Erich Fromm - The Art Of Being - Psychology audiobook

Blackstone audio [Music] presents the art of Being by Eric [Music] [Applause] FR at s forward between 1974 and 1976 while working on the book to have or to be at his home in larno Switzerland the Aged Eric FR wrote far more manuscript and chapters than were actually used in the Book which was published in 1976 some of these chapters are contained in the present volume they deal entirely with the steps toward being that the individual can take in order to learn the art of Being FR withdrew the chapters on steps toward being from the typescript

shortly before the type setting of to have or to be because he believed that his book could be misunderstood to mean that each individual has only to search for Spiritual well-being and the awareness development and Analysis of himself without changing the economic realities that produce the having mode the roots of the mass phenomenon of orientation toward having which are typical of a luxurian society that has everything were to be sought for in the economic political and social realities of modern industrial society especially in its organization of Labor and in its modes of Production despite the

fact that our orientation toward having is rooted in the structural realities of today's industrial culture the overcoming of these realities consists in rediscovering man's own psychic intellectual and physical powers and in his possibilities of self-determination for this reason these steps toward being are now being published they are intended to be a guide to productive self-awareness recent Trends have Certainly made it clear that the awareness realization development Etc of one's self almost always means something other than the enhancement of One's Own subjective Powers today by and large individual narcissism is being strengthened and the inability to

reason and to love which according to FR are characteristics of an orientation toward being entrenched as techniques of self-awareness offer new crutches of orientation toward Having the following summary of some of the statements made earlier in to have or to be is meant not to be a substitute for having read that book but rather to remind all who have read it of its most important thoughts Eric FR understood the Alternatives having or being to be too fun fundamental modes of existence or two different kinds of orientation towards self and the world two different types of

character structure whose Respective dominance determines the totality of how a person thinks feels and acts to have or to be page 24 if one investigates all the possible ways in which a person can Orient his life then one comes to this conclusion in the end a person orients his life either toward having or toward being what does it mean when someone ultimately orients his or her life toward having whoever orients his or her life Toward having determines oneself one's existence one's meaning of life and one's way of life according to what one has what that

person can have and what one can have more of now there is almost nothing that could not become an object of having and of the desire to have material things of all types one's own house money stocks artworks books stamps coins and other things that in part can be amassed with the passion of a Collector people too can become the object of having or of the desire to have of course one does not say that one takes possession of another person and considers that person one's property one is more considerate in this regard and prefers

to say that one is concerned about others and takes responsibility for them but it is well known that whoever has the responsibility for others also has the right to dispose of them thus Children the disabled the old the sick and those in need of care are taken possession of and considered to be a part of One's Own Self and woe should the sick become healthy and the child wish to decide for itself being determined by the having mode then becomes obvious as though it were not enough that other people can be had we also determine

the conduct of Our Lives by taking on or acquiring virtues and Honors all that matters to us is that we have esteem a certain image Health beauty or Youth and when this is no longer possible then we at least want to have experience or memories convictions of a political ideological and religious nature can also be acquired as possessions and staunchly defended to the point of bloodshed everything is made dependent upon whether one is in possession of the truth or whether one is in the Right virtually anything can be possessed if a person orients his way

of life toward having the issue is not whether one does or does not have something but rather whether a person's heart is set on what he or she does or does not have orientation toward not having is a having orientation too from is not advocating asceticism or orientation toward being is precisely what is not identical with orientation toward not having the Perpetual question Concerns the position that having or not having holds in the determination of one's purpose in life and in the determination of One's Own identity it is often difficult to distinguish whether someone possesses

something in the having mode of existence or to quote from whether someone possesses as if he were not possessing yet each person quickly test himself or herself by asking what he or she finds particularly valuable thereby Getting an idea of what would happen if he or she were to lose what was important and valuable whether he or she would lose the ground from under his or her feet and whether life would then become meaningless if one can then no longer feel any self-reliance or self value intrinsic to oneself if life and work are no longer

worth anything then one is deter in life according to an orientation toward having having a fine Vocation obedient children a good rapport profound insights better arguments and so forth the person who is oriented toward having always makes use of crutches rather than his or her own two feet that person uses an external object in order to exist in order to be on as he or she wishes he or she is himself or herself only in so far as that person has something the individual determines being as a subject according to the Having of an object

he or she is possessed by objects and thus by the object of having them at the same time the metaphor of crutches replacing one's own feet makes apparent what is meant by a different orientation that of being just as a person has a physical capacity for self-reliance which can be replaced with crutches if need be so does one have psychic abilities for self-reliance too a capacity for love a capacity for Reason and a capacity for productive activity but it is also possible for a person to replace those innate psychic powers with an orientation toward having

such that a capacity for love reason and productive activity depends upon the possession of those objects of having upon which the heart is set love reason and productive activity are one's own psychic forces that arise and grow only to the extent that they are practiced they cannot be consumed Bought or possessed like objects of having but can only be practiced exercised ventured upon performed in Contra distinction to objects of having which are expended when they are used up love reason and productive activity grow and increase when they are shared and used orientation toward being always

means that one's purpose in life is oriented towards one's own psychic forces one recognizes becomes acquainted With and assimilates the fact that the unknown and the strange in oneself and in the external world are characteristic of One's Own Self by learning this one attains a greater and more comprehensive relationship with oneself and one's environment in to have or to be FR proceeded from the obser ation that today's orientation toward having is a mass phenomenon founded in the economic and social actualities of a society that has too much and that can therefore Succumb to the temptation

of letting itself be determined or defined by having the enormous loss of individual's own psychic forces can be found in the structural realities of present day economics of present day organization of Labor and of present day social life if the roots of the faith development of the individual are to be sought for primarily in the socioeconomically determined lot of today's person then it is valid to Proceed on the basis of these rots and to understand the individual as having always been socialized that is why FR replaced the chapter on the steps toward being with his

suggestions for structural change and that is why an individual's efforts to shift from an orientation toward having to an orientation toward being can make sense only if those efforts simultaneously change the structure of One's Own Setting in vocational activity in the organization of One's Own work and in political and societal self-awareness The Guiding values of One's Own socioeconomic way of life must be changed so that one can genuinely experience one's own psychic forces of Reason love and productive activity and so that those powers can grow by use our attempt to attain self-awareness and self-development to

attain a view of ourselves and of our world that truly Corresponds to Inner and external reality is connected with the liberation of our socioeconomic way of life indeed only to the degree that the practice of life is freed from its contradictions and its irrationality can the map correspond to reality the author said in to have or to be in the present volume Eric FR First shows the false Paths of self-awareness just as he clearly recognized and identified them as such years ago with All the pthos of a dact yet he then suggests ways of gaining

self-awareness and shares with us the steps toward being that he himself has practiced daily giving very extensive attention to self-analysis as an application of psychoanalysis because the present work available here for the first time was not prepared for publication by FR himself there was a need for occasion supplementation both of the division and Systematization of the text as well as of the chapter headings Riner Funk tubing in Germany 1992 translated by Lance W garmer part one one on the art of being in the first part of this book I have tried to describe the nature

of the having and of the being modes of existence and the consequences that the dominance of either mode has for man's well-being we had concluded that the Full humanization of man requires the Breakthrough from The Possession centered to the activity centered orientation from selfishness and egotism to solidarity and altruism in the second part of the book I want to make some practical suggestions concerning the steps that might be helpful as preparations for the effort to move toward this humanization the discussion of steps in the practice of The Art of Living must begin with a Question

on the answer to which all practice depends what is the goal of living what is life's meaning for man but is this really a meaningful question is there a reason for wanting to live and would we rather not live if we had no such reason the fact is that all living beings animals and men want to live and this wish is paralyzed only under exceptional circumstances such as unbearable pain or in Man by the presence of passions such as love hate Pride loyalty that can be stronger than the wish to live it seems that nature

or if you will the process of evolution has endowed every living being with the wish to live and whatever he believes to be his reasons are only secondary Thoughts by which he rationalizes this biologically given impulse we do of course need to acknowledge theoretical ideas of evolution Meister reart has made the Same point in a simpler poetic way if you ask a good man why do you love God you will be answered I don't know because he is God why do you love Truth for truth's sake why do you love Justice for the sake of

Justice why do you love goodness for goodness sake and why do you live On My Honor I don't know I like to live that we want to live that we like to live are facts that require no explanation but if we ask how we want to Live what we seek from Life what makes life meaningful for us then indeed we deal with questions and they are more or less identical to which people will give many different answers some will say they want to love others will choose power others security others sensuous pleasure and comfort others

Fame but most would probably agree in the statement that what they want is happiness this is also what most philosophers and theologians have Declared to be the aim of human striving however if happiness covers such different and mostly mutually exclusive contents as the ones just mentioned it becomes an abstraction and thus rather useless what matters is to examine what the term happiness means for the Layman as well as for the philosopher even among the different concepts of Happiness there is still a view shared by most thinkers we are happy if our wishes are fulfilled or

to Put it differently if we have what we want the differences between the various views consist in the answer to the question what are those needs the Fulfillment of which brings about happiness we come thus to the point at which the question of the aim and meaning of life leads us to the of the nature of human needs by and large there are two opposing positions the first and today almost exclusively held position is that A need is defined entirely subjectively it is the striving for something I want badly enough so that we have a

right to call it a need the satisfaction of which gives pleasure in this definition the question is not raised what the source of the need is it is not asked whether as with hunger and thirst it has a physiological root or like the need for refined food and drink for art for theoretical thought it is a need rooted in the social and cultural development Of man or whether it is a socially induced need like that for cigarettes automobiles or innumerable gadgets or finally whether it is a pathological need like that for such behaviors as sadism

or masochism nor in this first view is the question raised what effect the satisfaction of the need has on person whether it enriches his life and contributes to his growth or whether it weakens him stifles him prevents growth And is self-destructive whether a person enjoys the satisfaction of his desire to listen to Bach or that of his sadism by controlling or hurting helpless people is supposed to be a matter of taste as long as this is what a person has a need for happiness consists in the satisfaction of this need the only exceptions that usually

are made are those cases in which the satisfaction of a need severely damages other people or The social usefulness of the person himself thus the need to destroy or the need to take drugs are usually not supposed to be needs that can claim their legitimacy from the fact that their satisfaction might produce pleasure the opposite or second position is fundamentally different it focuses on the question of whether a need is conducive to man's growth and well-being or whether it hobbles and damages him it speaks of such needs as are rooted in Man's nature and are

conducive to his growth and self-fulfillment in this second concept the purely subjective nature of happiness is replaced by an objective normative one only the Fulfillment of desires that are in man's interests lead to happiness in the first instance I say I am happy if I get all the pleasure I want in the second I am happy if I get what I ought to want provided I want to Attain an Optimum of self-completion it need not be emphasized that this last version is unacceptable from the standpoint of conventional scientific thinking because it introduces a norm I.E

a value judgment into the picture and hence seems to deprive the affirmation of its objective validity the question arises however whether it is true that a norm has objective validity can we not speak of a nature of man and if this is so does not An objectively definable nature of man lead to the assumption that its aim is the same as that of all living beings namely its most perfect functioning and the fullest realization of its potentialities does it then not follow that certain Norms are conducive to this aim While others hamper it this is

indeed well understood by any Gardener the aim of the life of a rose bush is to be all that is inherent as potentiality in the rose bush that its Leaves are welldeveloped and that its flower is the most perfect rose that can grow out of this seed The Gardener knows then in order to reach this aim he must follow certain Norms that have been empirically found the rose bush needs a specific kind of soil of moisture of temperature of sun and shade it is up to the gardener to provide these things if he wants to

have beautiful roses but even without his help the rose bush tries to provide itself with the optimum Of needs it can do nothing about moisture and soil but it can do something about sun and temperature by growing crooked in the direction of the sun provided there is such an opportunity why would not the same hold true for the human species even if we had no theoretical knowledge about the reasons for the Norms that are conducive to man's optimal growth and functioning experience tells us just as much as it Tells the gardener therein lies the reason

that all great teachers of man have arrived at essentially the same norms for living the essence of these Norms being that the overcoming of GRE Illusions and hate and the attainment of love and compassion are the conditions for attaining optimal being drawing conclusions from empirical evidence even if we cannot explain the evidence theoretically is a perfectly sound and By no means unscientific method although the scientist's ideal will remain to discover the laws behind the empirical evidence now those who insists that all so-called value judgments in reference to human happiness have no the thetical Foundation do

not raise the same objection with regard to a physiological problem although logically the case is not different assuming a person has a craving for sweets and cakes becomes fat And endangers his health they do not say if eating constitutes his greatest happiness he should go on with it and not persuade himself or let himself be persuaded by others to renounce this pleasure they recognize this craving as something different from normal desires precisely because it damages the organism this qualification is not called subjective or a value judgment or unscientific simply because everyone knows the connection between

overeating And health but then everyone also knows today a great deal about the pathological and damaging character of irrational passions such as the craving for fame power possessions Revenge control and can indeed qualify these needs as damaging on an equally theoretical and clinical basis one has only to think of the manager sickness peptic ulcers which is the result of wrong living the stress produced by over ambitiousness Dependence on success lack of a truly personal Center there is much data that goes beyond the connection between such wrong attitudes and somatic sickness in recent decades a number

of neurologists such as C Von Monaca RB Livingston and Hines Von forer have suggested that man is equipped with a neurologically built-in biological conscience in which Norms such as cooperation and solidarity a search for truth and for Freedom are rooted these Conceptions are based on considerations of the theory of evolution I myself have attempted to demonstrate that the principal human Norms are conditions for the full growth of the human being while many of the purely subjective desires are objectively harmful the goal of living as it is understood in the following Pages can be postulated on

different levels most generally speaking it can be defined as developing Oneself in such a way as to come closest to the model of human nature Spinosa or in other words to grow optimally according to the conditions of human existence and thus to become fully what one potentially is to let reason or experience guide us to the understanding of what Norms are conducive to well-being given the nature of man that reason enables us to understand Thomas aquinus perhaps the most fundamental form of expressing the goal and the Meaning of living is common to the tradition of

both the Far East and near East and Europe the great Liberation Liberation from the dominance of greed in all its forms and from the shackles of Illusions this double aspect of Liberation is to be found in systems such as Indian viic religion Buddhism and Chinese and Japanese Zen Buddhism as well as in a more mythical form of God as Supreme King in Judaism and Christianity it Finds Its crowning Development in the near East and West in Christian and Muslim Mystics in Spinosa and in Marx in all these teachings inner Liberation freedom from the shackles of

greed and delusions is inseparably tied to the optimal development of reason that is to say reason stood as the use of thought with the aim to know the world as it is and in contrast to manipulating intelligence which is the use of thought for the purpose of satisfying one's need this relation of Freedom from greed and the Primacy of reason is intrinsically necessary our reason functions only to the degree to which it is not flooded by greed the person who is the prisoner of his irrational passions loses the capacity for objectivity and is necessarily at

the mercy of his passions he rationalizes when he believes he is expressing the truth the concept of Liberation in its two Dimensions as the goal of life has Been lost in industrial society or rather it has been narrowed down and thus distorted Liberation has been exclusively applied to Liberation from outside forces by the middle class from feudalism by the working class from capitalism by the peoples in Africa and Asia from imperialism the only kind of Liberation that was emphasized was that from Outer forces it was essentially political Liberation note I am speaking here of The

popular Concepts and feelings if we consider the enlightenment philosophy with its motto seera a dare to know and of the philosophers concern with inner Freedom the concept of Freedom was of course not mainly a political one end of note indeed Liberation from Outer domination is necessary because such domination cripples the inner man with the exception of rare individuals but the one-sidedness of the emphasis on outer Liberation also did Great damage in the first place the liberators often transformed themselves into new rulers only mouthing the ideologies of Freedom second politic iCal Liberation could hide the fact

that new unfreedom developed but in Hidden and Anonymous forms this is the case in Western democracy where political Liberation hides the fact of dependency in many disguises in the Soviet countries the domination has been more overt most importantly one forgot Entirely that man can be a slave even without being put in Chains the reverse of an of repeated religious statement that man can be free even when he is in chains this may sometimes in exceedingly rare cases be true however it is not a statement that is significant for our times but that man can be

a slave without chains is of crucial importance in our situation today the outer chains have simply been put inside of man the desires and thoughts that the suggestion Apparatus of society fills him with chain him more thoroughly than outer chains this is so because man can at least be aware of outer chains but be unaware of inner chains carrying them with the illusion that he is free he can try to overthrow the outer chains but how can he rid himself of chains of whose existence he is unaware any attempt to overcome the possibly fatal crisis

of the industrialized part of the world and Perhaps of the human race must begin with the understanding of the nature of both outer and inner chains it must be based on the liberation of man in the classic humanist sense as as well as in the modern political and social sense the church still by and large speaks only of inner Liberation and political parties from liberals to Communists speak only about outer Liberation history has clearly shown that one ideology without the other leaves man Dependent and crippled the only realistic aim is total Liberation a goal that

may well be called radical or revolutionary humanism just as liberal ation has been distorted in industrial society so too has the concept of Reason since the beginning of the Renaissance the main object that reason has tried to grasp was nature and the marvels of technique were the fruits of the new science but man himself ceased to be the object of Study except more recently in the alienated forms of psychology anthropology and sociology more and more he was degraded to a mere tool for economic goals in in the less than three centuries following Spinosa it was

