Posts Tagged ‘self regulation’

Mind and Movement 10 – The History of Physical and Spiritual Healing in Different Cultures

A knowledge of history helps us have a wider and more tolerant view of ourselves and others. In connection with coex it helps us to have a more educated approach to the sort of claims made by groups such as Subud, that they have a unique power they are sharing with the world. In fact, their unique ‘force’ has appeared many times before in slightly different guises, but also obvious forms of coex.

Although the use of the self-regulatory forces in the human being is not new to our own times, it has waxed and waned with each culture. Each culture and period in history has also developed a slightly different theoretical explanation, and different approach. The overall change has been that the further back one looks, the more relig­ious and symbolic the approach – the nearer we come to our own times the more empirical and rational it has been.

Even from the earliest historical times there is evidence that humans used medical and psychological skills to deal with physical and psychic disorders. Shamans, witch-doctors, priests and priestesses were the early administra­tors of such help. Although some of their techniques were originally judged as ineffective, the growth of psychobiological knowledge has shown them to incorporate elements of hypnosis, suggestion treatment, use of the dream process, with herbal knowledge.

Psychologists like Patricia Norris, clinical director of the Biofeedback and Psychophysiology Centre at the Meninger Foundation, are experimenting with such techniques and finding they work. Norris uses imaging or visualisation methods to help people heal serious illness such as cancer. Whether we look at shamanic or modern psycho­logical usage, what we find is that the technique helps the patient develop a more positive inner feeling state in regard to their physical illness or fears. The self-regulatory process attempts this sort of shift itself in dreaming, and the techniques such as the dramatic rituals of shamanism, produced an environment where the coex linked dramatisation already described in other chapters could be ex­pressed. Modern research suggests that this may actually lead the activity of the immune system to greater efficiency.

Whether we look at the approach used by the Hindus, Chinese, Celts, Red Indians, Africans or Aborigines, they were very holistic. They were aimed at producing not only physical and psychological changes, but also to bring the patient into a more satisfying relationship with their environment and their social group. In this sense they linked physical mental and spiritual aspects of the person.

Looking at the details of some of these approaches it can be seen that amongst the ‘stone age’ type races, most had a powerful relationship with their dream life. The energies and emotions in a dream were often given expression. This was done in a variety of ways. Sometimes they were acted out in a group drama or dance. The Seneca Indians said that the soul often has desires it has been unable to express consciously. The Hurons believed that if these hidden desires were kept unexpressed the soul might be­come angry, and it might revolt ‘against the body, causing various diseases, and even death. . .’ To quote from my book Do You Dream:

 

The Indian tribes mentioned often had a sort of social psychiatry in which dreamers were allowed to live out their hidden (unconscious) desires that were threatening health and well being. Thus a dreamer would be allowed sexual freedoms with others; unlawful actions; objects desired; or feasts, etc. . Although these people as a society were usually modest and shy, and chastity and marital fidelity were public ideals.

This very direct admittance and expression of real needs is not common, either in the past or present. Most often the energies were given religious, dance, or ritualistic expression. One tribe, the Masai, came near to it however. The men form a group which shout, sing, cry, scream, dance and move to express their bottled-up feelings, fears and energy. No doubt this provides an environment for spontaneous action to erupt.

Sex and Coex in New Guinea

Michaela Denis, in her book Leopard In My Lap, tells of an interesting practise used by the Chimbu people of New Guinea. One of their ‘dances’ takes the form of the men and women sitting around the edge of a large hut. They are arranged alternately male and female, the men facing the women. With accompanying drumming they gradual­ly draw close and the men passionately rub noses and faces with the woman on their right, then the one on their left. This carries on for a long period and with obvious pleasure and ardour. The dance seems to be a way of safely allowing the sexual feelings within a group to find expression.

In the ancient world a great many of the ways people used coex was within a religious framework. The unconscious was allowed to express within accepted symbols and boundaries. Frequently the practitioner held the belief structure that it was a god or a spirit which expressed through them. Given the manner in which the unconscious expresses itself in symbols and readily takes up and uses any available belief system, such practices still obviously remain as self regulatory. In Man and His Symbols Jung tells of a Hindu widow who capably directed her household and employees by going into a trance and speaking with the same confidence, voice and authority as her dead husband. After all, she had lived with him many years, and his mannerisms and attitudes were well recorded in her un­conscious. By allowing her being to express itself in that way, she maintained an equilibrium which might other­wise have been difficult.

Shaktipat- The Indian Way to Enlightenment

In his article Between Coma and Convulsion, in Energy and Character, David Boadella quotes the report of a person studying the self-regulatory practices in India. Although this is a recent account, the yoga practice it describes has been used for many centuries in India:

I have been in India for about four months now and I thought the readers of Energy and Character might be interested in the similarities between Reichian work and Shaktipat or Kriya Yoga. The Sanscrit word ‘shakti’ means energy, bio-energy, or more correctly, bio- cosmic energy. Shaktipat is a practice which is described as the loosening of this energy by a guru from the way it may be blocked in us. When this shakti energy is loosened and no longer tightly bound by the control of the conscious mind it begins to circulate in the body. It is then said to open up energy channels or pathways, and usually begins to manifest in what are known as ‘kriya’. Kriyas are spontaneous movements of the body and of the respiratory system. One interesting aspect of kriyas, which resemble Reichian abreaction, is that they very often manifest as highly involved asanas (body postures) and as mudras (meditational postures involving the hands). I have seen many persons who practice shakipat enter a phase of intense energy flow in which breathing becomes rapid and involuntary and in which people begin with great rapidity to do asanas they never knew and which they ordinarily would never have been able to perform. Although the conscious practice of asanas facilitates this process, true hatha yoga (Indian techniques using physiological processes to integrate ones being) occurs involuntarily in this kriya phase. The burst of energy that results is sometimes astounding and may continue for well over an hour. The movements in some individuals are so intense and frantic they appear dangerous. In other persons the movements are soft, delicate and flowing. Thus some persons may breathe like locomotives, beat themselves repeatedly, stand on their heads, bellow, twist their limbs in the most unbelievable postures; others begin to dance harmoniously, to sing softly in languages they have never learned, to be­come playful and flirtatious and to utter strange sounds.

The explanation for this is that the shakti is opening or purifying obstructions in the energy pathways, that the individual is working out the results of past actions and experience, and that an evolutionary process is allowed to unfold which eventually will result in an expansion of awareness.

In this kind of meditation the individual sits still, but not rigidly; he doesn’t concentrate in any way, but simply relaxes as much as possible and permits the energy to do its thing. The energy is of course thought of as ultimately cosmic or divine. Hence the path of enlighten­ment lies in relinquishing ego control and identifications and allowing this bio-cosmic energy to express itself and lead us. The final results of this process is the opening of the highest brain centres in a new type of consciousness in which the individual merges with the universal consciousness. The total process takes a very long time but this should not dissuade us as each stage has its own rewards. The bodily spasms, automatic breathing, asanas, contortions and reflex patterns that manifest spontaneously as the energy gains momentum all serve to purify the organism. Though some of these phenomena may sound strange they are not experienced as unpleasant once the practitioner no longer totally identifies with bodily processes. Thus the meditator can be totally in their body without identifying totally with its experiences.

Hallucination – or is it My Unconscious Speaking?

This very precise description shows that Shaktipat is quite clearly of the spiritualistic belief structure mentioned else­where. In spiritualistic trances of the stone age races and of today, similar processes to the above are being expressed, but within different boundaries and limitations. Modern day spiritualists still use this approach to the self-regulatory process of the unconscious. The unconscious has no dif­ficulty in speaking in different ‘languages’, or expressing different racial types, personalities, or even animals.

In any attempt to understand the type of experiences described above, one needs to know a little about the vari­ous functions of the unconscious. The process of dream making and waking drama formation have already been covered, but one other aspect is important. It is the function which deals with body language. Humans have an ability to ‘read’ body language, but it usually takes place unconsciously. It was probably developed in the human race prior to the emergence of spoken language as we know it today. Now it remains as an almost unused func­tion, but operates at times during shock or ‘trance’ conditions – i.e., when the conscious personality surrenders its decision making arid critical faculties. Philip Zimbardo, in the tenth edition of Psychology and Life (Scott, Foresman & Co.), gives a fascinating example of this from his own experience. “It was my first day back to work after recover­ing from a traumatic automobile accident. I was lucky to be alive with only torn ligaments in my leg and a concussion: the driver had been killed by the impact of a head-on collision. As I hobbled up the three flights of stairs sup­ported by a crutch, my initial joy of returning to school was suddenly suspended. With each step I took a strange sensa­tion occurred: I could ‘feel’ myself BECOMING my younger brother, George. Not IMAGINE ‘as if’ I were George, but being transformed physically to be him.

I perceived my face changing to he his face and my body doing likewise. My limp became more pronounced, and it took great strength to climb the last flight. In a panic, I shut myself in my office, not wanting anyone to wit­ness this strange transformation. I avoided looking at my reflection in the window for fear I would see his face and hot mimic. Had I really become my brother or was I MERELY hallucinating?

Time passed during which I tried frantically to relax, ‘to pull myself together,’ and make sense of my distorted sense impressions. After all, I was a normal, serious scientist type not given to such flights of fancy. I lived by the reality principle.

My secretary and colleagues knocked and came into the office before I could say I was busy. They were worried by my abrupt disappearing act. They were relieved to see I was ‘my old self again,’ and I was relieved to see them responding to me as if I were Phil and not George. A glance at my reflection confirmed my hope. I had changed back, ‘or was no longer George

• or George was no longer manifesting himself in me.’ Whatever? Weird, no? But why?

When we were children, George had infantile paraly­sis and for a time had to wear leg braces and walk with crutches. I would accompany him to therapy sessions and observe his frustration, embarrassment, and anger at not being able to function normally. Since we were only eighteen months apart in age, I could readily empathise with his feelings. I may have also felt guilty at being glad I too was not crippled. Once I recall volun­teering to exchange places with him in the swimming pool exercises, but the nurse chided me, ‘being crippled is not fun and games young man.’ I was about four at the time.

As I hobbled up the stairs to my office some twenty five years later, the pattern of feedback sensory stimula­tion reactivated this prerecorded motor action plan. Memories of George’s posture and movement were enacted. I had retained mimicry responses of his motor activity that I had observed so intensely. Now I was changing places with him, but not consciously and not volitionally. The suddenness and vividness of the hallucination was frightening because it was so real, yet at the same time contradicted my knowledge of reality.

Philip Zimbardo calls his experience an hallucination, perhaps because he felt fear. However, if we remember something we do not call it an hallucination but a memory. Realising that we remember via body feelings, posture, emotion as well as images and words, enables us to see that Philip, because he was in a similar situation to that which his brother had been, remembered a whole set of responses. During coex such experiences are not unusual. When they are not seen as abnormal we can accept them without anxiety and they add to our range of information and experience. In fact, if Philip had not been disturbed by his experience, but had sought it as a means of understanding his brother, he could have gathered a great deal of inform­ation from it. If we realise that we gather such information from everybody we contact, we can see that we have a very rich source of insight into the lives of those around us. These are important points to understand because we are looking at historical approaches to coex. They help to explain why some uses of coex, which appear fantastic or irrational to us, were in fact extremely useful in sonic settings.

Trances Spirit Healing and Possession

Carol Laderman, an anthropologist who went to study childbirth practices in Malaysia, found that shamanic healers, who it was thought had disappeared 75 years ago, were still an everyday part of village life, (Science Digest July 1983, Trances That Heal-Rites Rituals and Brain Chemicals). To study their methods she became the apprentice of Pak Long Awang, himself a traditional shamanic healer. It is interesting that although she is highly educated in Western thought, she has the same fear of the unconscious as Philip Zimbardo. She says,

For almost two years after my arrival in the village, I refused to undergo one of the shaman’s trances. Having become a member of Pak Long’s entourage, I had attended healing ceremonies with growing regularity; the shaman had even adopted me as his own daughter. Still, as a Westerner and a scientist, I was afraid to enter trances – afraid I might embarrass myself or, worse, never come out at all. My reluctance became a standing joke among the villagers.

