total emptiness, and utter royal stupidity, which allows a belief that death is both an end to life and that it is painful. Don’t we believe that? Well, that’s not the truth, but that’s what we come to believe. Hey! That’s what we come to believe coming into human form.

Add a belief in a death…

Think of it. We got a game that has components of total emptiness and utter royal stupidity which allows a belief that death is both an end of life, and that it is painful. And that it is terrifyingly real, and terrifying because there is that darkness beyond it which…aaaaas usual!…all the yet unprojected interesting details of this temporary creation of God, this ego, can be viewed like on a movie screen. And lacking the fundamental truth that it is just a movie, well the parameters of this game allow for the most terrifying, most extreme feelings of any kind that is possible. Still not getting it, eh?

Asking, why would God do and make such a hideous possibility? Ok, well, for a second remember that, just like the baby, no matter what its fears, is lovingly taken care of by its mother. So the fears and all the darkness are only experiences…they’re just feelings. That means that they are not permanent, having no substance or foundation—like the reality of truth-awareness-bliss does…that reality is not gonna change—experiences, feelings are fleeting, impermanent, ultimately not real.

If God is all there is, and He can’t be on His side, who can?

For example, if your cat was to lodge itself under a porch, which if it stayed there it would die, would you hesitate to drag that cat out no matter how much it screamed and hollered and said, “oh yer…I’m in pain and everything”? Cause you knew you were taking care of that cat. You would do it. Well, let me just say that that’s kind of, kinda like the way sometimes we have to be treated by God. Because, well, actually to our credit we’ve chosen quite an adventure…and God loves God…and so we love ourselves and we’re gonna help ourselves out.

But sometimes we choose such an adventure that, uh, y’know…well…how can I say it? There’s no wrong adventures. It’s…there’s such…well let me just continue. Anyway, it’ll all come together, it’s like…[sigh]

The darkness, that the baby feels, whatever…the feeling of loss, it’s not permanent, it has no substance or foundation. The only substance out there that is true is that of Truth-Awareness-Bliss. These other things are fleeting. And, we don’t remember it now in human form, but most of Time of the timelessness of the Now, in which we exist—except for like going off on adventures like this in which we create time—we spend in that Truth-Awareness-Bliss.

And I’ll tell ya, I mean, from what… I mean, I can’t claim to have attained what, let’s say, the “residents” there have got. But I sure…it was the happiest time in my life. And I was all Truth-Awareness-Bliss…and, fucking laughin on your ass funniness…. I mean, I swear to God, this is the big surprise to me, that’s, that God is one…there would be no comedy I don’t think if there wasn’t a God…I think yea this particular gift, this particular creation…anyway…

The Poignancy of It All

Anyway, I’m surprised no one’s getting an inkling of the beauty, or you might see the perfect poignancy of such a game. There are so many other ways to describe its exquisiteness. I’ve got it. I will use your own truth to bring you to an appreciation of this.

Ok, you’re all God…pretending not to be. And you’re doing a heck of game today, by the way. It sure as hell reminds me again of the darkness we humans create here out of nothing as my frustration is of that. He!

But I have this secret that actually allows me to enjoy that frustration. Want a hint? A little hint that it is all in peek-a-boo, ok? Remembering that…all of it…not just a technique…remembering peek-a-boo, all of it, not just a technique, but the thing that humans always overlook, because it is actually God, and is the only thing that can be God…

In peek-a-boo…ok…alright…just continue…just continue listening….

This Is the Way, the Teacher, and the Path.

There is no physical world that exists. There are no words that are anything but a way to block out the vision of essence. But there is one thing, one thing always that exists, is always present, that contains everything, and that is everything, and is also the teacher, the path, the way…the way back to remembering…the way out of the darkness…the fear…or any of the more adventurous aspects of reality.

Did you notice I said adventurous, not negative, painful, or hard? Are you getting the notion? Let’s go back to that you are God. So therefore what you experience is always going to steer you to understanding. Did it not become clear from what I was saying just before this that thing, that thing which is overlooked in peek-a-boo, which is God? Did anybody get the…”

Forgetting where you put yourself

Yes! Anna! You got it. The experience of the baby is overlooked.

