Blog Archives
Prenatal Imprints for Air Pollution and the Greenhouse Effect … Fetal Malnutrition, Oxygen Starvation, and the Global Environment: Kaleidoscope of Postmodern Life, Part Eight
Oxygen Hunger, the Greenhouse Effect, and Fetal Malnutrition … The Latent Worldwide Oxygen Panic We Don’t Want to Notice: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 8
Let us now turn to how we bring this prenatal oxygen struggle, termed fetal malnutrition, into our adult attitudes toward and interactions with our planetary atmosphere and global environment.
Latent Worldwide Oxygen Panic?
The Fetus’s Latent Oxygen Panic
Remember, what the fetus experiences in the late stages of development in the womb is a state of a reduced oxygen, which causes subtle but simmering uncomfortable feelings of suffocation and a feeling of latent oxygen panic. Keep in mind also that this lessening of oxygen intake correlates necessarily with an increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the prenate’s blood supply.
These changes from the optimal might seem minuscule to us as adults, but we need to consider that the unborn child is living 24/7 in this environment. It might be thought of as comparable to being stuck in a cramped room in which the air has become stuffy and gets increasingly so…and one is not even able to open a window occasionally for some relief.
Think about that situation and especially how it keeps getting worse, and you may already sense the beginnings of a panic. That is what I am talking about. And remember that you as a prenate had no way of knowing that you were not, in fact, dying; you could not either, as you can now, console yourself with the thought that you could go out and get yourself more air at any point if it got too uncomfortable.
Gag Me With Exhaust—The Greenhouse Effect
So, the prenatal situation is analogous to our current environmental one. In both of them there is an increase in carbon dioxide—called “the greenhouse effect” when referring to the atmosphere. Perhaps these reflections between the prenatal and the planetary are not made often enough because in each case there is a tendency to focus on different halves of the equation: In terms of the prenatal situation, it is more common to think about the oxygen reduction; whereas when discussing the planetary situation it is almost always talked about as an increase in the carbon dioxide.
That We Don’t Want to See
In each case this seeing with blinders on seems unconsciously calculated to avoid another and perhaps harder to face unpleasantness involved. In the prenatal situation it is the increased carbon dioxide,
mentioned above and analogous to the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere and air pollution in the cities…this will be dealt with below under the category of “bad blood.”
In the planetary it is the reduced oxygen involved that is never brought up; this is the part that is directly analogous to the “fetal malnutrition” as it is normally thought of, that is, as just a deficiency of oxygen.
Oxygen Insufficiencies
At any rate, by this atmospheric rearrangement I mean that, while we reputedly have, and need, an oxygen concentration of twenty percent in our atmosphere, concentrations of oxygen these days, especially in heavily industrial areas, have been measured at much lower levels. For example, an industrial section of Gary, Indiana, was recorded at levels below that able to sustain human life.
Affecting Bodily Health
This is as reported in the book, O2xygen Therapies by Ed McCabe. Other examples of lowered oxygen levels in various arenas of our lives are given in the book as well, and the book is thoroughly documented. It makes a convincing case for the lowered oxygen levels as they relate to the rising statistics of a number of diseases. [Footnote 1]
Affecting Mental Health
The connection I am making here of this reduced availability of O2 to
psychological states and mental screens of perception is my own addition. However, I am informed as well by an understanding of intake of toxins as they relate to mental and psychological states, which I first found detailed in George Watson’s rare and astonishing work, Nutrition and Your Mind. [Footnote 2]
Global Oxygen Hunger
Regardless of these blatant situations of oxygen insufficiency—related to particularly adverse environments—and their effects on the bodily health of humans, there is an overall global decrease in oxygen, which, while not as extreme, is so pervasive and inescapable that it has profound consequences for all life on this planet.
Ocean Oxygen—Dead Zones and Overall Depletion
To get an idea of the distinction I am making, let us compare this atmospheric oxygen distribution with what we know of what is happening in the planet’s water supply, its oceans. The first instance of inordinate oxygen deficiency might be likened to the “dead zones” we know to exist in the seas. In these huge areas, some of them hundreds of miles in length, no life exists for there is no oxygen in the water. The second instance might be likened to the overall reduction in
oxygen in oceans with the
destruction of the oxygen-producing plankton and the other environmental
pressures to lower the oxygen levels of the oceans worldwide. So
there are wide variances of oxygen concentration in our oceans inside of a lowering of its oxygen level overall.