She goes on to say what some of the healing sessions she attended were like. A very fat woman for instance, who regularly experienced depression because of her awkward­ness and girth, while ‘entranced’ by the music of drums and gongs, and Pak Long’s chants, rose from her ‘sleeping mat’ with the grace of a lithe young girl and danced the role of the beautiful princess in the Malay Opera before a delighted audience of friends and neighbours. Afterwards her ailment disappeared.

Eventually Carol took the plunge herself.

As the vibrations of the drums and gongs entered my body, my eyes seemed to glaze over. As the music became louder my mouth opened, trembling uncon­trollably. I began to feel cold winds blowing inside my chest, winds that increased in intensity as the music swelled and accelerated until it felt as if a hurricane was raging within my heart. I put my hands on my chest to try to calm it, but instead I began to move my shoulders and then the upper part of my body as if I were about to get up and dance. With the last vestiges of my self control, I prevented myself; I still feared embarrassment But as the music swelled to a climax I began to move my head so quickly and violently that, had I not been in trance, my neck would undoubtedly have snapped.

What Carol Laderman describes appears to be just the same sort of movements as those experienced in ‘Shakti­pat’ and in modern coex. The approach, however, is quite different. In Shaktipat ‘trance’ is achieved by the individual sitting “still, but not rigidly; he does not concentrate in any way, but simply relaxes.” In Malaysian shamanism, trance is entered “through cultural cues, ritual props, incantations, songs and stories. Percussive music, a steady, musical pulse.” In modern coex similar states can be ex­perienced simply by allowing spontaneous movement. So it seems as if all that is important is that the persons own fears, cultural theories and needs are respected. For instance in Haiti, the trance is often accompanied by ‘possession’ by the god Ghede, which is manifested by a particular phy­sical posture.

Buddhism and the Way of Liberation

Ancient approaches to coex were not always in the form of trance or possession though. Two thousand five hundred years ago Guatama the Buddha gave an impulse to the world which has developed a quite different relationship with self regulatory processes. In terms of coex we can see these as Zen meditation. Tibetan Buddhism, the Chinese meditation described in the book The Secret of The Golden Flower, and Vipassana meditation. In these an open permit­ting state of consciousness is held. Thus the experiences described under Shaktipat may arise into consciousness. In the Buddhist tradition though, these are held back from physical expression and seen as illusory aspects of self which will pass away. As with Shaktipat and most of the older approaches, one seldom hears of people experiencing and transforming childhood experience. The direct experience of ourselves in this way is more Western than Eastern, though definitely not our exclusive property. What is noticeable in the Buddhist tradition is more of an em­phasis on introversion and withdrawal from the external activity. Thus, what is discovered within is seldom used to change social structure in the way described in chapter seven. But in its essence, Buddhism does not suggest this one sidedness of retreat. And in the techniques of Zen and Vipassana, especially in their Western adaptations, a really helpful approach to coex is seen. Perhaps the most useful aspect of the training is in the opening and letting go of the ego, yet learning not to be lost in the forces and images which arise.

A very clear example of this is given in Tibetan Bud­dhism. Such teachings are very old. In her book Secret Oral Teachings of Tibetan Buddhist Sects, Alexandra David-Neal writes:

Liberation is achieved by the practice of non-activity,

say the Masters of the Secret Teachings.

What is, according to them, non-activity? Let us first of all notice that it has nothing in common with the quietism of certain Christian or oriental mystics. Ought one to believe that it consists in inertia and that the disciples of the Masters who honour it are exhorted to abstain from doing anything whatever? Certainly not. In the first place it is impossible for a living being to do nothing. To exist is, in itself, a kind of activity. The doctrine of non-action does not in any way aim at those actions which are habitual in life such as eating, sleeping, walking, speaking, reading, studying, etc. In contradistinction to the Taoist mystics who, in general, consider that the practice of non-activity requires com­plete isolation in a hermitage, the Masters of the Secret Teachings, although prone to appreciate the ‘joys of solitude’, do not consider them in any way indispen­sable. As for the practice of non-activity itself, they judge it as absolutely necessary for the production of the state of deliverance.

What then is this activity from which one ought to abstain? It is the disordered activity of the mind which, unceasingly, devotes itself to the work of a builder erecting ideas, creating an imaginary world in which it shuts itself like a chrysalis in its cocoon.

In the Buddhist meditation called Vipassana, the process of self regulation is allowed to let the flow of consciousness present ones innate images, fears, hopes and imaginings about life and death, and to recognise them for what they are – images, fears, hopes and ideas. In this way the attach­ment and even pain we experienced in connection with them falls away in some degree. That is liberation.

Christianity’s Unwanted Secret

Another impulse more embedded in Western culture, but perhaps less accepted today, is that begun by the early Christians. This is very definitely an example of a group of people permitting the self-regulatory action to express itself consciously. It is what we call Pentecostalism, and from the point of view of coex, is in may ways similar to Shaktipat. The guru, Jesus, was the means of stimulating the release, or giving ‘grace’. Because we are acquainted with the dogmas and belief structure of Christianity in sonic measure, we can more readily see how a natural process, self regulation, can become deified and surround­ed by religious symbols and ritual. Just as the views of Buddhism and shamanism edited what aspects of the un­conscious were permissible, (i.e. in Vipassana it is not acceptable to go into ‘trance’ or be ‘possessed’. In shamanism it is thought ineffective if one only sits and remains aware of the flow of arising images) so in the Pentecostal approach, what is allowed must in some way link with Christ, God or biblical statements. Nevertheless, the ‘drunkenness’, speaking in ‘tongues’, the flow of cosmic energy – holy ghost – are all akin to Shaktipat and modern coex.

Pentecostal Christianity speaks of gifts of the spirit. These are listed as the gift of: the word of wisdom; the word of knowledge; faith healing; the working of mira­cles; prophecy; the discerning of spirits; diverse kinds of tongues; and interpretation of tongues.

Most of these are easily recognizable descriptions of faculties of the unconscious. The unconscious is constantly scanning information and considering the highest probable outcome – thus prophecy. Access to universal aspects of consciousness allow the gaining of insights which might also account for prophecy, wisdom and words of knowl­edge. Speaking in tongues is a common way in which the

unconscious expresses its feelings and insights. It is a level three expression in Van Rhijn/Caldwell’s levels of con­sciousness. When the ‘tongues’ are considered as symbolic expression they transform into meaningful words, just as dream symbols do. My experiments with such phenomena convincingly show the common link between these often considered unrelated phenomena and coex.

Discerning of spirits means the ability to look into a human heart and see what is hidden there. Considering how much we can learn subliminally through body langu­age and verbal cues, this is another straightforward uncon­scious faculty. But imagine a group of people all ‘worship­ping’ as is described of Pentecost, when the disciples were taken to be drunk. (Acts 1:12 to 2:13) There were 120 gathered in a room, men and women being equals – “All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.” Considering present day Pentecos­talism and other forms of coex, this large group would include people who would be shouting in tongues, others would be crying, moving their bodies, discerning spirits, and generally creating a bedlam of noise. Any newcomer to the group, not having had explained what was being attempted – that each be open to the Spirit and be moved by it – might think the people were crazy or drunk.

Saint Paul – Killer of the Spontaneous

Because of the obvious cultural fear we have regarding spontaneous expression, it is interesting to remind our­selves of what Paul said to the early Christians (Cor 1.14:26 to 40)

If therefore the whole church assembles and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say you are mad?

If any speak in a tongue, let there be two or at the most three, and each in turn; and let one interpret. But if there is no one to interpret let each of them keep silence in church and speak to himself and God.

•  . . As in all the churches of the saints, the women

should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate as even the law (Jewish law?) says. . . For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

Comparing the original Pentecost with the church services of today, I believe it is obvious where Paul’s advice, still rooted in Jewish male authoritarianism, led Christianity. The church gained converts, but as for helping it to experience the calm love of life the guru who consorted with prostitutes had, Paul played the role of murderer.

Mesmer – Father of Modern Psychotherapy

Coming nearer to our own times we find a connecting link between past and present in Franz Anton Mesmer. In about the year 1775 Mesmer, a qualified doctor three times over, began to experiment with magnets. He found that patients who had previously been incurable were healed when these were placed on their bodies. For a year he had a mania for experimenting with magnets in quite extra­ordinary ways. But within that period he realised the same healing results could be obtained without using the magnets. He found that simply by stroking or touching the patient along the line of the nerves, the muscles would begin to twitch. This twitching, he said, should not cause alarm, even if it led, as it usually did, to an intensification of the patients symptoms or even convulsive movements. Throughout these releases, noisy and explosive though they were, he saw how patients could experience a healing of the distressing symptoms.

Prior to this time these convulsive releases were considered to be the work of devils or spirits. This attitude arose out of Christian belief, and Jesus and the disciples clearly used the same technique. In the New Testament are descriptions of people cured by these convulsive releases. Mesmer is a transforming link with our own times because his approach to this phenomena was an experimental and evaluative one. Nevertheless he was still bound to the past by his belief that another human beings presence was necessary to act as a channel for a cosmic energy to reach the sick person. Thus he still remained, in this aspect, in connection with the guru as agent of change tradition.

Stefan Zweig, in his book Mental Healers, describes Mesmer’s way of working as follows:

With a serious and dignified mien, calmly, slowly, radi­ating tranquility he would draw near to the patients. At his proximity a gentle fit of trembling would spread through the assembly. He wore a lilac robe, thus calling up the image of a Zoroastrian or Indian magician.

Usually no great time elapsed before one or the other of the company would begin to tremble, then the limbs would twitch convulsively, and the patient would break out in perspiration, scream or groan. No sooner had such tokens manifested themselves in one member of the chain, than the others too, would feel the onset of the famous crisis which was to bring relief. Sonic would fall to the ground and go into convulsions, others would laugh shrilly, others would scream, and choke, and dance like dervishes, others would appear to faint or sink into a hypnotic sleep. According to Mesmer’s ‘theory of crisis’ the malady had to be provoked into its utmost marge of development, it had so to speak to be sweated out of the organism if the body was to retain healthy.

The importance of Mesmer to the history of coex is that, to the individuals who claim to have ‘discovered’ a new approach to human ills via abreaction, or say they have channeled a new cosmic force for the use of humanity, Mesmer stands as a direct contradiction. Three hundred years ago, despite his exotic dress and manlier, he ran in­dividual and group psychotherapy of a very successful nature. Although he thought of himself as a channel for a cosmic energy, he nevertheless recognised an agent other than technical psychiatric skill at work. Perhaps the ‘cosmic energy’ theory was not so far out either, as Reich revived it in new form in our own century. The work of Mesmer gradually moved into greater and greater complication -people dancing around trees for instance – instead of simplification and clarity. Out of it came Mesmerism which took the form of positive suggestion, completely leaving behind the aspect of allowing the organism to dis­charge its own tension and negativity. The spontaneous forces capable of self healing were ignored – even suppressed. The vainglorious power or forceful skill of the mesmerist or therapist took its place.

The approach started by Mesmer has never completely died out. While living in Russia in 1912 Sir Paul Dukes met Lev Lvovitch who used a self regulatory method to deal with a variety of illnesses. He would stroke patients limbs and induce shaking and trembling. In his book Unending Quest he describes the case of a boy whose legs were paralysed. “There was a broken exclamation from the boy in the middle of the room. ‘It’s b-b-beginning!’ The lad was quivering from head to foot so much that he had to hold oil to his chair.” After several treatments Dukes ob­served that the boy’s condition improved, and in a few weeks he was cured.

Only in very recent years has any serious scientific work been done in understanding what takes place in this healing which arises from within – with or without the help of an outside agent. Despite this research there is still virtually no socially established ways in which individuals are taught to trust their own internal processes. People in the West, and especially those trained in the helping professions, are forever committing the crime against human nature of ‘doing something’ to it, and seldom letting ‘It’ do some­thing to them. Nevertheless some individuals and groups have done a tremendous amount to make us aware of our lack, and point out ways of overcoming it. Freud does not leave us with any sense of there being a powerful and help­ful self-regulatory action in us. He gives no sense of finding a transformative power with which one can work toward spontaneous analysis and self help. But in Jung we find again and again very clear reference to what has been named in this book as coex.