Freud who was the first to again make the Inner Man the object of science even though Freud was handicapped by the narrow framework of Bourgeois materialism The crucial question today is as I see it whether we can Reconstitute the classic concept of inner and outer Liberation with the concept of Reason in its two aspects as applied to Nature science and applied to man self-awareness before beginning to make suggestions concerning certain Preparatory steps in the learning of The Art of Living I want to make sure that there may be no misunderstanding of my intentions if the

reader has expected that this chapter was a short prescription for learning The Art of Living he had better stop here all I want and am able to offer are suggestions in what direction the reader will find answers and to sketch tentatively what some of them are the only thing that might compensate the reader for the incompleteness of what I have to say is that I shall speak only of methods I have practiced and experienced myself this principle of presentation implies that I shall not try in the Following chapters to write about all or even only

about the most important methods of Preparatory practices other methods such as yoga or Zen practice meditation centered around a repeated word the Alexander The Jacobson and the felden Christ methods of relaxation are left out to write systematically about all methods would require at least a volume by itself and deide from this I would not be capable of writing such a compendium because I believe one cannot Write about experiences that one has not experienced indeed this chapter could be ended right here by saying read the writings of Masters of living learn to understand the true meaning

of their words form your own conviction of what you want to do with your life and get over the naive idea that you need no master no guide no model that you can find out in a lifetime what the greatest minds of the human species have discovered in many thousands of years And each one of them building with the stones and sketches their predecessors left them as one of the greatest masters of living Meister eart said how can anyone live without being instructed in the art of living and of dying yet I am not ending

the book here but shall try to present in a simple form some ideas I have learned studying the great Masters before even considering some of the steps that are helpful one should be Made aware of the main obstacles that stand in the way if one is unaware of what to avoid all of one's efforts will be in vain part two two great shams perhaps the most difficult obstacle to learning The Art of Living is what I would call the great sham not as if it were restricted to the field of human Enlightenment on the contrary

the latter is only one of the manifestations of the Great sham pervading all spheres of our society phenomena such as products with built-in obsoleteness products that are overpriced or actually useless if not harmful to the buyer advertising that is a blend of a little truth and much falsehood and many other social phenomenon are part of the Great fake of which the law prosecutes only the most drastic forms speaking merely of Commodities their real value is covered up by the value that advertising in the Name and greatness of their producers suggest how could it be otherwise

in a system whose basic principle is that production is directed by the interest in maximal profit and not by the interest in maximal usefulness for human beings the great Sham in the sphere of Po politics has become more visible recently through Watergate and the conduct of the Vietnam war with its untrue statement about near Victory or direct faking as in false reports of Aerial attacks yet only the tip of the iceberg of political sham has been exposed in the Spheres of art and literature the Sham is also rampant the public even the educated public has

largely lost its capacity to know the difference between what is genuine and what is fake this defect is caused by several factors foremost of all is the purely cerebral orientation of most people they read or listen to only words and intellectual Concepts and Do not listen with a third ear for proof of the author's authenticity to give an example in the literature on Zen Buddhism there are writers such as DT Suzuki whose authenticity is beyond doubt he speaks of what he has experienced the very fact of this authenticity makes his books often difficult to read

because it is of the essence of Zen not to give answers that are rationally satisfying there are some other books Which seem to portray the thoughts of Zen properly but whose authors are mere intellectuals whose experience is shallow their books are easier to understand but they do not convey the essential quality of Zen yet I have found that most people who claim to have a serious interest in Zen have not noticed the decisive difference in quality between Suzuki and others the other reason for our difficulty to discern the difference Between the authentic and the Sham

lies in the hypnotic attraction of power and fame if the name of a man or the title of a book is made famous by clever publicity the average person is willing to believe the works claims this process is greatly helped by another factor in a completely commercialized society in which salability and optimal profit constitute the core values and in which every person experiences himself as capital that he has to invest on the Market with the aim of optimal profit success his inner value counts as little as that of a dental cream or a patent medicine

whether he is kind intelligent productive courageous matters little if these qualities have not been of use to make him successful on the other hand if he is only mediocre as a person writer artist or whatever and is a narcissistic aggressive drunken obscene headline maker he will given some Talent easily become One of the leading artists or writers of the day of course not only he is involved the art dealers literary agents PR men Publishers all are interested financially in his success he is made by them and once he is a nationally advertised writer painter singer

once he is a celebrity he is a great man just as a soap powder is the best whose name you cannot help remembering if you are a TV viewer of course fake and fraud are nothing new they have always existed but There was perhaps no time in which the fact of being in the public eye was of such exclusive importance with these examples we touch upon the sector of the great sham that is most important in the context of this book the Sham in the field of man's salvation of his well-being inner growth and happiness

I must confess here that I was very hesitant to write this chapter and was even to leave it out after I had Written it the reason for this hesitancy lies in the fact that there are almost no words left in this field that have not been commercialized corrupted and otherwise misused words such as human growth or growth potential self-actualization experiencing versus thinking the here and now and many others have been cheapened by various writers and groups and even used in advertising copy must I not fear that The reader will connect certain ideas I am writing

about with others that have the opposite meaning just because some words are the same is it not more adequate to stop writing in this field altogether or to use mathematical symbols that are defined in a separate list I beg the reader to be aware of the fact that words in and by themselves have no reality except in terms of the context in which they are used in terms of the intentions and the character of The one who uses them if they are read head in a one-dimensional way without a depth perspective they hide ideas rather

than communicate them before beginning even a brief sketch I want to state that in speaking of sham I do not imply that the leaders and practitioners in various movements are consciously dishonest or intend to deceive the public although there are some for whom this holds true I believe that many intend to do good and believe In the usefulness of their spiritual Commodities yet there is not merely conscious and intended sham the socially more dangerous is the Swindle in which the performers honestly believe whether it is to plan a war or to offer the way to

happiness indeed certain things have to be said even at the risk of my being taken as personally attacking well-meaning people there is in fact little reason for personal attacks since these Merchants of Salvation only satisfy a widespread demand how could it be different people are confused and unsure they seek answers to guide them to Joy Tranquility self- knowledge salvation but they also demand that it be easy to learn that it require little or no effort that results be quickly obtained in the 20s and 30s a new movement emerged built upon the genuine interest of a

small number of people in New and hitherto unpopular ideas these ideas Were organized around two Central issues The Liberation of the body and the liberation of the Mind from the shackles into which conventional life had bound and distorted them the first Trend had two sources one was psychoanalytic George grodek was the first to use massage to loosen up the body and thus help a patient to get rid of tensions and repressions Wilhelm Reich went the same way more Systematically and with greater theoretical awareness of what he was doing the breaking of the resistance that defends

the repressed by breaking down the cramped and distorted bodily posture that functions as a protective defense against D repression reich's work was based on various methods of body awareness starting with the work of Elsa gindler in the 1920s the second Trend The Liberation of The Mind was centered mostly on Eastern ideas particularly certain forms of yoga Zen Buddhism and Buddhist Meditation all the ideas and methods in which only a few people were interested are genuine and important and have been of great help to a number of persons who did not expect to find an easy

shortcut to Salvation in the 50s and 60s a much larger number of people were looking for new ways to happiness and a mass Market Began to form especially California was a fruitful soil for mixing up legitimate methods like some of those mentioned with cheap methods in which sensitivity Joy Insight self-knowledge greater Effectiveness and relaxation were promised in short short courses in a kind of spiritual smage board program today there is nothing missing in this program you can have sensitivity training group therapy Zen Tai chiuan Almost anything under the sun in Pleasant surroundings and together with

others who suffer from the same troubles lack of genuine contact and genuine feeling from college students to business Executives everybody finds what he wants with little effort required with some dishes of the smorgas board such as sensory awareness there is nothing the matter with the teaching my only criticism being the atmosphere in which it is Taught in other endeavors the Sham lies in the superficiality of the teaching especially when it pretends to be based on the inside of the great Masters but perhaps the greatest sham is that what is Promised explicitly or implicitly is a

deep change in personality while what is given is momentary Improvement of symptoms or at best stimulation of energy and some relaxation in essence these methods are means of feeling better and of becoming better adjusted To society without a basic change in character this Californian movement however is insignificant by comparison with the mass production of spiritual Goods organized by and around Indian gurus the most stunning success has been that of the movement called Transcendental Meditation TM whose leader is the Indian Maharishi Mahesh Yogi this Guru seized Upon A Very Old Indian traditional idea that of meditation

over a mantra a mantra Usually being a word from Hindu scripture that is supposed to have special significance like m in the upanishads if one concentrates on it this concentration results in relaxation and in lessening of tension and in a feeling of well-being that accompanies the relaxation te M can be practiced without mystifications by using English words such as be still love one peace or any others that recommend themselves if Practiced regularly every day in a relaxed position with closed eyes for about 20 minutes it has apparently a marked effect of quietness relaxation and increase

in energy since I have not practiced it myself so far I only rely on credible reports by those who have Maharishi did not invent this method but he has invented how it can be packaged and marketed in the first place he sells the mantras alleging that for each individual that Mantra is chosen which Fits the individuality of the customer even if there were such correlations between specific mantras and specific individuals any one of the thousands of teachers who introduce the novices to the secret could hardly know enough about the individuality of the new customer to

make the right choice the idea of the custommade Mantra is the basis for selling it for a not inconsiderable sum to the newcomer the personal wishes of the individual are Taken into account and the possibility of this fulfillment is confirmed by the teacher what a promise any wish can be fulfilled if only one practices TM after having heard two introductory lectures the novice has an interview with the teacher then with a little ceremony he receives his personal Mantra and is instructed never to say it aloud to himself or to anyone else he has to sign

a statement that he will never teach the method to others obviously to Keep the Monopoly intact the new adherent has a right to be checked every year about his progress by the teacher who introduced him although as I understand it this is usually a brief routine procedure the movement has now many hundreds of thousands of practicing mainly in the United States but increasingly also in a number of European countries the promise that TM holds out is aside from the Fulfillment Of any personal wish that the practice does not require any effort yet it is the

basis for successful meaningful Behavior success and inner growth go together Caesar and God are reconciled the more you grow spiritually the more successful you will also be in business indeed the movement itself self its advertising its vague and often meaningless language its references to some respectable ideas The Cult of a smiling leader has adopted all the Features of big business the existence and popularity of the movement are as little surprising as that of certain patent medicines what is surprising is that among its adherents and practitioners are as I know from personal experience people of unquestionable

Integrity high intelligence and Superior psychological Insight I must admit that I am puzzled by the fact to be sure their positive reaction is due to the relaxing and Energizing effect of the meditation exercises but what is so puzzling is that they are not repelled by the unclear language the crude PR Spirit the exaggerated promises the commercialization of the Salvation business and why they retain their connection with TM rather than choose another non- mystifying technique such as one of those mentioned above has the spirit of big business and its selling methods already made such Inroads that

one must also accept them in the field of individual Spiritual Development in spite of the favorable effect of Mantra meditation it does in my opinion damage to the supporter in order to appreciate this damage one must go beyond the isolated Act of Mantra meditation and see the entire fabric of which it is a part one supports an idolatrous cult and th thus decreases one's Independence one supports the dehumanizing feature of our culture the Commercialization of all values as well as the spirit of PR falsehoods the no effort Doctrine and the perversion of Traditional Values such

as self- knowledge Joy well-being by clever packaging as a result one's mind becomes confused and filled with new Illusions in addition to those that exist already and should be gotten rid of there is another danger in movements like TM it is used by many people who are genuinely eager to achieve an inner Change and to find a new meaning to life and by its phraseology TM supports such wishes but it is in fact at best only a method for relaxation to be compared to Hatha Yoga or the honest autogenic training by the late professor IH