Atmospheric Oxygen
Similarly, there has to be wide variance in oxygen levels in air. Simply think of the differences we are aware of from indoors to outdoors, from one room, say one with an oxygen consuming fire blazing in the hearth, to another, say, with its windows wide open. So while there are wide variances in oxygen levels from location to location—some so deficient as to sicken,
cause unconsciousness, and in extreme situations kill people—there is also the reduced oxygen levels, on average, throughout the globe—caused by our uniquely human compulsion to burn carbon-based fossil fuels—which though minute, is both increasing and has subtler but more pervasive and so more dire implications.
Globally, Beginning to Gasp for Air
The results of one study were released not long ago by the Scripps Institute. The Scripps study monitored the oxygen in our atmosphere on the whole over a twenty-year period. It found a .1% decrease in global oxygen by 2005 since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the late 19th century. [Footnote 3]
So let us deal with each of these points in turn: that people are dying because of our insistence on burning stuff; that the overall global decrease though minute is serious and is having noticeable worldwide effects even as I write; and that this compulsion to burn stuff is uniquely human and what are the implications of that.
Continue with People Are Already Dying Because of Oxygen Deprivation … Global Oxygen Loss Has Dire Significance Physically AND Psychologically: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 9
Return to Oxygen Starvation and the Oliver Twist Economies We Are Imprinted in the Womb to Insist Upon…Prenatal Capitalism: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 7
Footnotes
1. O2xygen Therapies by Ed McCabe. 99-RD1 Morrisville, NY 13408: Energy Publications, 1988. See also http://www.oxygenhealth.com/
2. Nutrition and Your Mind by George Watson, 1976. See also http://naturalbias.com/your-nutritional-individuality-and-unhealthy-emotions/
3. As reported, as follows, in the article, Atmospheric Oxygen Levels Fall As Carbon Dioxide Rises at http://blogcritics.org/scitech/article/atmospheric-oxygen-levels-fall-as-carbon/. It reads partly as follows:
According to a study conducted by scientists from the Scripps Institute there is less oxygen in the atmosphere today than there used to be. The ongoing study, which accumulated and interpreted data from NOAA monitoring stations all over the world, has been running from 1989 to the present. It monitored both the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the decline in oxygen. The conclusion of that 20 year study is that, as carbon dioxide (produced primarily by burning fossil fuels) accumulates in the atmosphere, available oxygen is decreasing….
Carbon dioxide seems to be almost the total focus of attention in the climate change model as it exists today. After reviewing the results of this study and talking with Dr. Ralph Keeling (one of the lead scientists on the study), it seemed to me that the consequences of atmospheric oxygen depletion should be included in any discussion of atmospheric change….
… we are losing nearly three O2 molecules for each CO2 molecule that accumulates in the air….
Since the beginning of the industrial revolution we have removed .095% of the oxygen in our atmosphere. True, that is only a tenth of one percent of the total supply, but oxygen makes up only 20% of the atmosphere. I looked up safety rules regarding oxygen concentrations and according to OSHA rules on atmospheres in closed environments, “if the oxygen level in such an environment falls below 19.5% it is oxygen deficient, putting occupants of the confined space at risk of losing consciousness and death.” What happens if the world’s atmospheric levels of oxygen fall to 19.5% or lower? Are we all going to have to carry little blue oxygen tanks with us to survive? Not a pleasant possibility….
Plants and certain bacteria take in carbon dioxide, combine it with water to form glucose and produce oxygen as a byproduct in the photosynthesis reaction. The current increase in carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere indicates that this cycle is no longer in balance. It shows that we have reached the point where the biosphere of the planet can no longer process all of the carbon dioxide that we are producing….
We currently make estimates of how many years we have left before excess carbon dioxide becomes a bigger problem than it already is but we aren’t really sure of their accuracy. However, to the best of my knowledge, we don’t have estimates of how long it might be, if oxygen continues to be depleted at its current rate, until it might become a problem. After all, while most of us may be willing to wait out the effects of excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for a time just to see if we really do get warmer weather and more abundant crops out of the deal; how many of us want to wait and see how little oxygen we can survive on?