Yea. Notice! Anna, that you as a mother of three, having had many experiences yourself of seeing a baby in all kinds of states of feeling and experiencing the various experiential flavors that this game affords, you were tuned in to what is actually just the most obvious thing in the game, hell! It is actually amazing that our human amnesia could leave out the essence of existence as we were blinded by these physical things. Are you following this?

These physical things, which are only projections, not eternal, and certainly not real. For they depend on the perception of the seer for their existence! And there it is again—perception. Another clue! Hope you’re getting it.

Ok, enough of this tugging on your umbilical cords to yourselves as God for one day. Ok? This is not failure, for not getting it. So no need…for those looks…for there is no such thing as failure. And that’s part of the point, too. And all roads, everything that I’m saying leads to one and only one thing.

But before I spill the beans…and I’m going to…whether you get it or not…. Now, enough of this, you know, seeing if you can come to it now…. You will, in time.

Anyway, I just, before I spill the beans, I just thought of something funny. And have we already forgotten that God’s essential nature and that which we humans alone share with Him is that ability to laugh? Laughter. Wow. Like I said, all roads lead there…to God.

Let’s ‘Clast a Few Icons

Back to my little game for you though. Let us say we see what happens if we take…rather than trying to bring to awareness through gentle tugging at things you know inside but are not ready to remember…Let’s try instead a simple but effective way. I love iconoclasm.

Plato’s Cave

What’s an icon? It’s a piece of God that is described. Right? And now described is no longer seen. Now, what’s described is no longer seen, just the icons. Think about that.

Words, icons, the physical world

Well, there are all kinds of icons that we accept as totally real. And all of them block out reality…and cause you to not see the reality you are immersed in, as instead your mind thinks it lives in a world of reflections of your true nature. These reflections are called words, icons, and even the physical world.

What they all have in common is their ability to block out your perception of your true nature as God. What they also have in common is their ability to reveal your truth, when, in seeking God, you consciously decide to remove them from your perception. And what did I say they were? Words, icons, and the physical world.

Words = “monkey mind”

Some of that might be more obvious than others. We talk about words, the “monkey mind,” stuff like that. And you think well if you got rid of that maybe you’d be able to see God? He! But it’s the same thing—icons, the physical world…it’s the same thing as words.

Ok, alright…a road leading home. Oh well, sorry for the delay. You see, I only just myself caught this simple vision and I’m still in awe of the superb perfection of this game.

In Spite of Yourself

And thanks to you all for that, by the way [chuckles]. It’s a damn good thing (hu!)…It’s a damn good thing that all the fears you humans have about good and evil and your preoccupations with justice, innocence, and so on are just delusions. And by the way does it not occur to you that your seeming negative action toward me was the greatest gift I could possibly receive? But, you see, in spite of yourself you acted as God that you are. Hope you’re getting a little closer….

I’m just trying to return the favor a little. Well, this is my attempt at a little gift. Here’s my attempt to gift a little to you.

Unity is Reality, So…

We’ve all heard it said now innumerable times what the nature of God and Reality is. Ok? You can say it out whenever it occurs to you…I mean whoever wants to say it…I mean we have come so far as to know, somehow, that Reality is One. Alright? We all say Unity is what is Reality. Right?

We do service because…

Well the other ways we attempt to experience…there I go, again!…attempt to experience (there I go again) Unity is through service. In serving the unfortunate we invariably feel our heart—there’s another icon that we should dispense with I mean really…well maybe another time…. Let’s not do it all right now. We say it opens up, the heart opens up. Ok?

But what I’m saying is, the sense of Unity that we are trying to achieve, what we describe as where we’re headed, and the Ultimate Reality of it all, is always described aaaass One. Correct? And can anybody give me the other word for the other way that God is described, outside of being One.

[“Love?” is heard in response]

Does God Bore You? Ok, How About Truth?

Love. That’s pretty good. That is pretty good, because that is actually closer to the truth than what…. Closer. But not quite. It is Love…. It’s also hate…in a strange way…. But, uh, I’m backtracking to say that, so I’m going to just let you say He’s hate, but He’s hate, as us, having allowed Himself to completely forget. So He’s not hate…He’s not hate. It’s just an experience that a part of Him has wanted…is having.