Schultz which achieves states of refreshing and energizing relaxation in many people such relaxation while desirable has nothing to do with a fundamental human change from egocentricity to Inner Freedom Admittedly it is useful for a Vain and egocentric person just as it is for a person who has dropped much of his having structure but by pretending that it is more than momentary relaxation TM blocks the way for many who would seek a real path of Liberation did they not believe they had found it in Transcendental Meditation lately the movement is sought also to attract and incorporate

those who have an interest not only in Themselves but in mankind the Maharishi announced a world plan on January 8th 1972 after 7 Days of Silence to 2,000 new teachers of the science of creative Intelligence on the island of mayorca this world plan is to be fulfilled by the construction of 3,500 World plan centers each Center for 1 million people each will educate 1,000 teachers of the science of creative intelligence so that eventually every 1,000 people in every part of the world will be provided with a teacher the world plan has seven aims among them

to improve the achievements of governments and to abolish the old problems of crime and of all behavior that results in Misfortune for the realization of the seven goals there exist seven courses summarizing his aim the Maharishi stated we shall consider ourselves as successful only then when the problems of today's world are essentially Diminished and eventually abolished and when the educational authorities of every country will be able to bring up fully developed citizens do these plans for the Salvation of the world need any comment to prove their lack of any thought which goes beyond vulgar selling

methods the success of TM has given rise to similar Ventures one such Enterprise was described in Newsweek February 17th 1975 Its inventor born Jack Rosenberg now wner from worner Von braw aard from the former German Chancellor Ludwig aard has founded aard seminar training EST in EST he packaged his experience with yoga Zen sensitivity training and encounter therapy into a new unit that is sold for $250 in two weekend sessions according to the 1975 report already 6,000 salvation Seekers had been processed with a large profit for EST this is very little compared with TM Yet it

shows that by now not only an Indian but a former personal motivation expert from a Philadelphia suburb can break into the business I have devoted so much space to these movements because I think there is an important lesson to be learned the basis for any approach to self- transformation is an ever increasing awareness of reality and the shedding of Illusions Illusions contaminate even the most wonderful sounding teaching to make It poisonous I'm not referring here to possible errors in the teaching the Buddhist teachings are not contaminated because one does not believe that transmigration exists nor

is the biblical text contaminated because it contrasts with the more realistic knowledge of the history of the earth and the evolution of man there are however intrinsic untruths and deceptions that do contaminate teaching such as announcing that great results Can be achieved without effort or that the craving for fame can go together with egolessness or that methods of mass suggestion are compatible with Independence to be naive and easily deceived is impermissible today more than ever when the prevailing untruths may lead to a catastrophe because they blind people to real dangers and real possibilities the realists

believe of those who strive for kindness that these latter mean well but that they are Ingenuous full of Illusions briefly fools and they are not entirely wrong many of those who upour violence hate and selfishness are naive they need their belief in everybody's innate goodness in order to sustain that belief their faith is not strong enough to believe in the fertile possibilities of man without shutting their eyes to the ugly less and viciousness of individuals and groups as long as they do so their Attempts to achieve an Optimum of well-being must fail any intense disappointment

will convince them that they were wrong or will drive them into a depression because they do not then know what to believe faith in life in oneself in others must be built on the Hard Rock of realism that is to say on the capacity to see evil where it is to see swim Windle destructiveness and selfishness not only when they are obvious but in Their many disguises and rationalizations indeed Faith Love and Hope must go together with such a passion for seeing reality in all its nakedness that the outsider would be prone to call the

attitude cynicism and cynical it is when we mean by it the refusal to be taken in by the sweet and plausible lies that cover almost everything that is said and believed but this kind of cynicism is not Cynicism it is uncompromisingly critical a refusal to play the game in a system of deception Meister eart expressed this briefly and succinctly when he said of the simple one whom Jesus taught he does not deceive but he is also not deceived indeed neither the Buddha nor the prophets nor Jesus nor eart nor Spinosa nor Marx nor schwitzer were

softies on the contrary they were hard-headed Realists and most of them were persecuted and maligned not because they preached virtue but because they spoke truth they did not Respect power titles or fame and they knew that the emperor was naked and they knew that power can kill the truthsayers three trivial talk among the obstacles to learning the art of being one other is indulging in Trivial talk what is Trivial literally It means commonplace from Latin Tria equals the point where three roads meet it usually denotes shallow humdrum lacking ability or moral qualities one might also

Define trivial as an attitude that is concerned only with the surface of things not with their causes or the deeper layers as an attitude that does not distinguish between what is essential and what is unessential or one that is prone to reverse the two Qualities we may say in addition that triviality results from un aliveness unresponsiveness deadness or from any concern that is not related to the central task of man to be fully born in this latter sense the Buddha has defined trivial talk he said if the mind of a monk inclines to talking he

should think thus I shall not engage in the low kind of talk that is vulgar worldly and unprofitable that does not lead to Detachment dispassionate cessation Tranquility direct knowledge Enlightenment Nirvana namely talk about Kings thieves ministers armies famine and War about eating drinking clothing and lodgings about garlands perfumes relatives Vehicles Villages towns cities and countries about women and wine the gossip of the street and the well talk about ancestors about various Trifles tales about the origins of the world and the Sea talk about things being so or otherwise and similar matters thus he Has clear

comprehension but talk that is helpful for leading the austere life useful for mental Clarity that leads to complete Detachment dispassionate cessation Tranquility direct knowledge Enlightenment and nabana that is talk on frugality contentedness Solitude seclusion application of energy virtue concentration wisdom deliverance and on the knowledge and vision bestowed by Deliverance in such talk shall I engage thus he has clear Comprehension some of the examples cited for trivial conversation may not appear trivial to a non- Buddhist such as the question of the origin of the world or perhaps even a Buddhist might say that talk about famine

if serious and with the intention to help was never meant to be trivial by the Buddha however this may be the whole list in its bold summation of topics some of which are sacred to some and dear to many is very impressive because It conveys the flavor of banality how many billions of conversations have taken place in these last years about inflation Vietnam the near East Watergate elections Etc and and how rarely do these conversations go beyond the obvious the strict partisan Viewpoint and penetrate to the roots and causes of the phenomena that are discussed

one is prone to believe that most people need Wars crimes scandals and even illness in order to have Something to talk about that is in order to have a reason to communicate with each other even though on the level of triviality indeed when human beings are transformed into Commodities what can their conversation be but trivial would Commodities on the market if they could speak not talk about the customers the behavior of the salesp Personnel their own hopes of fetching a high price and their disappointment when it became clear that they would not be Sold perhaps

most trivial talk is a need to talk about oneself hence the NeverEnding subject of health and sickness children travel successes what one did and the innumerable daily things that seem to be important since one cannot talk about oneself all the time without being thought a bore one must exchange the privilege by a Readiness to listen to others talking about themselves private social meetings between individuals and often also Meetings of all kinds of associations and groups are little markets where one exchanges one's need to talk about oneself and one's desire to be listened to for the

need of others who seek the same opportunity most people respect this arrangement of exchange those who don't and want to talk more about themselves than they are willing to listen are cheaters and they are resented and have to choose inferior company in order to Be tolerated one can hardly overestimate people's need to talk about themselves and to be listened to if this need were present only in highly narcissistic people who are filled only with themselves it would be easy to understand but it exists in the average person for reasons that are inherent in our culture

modern man is a mass man he is highly socialized but he is very lonely David reesman has expressed this phenomenon strikingly in the title of His 1961 book The Lonely crowd New York Free Press modern man is alienated from others and confronted with a dilemma he is afraid of close contact with another and equally afraid to be alone and have no contact it is the function of trivial conversation to answer the question how do I remain alone without being lonely talking becomes an addiction as long as I talk I know I exist that I am

not nobody that I have a past that I have a job I have a family and by Talking about all this I affirm myself however I need someone to listen if I were only talking to myself I would go crazy The Listener produces the illusion of a dialogue when in reality there is only a monologue Bad Company on the other hand is not only the company of merely trivial people but of evil sadistic destructive life hostile people but why one might ask is there a danger in the company of bad people unless they try to

harm one In one form or another in order to answer this question it is necessary to recognize a law in human relations there is no contact between human beings that does not affect both of them no meeting between two people no conversation between them except perhaps the most casual one leaves either one of them unchanged even though the change may be so minimal as to be unrecognizable except by its cumulative effect when such meetings are Frequent even a casual meeting can have a considerable impact who has not been touched in his life by the kindness

in a face of a person whom he saw only for a minute and never talked to who has not experienced the horror that a truly evil face produced in him even being exposed to it for only a moment many will remember such faces and the effects they had on them for many years or for all their lives who after being with a certain Person has not felt cheered up more alive in a better mood or in some cases even possessing new courage and new insights even though the content of the conversation would not account for

this change on the other hand many people have had the experience after being with certain others of being depressed tired hopeless yet unable to find the content of the conversation responsible for the reaction I am not speaking here of the influence of persons with whom somebody Is in love admires is afraid of Etc obviously they can have a strong influence by what they say or how they behave toward a person who is under their spell what I am talking about is the influence of persons on those who are not bound to them in special ways

all these considerations lead to the conclusion that it is desirable to avoid trivial and evil company altogether unless one can assert oneself fully and thus make the other Doubt his own position in as much as one cannot avoid Bad Company one should not be deceived one should see the insincerity behind the mask of friendliness the destructiveness behind the mask of Eternal complaints about unhappiness the narcissism behind the charm one should also not act as if he or she were taken in by the other's deceptive appearance in order to avoid being forced into a certain dishonesty

Oneself one need not speak to them about what one sees but one should not attempt to convince them that one is blind the great 12th century Jewish philosopher Moses myones recognizing the effect of bad company made the DraStic proposal if you live in a country whose inhabitants are evil avoid their company if they try to force you to associate with them leave the country even if it means going to the desert if other people do not understand Our Behavior so what their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate

to us if this is being asocial or irrational in their eyes so be it mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves we owe nobody an explanation or an accounting as as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them how many lives have been ruined by this need to explain which usually implies that the explanation be understood I.E Approved let your Deeds be judged and from your Deeds your real intentions but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself to his reason and his conscience and to

the few who may have a Justified claim for explanation four no effort no pain another barrier to learning the art of Being is the no effort no pain Doctrine people are convinced that everything even the most difficult tasks should be mastered Without or with only little effort this Doctrine is so popular that it scarcely requires a lengthy explanation take our entire method of Education we persuade our young people we actually beg them to get an education ation in the name of self-expression anti- achievement Freedom we make every course as easy and pleasant as possible the

only exceptions are the Natural Sciences where real achievement is intended and where one cannot Master the Subject in Easy Lessons but in the social sciences art and literature courses and in Elementary and high schools the same tendency is present make it easy and take it easy the professor who insists on hard work is called authoritarian or old-fashioned the causes for this trend today are not difficult to discover the increasing need for technicians for half-educated people who work in service industries from clerks to minor Executives requires people with a smattering of knowledge as our colleges provided

second our whole social system rests upon the fictitious belief that nobody is forced to do what he does but that he likes to do it this replacement of overt by Anonymous Authority Finds Its expression in all areas of life force is camouflaged by consent the consent is brought about by methods of mass suggestion as a consequence study 2 should be felt as pleasant not enforced And all the more so in fields in which the need for serious knowledge is minimal the idea of effortless learning has still another route technical progress has indeed diminished the amount

of physical energy necessary for the production of goods and in the first Industrial Revolution animal and human physical energy were replaced by the mechanical energy of the machine in the Second Industrial Revolution thinking and memorizing are replaced by machines Up to the large computers this Liberation from hard work is experienced as the greatest gift of modern progress and it is a gift provided that the human energy thus liberated be applied to other more elevated and creative tasks however this has not been the case The Liberation from the machine has resulted in the ideal of absolute

laziness of the horror of making any real effort the good life is the effortless life the necessity to make Strong efforts is as it were considered to be a medieval Remnant and one makes strong efforts only if one is really forced to do so not voluntarily you take your car to the grocery store two blocks away in order to avoid the effort of walking the clerk in the store punches three figures on the adding machine to save the mental effort of adding related to the no effort Doctrine is the No Pain Doctrine this too has

a Phobic quality to avoid under all circumstances pain and suffering physically and particularly mentally the era of modern progress claims to lead man into the promised land of painless existence in fact people develop a kind of chronic phobia of pain pain is referred to here in the broadest sense of the word not merely physical and mental pain it is also painful to practice musical scales for hours every day to study a subject that is not Interesting yet is necessary for acquiring the knowledge one is interested in it is painful to sit and study when one

would like to meet his girlfriend or just walk or have fun with friends these are indeed small pains regretfully one must be willing to accept them cheerfully end without fretting if one wants to learn what is essential wants to correct whatever is wrong in one's hierarchy as far as more severe Suffering is concerned it must indeed be said that to be happy is only the lot of a few to suffer is the lot of all men solidarity among men has one of its strongest foundations in the experience of sharing one's own suffering with the suffering

of all five anti-authoritarianism another obstacle to being is the phobia against anything that is considered authoritarian that is to say forced upon The individual and requiring discipline this phobia is consciously conceived as desire for Freedom the complete freedom to decide Jean Paul sart in his concept of Freedom has given the philosophical rationalization for this ideal it has many roots first of all there is a socioeconomic root capitalist economy is based on the principle of freedom to sell and to buy without interference or restriction the freedom to act without any restricting moral or political Principles except

those explicitly codified by law which on the whole tend to prevent willful damage to others but even though bis Freedom had largely economic Roots we cannot understand the passionate character of the wish for Liberty unless we take into account that this wish was also rooted in a powerful existential passion the need to be oneself and not a means to be used for the purposes of others this existential desire for Liberty slowly was repressed However in the desire to protect one's property the genuine Wish For Freedom became a mere ideology and yet a seemingly paradoxical development

set in in the last decades authoritarianism decreased considerably in the western democracies yet with it decreased too the factual freedom of the individual what changed was not the fact of dependency but its form in the 19th century those who ruled exercised overt direct Authority Kings Governments priests bosses parents teachers with changing methods of production particularly the increasing role of machines and with the change from the idea of hard work and saving to the ideal of consumption happiness overt personal obedience to a person was substituted by submission to the organization the endless belt the giant Enterprises

governments which persuaded the individual that he was free that everything was done in his interests That he the public was the real boss yet precisely because of the gigantic power in size of the bureaucracy of the state Army industry the replacement of personal bosses by impersonal bureaucracies the individual became more powerless than he was even before but he is not aware of his power lessness in order to defend himself against such an individually and socially disturbing awareness he has now built up an ideal of absolute Unrestricted personal freedom one manifestation of this has been the

establishment of sexual Freedom both the young and many of their middle-aged parents have tried to realize this ideal of Freedom by rejecting any restrictions in the sphere of sexual relations to be sure this was partly a very wholesome process after 2,000 years of religious defamation sexual desire and satisfaction ceased to be considered sinful and hence constant guilt feelings And thus a Readiness to atone for that guilt by renewed submission were reduced but even with due appreciation of the historical significance of the sexual Revolution one should not ignore some other less favorable side effects of that

Revolution it tried to establish the freedom of whim instead of the freedom of will will what is the difference a whim is any desire that emerges spontaneously without any structural connection with the whole Personality and its goals in young children they form part of a normal pattern the desire itself even the most fleeting or irrational one today requires its fulfillment to disregard it or even to postpone it is experienced as an infringement of one's Freedom if a man meets a woman accidentally has a few free hours is Bored he may easily consider the idea of

sleeping with her once the idea has appeared on his mental screen he decides To act accordingly not necessarily because the woman attracts him particularly or because his sexual need is so intense but because of the compulsive need to act out what even he has conceived as a wish or say a detached lonely adolescent who walks along the street suddenly has a thought that it would be exciting to stab the young nurse whom he passes and he stabs her to death these are not merely a few instances in which people have followed Whims that the First