Car/Jung Linking East and West

In Psychological Commentary On Time Tibetan Book’ f Time Great Liberation, Jung says:

If we snatch these things directly from the East, we have merely indulged our Western acquisitiveness, confirming yet again that ‘everything good is outside’ whence it has to be fetched and pumped into our barren souls. It seems to me we have really learned something from the East when we understand that the psyche contains riches enough without having to be primed from outside, and when we feel capable of evolving out of ourselves with or without divine grace. . . We must get at the Eastern values from within and not from without, seeking them in ourselves, in the unconscious. Because of these resis­tances we doubt the very thing that seems so obvious to the East, namely, the SELF LIBERATING POWER OF THE INTROVERTED MIND. This aspect of the mind is practically unknown to the West, though it forms the most important component of the unconscious.

• . . The whole process is called the ‘transcendent function’. It is a process arid a method at the same time. The production of unconscious compensation (self-regulation) is a spontaneous PROCESS; the conscious realisation is a METHOD.

 

In Jung we find something of the reverence for what is met within a human being – a reverence for life itself. A great deal of Jung’s attitudes and thoughts have already been quoted iii other chapters, enough to show that he did not use the self-regulatory process in such a cathartic way as Mesmer.

Aurobindo and Integral Yoga

During the early part of this century another great figure, in a field other than psychology, was exploring what resulted from consciousness opening to the self-regulating ‘evolutionary energy’. Writing and working from the dual standpoint of an Eastern yogi and Western thinker Aurobindo explains what he found in forty years of investigating the depths and heights of inner experience. In some approaches to coex such as Pentecostalism, there is an emphasis on the transcendental, the higher potential of human nature. In other approaches the emphasis is on tile cleansing or catharsis of past experience, pain and conditioning. Aurobindo finds a balance between these two which well suits the name of Integral Yoga which lie gave to his system. In the book The Adventure of Consciousness, Satprem describes Aurobindo’s statement of how the ‘evolutionary force’ acts on one who opens to it. “We feel around the head” he says, “and more particularly around the nape of the neck, an unusual pressure which may give the sensation of a false headache. At the beginning we can scarcely endure it for long and shake it off. Gradually this pressure takes a more distinct form and we feel a veritable current which descends – a current of force not like an unpleasant electric current but rather like a fluid mass.”

To allow this spontaneously active force to work in us, Aurobindo tells us we must be quiet and open our restless mind or consciousness. In Aurobindo’s own words, “When the Peace is established, this higher or Divine Force from above can descend and work in us. It descends usually first into the head and liberates inner mind centres, then into the heart centre, then into the navel and other vital centres, them into the sacral region and below. It works at the same time for perfection as well as liberation. It takes up the whole nature part by part and deals with it, rejecting what has to be rejected, sublimating what has to be sublimated, creating what has to be created. It integrates, harmonizes, establishes a new rhythm in the nature.

• . • The surest way toward this integral fulfillment is to find the Master of the Secret who dwells within us, open ourselves constantly to the Divine Power which is also the Divine Wisdom and Love, and trust it to effect the conversion. But it is difficult for the egoistic consciousness to do this at all at the beginning. And, if done at all, it is still difficult to do it perfectly and in every strand of our nature. It is difficult at first because of our egoistic habits of thought, of sensation, of feelings blocking up the avenues by which we arrive at the perception that is needed. It is difficult afterwards because the faith, the surrender, the courage requisite in this path are not easy to the ego clouded soul. The divine working is not the working the egoistic mind desires or approves, for it uses error to arrive at truth, suffering in order to arrive at perfection. The ego cannot see where it is being led; it revolts against the leading, loses confidence, loses courage. These failings would not matter; for the Divine Guide within is not offended by our revolt, riot discouraged by our want of faith or repelled by our weakness; it has the entire love of the mother and the entire patience of the teacher. But by withdrawing our assent from the guidance we lose the consciousness, though hot all the actuality of its benefit.”

Reich – Cosmic Energy and the Death of Guru’s

Dr. Wilhelm Reich offers us a very different approach to this world of experience. In the 1920’s Reich gradually felt his way from an orthodox use of Freudian psycho-analysis to a more biological, physiological or energetic point of View. Not that he lost sight of the human soul, but he realised how much body, energy and personality are uni­fied. By working with body attitudes or postures he found he could help the patient melt tensions and emotional blocks. By relaxing muscular tensions, flows of energy, movement and feeling were unblocked. Perhaps more than any other clinical therapist or doctor of his time, he recognised that a spontaneous, self-regulating activity or energy was at work in all living organisms. He says of this energy, which he eventually called orgone:

Contrary to galvanic electricity – it would function on organic material which is a non-conductor for electri­city, and on animal tissues. Its function would not be restricted to isolated nerve cells or cell groups, but would permeate and govern the total organism. It would have to explain in a simple way, the pulsating basic function of the living , contraction and expansion, as it is expressed in respiration and orgasm. It would express itself in the production of heat, a characteristic of most living organisms. It would definitely explain the sexual function, i.e. it would make sexual attraction understandable. It would explain what has been added to the chemically complicated protein in order to make it alive. It would, finally, have to show us the mechanism of the symmetry of form development in general.

Gradually Reich developed very definite techniques, working with respiration, muscular tension and character attitudes. He particularly explored the place of sexuality individual, social and political structures. He helped people release their own self-regulatory process and work with it toward health and wholeness. As people learnt this they experienced spontaneous movement, trembling, changed feeling states and emotional and sexual release. The actual results, as compared with those already mentioned in this short history, were no different to those in Shaktipat or in Mesmer’s work. Nevertheless Reich brought a new open­ness, a new technical understanding to the subject with his genius. Unlike Mesmer he did not rest until he had pin­pointed clearly what released self-regulatory action into conscious operation. He did not stop, as Mesmer and the gurus did, in believing himself and certain other special men and women were the channels of a cosmic energy which healed. Reich made the tremendous step, while yet remaining a scientist and clinical therapist, of seeing an integral law of human nature at work, and active in indi­viduals quite apart from his personal influence. In this Reich helped people in the present to begin a link with their spontaneous energies which earlier peoples had known only in a religious context. The deeply religious, surrendered attitudes so prevalent in the past are seldom found today in the West. Certainly not in the way demon­strated by the original Christians who surrendered body and mind to a force they trusted. Looked at in this way, even the Godly in the West are frightened of God’s power. Jung makes the statement that people in the West cannot find God because none of us can bow low enough. Philip Zimbardo and Carol Laderman are more typical of the fear we have as Westerners of the unconscious. We see in it possible madness, loss of self, and possession by unnamed urges and forces. Being unable to form the trust out of our religious convictions, Reich enabled people to meet this vital part of themselves from a different more acceptable starting point. The new standpoint is that which includes our critical and analytical intellect. To deny it in an attempt to emulate the East in approaching their inner life uncriti­cally, would be to do ourselves a great disservice. Reich proved that as Westerners we can still touch our deep spontaneous energies while retaining our new-found intellect.

God’s Chosen People – The Way of Subud

Considering Reich’s work it is interesting now to look at the influence of Muhammed Subuh. He was born and lived in Indonesia, working as an accountant for many years. His main interest in life was to seek out some of the many gurus in his country, and attempt a deeper aware­ness of life’s mysteries and the nature of God. In his late twenties, in the year 1925, he experienced a vision while out walking. It seemed to him that a ball of light or fire rushed across the sky and descended on his head. He began to shake and tremble, and felt a powerful and divine energy had begun to work in his being. On reaching home he opened himself to the influence of this power and found spontaneous movements and experiences occurred. From that time onwards he frequently ‘opened’ himself to what he felt to come from God, and found that each time move­ments, sounds, and a wide variety of inner experience arose. He observed that the movements and experiences were ways in which his being was gradually cleansed and made whole. It was as if some influence were gradually guiding him through experiences in a direction he could not preconceive, but IT could. Also, his physical health improved, his experiences educated him regarding his and other peoples life on Earth, and he found his intuitive faculties enormously enlarged. Often he could also be instrumental in helping other people to experience healing. The film star Eva Bartok told her story in the newspapers at the time of her own healing in connection with Pak Subuh and her baby.

By 1932 Pak Subuh had discovered that other people who relaxed in his presence could also receive the same experience and be led through cleansing and integration. Groups of people in Indonesia began to practice this ‘opening’ to what they felt to be the grace of God working in their lives. The manner of these group experiences is like that described under Shaktipat. People found their bodies making spontaneous movements; they experienced themselves in a wide variety of ways, were led through catharsis and great inspirational insights. Like the Pente­costal approach, there was a tendency toward remaining on the symbolic level, and editing all but the transcendental.

The experience of being moved from within was called ‘Latihan’, which in Indonesian means to be moved, cleansed and disciplined by the power of God. But until 1957 comparatively few people were in these groups doing latihan. Those who were had mostly been using latihan several times a week for many years. Sometimes the length of practice was ten or fifteen years. These practi­tioners had found that their nature and body had been gradually changed by the practice. Their awareness and sympathies had widened. Problems had shifted, and in general they felt more in touch with the force or meaning behind their existence. At this point a European working in Indonesia – Rofe – asked to be introduced to the lati­han. Rofe taught it to people in England who started an international centre at Coombe Springs. From there the practice went world-wide, and at one time the followers numbers were claimed to be 200,000. People of all nation­alities, religious belief, political views and social status found they could experience the latihan. The lives of many were deeply changed by it.

If we are to understand how modern men and women relate to coex there are things we must be aware of in re­gard to the latihan, and the organisation named Subud. J.P. Barter, for instance, writing about his involvement in the latihan says, “We do not know for any certainty why the force which is received in Subud has been made uni­quely available to mankind today rather than at some earlier period in history.” The statement is typical of the sort of historical blindness and spiritual pomposity that is common in the practice. Pak Subuh states that the experi­ence is unique to him and new in the world. When I myself started a coex group many years ago, based on Reichian work and Mesmer’s groups, a spy was sent from a Subud group in a nearby town to find out where or how I had stolen their latihan. That people like J.G. Bennet, a well educated man, and Barter, bright enough to write an orderly account of Subud, can accept such statements is a warning that the Western mind, in attempting to re­establish connection with the deeper layers of the psyche, can often revert to primitive attitudes, ignoring or discarding information and lessons learnt through hard experi­ence.

Burying Old Dogmas

Another dogma in Subud, which links the organisation with the ancient guru tradition, is that no one can experience latihan without it being passed to them by someone who had received it via Pak Subuh and Subud members. It is, therefore, implied that this is not a natural occurrence, or a part of everyone’s inner equipment, but is a special dispensation, a sort of occult power given just to Pak Subuh and members of Subud by God. The hard lessons I mentioned above are how deadly such attitudes have proved themselves to be in the past. How many millions died because sects fought each other over who had the REAL access to God and the truth? Placing the latihan in the realm of the occult and sectarian as this does, is a factor which kills its general applicability.

This reversion on the part of Westerners when meeting the unconscious is illustrated by two examples. Michael Manger visited Swami Muktananda – a Shaktipat guru – at Ganeshpuri, N.E. of Bombay. He says, “I am not sure exactly when or how I received Shaktipat as there was no formal external initiation, but it manifested itself in three ways. First an intense, wonderful and surprising tranquility of mind and body whilst sitting in the house where Babaji – the guru – was staying. Secondly, an increase in emotional and physical excitement by being in Babaji’s presence and hearing him lecture. I had a pain at the base of my spine, flushed cheeks and bright eyes, despite my dis­agreement with the burden of Babaji’s lecture – the need for a guru. Thirdly, and most important, I awoke in the middle of the night doing spontaneous breathing exer­cises, followed by a series of dynamic yoga postures, some known and some unknown to me. Then there were twenty minutes in which a beautiful voice emanated from my throat singing in Sanscrit – it came in verse which I wrote down and showed to Babaji the next morning.

These external happenings had two very significant in­ternal accompaniments. Firstly an intense fire of love and light in my heart, indescribably stronger than any­thing I had felt previously; and secondly, direct intuitive knowledge that all this came from Babaji. It came also to a man with a communist atheist up-bringing, with but little experience of yoga or meditation and a very active belief in self help rather than guru help.