I’m starting to, I’m starting to spill the beans here aren’t I? Oh, I hope I… well… if that slipped out, if you get it, that’s fine.

But anyway, what I’m saying is that…. Does this not sound familiar? You ever heard the word…Universal Consciousness…Universal Consciousness…we have One Consciousness? Didja ever think what the hell that means? “One Consciousness!”

The Cloud of Boring Sameness

We don’t think of it as conscience, right? Course some people do. They mistake the two and they just can’t get that out of their mind. So that’s a problem right there, but, huh? Consciousness…What do we think of it, how do we picture consciousness? Can you see consciousness? So how do you picture it? Like some gigantic cloud, right?

[Someone says, “y’don’t picture it…”]

But, it’s like some gigantic…empty thing, right? Am I right?

[“uh uh…”]

Well you just said you don’t picture it.

[“You don’t picture it. It’s just Total Awareness, it doesn’t have a form.”]

It’s Total Awareness, uh huh. It doesn’t have a form….

[“As you say, it’s no thing…”]

That’s true. But so you’re picturing it aaaas? Light? Er, something? Total Awareness?

[“I can’t really picture it. I can’t….”]

I know, I know but I can. And you could, so simply. Because it is the biggest..secret…of all, that is so obvious that you wanta die when you fucking understand it….

[“It’s Experience…that’s what God is.”]

Well, what would experience be? Don’t you see you hit it but you didn’t understand what you hit?

First of all I said I like being an iconoclast. Why do I like being an iconoclast? I just gave you an indication that this idea of Consciousness…which is like, yea, we all see it as being somehow…well, you can’t see it, right? Like you just said, right? It’s all some kind of an amorphous, like gigantic mind that’s invisible, you know, and creates colorful things…but it’s really just basically like a big, big grey sameness, maybe.

Well it sounds pretty goddamn boring! And thinking of it that way has really hurt a lot of people, y’know when, they’re, you know, when they want to become more of this Consciousness? I know I had a problem with that part.

But I’ll tell you…. You compare that One Consciousness, ok? with… That One Consciousness that we imagine with….

Is God nothing or no-thing?

Put it this way: How many people have you seen…sitting for hours and hours and hours trying to have like nothing in their brain!?

Y’know? Nothing in their brain!? That’s what they’re thinking is GOD!

[chuckling, “yea.”]

Why Don’t We Stop Crucifying Christ Already…

He’s actually a nice guy.

Or do they think God’s gonna show up in a nice pixie, er, elf uniform or something? No they’re not. WHATEVER THEY’RE PICTURING IS GODDAMN BORING! Look what they did to Christ! He was a funny guy! I know! I met Him up there! He’s still hanging out there. He likes to shoot pool and crap, I mean, I dunno. Ah, He’s older than me, what can I say?

So…we see all these people and they’re trying to empty their minds. And yet did Christ try to empty His mind? Did He? In fact if you think about Christ’s life, what we know most about it is suffering…right?

[“uh huh”]

What a rip-off!

And, we say He suffered for us…so that we don’t have to.

Wooow. What a bunch of hooey. Because, that would be like saying God became God so that He could prevent us from becoming God.

[“Ha, yea!…really!”]

Because actually…

[“That’s such a rip off” chuckling]

It’s such a rip off, it’s like He’s gonna feel, He’s gets to feel and we don’t… y’know?…

Continue on this site with
The Great Reveal, Chapter Five:
God Is Experience, Life Is a Disneyland

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Facebook Funny Revelations and the Mind’s True Liberation

“Funny Fantasy Becomes Hilarious Meeting with God
Who Reveals All Reasons behind Existence, God, Living Things;
So Much More Wonderful Than Ever Imagined by Humans;
and Sadly because Humans Are Not Yet Capable
of Even Imagining Such Love and Goodness”

– Comedic, Philosophical Monologue by SillyMickel Adzema

For the audio monologue of the entire Facebook… Funny… God(dess)… Experience click above for the link to the audio site…. or below on the audio player to listen to it here….

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Continue on this site with
The Great Reveal, Chapter Five:
God Is Experience. Life Is a Disneyland

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