Act is love making and the second is killing is of course a significant difference but what they have in common is the character of a whim examples between these extremes abound and anyone can find them for himself the general Criterion of a whim is that it responds to the question why not and not to the question why I am sure that anyone who observes Behavior minutely has discovered with what extraordinary frequency people when Asked whether they would like to do this or that begin their answer with why not this why not implies that one does

something simply because there is no reason against doing it not because there is a reason for it it implies that it is a whim but not a manifestation of the will following a whim is in fact the result of deep inner passivity blended with a wish to avoid boredom will is based on activity whim on Passivity the most significant place in which the fiction of personal freedom is acted out is the area of consumption the customer is the king of the supermarket and the automobile Market many brands of each commodity VY for his favor they

have tried to entice him for months on the television screen and when he buys he seems to be like a powerful man who in full Freedom makes his choices between silp powder a b and c all of which beg for his vote as Political candidates do before election day the customer king is not aware that he has no influence on what is offered him and that the alleged choice is no choice since the different brands are essentially the same sometimes even manufactured by the same Corporation it is possible to formulate a general psychological law the

greater the sense of powerlessness and the greater the lack of authentic will the more grows either submission or an Obsessional desire for satisfaction of one's whims and the insistence on arbitrariness to sum up the chief rationalization for the obsession of arbitrariness is the concept of anti-authoritarianism to be sure the fight against authoritarianism was and still is of great positive significance but anti-authoritarianism can and has become a rationalization for narcissist IC self-indulgence for a childlike CTIC life of unimpaired pleasure in which According to Herbert maruz even the Primacy of genital sexuality is authoritarian because it restricts

the freedom of pregenital I.E anal perversions finally the fear of authoritarianism serves to rationalize a kind of Madness a desire to escape from reality reality imposes its law on man laws that he can only Escape in dreams or in states of Trance or in Insanity part three six to will one Thing the first condition for more than mediocre achievement in any field including that of the art of living is to will one thing to will one thing presupposes having made a decision having committed oneself to one goal it means that the whole person is geared

and devoted to the one thing he is decided on that all his energies flow in the direction of this chosen goal where energies are split in different directions an aim is not only Striven for with diminished energy but the split of energies has the effect of weakening them in both directions by the constant conflicts that are engendered an obsessional Neurosis is a case in point the will of a person who is doubting whether he should do one thing or its opposite whose attitude toward the most important people in his life is one of extreme ambivalence

may become completely paralyzed in making any decisions and or eventually in Acting altogether in the normal case where the aims are not so rigidly opposed a smaller amount of energy is wasted nevertheless the capacity to reach any goal is greatly reduced it actually does not matter what the goal is material or spiritual moral or immoral a bank robber needs to will one thing just as much as a scientist or a violinist provided that they want to do what they're doing excellently or even Competently half-heartedness leads one to prison the others to becoming an unproductive and

bored college professor or a member of a second class Orchestra respectively of course if only amateur status is aspired to matters are different the thief will probably get into trouble the scientist will likely feel frustrated while the amateur violinist will thoroughly enjoy his activity for its intrinsic value provided he does not expect to achieve Excellence it is easy to observe the frequency of unresolved contradictions of goals within people in part they are derived from a split in our culture which provides its members with opposite sets of norms those of Christian charity and altruism and those

of bajis indifference and selfishness while in practice the norm of selfishness is generally adopted quite a few people are nevertheless still Influenced by the old Norms yet not strongly enough to lead them to a different conduct of life in contemporary industrial society the opportunities for doing things wholeheartedly are greatly reduced indeed if the worker on the endless belt the bureaucrat filing papers the street cleaner or the man selling stamps behind the post office window tried to do this with a whole heart and a unified will he would be in danger of becoming crazy Thus he

tries to detach himself as much as he can from that work and occupy his mind with all sorts of thoughts Daydreams or with nothing but there are still a number of occupations that permit the development of Excellence to name a few those of a scientist a physician an artist even of a secretary who has interesting work to do or the work of a nurse a bus driver an editor a pilot a carpenter the increasing mechanization and routinization of work However will reduce these possibilities more and more to begin with even manual and clerical work need

not be automatized and routinized as it is now as a number of recent experiments show one can reduce the monotony of work and create the possibility of a certain degree of interest and skill by reversing the process of over specialization and changing the methods of production in such a way that the worker decides on his method of Operating and thus ceases to be narrowed down to the repetition of one or two mechanical movements however in any kind of industrial mass production there are limitations to the extent to which work will permit the development of interest

and the striving for excellence the matter is quite different where we do not speak of the technical aspect of work but of its social aspect this is more obvious today when nearly All work is teamwork from the work in an automobile plant to that in a research institute everyone finds himself in a net of interpersonal relations and is part of it in various ways and to varying degrees the social situation in which I live is part of my own life it affects me as I affect it if the blue and white color workers in an

industrial Enterprise or the nurses and employees in the hospital once they ceased to be employed participated in managing the Instit institions by themselves if they could build a community together with all who work in the same institution they would have a task set before them that can achieve Excellence by the rationality of organization and the quality of human relations in such productive work each would also work productively on his own life aside from the place of work as a social organization the optimal organization of society as a whole gives Everyone the possibility to contribute with

his whole heart however to achieve this would require that society and its political representative the state cease to be powers that stood over and against the citizen but that they are the product of his work at the present stage of alienation this is quite impossible in a humanized society aside from his own life Society itself becomes man's most important work fact and the ends of both Coincide seven to be awake today there was much talk among Seekers of New Paths about altering and widening the State of Consciousness one usually means by this something like seeing

the world in a new light especially in a physical sense with colors and forms appearing with greater intensity and in entirely original forms various means are recommended to Reach this state of altered Consciousness primarily the psycho drugs of various intensities and self-induced states of Trance no one can deny that such states of altered Consciousness can occur but few people who are so enthusiastic about them seem to raise the question why anyone would want to alter his Consciousness when in his normal state of being he has not even reached the state of normally developed Consciousness the

fact is most of those Who are so eager to reach states of altered Consciousness do not have more developed States of Consciousness than their fellow men who only drink coffee liquor and smoke cigarettes binges of widened Consciousness are escapes from a narrow Consciousness and after the trip they are no different from what they were before and from how their fellow men have been all the time half- awake people this term half awake needs some explanation especially since I introduce It to denote the customary State of Mind in most people we believe we are on On

Solid Ground if we distinguish between sleeping and being awake and up to a certain extent we are there are definite physiological I.E chemical and electrical differences between the two states from a psychobiological standpoint the differences can be thus described in the state of awakeness the total person fulfills the function of providing food and shelter and other Necessities of life and of protecting himself against dangers mainly by fighting or running away or in Man by negotiating a compromise that avoids both equally dangerous Alternatives in the state of sleep man is freed from the function of having

to make efforts for survival he does not need to work and only emergency signals such as unusual noises wake him up for self-defense he is turned Inward and is capable of formulating messages to Himself creating directing and acting out plays in which he expresses his wishes his fears and his deepest insights into himself and others insights made possible by the fact that he is not drugged by the voices of Common Sense and illusions that intrude on him while he is awake in fact paradoxically we are more awake when we are asleep than when we are

not our dreams often testify to our creative activity our Daydreams to our Mental laziness however both the sleeping State and the waking state are not two undifferentiated entities within each state are many substates from light to Deep Sleep States in which we dream recognizable by an observer because our eyes move and technically called R sleep and states in which we do not dream it is also known that definite distinctions exist within the waking State they have been studied by means of analyzing differing kinds of electric waves emitted by the brain Although our scientific knowledge in

this field is still rudimentary empirical self-observation however can provide us with data that we have not yet obtained in a more exact way everybody recognizes differences in the state of alertness openness Vigor of Mind as against states of a certain sluggishness or inattentiveness at the same time it is Also a matter of General experience that these two states can follow each other very rapidly so that the usual explanation of not having had enough sleep or just being tired can be excluded it is interesting to analyze what factor changes the state of tiredness to that of

intense alertness the most obvious example is that of the influence of people the same man who was sitting in his office doing His routine work correctly yet listlessly only sufficiently concentrated to do his work properly leaves the office and meets a woman whom he is in love with he is suddenly another man alert witty attractive full of life energetic one might say that from being half asleep he has become wide awake or the opposite case a married man quite immersed in work that is interesting may be very alert and awake he comes home and he

may totally Change he may become bored half drowsy want to look at television to have a drink hoping that these will stimulate him when this fails to occur some desolator conversation with his wife may follow then more television and a sigh of relief when the day is over topped sometimes by a bit of tired sex this of course happens only in tired marriages where people have long ceased to be in love if they ever were other motives also stimulate Awakeness a danger a chance to win or destroy or to conquer or to satisfy any of

the passions that are able to stimulate a person one could say justifiedly tell me what wakes you up and I'll tell you who you are it would be a mistake though to assume that the quality of being fully awake is independent of the stimuli that produces this result the man brought to full awakeness by awareness of a danger will be mainly alert to all factors Pertaining to this threat the man brought to life by the chance of gaining in gambling May remain quite unaware of his wife's anguish about his addiction to it to put it

more generally we become Alert in the way and to the degree with which a vitally necessary task such as working or defending one's vital interests or a passionate goal such as the Quest for money requires it different from this partial and as it were pragmatic alertness is a state of Total awakeness in this state one is not only aware of that which one needs to be aware of in order to survive or to satisfy passionate goals one is aware of oneself and of the world people and nature around one one sees not opaquely but clearly

the surface together with its roots the world becomes fully real every detail and the details in their configuration and structure become a meaningful unit it feels as if a veil That had been in front of our eyes permanently without our recognizing it was there and it suddenly dropped away this is an example of awakeness known to everybody we have seen the face of a person many times he may be a relative a friend an acquaintance a companion at work one day for reasons that we often do not understand we suddenly see his face in a

completely new manner it is as if it had assumed a new dimension it has come Fully to life for us even in its un aliveness if this be the case we see with an extraordinary Clarity distinctness reality we see in it the man not his problems his past nothing that leads us to theoretical considerations just him in his suchness he may be evil or kind strong or weak brutal or delicate or any blend of these factors he has become he for us and his face remains in our mind we can never think of him in

the Bland blurred distant way he had appeared to us before it is of course not necessarily the face that has become so expressive for quite a few people the hand the shape of the body the gestures and movements are of equal significance or even more so two people look at each other and are aware of each other they see each other in their unique suchness there is no barrier no fog they see in a state of intense awakeness in this Process of direct unimpeded awareness they do not think about each other they do not raise

psychological questions do not ask how the person has become what he is how he will develop whether he is good or evil they are just aware later on indeed they may think of each other they may analyze evaluate clarify but if they thought while they are aware the awareness would suffer eight to be aware generally the words to be aware to Know to be conscious of are considered to be synonymous yet the eological roots of aware point to a difference from the two other words the root of aware as the German gavar has in the

English and German history of the word the meaning attention or mindfulness German alumite it is usually construed as to be or to become aware of something this means more than simple Consciousness or knowledge it has the meaning of discovering something that was not quite Obvious or was even not expected in other words awareness is knowing or Consciousness in a state of close attention let us consider the different meanings of awareness awareness can refer to one's body or to one's psychic State I.E one's feelings and one's mood a simple example of bodily awareness is to become

aware of one's breathing of course we know that we are breathing but this is an intellectual knowledge that can be proven by our observing the fact Of breathing of inhaling and exhaling or the movement of our abdomen but this knowledge that we breathe is something quite different from the awareness of the act of breathing anybody can notice the difference by making a simple experiment one sits down in a relaxed that is neither slouching nor rigid posture closes one's eyes tries to think of nothing and just feel one's breathing this is by no means as easy

as It sounds because many thoughts will intrude and one will notice especially in the beginning that after a few seconds one stopped being aware of one's breathing and began to think of many often irrelevant things to the the degree to which one succeeds in concentrating on one's breathing one is aware of the process of breathing without trying to force it or to control it without any purpose or goal at all one gives oneself to the act Of breathing one will discover that this awareness of breathing is something quite different from thinking about one's breathing in

fact the two modes exclude each other as soon as I think about my breathing I cannot be aware of the AC of breathing another example example also simple for anyone to try is the following again one assumes the relaxed position and closes one's eyes the hands are resting on one's upper legs the Posture one can see in the statues of the famous Abu symbol sitting pharohs one decides to raise one arm up to a 45° angle when we do this normally with open eyes our nervous system gives a signal to the corresponding muscles and we

raise the arm we do it immediately we see the effect the order is fulfilled and we can give the order to drop it to its original position have we experienced the movement of the arm hardly the arm is an Instrument and there is little difference from our pushing a button that would Elevate an artificial arm what matters is the effect not the process if in contrast to the usual method we want to concentrate on the experience of the movement we must try to forget the end and move the arm with such slowness that we begin

to feel how it moves from the subtle raising of the Palm from the rest to the moment when it is airborn then further and further when It eventually has arrived at more or less the planned height and then as we move it down again until it comes to a full rest anybody who does this little exercise will notice that he experiences the moving arm and not that he is a witness to movement he will also recognize that he is so concentrating on being aware of the movement that he does not think or reflect about it

he may think or reflect about it before or Afterward but in the process of becoming aware thinking is excluded the same principle exists in the art of moving taught by kacha delova and in an old Chinese traditional sequence of movements the taii Chan the latter is a particularly recommendable exercise because it combines elements of sensory awareness with a state of concentrated meditation note I am indebted to Charlotte sver for her teaching of sensory awareness in the 1940s and to Kaa delova for her teaching of the art of moving and especially of the taii Chan in

the last 10 years end of note the same difference between awareness and thinking exists also with regard to the awareness of our feelings and moods if I am aware of feeling Joy love sadness fear or hate this means that I feel and that the feeling is not repressed it does not mean I think or Reflect about my feeling it would also be correct to say I am conscious of what I feel conscious comes from the Latin root con equals with plus SRA equals to know I.E participating in knowledge or with mental faculties awake to be

conscious contains an active element similar to to be aware of the German an equivalent b z is even more expressive it is b z equals conscious being until the 18th century it is used in philosophical language in two words b Z thus far I have discussed awareness of what is not hidden a different kind of awareness is that of becoming aware of what is hidden this becoming aware of what is hidden is the same as becoming conscious of what is unconscious repressed or to make conscious what is repressed since in general it requires an active

effort if something unconscious is to become conscious we could also call the same process revealing or uncovering Awareness the two most far-reaching eye-opening critical theories at the beginning of the latest phase of industrial society were those of Marx and of Freud note Buddhism too was a critical theory which like Marxism mobilized the activity of millions just as Marx's theories did in the 19th century I am indebted to Z fiser for pointing out to me this parallel end of note Mark showed the moving powers and The conflicts in the social historical process Freud aimed at the

critical uncovering of the inner conflicts both worked for the liberation of man Even though Marx's concept was more comprehensive and less time-bound than Freud's both theories also share the Fate that they soon lost their most important quality that of critical and thus liberating thought and were transformed by most of their faithful adherence into Ideologies and their authors into Idols the fact that Freud's and Marx's critical analyses can be considered to express the same idea in two different dimensions is based on a fundamental consideration awareness refers not only to the uncovering of inner conflicts but equally

to conflicts in social life that are negated and harmonized by ideologies social rationalizations since the individual is a part of society and cannot be Conceived of outside the social fabric the Illusions about social reality affect the clarity of his mind and thus also prevent him from liberating himself from the Illusions about himself the capacity to see and equally so blindness are not divisible the critical faculty of the human mind is one to believe one can be seeing internally but blind as far as the outside world is concerned is like saying that the light of a

candle gives Light only in One Direction and not in all the light of a candle is reason's capacity for critical penetrating uncovering thought two questions must arise is the liberating effect of awareness possible and if so how furthermore is awareness necessarily desirable there can be no doubt that it is possible there are many examples throughout history for the fact that man is able to undo the chains of Illusion And penetrate to the roots and thus to the causes of phenomena I am referring here not only to the Great Men but to many Ordinary People Who

sometimes for unknown reasons shed the Illusions obstructing their eyes and begin to see more about this will be said in the later discussion of psychoanalysis one answer to the question why it is possible seems to lie in the following consideration the strength of man's Position in the world depends on the degree of adequacy of his perception of reality the less adequate it is the more disoriented and hence insecure he is and hence in need of Idols to lean on and thus find security the more adequate it is the more can he stand on his own

feet and have his Center within himself man is like antias who charged himself with energy by touching Mother Earth and who could be killed only when his enemy kept him long enough in the Air the question of whether shedding one's blindness is desirable is more difficult to answer there will be considerable agreement that it is desirable provided the insight into the hidden conflicts leads to a constructive solution and hence to Greater well-being this is what Marx expected if the working class would become aware of its own conditions if the working class would get rid of