The second man, William Groom, does not make it plain whether he had planned to visit Jogeshwari to meet the guru of whether it was by chance. He says that

before long a very old man appeared, and Tamhane, one of my companions presented me to him. He was Sivrao Nileshwar a Bhakti yogi who lived at Jogeshwari, about 73 years of age and dignified in his approach. He stood in front of me with arms outstretched and took hold of my hands, the effect on me was instantan­eous and electrifying. My head spun, my senses reeled, and almost immediately I became oblivious of my surroundings. Sivrao was in a deep trance from the moment he took my hands. From his throat emanated choking sounds as though he were unable to speak, whilst at the same time I could feel this powerful force flowing through his hands. This mystical experience was to become the foundation of many others which still continue with me wherever I go. I had received from the Holy Man a force or power which devotees told me is called Pare Sattva, a gift from God which they said would be with me for the rest of my life.

As can be seen from these descriptions it does riot occur to these men that their experience was in any way a product of their own unconscious, despite the fact that Michael’s first arose from a sleep state. The ‘guru’ in these cases is certainly a catalyst, helping the person to accept and trust, even believe in an inner spontaneous process. Michael’s statement about his background of rational communism is almost humorous, as if communists or people with a scientific rational mind do not have an unconscious and dream life, or religious feelings. Dr. Heyer, in Organism of the Mind, tells of a young scientist who went for psycho-analysis because of great personal tension. As soon as he lay on the couch he burst forth in singing a hymn. By not accepting his ‘irrational’ nature with its religious feelings he had experienced conflict. This was resolved by allowing such feelings to be expressed.

Dianetics – Co-counseling and Accessible Coex

In the 50’s Ron Hubbard published a book about his work called Dianetics. It was revolutionary in its claims of self- help psychotherapy, because until then such healing had been firmly in the hands of specialists or cults such as Subud – both being jealous of their field and requiring either high fees or membership. In a readily under­standable book Hubbard described how people could help themselves. The book gave details about re-experiencing childhood trauma, of remembering life in the womb, of full memory, and how childhood pain causes the person to function inefficiently. Unfortunately his work led to the formation of The Church of Scientology, which has signs of being another cult.

One of the offshoots of Dianetics, even though it fails to claim itself as such, is Re-Evaluation Counseling or Co-Counseling, which unlike Scientology, makes itself available to the public easily and at little or no cost. Also it clearly works with the process of self-regulation. In 1964 Harvey Jackins published a pamphlet called The Postulates of Re-Evaluation Counseling. In summary these postulates say that

•  . . the essence of rational human behaviour consists of responding to each instant of living with a new response, created afresh at that moment to precisely fit and handle the situation of that moment as that situation is defined by the information received through the senses of the person. . . Each human with a physically undamaged brain has a large inherent capacity for this kind of behaviour. . .The natural emotional tone of a human being is zestful enjoyment of life. The natural relationship between any two human beings is loving affection, communication and cooperation. The special human capacity for rational response is interrupted by an experience of physical or emotional distress. Infor­mation input through the senses then stores as an unevaluated and rigid accumulation, exhibiting the characteristics of a very complete, literal recording of all aspects of the incident.

Immediately after the distress experience is concluded or at the first opportunity thereafter, the distressed human spontaneously seeks to claim the attention of another human. If they are successful in claiming this aware attention of the other person, a process of what has been called ‘discharge’ ensues.

Discharge is signaled externally by one or more of a precise set of physical processes. These are: crying or sobbing (with tears), trembling with cold perspiration, laughter, angry shouting and vigorous movement with warm perspiration, live interested talking; and in a slightly different way, yawning, often with scratching or stretching. Discharge requires considerable time for completion.

In actual practise two people contract to work together. One listens while the other talks over areas of pain or deep feeling and enters into discharge. They then swap roles. It is a very simple and effective technique. As such it cuts out all the negative aspects attendant on gurus and cults, while remaining highly effective and much more available.

The work of Dr. Caron Kent, as summarised by his book The Puzzled Body, while not as influential as some of the approaches mentioned, is nevertheless important. He began to explore coex because of his own need by giving himself regular time at a typewriter and writing sponta­neously whatever came to mind. In this way he found he began to contact areas of experience and feeling previously unavailable. He developed this in his practice as a psycho­therapist into working with the body and feelings directly. He writes of his work as dealing with the self-regulatory forces, and deplores physicians and therapists who are blind to their importance. One of the interesting aspects of his work is that he took careful measurements of his patients and found that as they were able to allow their being to release its own self-regulatory process, their bodies achieved their growth potential. In adults head size changed radically, as with feet, chest, etc. Kent concluded that painful or non integrated experience interfered with the growth processes in body and personality. When such experiences were released and integrated, the growth processes were released to complete their work.

Ronnie Laing Daring to Care

Someone who has had a very widespread and revolution­ary influence on psychiatric and non-clinical therapy is R.D. Laing. His book Time Politics of Experience, published in 1967, sums up his view of how the sane and the so-called insane can be helped by forming a supportive envi­ronment in which self-regulation can take place. He says in the book:

No age in the history of humanity has perhaps so host touch with this natural ‘healing’ process, that implicates some of the people whom we label schizophrenic. No age has so developed it, no age had imposed such prohibitions and deterrences against it, as our own. Instead of the mental hospital, which is a sort of re-servicing factory for human breakdowns, we need a place where people who have traveled further and, consequently, may be more lost than psychiatrists and other sane people, can find their way ‘further’ into inner space and time, and back again. Instead of the ‘degradation’ ceremonial of psychiatric examination, diagnosis and prognostication, we need, for those who are ready for it, an initiation ceremonial, through which the person will be guided with full social encouragement and sanction, into inner space and time, by people who have been there and back again. Psychiatrically this would appear as ex-patients helping future patients to go mad.

What is entailed then is:

i A voyage from outer to inner,

ii  from life to a kind of death,

iii    from going forward to going back,

iv    from temporal movement to temporal standstill,

v  from mundane time to aeonic time,

vi    from the ego to the self,

vii   from being outside (post birth) back into the womb of all things (pre birth).

And then subsequently a return voyage from:

1 Inner to outer,

2 from death to life,

3 from the movement back to a movement forward,

4 from immortality back to mortality,

5 from eternity back to time,

6 from self to a new ego,

7 from a cosmic foetalisation to an existential rebirth.

This process may be one that all of us need, in one form or another. The process could have a central function in a truly sane society.

The Japanese Have Seitai

While teaching coex in Japan I was introduced to another Oriental approach to self-regulation which is widely used in that country. It is called Seitai and was taught in its present form by Haruchika Noguchi. In Japan Seitai is thought of as a way of keeping healthy, but it has a particular quality about it which comes out in Noguchi’s teachings. He constantly stressed that you cannot under­stand what a human being is by dissecting one, or by trying to understand the function of separate organs such as the liver or brain.

For instance, he said that,

One person may find his appetite increases when he is in love, another may find that his heart rather than his stomach responds. Similarly, the same stressful situation may result in rheumatism in one person and dia­betes in another. What causes these differences? Sonic individuals are so tough they are calm even with a million pound debt, while others become ill over obli­gations of only ten pounds. The physical tendencies of each person are different, and unless one takes ones stand on this fact the health problems of different people cannot be grasped.

Seitai’s starting point is from a completely different con­cept of health to that of a keep-fit class. In keep-fit, and in just about every form of exercise from yoga to weight training, there are certain movements or postures which are said to exercise particular muscles, or to be ‘good’ for the thighs, abdomen, etc. These are then applied or prac­tised from outside, as it were. Seitai has the concept that our life process knows what sort, and how much exercise we need, and the exercise arises from within. In other

words it is stimulated by our unconscious sense of our own needs, just as a sneeze is.

Let me quote Noguchi again to explain this. He says,

In my teens I started to guide people to health by means of what we now call Seitai Soho and Katsugen Undo, though at that time I had no knowledge of medicine or of the body’s anatomical structure. I did not know anything about the kind of food we should eat, yet I was able to lead people to health.

What was the basis for the guidance? It was that I asked myself why human beings stayed alive and what should be done to activate their strength to live. . . We find various excuses for suppressing ourselves and, wit­hout realising we are putting our innate powers for health asleep, we convince ourselves that we are weak and blame it on our surroundings, the food we eat or the hours we sleep, unaware that the real responsibility lies with us.

So Seitai creates a situation in which we listen and allow response. Noguchi taught that the spontaneous move­ments which arise as the response are the same as those occurring during sleep. Seitai considers whether our vitality and enthusiasm for life is active or withdrawn. If withdrawn, then it is encouraged to express itself again. Because a great deal of the suppressive factors in us are mental and emotional, Seitai encourages a strong and healthy confidence in ones ability to survive. If we fear we will become ill if a night’s sleep is missed, the anxiety creates tension which suppresses the defence systems of the body. If illness then occurred, would it mean one was naturally sickly?

Put in another way, we are learning to allow the body’s own natural mechanisms, such as the eyes watering if dust enters them, and other such more subtle reactions, to function more vitally. Noguchi stresses that it is not the movements of Seitai which heal us. The symptoms of illness are the body’s own attempts to heal itself, and Seitai helps us work with that process. To do the movements mechanically as if they were the thing which healed, is to miss the point and would be a return to keep-fit. But once

you have learnt to allow your body to heal itself more vigorously, you do not need to practise it any more.

Coming right up to the present, Rolfing, Primal Therapy, EST, Re-Birthing, Bioenergetics, all offer their particular genius to a culture convulsing with activity to become whole. Unfortunately most of these approaches offer their help through highly paid experts to those who feel in need of paying for it. The Expert/Patient relation­ship is something which is badly in need of renovation. As Laing suggests, what we need is not more experts and organisations, but something seen as a central function in a sane society. We need courage and faith in our own ability to move toward wholeness – and companions who will be with us while we experience the Journey.

The Work of Herman Weiner

One of the problems with the development of self determinism in therapy is the changed social and financial situation of the therapists themselves. In an article called ‘Working With Groups’ Herman Weiner says:

As a psychoanalytically trained therapist, I conducted analytically oriented groups for several years during the sixties and I duly had my share of ‘success’. Try as I might to be open and free-feeling, I would end up at sonic point in the group process somewhat more guarded. I also observed that this pulling back was periodically reached by my patients. . . It became dif­ficult to feel less neurotic than my patients seemed to be. A very humbling experience! I ultimately decided to give up groups and to work on a one-to-one basis.

Returning to group work later he organised a different group dynamics, which he describes as the

patients enter a semi-darkened well padded, sound dampened set of adjoining rooms. . . They already know what to do for themselves from an initial series of individual preparatory sessions. They are beginning to know that courage to let themselves sense, move, fantasise and feel without restraint, is both liberating and healing. In the initial sessions they have been encouraged to surrender themselves to themselves in this manner. Now, in the semi-darkness, I move from one mat to another giving support, courage, and contact where necessary, so as to facilitate their descent into themselves.

Without the historical background to Herman Weiner’s work, we would not realise that he is doing nothing new. 1mm fact he is still attempting to play the central role for his ‘patients’. Even Subud gives more autonomy, and Co-Counseling exhibits the deep trust of help in healing to whoever can give ‘aware attention’.

Love is the Key to Changing Lives

While Janov’s work has reminded the world of the need to discharge pain and anger, from our consideration of coex it does riot have a great deal to say. With Bioenergetics also, though Lowen’s writings are full of self-regulatory principles, based as they are on Reich’s work, it is still a therapist/patient oriented technique.

Something which enters more deeply into general social applicability is the work being done by Jacques Schiff in U.S.A. A person of obviously great love and wisdom, she and her husband adopted several teenage ‘children’ and allowed them full opportunity to self-regulate right in their home. These children were often the apparently hopeless cases from mental hospitals, and were allowed to regress to being in nappies again, bottle feeding, and to work through their stages of growth in a healthier way than had originally occurred. As she shows clearly in her book – All My Children – the self-regulatory release these young adults had was only half what was needed in their healing. The other half, as Jackins points out, comes through consciously re-evaluating the experience released in coex.

Once she had brought several of her ‘children’ through to health, although she and her husband are psychiatrists, she encouraged other families to use the same methods. Some of the ‘children’ now adult, have set up their own fostering family setting. These new family groups are likewise raising healthy children out of sick adults.