Read more: http://blogcritics.org/scitech/article/atmospheric-oxygen-levels-fall-as-carbon/
Continue with People Are Already Dying Because of Oxygen Deprivation … Global Oxygen Loss Has Dire Significance Physically AND Psychologically: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 9
Return to Oxygen Starvation and the Oliver Twist Economies We Are Imprinted in the Womb to Insist Upon…Prenatal Capitalism: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 7
Invite you to join me on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/sillymickel
friend me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sillymickel
Kaleidoscope of 21st Century Life: The Doors of Perception…Stormed
Apocalypse No! Chapter Nine:
Twenty-First Century Life –
Table of DisContents
Kaleidoscope of Postmodern Life
Dangling Above an Abyss
Beyond the entertainment media, it seems perinatal themes and elements are showing up everywhere else in our surrounding environment and culture. The scenery of our everyday reality consists of pollution of our air, water, and food; threat of death “at any moment,” caused by the knowledge of the power of nuclear weapons; fantasies of apocalypse of all kinds, magnified, perhaps, by the ending of a millennium and the approach of 2012—including fundamentalist Christian imaginings of an end to human civilization in an apocalyptic “rapture”; New Age fantasies of ecological, spiritual, and social utopias; and so on.
First, let us consider a few of the most blatantly birth-related of the events around us.
The Perinatal Screen
Aliens…Ooooooooooo…Sca-ry….
Alien abduction stories, while a relatively recent addition to our cultural landscape, are unusual in the rapidity with which they have gained cultural currency and are telling in the extreme fascination the public has with them. They have catapulted more than one show—The X Files being the prime example, of course—to cult-like status. The photo here is a scene after the abduction of Fox Mulder, one of The X-Files main characters.
Fetal aliens
Yet Alvin Lawson has pointed out how alien abduction stories are replete with perinatal elements: passing through walls, umbilical beams of connection to the “mother ship”—the placenta—either fetal-looking aliens or aliens whose eyes are most prominent and the lower parts of their faces undistinguished—similar to the way a newborn might see an obstetrician wearing a medical mask.
Then of course there are the elements of being medically probed, measured, samples taken from one, and being swooshed from one place to another with no say on one’s part—all remarkably like the experience of a newborn, right out of the womb. [Footnote 1]
While I do not think that the “alien abduction” phenomenon is just derivative of birth, as Lawson does, I do believe that we perceive these events through a veil of birth trauma, the likes of which the world has never known. My position is explained in the article, “Alien Abductors: Angelic Midwives or Hounds From Hell?“
An interesting development in the alien face is the “shoved down the throat” thing going on. Similar to the “Jacob’s Ladder” kind of vegetable thrusting out, which was described in the last chapter, it was popularized greatly in the movie, “Alien.”
As a neonate we cannot see the mouths of the masked attendants at our birth. In a traumatic situation, whatever is hidden is more feared than what can be seen. As in anything else, onto the unknown we can project the most magnified versions of our fears. When these images arise in us, then, it makes sense that if the mouth is shown it might be even more frightening than that above the mouth.
So in modern times, for the first time in history, we see something going on where these feelings are symbolized as a ferocious mouth coming out of the mouth. The fact that it appears like something that would gag reveals that this image contains elements of the trauma around ungentle mouth suctioning or clearing as well as the reveal of what might be under the mask of the seeming attacker, the obstetrician. Add lots of teeth and you have the perinatal vagina dentate as well, symbolizing the trauma occurring at birth, when actually emerging from the mother.
Rock Concerts (For some, ditto)
Lawson has also described perinatal elements in rock concerts. [Footnote 2]
Mosh wombs
Keep in mind that rock music popularity and concert rituals are world-wide phenomena. Youth from nearly all countries are involved in rock culture. Among other things, Lawson, in his article, refers to placental guitars, umbilical mikes, and youths jumping into mosh pits. Mosh pits suggest birth feelings in that they simulate the crushing in the womb.
At birth our consciousness is filled with the feeling of flesh all around. The world is crushing, heaving, rollicking, bouncing flesh everywhere. During a non-cesarean birth one struggles and moves through this flesh to reach space, air, light…freedom. We re-create this pattern of struggle in order to reach the light, or freedom and space, throughout life. It is obvious that mosh pits are attractive, appealing places to re-create the danger of birth alongside the hope of being “held up,” uplifted, and reborn.
The doors of perception…stormed
We could also mention the loud music, fireworks, and flashing and bright explosions of light at these concerts as perinatal in that they re-create the assault of sensation that occurs to the newly emerged fetus—an assault which in one’s mind is like unto a bomb exploding.