Its Illusions it would build a society that would not require any Illusions and this could be done because the historical conditions were ripe Freud believed that the insight into the hidden conflicts between conscious and unconscious forces would result in the Cure of neurosis but what if the conflict cannot be solved is man not better off to live with Illusions than with a painful truth that does not help him to liberate Himself in real life if as Marx and Freud believed the teachings of religion were an illusion was it a necessary one in order to make

it possible for man to survive at all what would have happened to him if he had given up this illusion and experienced nothing but despair at seeing no chance for a more human social order and greater personal well-being or if a sadistic obsessional person recognized the roots of his suffering and yet for a number of possible reasons Knew also that he could not change would he not be better off if he remained blind and continued to believe in his rationalizations who will dare to answer these questions at first glance it would seem that the wish

not to make anyone suffer unnecessarily should be a sufficient reason to plead in favor of not wanting to liberate him from his Illusions yet I cannot help having some misgivings about this answer is this not the same as the question of whether one Should tell a patient the truth about a terminal illness does one not deprive him of the last possibility to face his life to gather all the inner force that he had not mobilized and Rise Above fear to Serenity and strength this latter question has often been under discussion it seems to me that

the most concerned observers will refuse to choose dogmatically one or the other solution they will agree that it depends on the personality of the dying person and that The Judgment can be made only after one has tried to assess that person's inner actual and potential strength and to understand his deepest often unexpressed wish it would seem to me inhuman to force upon him the truth in any dogmatic belief that it is necessarily the best for him in matters of conflicts and Illusions in general a similar reasoning appears justified in the first place the question is

in part purely abstract and Hence a wrong question most individuals as well as social classes who cannot bear disillusionment without Positive Solutions will simply not listen to understand and certainly not agree with the disillusioning analysis even if the critical thinker speaks with the voice of an Angel examples in Social and individual life of the strength of resistance abound and there is no need to cite any but what about those whose resistance is Not so massive are they necessarily better off keeping their Illusions in order to answer this question we must remember that becoming aware of

the truth has a liberating effect it releases energy and defog one's mind as a result one is more independent has one's Center in oneself and is more alive one may fully realize that nothing in reality can be changed but one has succeeded in living and dying as a human person and not as a Sheep if avoidance of pain and maximal comfort are Supreme values then indeed Illusions are preferable to the truth if on the other hand we consider that every man at any time in history is born with the potential of being a full man

and that Furthermore with his death the one chance given to him is over then indeed much can be said for the personal value of shedding Illusions and thus attaining an Optimum of personal fulfillment in addition the more seeing individuals Will become the more likely it is that they can produce changes social and individual ones at the earliest possible moment rather than as is often the case waiting until the chances for change have disappeared because their mind their courage their will have become atrophied the conclusion from all these considerations is that the most important step in

the art of Being is everything that leads to and enhances our capacity for heightened awareness And as far as the mind is concerned for critical questioning thinking this is not primarily a question of intelligence education or age it is essentially a matter of character more more specifically of the degree of personal independence from irrational authorities and Idols of all kinds that one has achieved how is this greater Independence to be achieved what can be said here is only this once one is aware Of the crucial importance of non-submission I mean here of inner non-submission and

not necessarily of purely defiant dogmatic Disobedience one will become very sensitive to the small signs of submission one will look through the rationalization that justifies it one will practice courage and one will discover that once the problem and its central significance are recognized one discovers by oneself many answers to the Question it is the same as it is with everything else one discovers answers to problems only when one feels that they are burning and that it is a matter of life and death to solve them if nothing is of burning interest one's reason and one's

critical faculty operate on a low level of activity it appears then that one lacks The Faculty to observe another helpful attitude is one of deep distrust since most of what we hear is either plainly untrue or Hal True and half distorted and since most of what we read in the newspapers is distorted interpretations served as facts it is by far the best plan to start out with radical skepticism and the assumption that most of what one hears is likely to be a lie or a Distortion if this sounds too grim and cynical I might add

that I do not mean this quite literally but that I want to emphasize that it is much more healthful than the opposite premise namely to Believe that people say the truth until the opposite is proven my recommendation may sound perhaps less misanthropic if I stress that I spoke of the truth of statements not about people who are liars it would perhaps be simpler although less bearable if most people could be thus qualified but the fact is a majority of people whose statements are untrue or Hal true believe sincerely that they are speaking the truth or

at Least persuade themselves of this while they are making their statements as for the Practical steps to self-awareness I shall discuss them later in the chapter on psychoanalysis and self-analysis first however I want to discuss some other steps in the learning of The Art of Living nine to concentrate the capacity to concentrate has become a rarity in the life of Cybernetic man on the contrary it seems as if he does everything to avoid concentration he likes to do several things at the same time such as listen to music read eat talk with friends a cartoon

has expressed this trend quite succinctly a man has installed a television on the wall above his bed so that he could look at the screen while he was making love indeed television is a good teacher of Non-concentration by interruptions of a program for advertising the audience becomes conditioned not to concentrate reading habits exhibit the same tendency the fashion of editing and Publishing anthologies accentuates this trend worse one is offered fragments of thought by an author as a substitute for reading his book thereby one does not need to concentrate in order to grasp a complex system

of thoughts but gets the meat in Easy chunks that require far less Concentration many students have the habit of never reading a whole book even if there is no Anthology or abridgment the introduction the conclusion some pages that the professor has indicated and one knows the author's thought at least superficially and without need to concentrate how little concentration on a subject and on the other person occurs in conversations is surely known to anyone who observes average oral exchanges when people are by themselves They also avoid concentrating on anything they immediately pick up a newspaper or

a magazine which permits easy reading and demands no real concentration concentration is such a rare phenomenon because one's will is not directed to one thing nothing is worth the effort to concentrate on it because no goal is pursued passionately but there is more to it people are afraid to concentrate because they are afraid of losing themselves if they are To absorbed in another person in an idea in an event the less strong their self the greater the fear of losing themselves in the act of concentration on the non-self for the person with a dominant having

orientation this fear of losing oneself is one of the main factors that operates against concentration finally to concentrate requires inner activity not busyness and this activity is rare today when Buzziness is the key to success there is still another reason why people are afraid of concentrating they think that concentrating is too strenuous in activity and that they would get tired quickly in fact the opposite is true as anyone can observe in oneself lack of concentration makes one tired while concentration wakes one up there is no mystery in this in unconcentrated activity no energy is mobilized

since a Low level of energy is sufficient to do the task mobilization of energy which has a psychic as well as a physiological aspect has the effect of making one feel alive the difficulty with concentrating is in the last analysis the outcome of the whole structure of the Contemporary system of production and consumption the more man's work is to service a machine or to act as that part of a machine that has not yet been devised in iron or steel the less has he A chance to concentrate the process of work is too monotonous to

permit genuine concentration the same holds true for consumption the market offers as many different bits of amusement as possible such a variety that it is neither necessary nor possible to concentrate on any one thing where would industry be if people began to concentrate on a few things rather than getting tired quickly of something and rushing out to buy new Things that are exciting because they are new how does one learn to concentrate the answer to this question must either be very brief or very long for reasons of space it must be brief as a first

step I suggest to practice how to be still concretely speaking this means to sit still for say 10 minutes to do nothing and as far as possible to think of nothing but to be aware of what is going on in Oneself anyone who thinks this is easy has never tried one who tries finds immediately that it is quite difficult he will notice that he is fidgety that he moves his hand his legs his body this becomes even more marked when he tries the classic sitting position we still see on the statues and pictures of the

Pharaohs legs not crossed but firmly planted in front of one arms on an armrest or on the upper leg but the position should be neither stiff as we Learn it in old-fashioned military style gymnastics nor slouching and lazy it is something else the body is in a harmonious position it feels alive and comfortable in an active way if one has learned this kind of sitting one feels uncomfortable in an overstuffed chair and comfortable sitting in a straight chair this practice of sitting is one step to learning concentration it should be extended from 10 to 15

or 20 minutes and done regularly every day in the Morning and it is very recommendable to practice it at least for 5 to to 10 minutes in the evening and if possible once more during the day after having achieved a certain amount of Stillness the effort May last from 1 to 3 months it is to be recommended to add direct concentration exercises during or after the Stillness practically speaking this can be done in many ways one may focus on a coin and concentrate completely on all Its details to the point where one sees it fully

with closed eyes or one may use any other object a vas a clock a telephone a flower a leaf a stone or whatever one wishes to concentrate on or instead one may concentrate on a word for many months many other thoughts will pass through one's mind and disrupt the concentration here as with everything living force does not do any good it does not help to try to force out Tangential thoughts to treat them as if they were enemies and hence to feel defeated if one has not won the battle they need to be treated gently

and that means one must be patient with oneself impatience is usually the outcome of the intention to force slowly very slowly indeed will intruding thoughts diminish in frequency and one will be better able to concentrate another even more formidable obstacle is that of getting sleepy and Frequently one will find oneself on the verge of dozing off this too one must take in one's stride one may try again immediately or take a few deep breaths and if the sleepiness persists one may stop and try again at a better time to cope with these difficulties makes the

learning of concentration so difficult because many if not most people become discouraged after a while they may criticize themselves for their inability or Rationalize their failure by deciding that the whole method is no good anyway here as in any Act of learning the capacity to tolerate failure is of crucial importance machine production where the object is spewed out by the machine knows no failures but it knows no Excellence either production by machine has led to a peculiar illusion that the road to Excellence is straight and pleasant that the violin does not make Scratching noises that

the study of a philosophical system does not leave one often puzzled and lost that the perfect meal is produced after having once read the recipe in the cookbook only if one knows that the road to concentration as to any other achievement necessarily brings with it failures and disappointments can one avoid the discouragement that is unavoidable in the process of learning to Concentrate the simple exercises described above should be accompanied or followed by practicing concentration on thoughts and on feelings for instance one reads a book on a significant topic by an author who can be supposed

to have something significant to say then one can observe in what way one reads the book whether one becomes restless after an hour whether one tries to skip Pages whether one rereads a page if it has not become quite clear at the first reading Whether one thinks about the author's argument formulates responses or new ideas of One's Own whether one tries to understand what the author really means rather than sticking to critiques of this or that point in order to refute the author whether one wants to learn something new or have one's own views confirmed

directly or indirectly by The Faults of an opposing view these are some of the symptoms that help us to find out whether we read in a Concentrated fashion if we discover that we are not concentrated we should practice concentration in reading by going to the essence of the author's thought often at the expense of reading fewer books to concentrate on another person is essentially not different from concentrating on thoughts I must leave it to the experience of each reader to gather material for the thesis that most of our personal relationships suffer From the complete absence

of concentration we tend to be very poor judges of character because we do not go much Beyond grasping the surface of another's personality I.E what he says how he behaves what position he has how he is dressed in short we observe the Persona the mask that he shows us and we do not penetrate through this surface to lift the mask and see who the person is behind it this we can only do if we concentrate on him but it seems we are Afraid to know anybody fully including ourselves individuality interferes with the smooth running of

the process concentrated observation of one person forces us to respond with Compassion Care or on the other hand horror all of which are unfavorable to the smooth functioning of a cybernetic Society we want distance we want to know of each other just as much as is necessary to live together to cooperate to feel secure hence knowledge of the Surface is desirable knowledge gained from concentration is disturbing there are other helpful forms of concentration such as certain sports like tennis or mountain climbing and games such as chess and there is playing an instrument or painting and

sculpting all these activities can be done in a concentrated or in an unconcentrated form primarily they are done in an unconcentrated form and thus contribute Nothing to learning concentration whenever they are done in a concentrated form their mental effect is entirely different but even without doing any of these things one can live continuously in a concentrated fashion as we shall see later the Buddhist concept of mindfulness means precisely a way of being in which one is fully concentrated on everything one is doing at any given moment whether it is planting a seed or cleaning a

room or Eating or as a zen master has said when I sleep I sleep when I eat I eat 10 to meditate from the practice of concentration a direct path leads to one of the basic preparations for learning the art of Being to meditate to begin with one must distinguish between two different kinds of meditation a states of self-induced slight trance by the use of Autos suggestive techniques which can lead to Mental and physical relaxation and make the practitioner feel refreshed rested and more energetic an example of such methods is the autogenous training developed by

the late professor IH Schultz in Berlin it has been practiced by many thousands of people and generally with good success note my wife and I studied with Professor Schultz but without too much success because of an inner resistance to its Autos suggestive character end of Note Schultz never claimed that the method served as anything other than mental relaxation since it is a method that one has to practice oneself it is also not entirely passive and does not make one dependent on the person of the teacher in contrast to autosuggestive forms of meditation are those the

main aim of which is to achieve a higher degree of non-attachment of non- greed and of non- Illusion briefly those that serve to Reach a higher level of being in Buddhist Meditation I have found a simple unstifled mahat which I recommend to everybody who is seriously interested in learning this method of meditation the following remarks should indicate what the teacher will find in the book the aim of Buddhist Meditation is maximum awareness of our bodily and mental processes the author states that the Systematic cultivation of right mindfulness as taught by the Buddha in his discourse

on Sati patana mindfulness still provides the most simple and direct the most thorough and effective method for training and developing the mind for its daily tasks and problems as well as for its highest aim the mind's own unshakable deliverance from greed hatred and delusion the teachings of the Buddha offer a great variety of methods of Mental training and subjects of meditation suited to the various individual needs temperaments and capacities yet all these methods ultimately converge in the way of mindfulness called by the master himself the only way or the soul way aayan Mago the way

of mindfulness May therefore rightly be called the heart of Buddhist Meditation or even the heart of the entire Doctrine damah Hada this great heart is in fact the center of all the Bloodstreams pulsating through the entire body of the doctrine damaka this ancient way of mindfulness is as practicable today as it was 2,500 years ago it is as applicable in the lands of the West as in the east in the midst of life's turmoil as well as in the Peace of the monk cell right mindfulness is in fact the indispensable basis of right living and

right thinking everywhere at any time for Everyone it has a vital message for all not only for the confirmed follower of the Buddha and his Doctrine dhma but for all who endeavor to master the mind that is so hard to control and who earnestly wish to develop its latent faculties of Greater strength and greater happiness mindfulness is practiced not only in daily meditation exercises in which awareness of breathing is the central issue but it is equally to be applied to every moment of daily living It means not to do anything in a distracted manner but

in full concentration of what is at hand whether this is walking eating thinking seeing so that living becomes fully transparent by full awareness mindfulness comprises the entire man and his whole field of experience says Nana pona it extends to every sphere of being to the state of one's mind and to the mental contents of one's mind every experience if it is Done with mindfulness is clear distinct real and hence not automatic mechanical diffuse the person who has reached a state of full-m mindedness is wide awake aware of reality in its depth and concreteness he is

concentrated and not distracted the first of the exercises that lead to an increase in mindfulness is breathing it is as the author emphasizes an exercise in mindfulness and not a breathing exercise And in the case of the Buddhist practice there is no retention of breath or any other interference appearance with it there is just a quiet bare observation of its natural flow with a firm and steady but easy and buoyant attention I.E without strain or rigidity the length or shortness of breathing is noticed but not deliberately regulated by regular practice however a calming equalizing and