LSD and the ‘Heavy’ Drug Scene

Because of the struggle our culture is having with drug abuse, it is necessary here to point out that a few of the ‘drugs’, notably psilocybin, LSD and Cannabis, all release self-regulatory experience. However, if the person does not integrate what is released by the drug, marked disorientation occurs. What have been called ‘flash backs’ are exactly the same as what is described by William Groom after meeting his guru – “still continue with me wherever I go.” In his case he wanted these inner eruptions of experience. If a person were frightened of the uncon­scious, as Philip Zimbardo describes, the ‘flash backs’ can be very disturbing.

Some of the most effective work with the principle of coex was done with LSD prior to its banishment. A number of psychiatrists were registered to work with it. To understand this positive side to these drugs, it is useful to read such books as Myself and I by Constance Newland; and LSD Psychotherapy by W.V. Caldwell. When com­pared with the literature on ‘tripping’, the tremendous difference can be seen between playing with and working with, the inner process of coex.

Summary

In the widest sense self-regulation is an integral part of all human experience. It is particularly noticeable historically in the religions of humanity. The ball of fire Pak Subuh mentions has been described by many other religious leaders. It appeared to the disciples at Pentecost. When we realise that the dream process in the coex experience pro­duces just such waking subjective impressions, it becomes obvious that a similar and universal psychobiological process underlies such human activities.

In different ages humans have met with, used and directed the self-regulatory process in different ways. We have given the experience of consciously working with such processes the name coex, and in the past it has been given many names and many explanations. The physical and subjective experiences which occur in coex, because of their connection with the dream process, frequently produce a sense of touching the divine. This is the way our internal interpretative process, expresses contact between our conscious personality and the universal life forces which give rise to it. Unfortunately, groups gathered around leaders who give their experience of coex different names such as Christianity, Buddhism, Subud and Mes­merism, frequently argue for their own uniqueness. In most cases however, as with Christianity, the original direct experience is quickly suppressed.

The historical perspective shows us not only how people lay claim to ownership of a natural principle, but also how they have a tendency to limit it to their own hori­zons and belief systems. Even Reich was guilty of claiming himself as the first man in history to use the process. But few have, indeed, dared to spell out its political and social implications as clearly as he. The released inner response of our being is revolutionary in nature. This is probably why established traditions of religion, medicine and politics often suppress any signs of its appearance. There is a lesson to be learned from Mesmer’s clash with his fellow phy­sicians. As hundreds received relief from pain, thousands more came. This led Mesmer to ‘magnetise’ anything that was handy, such as a tree, so people would be free of his counseling rooms. His popularity and excess led the French Academy of Science to set up a commission to examine Mesmer’s claims. They concluded that “Nothing proves the existence of magnetic animal fluid: imagination without magnetism may produce conversions: magnetism without imagination produces nothing.” While that may be true, Mesmer was discredited, and none of his critics managed to mobilise peoples ‘imagination’ sufficiently to cure the ills of the public in his place. . . Reich died in a prison cell.

Mind and Movement 11 – Appendix

Freud said that dreams were the ‘royal road to the unconscious’. Having explored and worked with the possibilities of dreams for the last seventeen years, it is my feeling that dreams are only a readily available doorway to our inner world. Jung suggests that what he called ‘active imagination’ gave one a fuller access. His description of using a fantasy with the hands is one of the ways he suggests of using active imagination. It involves the principle of coex which gives a much fuller entrance to the ‘more’ in us. When other doorways to the unconscious, such as dream work or meditation, are allied with the function of self regulation, they become more powerful tools.

 Because coex does provide such a full entrance into the unconscious, one needs to learn some of the basic principles which apply to the inner world of the mind. Meeting the contents of this part of ourselves are in many ways quite different from confronting events outside of us. Without realising it we have developed finely tuned responses to thousands of things and situations in our outer environment. Depending upon where one lives, from earliest childhood one begins to learn how to watch roads, avoid certain plants, eat others, respond to some people in one way and others in another. All these responses enable us to survive . If just one or two of those responses lapsed for a few minutes we could be killed. People often ask me if there are any dangers in using coex. Yes, there are dangers. But life itself is dangerous, driving a car is dangerous. In some areas walking down a street could be suicidal.

 The dangers of coex do not seem to me as possibly fatal as those of driving a car. As with driving a car however, if we learn certain rules and use them, the dangers become negligible.

 The first rule is to avoid carrying pride or overconfidence into the use of coex. This would be like believing that because you have survived the streets of London or New York, you can safely climb a mountain. Different rules apply, and different skills are needed. So if you have not made contact with your unconscious before, recognise that you are a novice. Start slowly and take your time working through the exercises and techniques given in this book. Start from the beginning and go step by step.

 The second rule is to clearly remember the nature of the process you are dealing with. It is self regulatory and it is the dream process. As such it has something of a direction of its own. Given any opportunity of expressing to consciousness, it will begin to work on its business in hand. For instance, supposing you had been attacked by a dog in childhood, and in your shock you had held back a lot of the emotions resulting from the attack. Perhaps you parents had even said something like, “Don’t cry. The dog’s gone now. It’s all okay now.” Of course in the realm of your body and inner life it isn’t okay. Perhaps a powerful urge to run was stifled by fear. Maybe anger and shocked emotions were suppressed. It could be that you wanted to scream at your parents asking why they weren’t there to protect you. Many such impulses are stored in each of us. They need to be discharged or allowed in order to release the inner pressure and tension they cause. If such impulses are not released or re-evaluated they can be stored in our being for a lifetime, contributing to such illnesses as arthritis and cancer. Many people experience coex without such scenes of childhood arising. But if we are going to use coex we need to realise that they may, and deal with them understandingly if they do.

 If such an event arises it is somewhat like childbirth. There are events presaging it; there is a middle; and there is a completion. It could take several sessions of practice to get the whole event expressed and integrated. To stop in the middle simply leaves one in an uncomfortable feeling. It is wiser to carry on in the next session, and arrive at the completed experience sooner. What was suppressed inside oneself is, during coex, bulging up into consciousness, into ones very personality, not safely exterior to oneself. Jane’s desires for compulsive eating, quoted at the end of chapter four are a good example of this. By meeting the feelings in another session, Jane could have cleared it more quickly.

 Because we are also dealing with the dream process, what arises may be presented in symbols of movement or experience. This has already been fairly well covered in previous chapters. Nevertheless it must be remembered. As human beings we have strong desires to see our pet theories ‘proved’ by what emerges from our own mysterious within. Recently, in an Arthur C. Clarke program about reincarnation, time was given to a subject apparently re-living a past life as a British soldier. The man, under hypnosis, cried out and jerked as he was wounded in the arm. The question from the hypnotist was, how could anyone express such things with such drama unless they were from real experience? Measured against what one experiences in dreams, and what I have witnessed people expressing during coex, the subjects dramatic expression was flaccid and without depth. The dream process can create a drama around any given theme. But it has a tendency to use scenes or characters from history or literature to express what situations occur within us. While Arthur Clarke was rightly sceptical of the claims for the validity of the hypnotised subjects experience, he misses the above point, that ones unconscious expresses its own internal conflicts in such themes.

 This is so important I will quote an edited version of Brian’s experiences with such symbolised events, which appeared originally in my INSTANT DREAM BOOK.

“It started with a dream in which I was in the First World War in Germany. The Germans had taken a hill we had been defending, and I had been captured. I had learnt to allow fantasy which included my body and feelings – coex – and when I continued the dream in this way I experienced in a very deep sense being a prisoner and being tied to a bed. German officers tortured me by crushing my left foot, but I wouldn’t give information. During the fantasy my body actually took on the position of being tied and tortured and I cried out. It all seemed real to me. I didn’t go through the physical pain of being tortured, but I certainly couldn’t see how I could make up such a thing. I even knew my name as that soldier, so I thought it must be memories of a past life. 

 “Because I couldn’t understand or feel conclusive about the first coex session I took another. The fantasy continued as if having a real and orderly source. Because I would not talk I was strapped on the bed face down and a line of German soldiers came and, one after the other buggered me. “

 Brian took two more sessions in which he began to break through the symbols. In one he felt attacked by two youths. In the second he realises the attack is to do with his own teenage sexuality. He goes on to say:-

“From that explosion of realisation all the other things fell into place. I remembered that as a teenager my uncle had given me a set of volumes about the First World War. I used to sit and look through the photos for ages. My dream and fantasy had taken the war as an expression of my own terrible inner conflict about sex. I had been a prisoner of that conflict, and had been tortured by it. My left foot represented my inner feelings of confidence to stand up or support myself as a man. The buggery and the attack by the youths were one and the same. Because I had never masturbated, never allowed myself a wet dream, or any flow of sexuality, the pressure of sexual drive had been introverted. Again and again I had felt that pressure as an attack – inside myself – which I had resisted, until I was buggered as a youthful personality.”

Back Cover:

MIND AND MOVEMENT

THE PRACTICE OF COEX

 By using body movements and postures as doorways to our own natural healing process, we can actively release tension; find balance between the mind and body; learn to dream creatively while wide awake; and tap areas of the unconscious thought inaccessible.

 Most physical movements and exercise are disconnected from our deepest drives, feelings and sources of healing. MIND AND MOVEMENT shows bow to find a natural way to healthy exercise and spiritual growth. The method of co-operating with our own internal healing and creativity has been known and used for centuries. In Japan it is called Seitai, in India Shaktipat; even the early Christian used this simple form of inner and outer hygiene.

 Recent research has linked this activity with the selfregulatory and dream process within us. But, no other book

has made plain to the public how to co-operate with these internal functions for one’s own benefit.

Tony Crisp has been writing about natural health and self

help for thirty years. His special interest in the healing

potential of the dream process led him to work as a therapist

during the past fourteen years. It is out of this experience

MIND AND MOVEMENT was written.

 Cover design: Tina Dutton Photograph: by the Author.

 0 85207 182 5

  THE C. W. DANIEL

COMPANY LTD

1 CHURCH PATH SAFFRON WALDEN

ESSEX CBlO IJP ENGLAND

Dream Deprivation

A factor that is missing in many scientific arguments and even therapeutic arguments about whether dreams are functional and meaningful rather than random pieces of flotsam, is the question of their possible self-regulatory function. After the first and second world wars, hundreds of ex-soldiers suffered recurring nightmares about battle scenes. The dreams re-presented the original experience, often accompanied by the original body movements made to escape the horror being faced. Charles Rycroft, in his book anxiety and Neurosis, describes the observed results on people of unexpected disasters such as earthquakes and train accidents. Among other things they have a tendency to ‘waking actions and dreams in which the traumatic experience is repeated.’ He goes on to say that these repetitions in dreams or actions can be ‘thought of as manifestations of the healing process. By repeating the trauma the traumatised person is, as it were, trying to get it in front of himself again so that he can anticipate it, react anxiously to it and then assimilate or ‘get over’ it in the way he would any other distressing experience.’

Working with such dreams leads to the view that there is a self-regulatory process within our psyche, which attempts to find healing through the presentation of such traumatic incidents in dreams. Jung and Hadfield in particular supported this view of dreaming. See Life’s Little Secrets

The findings in researching also link with this self-regulatory theory. Dr. Dement and others experimented with dream deprivation with many subjects. The most obvious finding was that if the REM – dreaming – period of sleep is disturbed or prevented by waking the subject each time the REM activity begins, the REM periods of dreaming quickly became more and more frequent. The experiments had to be abandoned because without the use of force it became impossible to stop REM sleep, and the subjects were becoming seriously effected. (6)

When the subjects were awoken during their normal sleep for similar periods of time, these critical effects did not arise. While such findings might be explained in a purely physiological way, the mind body unity prevents us from saying, ‘Yes but that is only the result of brain chemicals’. There is obviously a great need on the part of the body/mind to dream. If for no other reason, dreams thereby have a meaningful function.

When the subjects whose REM sleep had been prevented, were allowed normal undisturbed REM dreaming, a massive increase in REM dreaming occurred. This suggested to researchers that the brain has some real need for dreaming, and when deprived will later fulfil its need by increased activity. In the 1970’s research by Ramon Greenberg and Chester Pearlman suggested that REM sleep was an important ingredient in learning from experience. They deprived rats and mice of REM sleep and observed their performance while running a variety of mazes. It was found that loss of REM sleep – no loss of sleep altogether – hardly impaired the performance of running mazes already learnt. However, there was a marked drop in performance of learning new a new maze or performing new tasks of any complexity.