The rock groups and their lyrics themselves are often blatantly perinatal. The most obvious example of this was the group, Nirvana, who came out with a CD titled “In Utero.” The fact that the leader of the group, Kurt Cobain, committed suicide is a strong indication of his closeness and access to his perinatal trauma…as I will soon explain.
Pacifiers, Trolls, Crushing Populations, and Global Suffocation
Turning from rock, we see perinatal BPM III elements in the scenery of our everyday lives evident in the rising incidence of violence by children at ever younger ages.
In Europe, as pointed out by Mayr and Boederl, it appears a collective regression to the perinatal is going on, especially among the youth. [Footnote 3]
Collective navel-gazing
The forms this “regression” has taken include the surprising popularity of a pop song, sung by a very young child, expressing the difficulties of being a baby; the wearing of baby pacifiers as ornaments as a powerful fashion fad; and being enamored of troll-like dolls, which, according to the authors indicate a “regression to the womb.”
I would say a progression to the womb, by the way….I will soon explain why.
Additionally, we see the crushing, no-exit, claustrophobic BPM II elements manifesting in the crushing population densities in major human cities throughout the world.
Gag me with a crowd
One overlooked, but hugely pervasive perinatal element is the increasing carbon dioxide concentration in our atmosphere called “the greenhouse effect,” which, combined with decreased oxygen levels, is analogous to the situation of “fetal malnutrition,” described by Briend and deMause, that occurs prior to birth, and which is the basis for DeMause’s explanation of poisonous placenta symbolism. [Footnote 4]
At any rate, by this atmospheric rearrangement I mean that, while we reputedly have, and need, an oxygen concentration of twenty percent in our atmosphere, concentrations of oxygen these days, especially in heavily industrial areas, have been measured at much lower levels. For example, an industrial section of Gary, Indiana, was recorded at five percent oxygen concentration. [Footnote 5]
Raging to Reenter, Digging Under Ground
Other evidence for closeness to the perinatal unconscious comes from Kenneth Keniston, who studied the youth of the Sixties. In Keniston’s widely read book of the time titled The Uncommitted: Alienated Youth in American Society, he described an increasingly prevalent, unusually influential, and relatively newly emerging personality type, which he discovered in his sociopsychological study of youthful college students.
Among other traits, he found these youth to be characterized by fantasies of a “rage to reenter” the womb; and a “fantasy of fusion” with the mother, which took perinatal forms of all kinds including stories of wishing to dig one’s way back into the earth; a fascination with and wish to return to the past, the long forgotten, and the under ground; and a desire to find oblivion in some enveloping medium…even at the price of self-destruction!
Some of the other elements of Sixties youth were existential angst, being enamored of death and dying, and a refusal of “normal” adulthood. Think about it. Are these descriptions not a lot like we have heard of the generation that followed Sixties youth…the so-called Generation X?
Vampire apocalypse…It’s all so black and white
For Generation X, black clothes, white painted faces, and black lipstick are the fashion statement.
And what is this statement of this sector of youth—a statement that began in the Seventies among what was then called the “punk” movement—which includes now the fad of vampirism, except the same fascination with death as Sixties “alienated” youth…again. This fascination is an obvious reflection of the death/rebirth aspects of the perinatal.
Being gratefully dead
Need we remember this same kind of fascination with being dead and then reborn theme from the Sixties as in being “gratefully dead”? It seems that this trend toward easier access to and higher awareness of perinatal influences has been going on for a while now.
Drugs…. Oooooooooo…. Sca-ry….
There are other similarities between the youth of the Sixties and today’s youth: Drug use among youth, as reported in the last decade or so, has been going up again. This also is an indication of an emerging perinatal unconscious because drugs are intimately woven with perinatal influences in a number of ways. Not only can some drugs bring up birth feelings, as Grof’s work has shown, but the mother being drugged while giving birth to her child can result in drug abuse by that child later in life. [Footnote 6]
Lucy in the sewer with depression
Other connections between drug use and perinatal influence: Perinatal feelings are very often of the depressive, no-exit type, and some drugs are temporarily effective antidotes for that. Depression itself is epidemic, indicating the rise of BPM II feelings. There is widespread use of antidepressants in America currently.