deepening of the breath will result quite naturally and The tranquilization and deepening of the breath Rhythm will lead to a tranquilization and deepening of the entire life rhythm in this way mindfulness of breathing is an important factor of physical and mental health though that is only incidental to the practice in classic Buddhist Meditation as described by niap ponica mindfulness of breathing is followed by that of bodily postures by clear comprehension of all functions of the body then by Clear awareness of feeling of one's State of Mind self- knowledge and of mental contents it is impossible

in this short survey to report with sufficient Clarity and detail Buddhist Meditation as practiced by the theava school to which nanon mahat belongs hence to anyone who is seriously interested in Awareness widening meditation I can only recommend studying the heart of Buddhist Meditation there is one qualification however that I want to add to this suggestion although the author himself self has mentioned that this method is not only for the confirmed followers of the Buddha the author is a most learned Buddhist monk and he presents Buddhist Doctrine in its traditional form for many like myself who

do not agree with a number of Buddhist doctrines such as reincarnation and a certain life- negating tendency in hinayana Buddhism Or with methods suggested to convince oneself of the futility of craving by imagining the foulness of the dead body it is difficult to practice meditation in exactly the way which the author describes nevertheless it seems to me that even without the doctrines just mentioned there are two core doctrines acceptable to many who like myself are not Buddhists yet are deeply impressed by the core of Buddhist teaching I refer first of all to the doctrine that

the Goal of life is to overcome greed hate and ignorance in this respect Buddhism does not basically differ from Jewish and Christian ethical norms more important and different from the Jewish and Christian tradition is another element of Buddhist thinking the demand for optimal awareness of the processes inside and outside oneself Buddhism having been a revolutionary movement against Hindu Orthodoxy and severely persecuted for Its atheism for centuries is characterized by a degree of rationality and critical thought not to be found in Western religions the essence of its teaching is that by a full awareness of reality

greed hate and hence suffering can be overcome it is a philosophical anthropological system that arrives at norms for living as a consequence of analyzing the observable data about man's Existence nanon mahat himself has expressed his point with great clarity he describes the function of mindfulness as producing an increasingly greater Clarity and intensity of Consciousness and presenting a picture of actuality that is increasingly purged of any falsifications he speaks of meditation as leading to a natural close and more friendly contact with subconsciousness in that way he writes the subconsciousness will become more Articulate and more amenable

to control I.E capable of being coordinated with and helpful to the governing Tendencies of the conscious mind by reducing the element of the unpredictable and of the unmanageable Emer ing from the subconscious self-reliance will receive a safer basis he ends the description of the practice of mindfulness by emphasizing one of the most significant elements in Buddhist thinking its insistence on Independence and freedom he writes in its Spirit of self-reliance Sati paana mindfulness does not require any elaborate technique or external devices the daily life is its working material it has has nothing to do with any

exotic Cults or rights nor does it confer initiations or esoteric knowledge in any way other than by self-enlightenment we have seen that the essence of Buddhist Meditation is to achieve optimal awareness of reality more Particularly of one's body and of one's mind even for one who follows the method of Buddhist Meditation in its traditional form the question arises whether this form cannot be enlarged by adding New Dimensions of awareness that in the traditional method are only hinted at it seems to me that there are indeed two such extensions of Buddhist Meditation although they can be

practiced fruitfully without any connection with Buddhist Meditation or In connection with other kinds of meditation or simply with the practice of Stillness as far as methods conducive to Greater awareness of the body are concerned they have already been mentioned above I refer to sensory awareness the art of moving and the taichan the other aspect of Buddhist Meditation is greater Clarity and intensity of Consciousness and presenting a picture of actuality that Is increasingly purged of any falsifications Nana pona mahatha himself mentions a more friendly contact with unconsciousness and it is indeed going only one step further

to suggest that this psychoanalytic method whose aim is Insight of the unconscious aspects of one's mind may be an important addition to Buddhist Meditation Nan ponica to whom I am deeply indebted for his profound and patient explanations of Buddhist Meditation and Buddhist Doctrine agreed that such a psychoanalytic search may very well be considered an addition to traditional Buddhist Meditation but once more I want to emphasize that in my opinion the psychoanalytic method as a means to Optimal awareness is a method in its own right and valid without any connection with Buddhist or any other method

of meditation part four 11 psychoanalysis and self-awareness at this point we make connection again with the previous discussion on self-awareness provided that it is true that psychoanalysis can also have a trans therapeutic function and that it is one of the most adequate methods for increasing self awareness and hence inner Liberation this assumption is not shared by everybody probably most laymen and professionals Define the essence of Psychoanalysis as a cure for Neurosis achieved by bringing to our awareness repressed sexual memories and the aects connected with them the concept of awareness in this definition is very restricted

in comparison with the one presented earlier in the text it refers essentially to awareness of repressed libidinal forces and it's same is also restricted to the therapeutic one in the conventional sense I.E to help the patient to reduce his individual extra Suffering to the general socially accepted level of suffering I believe that this restricted concept of psychoanalysis does not do justice to the real depth and scope of Freud's discoveries Freud himself can be quoted as a witness for the justification of this statement when in the 20s he changed his theory from The crucial role of

the conflict between libido and ego to The crucial role of the conflict between two biologically Rooted instincts that of the life Instinct and the death Instinct he had factually given up the libido Theory even though he tried to reconcile the old and the new theories furthermore when Freud defined what he considered to be the essence of psychoanalytic theory he mentioned repression resistance and transference but not the libido Theory and not even the edus complex in order to appreciate the fact that what seems to be the nuclear concept of Psychoanalysis the libido Theory may not in

reality be Freud's most important Discovery and not even a correct one we must consider a more General phenomenon every creative thinker can only think in terms of the thought patterns and categories of his culture often his most original thought is not thinkable and hence he has to formulate his thought by distorting or narrowing down his discoveries in order that they be Thinkable the original idea must be expressed at first in erroneous forms until the development of thought based on the development of society permits that the older formulations can be liberated from their time bound errors

and assume a significance that is even greater than the author himself may have believed Freud deeply imbued with the philosophy of bis materialism found it Unthinkable to assume that a psychic Force should motivate man Unless it was identifiable as being simultaneously a physiological Force Sexual Energy was the only force that combined both qualities Freud's theory of the conflict between libbido and ego as the central conflict in man was therefore a necessary assumption which enabled him to express his fundamental Discovery in thinkable terms freed from the shackles of the libido Theory the essence of psychoanalysis can

be defined as the Discovery of the significance of conflicting tendencies in Man of the power of the resistance to fight against the awareness of these conflicts of the rationalizations that make it appear that there is no conflict and of the liberating effect of becoming aware of the conflict and of the pathogenic role of Unsolved conflicts Freud not only discovered these general principles but was the first to devise concrete methods of how To study the repressed in dreams symptoms and in behavior of daily life the conflicts between sexual impulses and the ego and super ego form

only a small part of the conflicts that in their tragic failure to be solved as well as in their productive Solutions are Central in many people's existence Freud's historical significance does not lie in the discovery of the effects of repressing Sexual striving this was a bold thesis at his time but if it had been Freud's greatest contribution he would never have had the jolting influence he had this influence was due to the fact that he smashed the conventional view that man's thinking and his being are identical that he unmasked hypocrisy that his theory was a

critical one in as much as he questioned all conscious thought intentions and virtues and demonstrated how often they are nothing But forms of resistance to hide the inner reality if one interprets Freud's theories in the sense that I just outlined then it is not difficult to proceed and to assume that the function of psychoanalysis transcends the narrower therapeutic one and that it can be a method for achieving inner Liberation by awareness of repressed conflicts before entering into a discussion of the trans therapeutic function of Psychoanalysis I deem it necessary to express some warnings and to

point to some dangers of psychoanalysis in spite of the general rush to be psychoanalyzed when a person faces difficulties in living there are a number of reasons why not to try psychoanalysis at least not as a first aid station the first reason is that it is an easy way out from the need to try to solve one's difficulty Oneself together with the ideals of smoothness painlessness and effortlessness discussed earlier there is also a widespread belief that life should not offer any conflicts agonizing choices painful decisions such situations are considered more or less abnormal or pathological

and not a necessary part of ordinary living of course machines have no conflicts therefore why should living automatons have any unless there is a Defect in their construction or their functioning what could be more naive only the most superficial alienated kind of living may not require conscious decisions although it does generate plenty of neurotic and psychosomatic symptoms such as ulcers or hypertension as a manifestation of unconscious conflicts if a person is not entirely lost the capacity to feel if he has not become a robot he can scarcely avoid facing painful Decisions this is the case

for instance in the process of a son's Liberation from his parents which can be very painful if he senses the hurt he inflicts upon them by the separation but he would be naive to believe that the fact that this decision is painful and difficult is an indication that it is neurotic and hence that he needs to be analyzed another example is that that of divorce the decision to divorce one's Wife or husband is one of the most painful ones to make yet it can be necessary for the sake of ending continuous conflict and severe hindrance

of One's Own development in this situation thousands of persons believe they must be analyzed because they must have a complex that makes the decision so difficult at least that is what they consciously think in reality they often have other motives most frequently all they want is to Postpone the decision rationalizing that they must first find out through being analyzed all their unconscious motivations many couples agree that both go to an analyst before they make the decision that the analysis May last two three or four years does not bother them particularly on the contrary the longer

it lasts the longer are they protected from making the decision but beyond this procrastination of decision with the help of analysis Many of these people have other hopes consciously or unconsciously some hope that the analyst will eventually make the decision for them or advise them what to do directly or via interpretation even if this does not work they have a second expectation that psychoanalysis will result in such inner Clarity that they will be able to decide without difficulty and with no pain involved when both expectations fail to Materialize they may nevertheless achieve a doubtful advant

Advantage either they are so tired of talking about the divorce that they decide without much further thought either to divorce or to stay together in the latter case they have at least a topic to talk about that interests both of them their own feelings fears dreams Etc in other words this analysis has given some substance to their communication although mainly one of talking about Feelings rather than feeling differently toward each other to the examples given so far many others could be added a man deciding to give up a well- paid for a more interesting and

less lucrative job a government official's choice to resign or act against his conscience a person participating in a political protest movement and risking losing his job or being blacklisted a priest's decision to let his conscience speak the truth and Risk being dismissed from his order and losing all material and psychic security that belonging to it gives it appears that people much more rarely go to a psychoanalyst for help in the conflict between the demands of conscience and those of self-interest then in connection with family and personal conflicts as described in the previous examples one might

suspect that these family and personal conflicts are put in the foreground in order to cover up the Much more fundamental severe and painful conflicts between conscience Integrity authenticity and self-interest usually these latter conflicts are not even seen as such but are quickly shoved away as irrational romantic infantile impulses that need not and should not be pursued any further yet they are the crucial conflicts of everyone's life much more crucial than divorce or not divorce which most of the time is only the Replacement of an older by a newer model another reason for not trying psychoanalysis

lies in the danger that one is seeking and finds in the psychoanalyst a new father figure on whom one becomes dependent thus in one's own further development the classic psychoanalyst will say that the opposite is true that the patient discovers the unconscious dependency on a father in the transference to the analyst and by analyzing the transference dissolves the Transference as well as the original attachment to a father theoretically this is true and practically it sometimes happens but many times something quite different occurs the analysand may have indeed cut the tie with father but under the

disguise of this Independence builds up a new tie that to the analyst he becomes the authority the adviser the wise teacher the kind friend the central figure in one's life that This happens so often has among others one reason in a shortcoming of classic Freudian Theory Freud's basic assumption was that all irrational phenomena such as the need for a strong Authority inordinate ambition avarice sadism masochism were rooted in the conditions of Early Childhood these conditions were the key to the understanding of later development even though theoretically he recognized constitutional factors as having some Influence thus

the need for a strong Authority was explained as being rooted in the factual helplessness of the child and when the same attachment appeared in relationship to the analyst it was explained as transference I.E as being transferred from one object the father to another the analyst such transference occurs and is an important psychic phenomenon but this explanation is too narrow not only is the child powerless the adult is powerless too this Powerlessness is rooted in the very conditions of man's existence in the human situation aware of the many dangers that threaten him of death of the

insecurity of the future of the limitations of his knowledge man cannot help feeling powerless this existential powerlessness of the individual has been greatly increased by his historical powerlessness which existed in all Societies in which an elite established Its exploitation of the majority by making them much more powerless than they would be in a state of natural democracy as it existed in the most primitive forms of human Societies or as it might in future forms based on solidarity rather than antagonism thus for both existential and historical reasons man seeks to attach himself to Magic helpers in

many forms shamans priests Kings political leaders fathers teachers psychoanalysts as well As to many institutions such as church and state those who have exploited man usually offered themselves and were readily accepted as such father figures one preferred to obey men who allegedly meant well rather than to admit to oneself that one obeyed out of fear and impotence Freud's discovery of the phenomenon of transference had much wider implications than he himself within the frame of reference of the Thinking of his time could see in discovering transference he discovered a special case of one of the most

powerful strivings in man that of idolatry alienation it is striving that is rooted in the ambiguity of man's existence and that has the aim of finding an answer to the uncertainty of Life by transforming a person an institution an idea into an absolute I.E into an idol by the submission to which the illusion of Certainty is created it is hardly possible to overestimate the psychological and social significance of idolatry in the course of history that great illusion which hobbles activity and Independence the clientele of psychoanalysts are largely liberal members of the middle and upper middle

classes for whom religion has ceased to play an effective role and who have no passionately held political convictions For them no God Emperor Pope pop Rabbi or charismatic political leader fills the void the psychoanalyst becomes a mixture of Guru scientist father priest or Rabbi he does not demand hard tasks he is friendly he dissolves all the real problems of Life social economic political religious moral philosophical into psychological ones thus he reduces them to the status of rationalizations of incestuous wishes pantal impulses or anal fixation The world becomes simple accountable manageable and comfortable when it is

reduced to this Bourgeois mini Cosmos another danger in conventional psychoanalysis lies in the fact that the patient often only pretends that he wants to change if he suffers from bothersome symptoms such as difficulties in sleeping impotence fear of authorities being unhappy in relation to the opposite sex or a general feeling of malaise he of course wants to be rid of His symptoms who wouldn't but he is unwilling to experience the pain and anguish that are inseparable from the process of growing and becoming independent how does he solve the Dilemma he expects that if he only

follows the basic rule to say whatever comes to mind without censoring it he will be cured without pain or even effort to put it briefly he believes in Salvation by talking but there is no such thing without effort and Willingness to experience pain and anxiety nobody grows in fact nobody achieves anything worth achieving one more danger of conventional analysis is something that one should expect least the cerealization of effective experience Freud's intention was clearly the opposite he wanted to break through conventional conscious thought processes and arrive at the experience the raw unrationed illogical feelings and