Similar research was later performed with human subjects and showed similar results. These findings led psychiatrists to believe our mind is doing serious work while we dream. It is integrating what has recently been learnt into our long-term memory and possibly practising how to use this in enhancing personal skills. REM may therefore be important in stimulating the development of connective links of thought in infants and young children. The theory would explain why humans, who are constantly adapting to meet new challenges, exhibit so much REM activity.

That dreams occur more frequently after a period of deprivation certainly shows their link with a regulatory process. Learning is also a part of our survival needs, and much of it would appear to occur in a self-regulatory way.

(1) The initials REM stand for ‘rapid eye movement’. This refers to the fact detailed later in the book, that in 1953 Aserinsky and Kleitman found rapid eye movements occurred while people slept. In 1957 the REM were linked with dreaming. Therefore sleep was observed to have two different phases, REM and NREM – non rapid eye movement, or non-REM. Later it was found that even during NREM sleep, a form of dreaming took place that is different to the REM dream with its pronounced imagery and drama.

(2) Van de Castle, Robert L. Our Dreaming Mind. Aquarian. London 1994.

(3) For instance Jules Verne wrote about submarines before they became a reality. Flying machines had been drawn by Leonardo da Vinci.

(4) In the USA by Basic Books, Inc., New York 1988. Published in UK by Penguin Books 1990.

• c(5) An expression of what is happening in the physical body. Some doctors consider dreams to show signs of illness long before they are evident in other ways. Women frequently know they are pregnant very early on through sleep awareness in a dream. See: body.
• A link between the sleeping mind and what is occurring externally. A person may be falling out of bed and dream of flying or falling for instance.
• A way of balancing the physiological and psychological activities in us. When a person is deprived of dreaming in experiments, a breakdown in mind and body quickly occurs. This type of dreaming can often be a safety valve releasing tension and emotion not dealt with in waking life. See: compensation theory; self-regulation dreams and fantasy; science and dreams.
• An enormously original source of insight and information. Dreams tap our memory, our experience, and scan information held in our unconscious to form new insights from old experience. Dreams often present to us summaries or details of experience we have been unable to access consciously. Sometimes this is as early as life in the womb. See: creativity and problem solving in dreams.

• A means of compensating for failure or deprivation in everyday life, and as a means of expressing the otherwise unacknowledged aspects of oneself. Such dreams are a move toward wholeness.
• In dreams we may be integrating new experience with what we have already gathered and digested. In this way our abilities, such as social skills, are gradually upgraded.
• Dreams often stand in place of actual experience. So through dreams we may experiment with new experience or practice things we have not yet done externally. For instance many young women dream in detail of giving birth. This function of what might be called ‘imagination’ is tremendously undervalued, but is a foundation upon which human survival is built.
• An means of exercise for the psyche or soul. Just as the body will become sick if not moved and stressed, so the mind and emotions need stimulus and exercise. Dreams fulfil this need.
• An expression of human supersenses. Humans have an unconscious ability to read body language – so they can assess other humans very quickly. Humans have an unimaginable ability to absorb information, not simply from books, but from everyday events. With it they constantly arrive at new insights and realisations. Humans frequently correctly predict the future – not out of a bizarre ability, but from the information gathered about the present. All these abilities and more show in our dreams. See: esp in dreams.
• A means of solving problems, or formulating creative ideas, both in our personal life, and also in relationships and work. Many people have produced highly creative work directly from dreams.
• A presentation in symbols of past traumatic experience. If met this can lead to deep psychological healing. Such dreams are therefore an attempt on the part of our spontaneous inner processes to bring about healing change. See: abreaction; compensation theory; nightmares.
• In the widest sense nearly all dreams act as a process of growth or a move toward maturing. Some dreams are very obviously presenting internal forces or dimensions of experience that might lead the conscious personality toward a greater balance and inclusiveness. See: Individuation.
• A way of reaching beyond the known world of experience and presenting intimations from the unknown. Many people have dreams in which ESP, out of the body experiences, and knowledge transcending time and space occur. This type of dream may indicate a link between the present person and people who had lived in the distant past; or between the dreamer and all existing life. Some of these dreams present powerful insights into how the transitory human personality may arise out of an eternal consciousness. They thus deal with the spiritual aspects of human nature.

(6) In the mid-1960s, a psychiatrist named Howard Roffwarg, at Columbia University in New York, suggested that nervous activity during REM sleep helps to stimulate the developing brain in very young children, thus promoting the growth of neural connections necessary for learning. In adults, according to Roffwarg, REM serves, like physical exercise, to maintain tone in the central nervous system.

The notion that REM could be a crucial ingredient in the learning process gained momentum during the 1970’s following the work of Boston psychiatrists Ramon Greenberg and Chester Pearlman. In the laboratory, Greenberg and Pearlman deprived rats and mice of REM sleep while training the animals to run through a variety of mazes. The researchers discovered that while REM loss caused test rodents to perform only slightly worse on simple routines that they had already mastered, it had a markedly adverse impact on the animals’ ability to carry out more complex tasks or to learn new ones, of whatever degree of complexity.

Greenberg and Pearlman noted that the same pattern appeared to be true with people. Human volunteers who went without REM sleep could per-form routine activities without much trouble but had much greater difficulty tackling complicated word-memorising tasks. This finding led the psychiatrists to conclude that the mind is doing serious work when it dreams-specifically, it is incorporating newly learned information into a long-term memory bank. According to this theory, REM may thus be critical in stimulating the development of associative thought in infants and young children. The theory would also explain why humans, who must constantly adapt to meet new challenges, exhibit so much REM activity. See The Secret Power

The Many Facets Of Dreaming

Although there is no final agreement on what dreams are and what their value is, if we look at the various findings, dreams can be seen to hold in them something of all the many aspects of human life. Just as society overall has hospitals and churches, schools, libraries and sports facilities to cater for the physical, spiritual, mental and recreational needs of people, so dreams express these departments of ourselves.

· Body Dreams – Bernard S. Seigal, M.D., assistant clinical professor of surgery, Yale University School of Medicine originated the ‘Exceptional Cancer Patient’ group therapy. Through encouraging his patients to tell their dreams and express their feelings via paintings, he found that patients often dreamt clearly about the condition of their body long before normal diagnostic methods could define the illness or healing. Other physicians, such as Kasatkin in Russia, have also drawn notice to this aspect of dreaming, and kept careful records of such dreams in patients.

· Virtual Reality – Sigmund Freud recognised that dreams are different in quality to waking fantasies or daydreams. While dreaming we are usually convinced that our surroundings and what is happening, is completely real. This sense of complete immersion in the dream does not pervade our fantasies. Although during a nightmare this feeling of reality can cause us to be very frightened, the positive side to it is that dreams give us experience as full of impact, and therefore as educational as waking life.

· Regulating – In experiments where volunteers were woken each time they began to dream, a breakdown in the efficiency of mind and body soon became apparent. The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung described dreams as compensatory. He was particularly referring to the way dreams help balance our conscious personality. According to this view, any extreme is compensated for by an expression of the opposite in our dreams. In this way, lack of love or success in our life may be compensated for by a very powerful release of dream imagery and experience. One may have a vision of ones dead mother or Christ for instance. Without such compensatory experience, continuing life in the face of failure and loneliness might be extremely difficult.

· Personal Growth – The growth of our personality from infancy is a very complex interplay between largely unconscious factors in our body, our experience of our environment, and the way we integrate and deal with these different influences. Dreams do appear to present clear indications of what is emerging as transforming forces in oneself. They also definitely reveal past experience that through trauma may need to be met in order to live ones life more satisfyingly or efficiently. This is why they are so often used in psychotherapy. Because our mind integrates experience, as described below under Creativity, some investigators believe that during our dreaming we ‘upgrade’ such skills as social interaction, speech, etc., which also leads to personal growth. There is neurological evidence that brain cells undergo a learning process during dreaming. Also in the area of personal growth, inquiry into dreams such as recurring nightmares, shows them to be an attempt, occasionally successful, to bring to consciousness and release past traumas such as childhood abandonment, involvement in war environments, or car accidents.

· Creativity – In 1912 Gestalt psychology was launched in Germany when Max Wertheimer published a paper on a visual illusion called apparent motion. Wertheimer had noticed that when we view a sequence of still pictures, as happens watching a film, we have the illusion of seeing movement. This perception of movement was different to the perception of its components – the many static images. This led to the understanding that many of the perceptions we have of the world around us, and many of the concepts we build, are radically different to the many pieces of information or experience they arise from. The sum is therefore different or greater than the parts. Sudden inspirations and creative leaps, when seen from this point of view, are usually a new ‘whole’ formed out of many parts which previously had no connection. The symbols and drama of dreams particularly express this creative forming of new experience and new realisations, new gestalts, out of the mass of separate pieces of experience or information.

· Imagination – This has been listed separately to creativity because they are not necessarily the same. Imagination has been described as the “ability of the mind to be creative or resourceful.” To be creative or resourceful is considered highly admirable, yet being imaginative is frequently put down as a time waster. Most of the greatest things in the external world arose out of imagination. Such things as vacuum cleaners and pictures that could be sent through the air – TV – seemed outlandish to logical rational people when they were first mentioned. Dreams are possibly the most powerfully imaginative experiences we can have. Through them we can break free of the restrictions and lack of perception the logical mind has.

· Exercise For The Psyche – Freud believed that dreams expressed repressed sexual desires such as sex and anger. Jung said that in dreams we compensate for what is not experienced in our life. Seen in a more positive light, we can each see that our daily life only allows us to live a small range of the things we would like to do or feel. The circumstances of our life may lead us to prevent ourselves from expressing openly the intensity of the love, the pain, the anger, the creativity we have inside us. In dreams such restrictions fall away to some degree, and our mind, our emotions and sexuality can unfold and we can discover our fuller range of expression and capability. Howard Roffwarg, a psychiatrist at Columbia University in New York, suggested that nervous activity during REM sleep helps to stimulate the developing brain in very young children, thus promoting the growth of neural connections necessary for learning. In adults, according to Roffwarg, REM serves, like physical exercise, to maintain tone in the central nervous system.

· The Supersenses – Even if we cannot accept there are aspects of life that our senses and sensitive instruments do not show us, most of us agree that our mind, through our senses and emotions, can extrapolate from the thousands of bits of information we take in. For instance is we look at a person for a few minutes we might have few thoughts about what type of person they are. But if questioned carefully, we will realise that we have very definite impressions about them from the way they dress, stand, talk and move. In fact we ‘know’ a great deal about them. In our dreams we not only browse through the huge amount of information we have taken in and build insight or knowledge out of it, but sometimes we leap right beyond what our senses have enables us to gather, and arrive at true intuitive perception.

(2)What a waste of a wonderful resource, what criminal negligence it is if we therefore fail to remember dreams and gain enrichment from their fresh and unique perspectives, their ability to give pungent comments on our relationships and their possible outcome, and the opportunities dreams present to explore new approaches to our everyday life. What a loss if we do not discover the many splendored facets of our own mind and consciousness. As Robert Van De Castle says – You were issued a lifetime pass to free dreams at birth. Why not take advantage of it? (3)

Compensation Theory of Dreaming

Jung, Hadfield and several other dream researchers believe the dream process is linked with homeostasis or self-regulation – the sort of self-regulation indicated in the observations of MacKenzie, means that the process underlying dream production helps keep psychological balance, just as homeostasis keeps body functions balanced by producing perspiration when hot, shivering when cold, and the almost miraculous minutiae of internal changes. Despite self-regulation or homeostasis being an obvious and fundamental process in the body, in nature and the cosmos as a whole, it still appears difficult for many people investigating the mind to accept a similar function psychologically. See: biological dream theory;computers and dreams; self-regulation dreams and fantasy; movements during sleep; science sleep and dreams; sleep walking; LifeStream; People’s Experience of LifeStream; Opening to Life

All our lives we try to achieve a balance of the contradictory opposites within us, and whether in our egos we succeed or fail, every function claimed by the ego is balanced by its opposite in the subconscious. Only in the fusion of infancy, or of sexual orgasm, or in religious ecstasy do we escape the psychic wound of division.