No-exit wombs
Grof has claimed, based upon the tens of thousands of sessions of exploration into the perinatal unconscious that he has personally facilitated and thus observed, that the roots of endogenous—that is to say, deep rooted and engrained, not just situational—depression lie in the no-exit BPM II experience in the womb prior to birth. Furthermore, my personal experience with my own depression and my primal re-experiencing of prenatal, womb feelings, as well as birth, confirms his statement.
Tune inward, turn back, drop down
Finally, psychedelic drugs..LSD… “they’re ba-a-a-ack.” Though they are more discreetly used these days and so are less obviously evident. Various psychedelics and hallucinogens are used at postmodern raves, among many other places.
Their increased use also points to perinatal influences in that it is known that psychedelics—LSD in particular—can help people to access and to some extent resolve perinatal trauma, when taken for purposes of personal growth. [Footnote 7]
“Most Peculiar, Mama!”
We have considered the uniqueness of our times and the elements of the perinatal unconscious. We have followed that with a look at the predominant underlying fantasies and myths of our times—our contemporary collective dreams as projected onto the silver screen, boob tube, and printed page, with a perinatal rock heartbeat of a soundtrack.
Our Nightly News and Neighborhoods
Finally we have taken a look at the anomalous elements of our everyday reality—those confusing and bizarre, newly emerging images that permeate our nightly news and neighborhoods, along with those totally unprecedented cultural, environmental, and social factors that weave the backdrops of our lives.
Going Forward, Explore Our Hells and Heavens
Let us now go deeper. Let us make the connections. Let us explore the way we have reflected our innermost intimate hells and heavens into the fabric of our times. And back again, let us uncover the way the warp and woof of these strangest of days has affected each of us, in our most superficial of behaviors to the most intimate and deepest of our minds. The way forward is down.
Continue on this site with
Apocalypse – No! Chapter Ten:
The Scenery of Postmodern Life
Footnotes
1. Alvin H. Lawson, “UFO abductions or birth memories?” Fate, 38(3) March 1985, pp. 68-80; and Alvin H. Lawson, “Perinatal imagery in UFO abduction reports.” In T. Verny (ed.): Pre- and Perinatal Psychology: An Introduction. Human Sciences Press, New York, 1987. [return to text]
2. Alvin H. Lawson, “Placental Guitars, Umbilical Mikes, and the Maternal Rock-Beat: Birth Fantasies and Rock Music Videos.” The Journal of Psychohistory 21 (1994): 335-353. [return to text]
3. Daniela F. Mayr & Artur R. Boelderl, “The Pacifier Craze: Collective Regression in Europe.” The Journal of Psychohistory 21 (1993): 143-156. [return to text]
4. A. Briend, “Fetal Malnutrition: The Price of Upright Posture?” British Medical Journal 2 (1979): 317-319. [return to text]
5. As reported in the book, O2xygen Therapies by Ed McCabe. 99-RD1 Morrisville, NY 13408: Energy Publications, 1988.
Other examples of lowered oxygen levels in various arenas of our lives are given in the book as well, and the book is thoroughly documented. It makes a convincing case for the lowered oxygen levels as they relate to the rise of a number of diseases. The connection of these lowered levels to mental states is my own addition.
I also owe a lot of understanding of toxins as they relate to mental states to George Watson’s rare 1976 work, Nutrition and Your Mind. [return to text]
6. There is another overlooked factor or aspect of this rise in drug use: These youngsters are the sons and daughters of the Sixties generation who, in their own youth, as we all know too well, engaged in drug experimentation. This new generation of drug users has been called the baby-boomer “echo” generation.
Unlike the preceding “echo” generation of the Eighties—whose parents’ young adulthood occurred during the Great Depression and World War Two, and whose own young adult formative years occurred during the Eisenhower–Joe McCarthy–Presley Fifties and who were thus influenced by their parents to conservatism, career-mindedness, and, for drug-of-choice, alcohol—this “echo” generation has parents whose young adulthood was forged in the rebellion, drug and sex experimentation, activism, liberal-radicalism, and idealism of the Sixties.
See my website/book Culture War, Class War, especially Chapter Two: Matrix Aroused, the Sixties and Chapter Four: Drugs of Choice and Generational Cultures – Concocted Worlds and Chapter Five: The King Won’t Die – An Aborted Changing of the Guard.