Visions behind the smooth surface of daylight thought he indeed found it in the hypnotic state in the in the language of symptoms and in many usually unobserved small details of behavior but in the practice of psychoanalysis the original goal withered away and became an ideology more and more psychoanalysis became transformed into a kind of Historical Research into the development of an individual heavily overloaded with Theoretical explanation and constructions the analyst had a number of theoretical assumptions and he used the patients associations as documentary proofs for the correctness of his theories he was in good faith

because he was convinced of the truth of the dogma and he believed that the material the analysand offered must be profound and genuine precisely because it fitted the theory the method became increasingly one of Explanation here is a typical example a patient suffers from obesity caused by compulsive eating habits the analyst interprets her compulsion and the ensuing fatness as being rooted in her unconscious desire to swallow her father's semen and to be pregnant through him the fact that she has no direct memories of ever having had such wishes and Fantasies is explained by the repression

of this painful infantile material but on the Basis of the theory this origin is reconstructed and the rest of the analysis consists largely in the analyst's attempt to use the patient further associations and dreams in order to prove the correctness of the reconstruction it is assumed that when the patient has fully understood the meaning of the symptom she will be cured from it basically the method of this kind of interpretation is to cure by explanation The crucial question is why has the neurotic symptom been formed while the patient is asked to go on associating he

is engaged intellectually in the research about the origin of his symptoms what was meant to be an experiential method has become transformed in fact though not in theory into an intellectual search even if the theoretical premises were correct such a method could not lead to changes except those that are brought about by any Method of suggestion if a person is analyzed for a considerable time and told that this or that factor is the cause of his Neurosis he will easily be ready to believe that this is so and relinquish his symptom on the basis of

the faith that the discovery of the roots has brought about the Cure this mechanism is so frequent that no scientist would accept the Cure of a symptom as being caused by a given medicine unless the patient is unaware Whether he got the medicine or a placebo and not only the patient but the physician also in order to make sure that he himself is not influenced by his own expectations double blind test the danger of intellectualization is all the greater today when the prevailing alienation from one's own effective experience leads to an almost total intellectual approach

to one's self and the rest of the world in spite of the dangers inherent In the conventional practice of psychoanalysis I must confess that after over 40 years of psychoanalytic practice I am more convinced than ever that psychoanalysis properly understood and practiced has great potential as a means to help man this holds true for the traditional realm of psychoanalysis The Cure of neurosis but we are not concerned here primarily with psycho analysis as a therapy for Neurosis but with a new Function of analysis which I call Trans therapeutic analysis it may begin as a therapeutic

analysis but not stop when the symptoms are cured and proceed to new goals that transcend therapy or it may start out with a trans therapeutic goal where there are no significant psychopathological problems to be resolved decisive is that its goals go beyond restoring a patient to normaly this aim was not in Freud's mind as far as he was a therapist although it Is not as foreign to him as one might assume while his aim for therapy was that of adjustment to normal functioning to be able to work and to love his great ambition did not

lie in the field of therapy but in the creation of an Enlightenment movement based on the last step Enlightenment could make the awareness and control of a rational passions this ambition was so strong that Freud often acted as a political leader who had to conquer the world with His movement rather than as a scientist the trans therpeutic goal is that of man's self- Liberation by Optimal self-awareness of the attaining of well-being Independence of the capacity to love and of critical disillusioned thinking of being rather than having trans therapeutic humanistic psychoanalysis revises some of Freud's theories

particularly the libido Theory as being too small a basis for the understanding of man instead of Centering on sexuality and the family it claims that the specific conditions of human existence and the structure of society are of more fundamental importance than the family and that the passions motivating man are essentially not instinctive but a second nature of man formed by the interaction of existential and social conditions in the past I sometimes used the term humanistic psychoanalysis and then dropped it partly because it was Taken over by a group of psychologists whose views I did not

share partly because I wanted to avoid the impression that I was establishing a new school of psychoanalysis as far as schools of psychoanalysis are concerned experience has shown that they are detrimental to the theoretical development of psychoanalysis and to the competence of their practitioners this is obvious in the case of Freud School Freud I believe was hindered in changing his theories Because he had to hold together his adherence by a common ideology if he had changed basic theoretical positions he would have deprived his adherence of unifying dogmas furthermore the school and its approbation had devastating

effects on its members being properly ordained gave to many the necessary moral support to feel competent for their task without having to make further great efforts in learning what holds true for the Orthodox School holds true from my observation for all the rest these observations have led me to the conviction that the formation of psychoanalytic schools is undesirable and only leads to dogmatism and incompetence note these theoretical views are dealt with in many of my writings the most concise formulation is to be found in E the anatomy of human destructiveness end of note also the

technical procedure is Different more active direct and challenging the basic aim nevertheless is that of classic psychoanalysis the uncovering of unconscious strivings the recognition of resistance transference rationalization and the interpretation of dreams as the royal road to the understanding of the unconscious one qualification should be added to this description a person who seeks optimal growth may also have neurotic symptoms and thus need analysis As a therapy a person who has not been completely alienated who has remained sensitive and able to feel who has not lost the sense of dignity who is not yet for sale

who can still suffer over the suffering of others who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence briefly a person who has remained a person and not become a thing cannot help feeling lonely powerless isolated in present day Society he cannot help doubting himself And his own convictions if not his sanity he cannot help suffering even though he can experience moments of joy and Clarity that are absent in the life of his normal contemporaries not rarely will he suffer from a Neurosis that results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane

Society rather than that of the more conventional Neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt himself to a sick Society in the process of going further In his analysis I.E of growing to Greater Independence and productivity his neurotic symptoms will cure themselves in the last analysis all forms of neurosis are indications of the failure to solve the problem of living adequately 12 self analysis if the exploration of one's unconscious should be a part of meditation the question arises whether a person can analyze himself as part of His meditation practice no doubt this is very difficult

and it is preferable that he be introduced into the practice of self analyzing by analytic work with a competent analyst the first question to answer is what analyst is competent for this kind of trans therapeutic analysis if the analyst himself has not had this goal he would scarcely understand what the patient wants and needs not that he must have achieved This goal by himself but that he is on the way toward it since the number of analysts pursuing this goal is relatively small it is not easy to find such an analyst one rule should be

observed here as in choosing an analyst for strictly therapeutic reasons that one should thoroughly investigate the psychoanalyst through people who know him well patients and colleagues and not believe in big names or impressive offices as Recommendations one should also be skeptical of enthusiastic reports by patients who have idolized their analyst one should try to form form an impression of the analyst in one or two or even 10 first interviews and watch him as carefully as he is supposed to watch you to work for years with a wrong analyst can be as harmful as being married

for years to the wrong person as for the school an analyst comes from that in itself says little the Existentialist psychoanalysts are supposed to be more concerned with problems of human goals and some are others understand little and simply use a philosophical jargon taken from husel haiger or sart as a gimmick Without Really penetrating the depth of the patient's personality yans have the reputation of being those most concerned with the spiritual and religious needs of the patient some of them are but many in their enthusiasm for myths and Analogies fail to penetrate into the depths

of the patient's individual life and into his personal unconscious the Neo Frans are not necessarily more reliable than the others not to be a Freudian is not enough some indeed approach analysis from a standpoint that is related to the one outlined here many others have a rather superficial approach which lacks depth and critical thought perhaps the school furthest away From the one I suggest are the Orthodox freudians because the libido Theory and the one-sided emphasis on childhood experience stand in their way yet in spite of that Doctrine there are probably a few whose personal qualities

and philosophy make them acceptable guides to the full awareness of one's inner reality in some I believe the competence of an analyst is less a matter of the school to which he belongs than of his personality his character His capacity for critical thinking and his personal philosophy closely related to the person of the analyst is the method he uses first of all I do not believe that an analysis aimed at teaching self analysis need last very long in general 2 hours a week for 6 months should suffice this requires a special technique the analyst should

not be passive after listening to the patient for 5 to 10 hours he should have an idea Of the patient's unconscious structure and of the intensity of his resistance the analyst then should be able to confront the patient with his findings analyze his reactions and particular ly his resistance furthermore he should analyze from the beginning the patient's dreams using them for guidance of his own diagnosis and then communicate their interpretation as well as that of the rest to the patient at the end of this period the Patient should have become sufficiently acquainted with his own

unconscious and lowered his resistance to the point where he can continue the analysis on his own beginning his daily self analysis for the rest of his life I say that this because there is no limit to the knowledge of oneself and I can say from my own experience with daily self analysis over the last 40 years that at no time until now has it happened that I did not discover Something new or deepen already known material however it may be useful especially in the beginning of self-analysis to return to work with the analyst if one

finds oneself styed but this should be done only as a last resort otherwise it is too tempting to renew the attachment an introductory analysis as preparation for self analysis is the most desirable procedure this procedure is very difficult not only because there Are not many psychoanalysts whose own personality capacitates for this work but also because the routine of their practice is not geared to seeing patients for 6 months and then to seeing them again only occasionally if at all this type of work requires not only a special kind of interest but also a rather flexible

schedule I believe that if trans therapeutic self-analysis became more widespread a number of psychoanalysts Would specialize in this kind of work or at least devote half of their working time to it but what if one does not find the proper analyst or for any number of reasons cannot go to the place where he practices or cannot afford it financially is self-analysis in such a case possible the answer to the this question depends on a number of factors first of all it depends on the intensity of the will to achieve the goal of Liberation And even

this will as such cannot become effective except for the fact that the human brain has a built-in tendency for health and well-being I.E for the attainment of all those conditions that further the growth and development of the individual and the human species that this health preserving tendency exists in the somatic sector of living is well known and all that medicine can do is remove the obstacles to the efficacy of these Tendencies and support Them indeed most illnesses cure themselves without any kind of intervention that the same holds true for mental well-being is beginning to be

seen again recently although it was well known to an older less technical interventionist age unfavorable factors for self-analysis are states of serious pathology which are even difficult enough to deal with in a prolonged regular analysis In addition an extremely important factor lies in certain circumstances of a person's life if for example a person does not have to earn a living because he lives from inherited money or from the money of his parents or of his wife or husband he has a worse chance than one who is forced to work and hence can less well afford

to insulate himself someone who lives in a group in which everybody suffers the same defect will be prone to accept his group's values as Normal another negative condition is a case in which a person makes a living in such a manner that his neurotic qualities are an asset and where an inner change might endanger his livelihood we think here of an Entertainer or actor whose narcissism is a necessary condition for his success or of a bureaucrat who might lose his job if he lost his submissiveness finally the cultural and spiritual condition of a person is

of Great significance whether some cont with philosophical religious or critical political thought exists or whether he has never looked beyond the culturally patterned views of his environment and social class makes a great deal of difference often a decisive one and finally mere intelligence as such does not appear to be a decisive Factor sometimes intellectual Brilliance only serves the purposes of resistance 13 methods of self-analysis it would require a book in itself to write in full about how to learn to analyze oneself hence I must restrain myself here to a few simple suggestions before one can

even begin one must have learned to be still to sit relaxed and to concentrate when these first conditions are achieved at least to some degree one can proceed in different ways that by no means exclude each other one one may try to remember The thoughts that were intruding while one tried to be still and then feel one's way into them with the aim of seeing whether they have any connection and what it might be or one may proceed by observing certain symptoms such as feeling tired in spite of sufficient sleep or depressed or angry and

then feel around what it was a reaction to and what was the unconscious experience behind the Manifest feeling I intentionally do not say to Think because one does not arrive at any answer by theoretical thought at best one arrives at a theoretical speculation what I mean by feeling around is an imaginative tasting of various possible feelings until if one has succeeded a certain realization appears with clarity as being the root of the conscious experience of say tiredness an example one tries to imagine previous instances of such tiredness and whether later on one Became aware of

the cause one imagines several possibilities that could be at the bottom of the tiredness such as a difficult task one tried to postpone instead of facing the difficulty an ambivalent feeling toward a friend or a loved person a criticism that might have hurt one's narcissism to the extent of causing a slight depression a meeting with a person in which one pretended a friendliness that was not genuine a more complex example is the Following a man has fallen in in love with a girl suddenly after some months he feels tired depressed listless he might try to

find all sorts of rationalizing explanations such as that his work is not going well which may indeed be caused by the same factor that causes the tiredness or that he is disappointed and saddened by political developments or he may acquire a severe cold and thus find a satisfactory answer but if he is sensitive toward his own Feelings he may observe that recently he has tended to find fault in little things with the girlfriend that he had a dream in which she had an ugly face and cheated on him or he may notice that while he

was always very eager to see her he has now found reasons that make it necessary to postpone planned visits these and many other little signs May indicate to him that something is wrong in his relationship with her if he concentrates on this feeling it suddenly May Dawn on him that his picture of her has changed that in the first blossoming of his erotic and sexual attraction to her he had not noticed certain negative traits and that her sweet smile seems now to be calculated and actually cold he may Trace back this change in his judgment

to a certain evening when he had entered a room and watched her talking to other people before she had seen him at that moment he felt almost sick but put away this feeling as Neurotic or irrational but then the next morning he had awakened with the depressed feeling from which he suffered by now for several weeks he had tried to repress the new awareness and his doubts because on the stage of conscious life the script of love and admiration was still being acted out the conflict showed only in the indirect form of being styed of

being listless and depressed because he could neither pursue his love affair With a joyful and honest heart nor break it off because he had repressed the awareness of the change in his feelings once his eyes are open he made regain his sense of reality See Clearly what he feels and with real pain but without depression and the relationship here is another example of the analysis of a symptom a bachelor in his 40s suffers from the obsessional fear whenever he has left his house that he may not have turned off the electric Stove and that a

fire will start and destroy the whole house especially his valuable Library consequently he feels compelled to return to his house when he has left it a compulsion that obviously disrupts his normal activities the symptom has a simple explanation almost 5 years ago he had been operated on for cancer his physician had dropped the remark that everything was fine except for the possibility in the next 5 years of the Spread of the malignant cells which can spread like a fire the man was so frightened of this possibility that he repressed the thought totally from his awareness

and substituted for it the fear that fire might spread in his house while uncomfortable this fear was much less tormenting than that of the return of cancer when the repressed content of the fear became conscious the fire Obsession disappeared without Reviving the fear of cancer helped largely by the Circumstance that by then almost 5 years had passed since the operation and the danger of further complications was largely reduced this process of conscientization usually carries with it a feeling of relief and even Joy even though the content itself may be nothing to be pleased about in

addition whatever the newly discovered element is following it up by feeling around further will quite likely lead to some new discoveries or ramifications the Same day or later on what is essential is not to fall into the Trap of stating complex theoretical speculations two another approach is one that corresponds to the method of free association One lets go of one's thought control permits one's thoughts to come in and tries to scrutinize them with the aim of discovering hidden connections between them points of resistance where one Feels like stopping the train of thought until certain elements

come to the four that heretofor had not been in one's awareness three still another approach is an autobiographical one by this I mean speculations about one's history beginning with one's early childhood and ending with one's projected future development try to get a picture of significant events of your early fears hopes disappointments events that decreased your trust and faith in people And in yourself ask on whom am I dependent what are my main fears who was I meant to be at Birth what were my goals and how did they change what were the forks of the

road where I took the wrong direction and went the wrong way what efforts did I make to correct the error and return to the right way who am I now and who would I be if I had always made the right decisions and avoided crucial errors whom did I want to be long ago now and in the future what is My image of myself what is the image I wish others to have of me where are the discrepancies between the two images both between themselves and with what I sense is my real self who will