Put bluntly, dreams are said to compensate for conscious attitudes and personality traits. So the coldly intellectual man would have dreams expressive of feelings and the irrational as part of a compensatory process. The ascetic might dream of sensuous pleasures, and the lonely unloved child dream of affection and comfort. But this is only the most basic aspect of compensation and is demonstrated in the example below.

Somewhere within the total personality, however, there appears to be a continuing integrative force; though an individual may be overwhelmed by their life experience, some part of one’s mind still seems to observe, evaluate, comment, and even attempt to integrate this otherwise hidden material with the knowledge of conscious life. This may disappear for brief periods, when the fears or pain occurs, but for most of the time it is clearly at work. No one knows what type of ‘thinking’ this may be. It appears to be different both from ‘reality thinking’ and ‘autistic thinking,’ from the patterns of conscious thought and the imagery of fantasy a kind of bridge between two types of mental process. Lawrence Lessing, in a Fortune article on recent sleep research, has written: ‘At the same time recent evidence shows that there may well be a second, lower level of dreaming extending down even into deep sleep, consisting largely of abstract thoughts or isolated symbols, much harder to recall than the generally vivid, active imagery of rapid-eye-movement dreaming.’

Example: In his book Psychology in Service of The Soul, Leslie Weatherhead tells the story of a little girl who while on a visit to a zoo was given a coin to get a small chocolate bar from a vending machine. She eagerly asked for more coins to obtain all the bars in the machine. The mother refused. The next morning the girl said she dreamt her mother had come into her bedroom and thrown a lot of chocolate bars under her bed.

Jung’s view of compensation was far more inclusive however. He quotes, as an example the dream of an elderly general he met while sitting opposite him on a train journey. The general told Jung that he had dreamt he was on parade with younger officers while being inspected by the commander in chief. On reaching the general the commander asked him to define beauty. This surprised the general as he expected to be asked technical questions regarding his service. He was embarrassed and could not give a clear answer. The commander in chief then asked a young major the same question and received a clearer answer. The general experienced feelings of failure and his grief woke him. Jung’s questioning led the general to realise that the young major who successfully answered the query about beauty actually looked just like himself when he was that age and a major. Further questioning led to the information that at that age the general had been interested in art, but the pressure of work and the rigidity of the military life had eroded the interest. Jung goes on to suggest that the dream in his late life was helping to compensate for the one sided development necessitated by his army career. The dream in fact reminded the general of this neglected side of himself.

This concept of wholeness, linked with the Self, which such compensatory dreams connect with is best seen in the collection of many years dreams by an individual undertaking their own personal journey to self acceptance and integration. Through an overview of dreams gained in this way, the two aspects of compensation become much more clearly drawn. The dream work, aimed at meeting the neglected or hurt parts of oneself, opens the way to more pronounced compensation. A man who was investigating a feeling of lack in regard to his marriage, gives the following account.

Example: As I was exploring my feeling I suddenly began to change direction and realised that from the very earliest period of my life I had certain filters in place that influenced incoming sensory information. This had come about because I noticed how critical I was of our next-door – upstairs – neighbours, and in examining it saw that I had filters to search all information for danger. This burst open in intense feelings and awareness of being a ‘weak chick’. A powerful internal struggle and something like an ‘oh God no!’ feeling accompanied it. I then experienced what it was like to be a premature baby and so weak. Being born two months prematurely had thrown my infant self into a high state of anxious survival where everything was felt as a potential danger. So my filters were examining everything for danger. Everything that moved or made a noise was a potential threat to my existence.

At first with laughter, then with pain I saw that this had made me suspicious of my own mother. I had not fitted the ‘norm’ in terms of size, strength or behaviour, so not only had I lived with a ‘danger alert’ process going all the time, but also with the realisation I was not up to scratch. Instead of the full term child who is more adjusted to the environment I had emerged still in a condition adjusted to the womb. My psychological state was also, I felt, quite different, a sort of experience of the death world, the world before birth and after death.

Society, I felt, has a sort of labelling or measuring system. It has emerged out of biological criteria of survival and fitness, and is largely unconscious. People haven’t even acknowledged they are acting under such drives. ‘My genes are best, and everybody else’s are abnormal. But only the best of mine are going to get through’. Out of this I sensed that mothers who have children who are not ‘the best’ suffer a great internal struggle about their child. Part of them cries out, ‘That is no child of mine!’

So the people who are not seen as ‘fit’ are not given social rewards, starting with such rewards as recognition and warmth from ones own parents, and escalating from there into recognition and rewards from social groups and organisations. I personally felt as if I were not seen as fit for several reasons. My premature birth led me to be slightly less robust, and also my mixed cultural background during a time of war made me less fit. I didn’t have the right label attached. Christy D.

As can be seen, Christy feels himself much less capable and accepted by his mother than someone who has had a normal birth. He feels his premature birth left him always paces behind those born full term. He sums this up by saying:

Example: Due to constantly searching for something I had lost too soon – the security of my mother’s womb – due to feeling I never bonded with my mother, I had felt agonised most of my life that I couldn’t be an ordinary husband emotionally and sexually. I pushed and pushed to see if I could grow to this ordinariness and finally felt that I had arrived, only to find that I was too late. Not only had my wife entered the menopause and lost interest in a sexual relationship, but also my children had grown up and I had lost the huge satisfaction of being with them as youngsters. So here I am in my late fifties without a sexual relationship and without the loving contact of youngsters.

The gaps in Christy’s life are obvious, and the urge or need to compensate is also plain to see. In fact Christy has an experience that he describes as follows:

Example: I realised that because I had always felt inadequate in a certain degree, I had used religion as a means of compensation. Suddenly I saw the need for hero figures to use for compensatory purposes for individuals and groups. The person may not be able to live out some aspect of their life. They may not get a sexual partner; they may not get recognition in their work; perhaps people treat them as of no account. For some people an actual physical disability stops them from living out their life fully. The hero/ine figure is then used as an image that has several functions.

For instance nuns in a convent will not live out their ability to get married or have a child. The figure of Christ is used as a compensatory symbol for this in that they marry Christ and their passion is through meditation on his being. In this way people use a hero/ine figure to compensate for what is missing in their own life. They can live their unlived soul through the passion of Christ for instance.

The figure such as Christ represents our own wholeness and complete potential. To compensate for our own unlived areas we look to this figure and have a taste of what we are not expressing outwardly through identifying with the hero/ine. Meditations on the figure might produce great feelings of love, pain, wonder, and recognition – in fact whatever is missing in everyday relationships. The Christian festivals appear to be a way of living out via the image of Christ the passions of life that we might not meet in our everyday life. The birth, the struggle, the love, the death, can all be partaken of. We can share the passionate experience of living in this way, even though in our own actual life we might not be able to live such a passionate and eventful existence. And I suppose television does this for many people today.

At first I had a strong feeling this sort of compensation was used by people who are inadequate in some way, a path for the weak, and a path that I had taken myself. This suggested by inference that I was less capable of living a full life than most. I had a sneering feeling about how people use this as a crutch, but then realised I was judging once more. ‘I need a kick in the arse. I’ve got an ability to see, but I put all these judgements on things.’

As I looked at the situation more fully though I saw that in fact nobody lives a complete life. No one is completely whole, expressing every aspect of their potential. So in fact we all relate in some way to the Christ or other such figures who represents, or in some way ARE the total potential of human existence; a mighty example of what human life can achieve.

Now I came face to face with Christ. I felt knocked over emotionally by it. It was an experience of meeting the most amazing creature or being one could imagine. I stood in front of a god, something that totally transcended human existence. Gods are often depicted as having some great power of destruction or creativity. They might be like a human being magnified many times, with loves and hates, huge powers, throwing lightning bolts and so on. My experience didn’t show Christ as anything like this. The transcendence was in the manner of Christ’s consciousness. Here was a being with no real power in a worldly sense. This being hadn’t created the world and couldn’t influence world history through power.

The consciousness, the being of Christ, existed by a form of love so magnificent I could barely look upon it. If love is the right word, this love penetrated every living thing and absorbed their most intimate life experience. The Christ took in every aspect of existence without any judgement whatsoever. This was its life and sustenance. So one could say this wondrous creature was a sort of parasite living off the energy of life forms. But this is only a part of what I experienced. Through total acceptance it took in all. It took every tiny memory of each individual. But in return, if we can share its immense passion it offers us its own life that compared with our own is eternal.

I experienced that not only does one inherit the gift of eternal life through identification with Christ, but also we share the awareness of all life forms. Through this we participate in the life and passion of all beings present and past. As I met this I was on my knees as it were because I couldn’t help loving this wondrous being. I couldn’t help feeling my own smallness. I wanted to lose myself in this being and be washed through by its radiance and hugeness. To be in its presence was the most amazing thing. If you can imagine standing before a cosmic being that had arrived from some other galaxy, and was millions of years old, perhaps ageless, had no physical form except our own teeming lives, radiated love so much that you were engulfed in it, and simply by being in its presence shared its magnificent awareness, this might give some idea. Christy D.

Christy acknowledges his own need for compensation due to feelings of inadequacy. But he goes beyond this to see that each of us are in some measure incomplete and compensation in its largest sense is about finding awareness of the wholeness underlying our own life.

The description of compensation above is an example of something functional. To be able to survive crushing life experience is a real achievement, not an imagined one, and is therefore functional. Using an image to evoke hope and motivation doesn’t make it less of an achievement. The process of compensation also links with patterns of love and strength actually lived by others. They are then patterns remaining in the collective experience of humanity and can be accessed. When we touch these powerful racial memories we may clothe them in the image of our cultural hero or saviour.

To be clear about this, the power that is found is a release of our own potential emerging from our core self. So in this sense the compenstaory image is a graphic presentation of our own innate potential. This emerges from our unconscious clothed in whatever imagery or ideas we can accept or allow, as do dreams. It can also be evoked by using such images in a compensatory way.

See: – LifeStream; biological dream theory; self-regulation dreams and fantasy; movements during sleep; People’s Experience of LifeStream; Introduction to Dreams

 

Biological Dream Theory

In his book Dreams and Nightmares, (Pelican 1954) J. A. Hadfield puts forward what he calls a Biological Theory of Dreams. He says the function of dreams is that by reproducing difficult or unsolved life situations or experiences, the dream aids towards a solving or resolution of the problems. He gives the example of a man climbing a cliff who slips fractionally. He then may dream of actually falling and waking terrified. Subsequently the dream recurs, but in each the dreamer tries out a different behaviour, such as clasping for a branch, until he manages to act appropriately to avert the disaster. Hadfield sums up by saying dreams stand in the place of experience. They make us relive areas of anxious or difficult experience. They thus help problem solving. But they not only look back at past behaviour, they act just like thinking in considering future plans and needs.

Adrian Morrison’s findings with animal dreams, (see movements during sleep) opens the possibility that practicing and developing skills and strategies may be the function dreams performed in early animals. They may enable us to economically learn from experience, and to play with experience in untidy or irrational ways. This ‘untidiness’ enables experience to be juxtapositioned in so many ways that it enables useful new behaviour to arise from the occasional creative juxtapositioning. See: Evans, Christopher.

Hadfield also emphasises a slightly different aspect of the compensatory process in dreams than Jung, although there is great similarity. He writes in Dreams and Nightmares, ‘If a branch of a tree is cut, new shoots spring out; if you injure your hand, all the forces of the blood are mobilised until that wound is healed and you are made whole. It is a law of nature. So it is psychologically: every individual has potentialities in his nature, all of which are not merely seeking their own individual ends, but each and all of which serve the functions of the personality as a whole. Our personality as a whole, like every organism, is working towards its own fulfilment.’