Generationally speaking, we know that children do not predominantly rebel to the opposite of their parents’ values. Keniston, for one, has made it clear—referring to studies done as evidence—that children are paramountly influenced by the values and attitudes…conscious and unconscious…of their parents. So this new youth is going to be more liberal in their attitude to drug use, even if their parents, in their coming into adulthood, overtly decry or are against the use of drugs. Keep in mind also that many of the baby-boomers have retained, not reversed, their acceptance of drug experimentation, and many still believe in and use drugs; many still considering the occasional use of certain types—especially the psychedelics, and to some extent, pot—to be an aid to self-development and/or spiritual awareness.
The myth that youth rebel against their parents’ values was expressed and propagandized by the TV show “Family Ties.” This was an oh-so-convenient portrayal, as it contributed to the pervasive scapegoating of the Sixties generation by the Eisenhower–Joe McCarthy–Presley generation who came into their Triumphant Phase, that is, took over the reins of society as mature adults in the Eighties.
This “Family Ties” kind of rebellion, however inaccurate, seems to be credible largely as a result of the observation that youth do rebel against their parents. But it ignores the fact that when they do, and they don’t always, they revolt or rebel, as in the Sixties youth, most often in the direction of being more so in terms of the values of their parents. As Keniston found out, for example, as he described in his follow-up to The Uncommitted, in the book, Young Radicals: Notes on Committed Youth, radical youth had liberal (hardly conservative!) parents.
If they were angry at their parents it was out of their perception of their parents as compromising and not living out their own expressed ideals, as laid out to their children in raising them…therefore, out of their disgust at their parents as “not walking their talk.” Hence, as we may recollect, there was the oft-repeated charge of “hypocrite” directed by some of these youth toward their parental generation.
In this regard it might also be noted that this new crop of youngsters, the sons and daughters of the Sixties Generation, has also seen increases in voting for liberal or Democratic candidates. Their turnout for Clinton in 1992 was the first time since the Seventies that the youth vote went Democratic. Their support of Obama was widely given as the reason for his success. This new cohort of youth also has seen increases in idealism, activism, and volunteerism, and—despite the AIDS scare—in early and/or increased sexual experimentation (the fledgling “youth celibacy movement” is long gone, folks).
These aspects and generational phenomena are spelled out in more detail in my work-in-progress, The Once and Current Generation: Regression, Mysticism, and “My Generation.” Right at hand, however, you can read an elaboration of some of these ideas in the chapters mentioned in Culture War, Class War—especially Chapters One through Seven. [return to text]
7. And for those who have cynically adopted the line that either psychedelics are another drug that blots out one’s Pain or that they are only used for recreational or sensual/hedonistic purposes or that the kinds of birth experiences that Grof describes as occurring on LSD only occur in supervised and guided sessions, like the ones he offered…for those who have dismissed psychedelics and LSD in any of these ways, let me say,
First, psychedelics, especially LSD and to some extent, even marijuana, are known to act in the brain in a way almost exactly the opposite of the drugs used to escape from reality—such as, for example, alcohol; speed, crack, or cocaine; nicotine; or heroin—though this news flies in the face of the myth put out by the all-encompassing anti-drug propaganda machine, which puts all drugs in the same category. This is common knowledge among researchers and scientists who study these things. For elaboration, see Culture War, Class War Chapter Three: Drugs of Choice and Generational Cultures – Opposing Worlds—especially the part on “Drugs and Consciousness“—as well as subsequent chapters of that book/website.
Second, that drugs are only used for recreational purposes is patently false. Though the vast majority of drug use is recreational, there are in print many examples, and the admissions of many authors, of the use of LSD by individuals and groups for purposes of personal growth. And, in my own limited exploration, personal growth was my motivation. In fact, many people are afraid to take the drug LSD, knowing full well that its effects are not always pleasurable or recreational. So why would they accept that risk if they did not have some other intent, like personal growth, for experimenting on themselves with it?
Finally, before I had ever heard of such a possibility of reliving one’s birth, let alone heard of Grof, or Janov for that matter, I learned that at least one person at my university on LSD found himself feeling like a fetus and then going through a process of struggling through a birth canal, and so on. [return to text]
Copyright © 1999, 2011 by Michael Derzak Adzema
Continue on this site with
Apocalypse – No! Chapter Ten:
Birth Wars, World Woes
Invite you to follow me on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/sillymickel
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sillymickel