He connects this even more directly with the overall self-regulatory physical processes in saying ‘There is in the psyche an automatic movement toward readjustment, towards an equilibrium, toward a restoration of the balance of our personality. This automatic adaptation of the organism is one of the main functions of the dream as indeed it is of bodily functions and of the personality as a whole. This idea need not cause us much concern for this automatic self-regulating process is a well known phenomenon in Physics and Physiology. The function of compensation which Jung has emphasised appears to be one of the means by which this automatic adaptation takes place, for the expression of repressed tendencies has the effect of getting rid of conflict in the personality. For the time being, it is true, the release may make the conflict more acute as the repressed emotions emerge, and we have violent dreams from which we wake with a start. But by this means, the balance of our personality is restored.’

The difference between Jung and Hadfield is that Hadfield is saying the dream is not merely ‘compensating’ for something the conscious personality is doing but is being purposive in pushing toward healing or growth. As with the physical process of self-regulation, which overall supports growth and stability, this psychological process in dreams appears to have much the same function. See Life’s Little Secrets and LifeStream.

One might argue that any growth arising from the self-regulatory process might come spontaneously from the integration of experience. Caron Kent, in his book The Puzzled Body, argues that in fact the internal process of adjustment presses for growth. I believe that the unexpressed potential for growth is both physical and psychological, and if it is not fulfilled, manifests as an internal sense of dissatisfaction. The body and the mind therefore drive to find a fuller measure of satisfaction as well as they can. Because the area of dreams is so plastic and formative, this is exactly the area that these often subtle and deeply unconscious urges toward growth can manifest. See: compensation theory; self-regulation and fantasy.

The Fundamental Process

During my 20s I experienced a lot of depression and emotional pain. At times I felt suicidal, but having children and believing that life had some purpose, I never did take the step of attempting to kill myself.

What I did do was to see if there were ways in which I could help myself or heal my condition. I read every possible book I could, not just the orthodox ones but also alternatives and crazy books. Fortunately I have one of those minds, or perhaps it’s my attitude, that doesn’t take what people say for granted. I don’t have a great respect for authority, so although I listen I do not necessarily think they know what they are talking about.

Also I seem to be able to just pull out of the immense amount of stuff that I read, the things that are relevant. Or maybe it is the skill of putting various bits of information together and seeing what they mean. But I didn’t stop at reading. I tried many approaches as well – meditation; relaxation; hours of prayer; diet; exercise; yoga; dream work and psychotherapy.

 

Tony reading every thing he could find about Life

Realisations

Gradually I began to see that throughout the ages, in the different religions and traditional practices of East and West, there was a certain similarity. This was not apparent unless you could see right through to what the fundamental essence of the practices were. For instance one of the books I read was about Anton Mesmer, the father in the West of what has become hypnotism. What Mesmer stumbled upon was that, while experimenting with magnets on patients who had some physical or psychological problem, they began to tremble or experience spontaneous movements and often relived the source of their trauma and arrived at a cure. (The book was Mental Healers).

 

Stefan Zweig

 

When I put this together with the description of the Christian Pentecost or the practice of Seitai in Japan, I saw that fundamentally they were the same. With Mesmer he thought at first it was the magnets producing the release, but later discarded the idea and thought that perhaps it was his own personal magnetism. But when I compare that with what happened at Pentecost, and other similar practices East and West, I saw that fundamentally it was about the person relaxing and allowing what ever was spontaneous to arise.

In fact Carl Jung said outright, “Do nothing but let things happen.”

So the Christian disciples, in their words, surrendered to God. Mesmer’s patients surrendered because they trusted him. In Indonesia the practice of Subud had the same principles. The people came together in a group, surrendered their conscious will, and allowed spontaneous movements, sounds and fantasies to arise. In all of these practices people were gradually transformed and healed.

The Secret

I felt there was a great secret here and tried to see if I could access it myself. But I gradually found a way through dreams, and also using T. S. Elliot’s advice to, “… be still and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing;”

I was never able to be have that wonderful influx of something other than my conscious self taking over and producing healing experiences. But one day it happened. I was with friends with whom I felt completely relaxed, my body started shaking and I lay down and allowed it to happen. In doing so I re-experienced a tonsil operation I had at six years old that had produced a very powerful neck tension and also some psychological fears. After that experience, the neck tension that had troubled me for ages disappeared, along with some emotional difficulties also. From then on I could simply surrender and the process would continue to work. The process as it unfolded led me through some of the most amazing and wonderful experiences I have ever met. Also I was healed of long standing depression and sexual problems. See People Experiences Using It

Over the years I have gradually put together some ideas that I believe explain the fundamentals of how this amazing thing can happen. My search for meaning arose because over a period of time enormous transformation occurred in me through allowing the spontaneous to break through into my waking life. And recently I tried to arrive at a simpler and more compact expression of what I have learned about what lies behind these experiences, and wrote the following.

Fundamental to what I experienced and what was behind Pentecost and the other approaches mentioned, is, I believe, the process of self-regulation. Self-regulation is another term for what in physiology is called homeostasis. This is a name for the processes in our body and mind that all the time keep a balance amid the immense changes we meet physically and psychologically – changes such as temperature, stillness or rapid movement, stress or ease, growth or ageing.

Physical examples of self-regulation (SR) are of vomiting, sneezing or trembling. Vomiting occurs when we have taken something poisonous or irritating into our body. Sneezing when our body is trying to get rid of an irritant or infection. Trembling can occur when we are cold, and is an attempt to bring our temperature up. See Psychological Vomiting

Psychological examples of SR are crying after a shock, reliving a past traumatic event, or a dream in which past fears or traumas are met, as when we experience a nightmare. But it goes on after the difficulties and traumas are healed and begins the process of leading you to a life without emotional pain, mental illness and changes your life to something better.

Overall the process of SR is an attempt to bring us back to balance after our environment, or events, have in some way unbalanced us or interfered with our healthy functioning physically or psychologically. It also underlies the process of growth that takes us from conception through to adulthood and beyond.

Dr. Peter Knapp, Professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine was asked the question as to why some people come through a crisis such as bereavement or ill health better than others. His reply was, ‘I believe that the ones who stay healthy actively grieve. They allow themselves to feel and express their emotions.’ If you lock feelings away, it seems your body mourns for you by becoming sick. Very often we unconsciously work against these processes in us, whether they manifest physically or psychologically. We are thereby attempting to block the self-regulatory activity that is trying to get rid of dangerous things we have taken into ourselves and to move on to growth and creativity.

The reasons we block the action is the same reason some people repress vomiting or a sneeze. They don’t like the discomfort or even pain. It is also the same as when we pull our hand back from something hot. In other words there is an inbuilt urge to draw away from pain, whether physical or emotional. Discharging old pains, grief or trauma is uncomfortable as it emerges, but an enormous relief and healing when allowed. So one of the things we need to learn in order for the action of SR to take place is to allow the uncomfortable. If we do it is not painful at all as it emerges. All the pain is involved in repressing the poisonous or traumatic emotions and physical tensions.

 

The Secret of Dreams

Dreams are one of the major ways our inner process tries to do this old housework of cleaning up our inner problems or conflicts. But because we resist it the process cannot complete itself even though we are asleep. Think of nightmares for instance. They are the major way the dream tries to present us with things that have really disturbed us, and most people wake trying to distance themselves from such feelings as fast as they can.

SR which as a practice I call LifeStream is not simply about the action behind healing hurts. It is also part of the process of our physical and psychological growth, or the emergence of our potential. Our creative potential cannot unfold while there are still locked in childhood pains or conflicts, or adult traumas that are blocking the process. In fact this natural process lies behind our growth even from the beginning of conception. It has opened us up from that tiny seed, directing and organising our growth. It is a profound influence in our life, and continues to attempt further unfoldment.

But there is a way we can cooperate with it. A way of speeding up our healing and growth. Its first step lies in recognising how the processes of our growth and healing declare themselves – how LifeStream emerges into conscious life and how we block it.

When we consider that the self-regulatory process in regard to perspiring, breathing or vomiting, they are all spontaneous movements or functions from within, one can see that personally we are all the time immersed in processes which we have not willed into action. Learning to work with LifeStream is a way of relating constructively to these spontaneous activities. These self-regulatory activities and your relationship with them are seen very clearly in the dream process.

If you have observed a cat, a dog, or a human being while they sleep, their limbs can often be seen to twitch or move. Perhaps you can see their eyes moving and they may even make sounds. If you could see the images of the dream they are experiencing, then you would see the movements and speech as expressions of the dream. All this happens when their conscious self is relaxed and surrendered in sleep. Perhaps the dog or person are completely unaware of the powerful sounds or movements being made, so that if asked about them on waking, they would have no memory. Some people move to the extent of sleepwalking without later memory. The movements, the strong feelings, the speech, are all done without conscious volition. They are emerging from a level of oneself that we call the unconscious or the dream process. The important thing to recognise here is that you have two levels of will – your conscious will, and what I have names the ‘Life Will’ that moves and acts in dreams. It is this unconscious or Life Will that LifeStream is govern by. See Life Will and Conscious Will

The Way In

From this it can be seen that when LifeStream is working it produces – if not interfered with by conscious volition, fears or decisions – spontaneous movements, emotions, fantasy (dreams), speech and drama. In its action it can be seen to produce a totally real full surround virtual reality that we call a dream. This includes all of the things mentioned above, full emotion, sexual experience, sounds such as other people’s voice, physical movement, and realistic surroundings. Not only is that active in sleep and dreams, but it can occur while awake, and people call it a vision or an hallucination. It is the same process though. Anything that blocks that is blocking LifeStream in some measure. So for most people only a fraction of the power of LifeStream ever manages to function because as individuals and society we are taught to inhibit anything other than our conscious and rational self expression. People are taught to be frightened of hallucinations, visions or voices talking to them as if it were a sickness. Recently I came across the following news item. See Hallucinations and Hallucinogens

A University of Manchester investigation follows a Dutch study that found many healthy members of the population in that nation regularly hear voices in their heads. Although hearing voices has traditionally been viewed as abnormal and a symptom of mental illness, the Dutch findings suggest it’s more widespread than thought, estimating about 4 percent of the population could be affected.

Manchester Researcher Aylish Campbell said: “We know many members of the general population hear voices, but have never felt the need to access mental health services; some experts even claim that more people hear voices and don’t seek psychiatric help than those who do. “In fact, many of those affected describe their voices as being a positive influence in their lives, comforting or inspiring them as they go about their daily business.”

In most social settings we usually restrain everything except what may be acceptable to others, expedient in the situation, or judged as correct. This means that we may not give ourselves the freedom to allow our own creative imagination – our body to discharge tension through movement – experience our intuitive process – and our full range of feeling responses. In this way we gradually diminish ourselves, blocking out much of ourselves that is not of immediate use in everyday affairs. We may in fact diminish our relationship with life itself.

Can you therefore imagine a situation in which while you are still awake, you allow a state of mind and body in which active decisions, judgements and purposive aims are dropped for a while? This is the necessary step you take in approaching the experience of SR. You take on a quiet, accepting attitude, then the sleep/dream process can begin to function even though you are wide awake. SR can work with your cooperation instead of against your inhibitions. The process doesn’t need you to be asleep, only to stop interfering, judging, deciding what you ought or should be doing. If you can stop forever interfering with your process, and for a time at least, listen and allow, then the self-regulatory action, the creative response from full experience and the other functions usually only found in dreams, can emerge into waking consciousness. See Waking Lucid Dreaming

Accessing Lifestream

Therefore to access LifeStream you can explore your dreams while awake, using such as approach as described under Techniques for Exploring your Dreams, or you can give yourself free space and the permission to experience spontaneous movement, feelings and vocalisation. This needs to be done at least twice a week, alone or preferably with one or more partners. To learn to do it see: Arm Circling Meditation.

Your personality is dependent upon the deepest cellular and organic processes of your body. These processes are directed and kept healthy by homeostasis. Usually we hold onto the idea that somehow we are the prime mover, or that life is meaningless and mechanistic. But your body has an integrity that it defends moment by moment against the assaults of temperature change, against bacterial invasion, against the rubbish and poisons we take in from our atmosphere and food and also traumas we experience and the crazy information we take in daily. This integrity and its potential want to unfold. It cannot while we are not working with it. Even when it tries we sometimes feel it as an assault. “I am having strange fantasies; my body is moving spontaneously, I talk in my sleep – am I going mad?”

No, just your being trying to heal and grow. (For fuller description see What Is The Unconscious – Life’s Little Secrets – Opening to Life.)