I be if I continue to live as I am living now what are the conditions responsible for the development as it happened what are the alternatives for further development open to me now what must I do to realize the possibility I choose this autobiographical research Should not consist of abstract constructions in terms of psychoanalytic theorizing but should remain on the empirical level of seeing sensing imagining with theoretical thoughts reduced to a minimum four closely related to the autobiographical approach is one that tries to uncover the discrepancies that exist between our conscious goals in life and

those of which we are not aware Yet which determine our life in many persons there are two such plots a conscious official one as it were which is the cover story for the secret plot that dominates our Behavior the discrepancy between the secret and the conscious plots is shown in many of the ancient Greek dramas in which the secret plot is attributed to fate Moira Moira is the alienated form of man's unconscious plot which is within him and which determines his life the edus drama For instance shows this discrepancy with all Clarity edus secret plot

is to kill his father and marry his mother his conscious and intended Life plot is to avoid this crime under all circumstances yet the secret plot is stronger against his intention and without awareness of what he is doing he lives according to the secret plot the degree of discrepancy between the conscious and unconscious plots varies enormously in many people on the one end Of the Continuum are those persons for whom there is no secret plot because the person has grown so far that he has become entirely one with himself and need not repress anything on

the Other Extreme there may be no secret plot because the person is identified with his evil self to a degree that he does not even try to pretend that there is a better self the former are sometimes called the just ones the awakened ones the latter are severely sick people for Whom a number of diagnostic labels could be used but without adding to their understanding the vast majority of men can be plotted on a Continuum between the two extremes yet even in this middle group an important distinction can be made there are those whose conscious

plot is an idealization of what they are actually striving for so that the two plots are essentially similar with others the cover story is exact the opposite of the secret plot it serves Only to hide it in order to follow it all the better it is in the cases of significant contradictions between the two plots that severe conflicts insecurity doubts and waste of energy occur and as a result a number of manifest symptoms develop how could it be otherwise when a person has constantly to use a great deal of energy in order to avoid being

aware of the inner contradiction to cease being plagued by Deep doubts of About his identity and to repress his own dim sense of lack of genuiness and integrity his only alternative is either to continue his state of malaise or to penetrate to the deeply repressed layers of experience and the latter process is necessarily conducive to a good deal of anxiety here are a few examples of secret plots I remember a man whom I knew well but did not analyze who once told me the following dream I said added a coffin which served As a table

a meal was served on it which I ate next I was shown a book in which many great men had signed their names I saw the names of Moses Aristotle Plato Kant Spinosa Marx and Freud I was asked to sign my name as the last one the book then was presumably to be closed forever the dreamer was a man with extraordinary ambition despite great knowledge and Brilliance he had the greatest difficulty to write a book by himself and with ideas he had not taken From somebody else he had a sadistic character which was covered up

by altruistic radical ideas and occasional gestures of helpfulness to others in the first part of his dream we see a thinly veiled necrophagous desire the lunch served on the coffin expresses if translated into a non-censored clear text the desire to eat the body in the coffin this is one of the frequent manifestations of what Freud called The Dream workor which translates the Unacceptable latent dream thought into a harmless sounding manifest dream text the second part of the dream is hardly censored at all the dreamer's ambition is to have the fame of one of the greatest

thinkers of the world his selfishness is expressed in the fact that he wishes that with him the history of philosophy should be ended no more great men should arise from which future Generations could benefit this secret plot of eating the corpses of Great Men I.E feeding himself on the masters of the past and becoming by this injection a master himself was unknown to this person and hidden from those around him most of whom admired him for his Brilliance kindness and benevolent ideas the outline of another secret plot to save his mother from his cruel father

and through her admiration to become the greatest man in the world or another to destroy every living soul in order to be left alone Thus being rid of his feeling of weakness and of fear of others and another to attach oneself to someone rich and Powerful to find his favor and to wait for his death in order to inherit everything he owns material Goods ideas and Prestige still another to experience the world as a prison made of food the aim of life being to eat up the walls of his prison eating becomes the goal of

Life eating means Liberation one could add many more plots but not an unlimited number since the secret plots are all answers to the basic needs rooted in human existence there are only a limited number because the number of man's existential needs is limited does this mean that we are in reality traitors Liars ssts Etc and only cover this up and do not act it out in overt Behavior indeed it can mean that if to betray to lie to torture are dominant passions with within ourselves And with not merely a few this is precisely the case

these very persons will have the least impulse to make such discoveries with many others however these repressed Trends are not dominant when they become conscious they become in conflict with the opposite passions and have a good chance of being defeated in the ensuing struggle awareness is a condition that makes this conflict more acute but it does not dissolve the formally repressed strivings simply by Our Act of becoming conscious of them five a fifth approach is to let one's thoughts and feelings be centered around the goals of living such as overcoming greed hate Illusions fears possessiveness

narcissism destructiveness sadism masochism dishonesty lack of authenticity alienation indifference necrofilia male patriarchal dominance or corresponding female submission and to achieve independence the capacity for critical Thought for giving for loving this approach consists in the attempt to uncover the unconscious presence of any of these bad traits the way they are rationalized how they form part of one's whole character structure the conditions of their development the process is often very painful and may arouse a great deal of anxiety it requires that we become aware of being dependent when we believe that we love and are loyal that

we become Aware of our vanity narcissism when we believe ourselves to be nothing but kind and helpful that we become aware of our sadism when we believe that we want to do for others only what is good for them that we discover our destructiveness when we believe that it is our sense of justice that demands punishment that we become aware of our cowardice when we believe ourselves to be only prudent and realistic that we become aware of our arrogance when we believe that we behave With extraordinary Ary humility that we are aware that we are

afraid of Freedom when we think that we are only motivated by the wish not to hurt anybody that we become aware that we are insincere when we only thought that we did not want to be rude that we discover that we are treacherous when we believe that we are being particularly objective in short as Gerta put it only if we can imagine ourselves as the author of any conceivable crime and mean it can we be Reasonably sure of having dropped the mask and of being on the way to becoming aware of who we are at

the moment when one discovers the narcissistic component of one's friendliness or the sadistic elements of one's helpfulness the shock may be so intense that for a moment or a day one feels oneself to be an utterly worthless creature of whom nothing good could be said but if one does not permit oneself to be stopped by this shock and goes on Analyzing one may discover that the shock is so int tense because of the narcissistic expectations of oneself that it will serve as a resistance to further analysis and that the negative strivings one has discovered are

after all not the only driving forces within oneself in those instances in which this is true a person will likely follow his resistance and stop analyzing since as I pointed out in the earlier discussion of awareness the Capacity to see is not divisible self-analysis must also be concerned with becoming aware of the reality in other persons as well as in social and political life in fact knowledge of others often precedes self- knowledge the child at an early age observes adults already dimly sensing the reality behind the facade and he becomes aware of the person behind

the Persona as adults we often observe unconscious strivings in others before We learn to observe them in ourselves we must be aware of these hidden sectors in others because what goes on in ourselves is not only intas psychic and thus to be understood by studying only what goes on within the four walls of our person but it is interpersonal that is to say it is a net of relations between myself and others I can see ourselves fully only in as much as I see myself in my relation to others and in Theirs to me to

see himself without Illusions Would not be so difficult for the individual were he not constantly exposed to being brainwashed and deprived of the faculty of critical thinking he is made to think and feel things that he would not feel or think were it not for uninterrupted suggestions and elaborate methods of conditioning unless he can see the real meaning behind the double talk the reality behind the Illusions he is unable to be aware of himself as he is And is aware only of himself as he is supposed to be what can I know of myself as

as long as I do not know that the self I do know is largely a synthetic product that most people including myself lie without knowing it that defense Means War and Duty submission that virtue means obedience and sin Disobedience that the idea that parents instinctively love their children is a myth that Fame is only rarely based on admirable human Qualities and even not too often on real achievements that history is a distorted Rec record because it is written by The Victors that over modesty is not necessarily the proof of a lack of vanity that loving

is the opposite of craving and greed that everyone tries to rationalize evil intentions and actions and to make them appear Noble and beneficial ones that the pursuit of power means the persecution of truth justice and love that present day Industrial society is centered around the principle of selfishness having and consuming and not on principles of of love and respect for life as it preaches unless I am able to analyze the unconscious aspects of the society in which I live I cannot know who I am because I don't know which part of me is not me

in the following paragraphs I want to make some general remarks about the method of self-analysis It is crucially important that it be done like meditation and concentration regularly and not if one is in the mood if somebody says he has no time for it he is simply saying that he does not consider it important if he has no time he can make time and this is so obviously a matter of the importance he gives to self analysis that it is useless to explain how he can make the time I should like to add that I

do not mean to imply that Self-analysis become a ritual that does not permit any exception there are of course occasions when it is practically impossible to do it and that should be taken in one stride altogether the process of self-analysis should not have the character of forced labor done in a grim mood of Duty yet necessary in order to reach a certain goal quite aside from the result the process in itself should be liberating and hence joyful even Though suffering pain anxiety and disappointment are mixed in with it for anyone who cannot empathize with the

passion to climb a mountain it must appear that the ascent is mere drudgery and discomfort and some think I have heard this also in psychoanalytic interpretation of mountain climbing that only a masochist could voluntarily choose to undergo such unpleasantness the mountain climber will not deny the effort and the strain yet This is part of his joy and by no means would he want to miss it effort does not equal effort pain does not equal pain the Pains of Labor are different from the Pains of an illness what matters is the entire context in which the

effort is made or the pain is suffered and which gives it its specific quality this is a point somewhat difficult to grasp because in our Western tradition Duty and virtue are considered harsh taskmasters in fact the Best proof that one acts rightly is that it is unpleasant the proof of the opposite that one likes to do it the Eastern tradition is entirely different and far superior in this respect it by passes the polarity between rigid stiff discipline and lazy slouching Comfort it aims at a state of Harmony which is at the same time structuralized disciplined

in the autonomous sense alive flexible and joyful in self-analysis as well as in analysis ad there is one difficulty Of which we must be aware from the very beginning that of the effects of verbalization assuming I wake up in the morning and see a blue sky and a shining Sun I am fully aware of the scenery it makes me happy and more alive but the experience is an awareness of the sky of my response to it and no words come to mind such as this is a beautiful sunny day once those words form and I

begin to think about the scenery in these words the experience has somewhat lost in Intensity when instead a Melody comes to my mind that expresses Joy or a painting that expresses the same mood nothing of the experience is lost the boundary between awareness of feeling and expression of feeling in words is very fluid there is the completely nonverbal experience and close to it the experience in which a word appears like a vessel that contains the feeling and yet does not contain it for the feeling is constantly flowing and it overflows The Vessel the word vessel

is more like a note in a musical score which is a symbol for a tone but not the tone itself the feeling may be still more closely related to the word but as long as the word is still a Living Word it has done little harm to the feeling but there comes a point where the word becomes separated from the feeling I.E also from the speaking person and at this point the word has lost its reality except as a combination Of sounds many people experience this change they were aware of a strong beautiful or frightening

experience a day later when they want to remember it by putting it into words they say a sentence that accurately describes the feeling yet the sentence sounds foreign to them it is felt as if it were entirely in their head that it has no connection with what they felt when it happened when this happens one should Realize that something went wrong and that one has begun juggling words rather than become aware of inner reality and one should begin to analyze the resistance that eggs one on to cerebral feelings such thoughts about feelings should be treated

like any other interfering thoughts self-analysis should be done for at least 30 minutes every morning if possible at the same time and place and outside interference should be avoided As far as possible it can be done also in Walking although in the streets of a big city there is too much unrest but self analysis and particularly breathing and awareness exercises can be done whenever one is not occupied with something else there are many occasions when one has to wait or has nothing to do as in a Subway or a plane all these occasions should be

used for one or another form of mindfulness rather than for starting to read a magazine talking To somebody or daydreaming once one has acquired the habit of doing so such situations when one has nothing to do become very welcome because they are enriching and enjoyable it is surprising that self-analysis has hardly been discussed in psychoanalytic literature one might have expected that Freud's self-analysis about which he himself reports in his dream interpretation would have suggested to others to experiment in the Same direction maybe the fact that this has not been so can be explained by the

assumption that the image of Freud became so idolized that it was quite natural that he could not have been analyzed by anyone else but had to owe his Enlightenment as it were only to himself that it is different with ordinary men they could not be without a Creator and Freud himself or the priests acting in his name had to Enlighten them whatever The reasons may be for this lack of following up Freud's example it was only as far as I am aware Karen horny who suggested self-analysis as a real possibility in the case she describes

she deals mainly with an acute neurotic problem and its solution the main point in this context is her warm recommendation of self-analysis Al though she clearly saw the difficulties the main reason for the fact that self-analysis has been so Neglected as a Curative possibility lies probably in the conventional bureaucratic concepts of most analysts about their role and that of the patient as in general medicine the sick person is transformed into a patient and the belief is fostered that he needs a professional to get cured he is not supposed to cure himself since that would indeed

break down the sacred bureaucratic difference between the professional healer and the Nonprofessional sufferer this bureaucratic attitude does much harm too in the process of regular analysis where the analyst if he wants sincerely to understand the patient must become himself a patient his own and forget that he is supposed to be the only healthy normal rational one of the two perhaps the most important reason for the unpopularity of self-analysis is the idea that it is very difficult in an analysis of The analyst can call the other's attention to his rationalizations resistances and narcissism in self analysis

one is in danger of going in circles and giving in to one's resistances and rationalizations without being aware that this is what one is doing indeed it cannot be denied that self-analysis is difficult but so is every other path to well-being no one has formulated this difficulty more succinctly than Spinosa At the end of his ethics book five prop 42 if the way which as I have shown leads hither seems very difficult it can nevertheless be found it must indeed be difficult since it is so seldom discovered for if salvation lay ready at hand and

could be discovered without great Labor how could it be possible that it should be neglected by almost everybody but all Noble things are as difficult as they are rare the difficulty might be Discouraging if the question were to reach or not to reach the final goal but if as we said before one is not craving for Perfection if one is not concerned with the point of the way at which one arrives but with the act of walking in the right direction the difficulties do not appear so formidable most of all self-analysis will result in such

an increase in inner Clarity and wellbeing that one would not want to miss it in spite of all the Difficulties having recommended self-analysis as a fruitful method in the search for self- Liberation I want to add that this recommendation does not imply that it is a necessary step that everybody should take it is one which appeals to me and which I have recommended to others who use it with profit there are many others who will use other methods of concentration Stillness and awareness that are quite as useful a very telling Example was Pablo Cal's who

began every day by playing one of box unac companied cello concheros who could doubt that this was the optimal method of self- Liberation for him yet even as far as the method of self-analysis is concerned a misunderstanding I fear could have crept between the reader and myself the process that I have described could be misunderstood as a daily moralistic search of conscience which should be the basis for a steady moral progression and A virtuous life if the reader's criticism were that I am opposed to ethical relativism the arbitrary iness of freedom to the Supreme value

of everybody's doing his own thing regardless of what it is worth I must plead guilty but I refuse such a plea if the accusation were that I am anxiously concerned about man's straight pursuit of virtue and the horror of sin and that I do not appreciate the fact that sin itself is often the very basis of Progress in order to clarify this point it must be kept in mind that the fundamental position from which self-analysis was discussed is the conception of living as a process and not as a sequence of fixed stages in sinning the

seed for an upward movement is attained in virtue the seed of Decay may be contained as a mystical principle says The Descent is for the sake of the asent sinning is not harmful but only stagnating and resting on what one has Achieved there is still another possible misunderstanding I want to correct it might sound as if self-analysis increases the tendency for being occupied with oneself I.E that it is the very opposite to the aim of getting rid of one's ego boundness indeed that can be an outcome but only of an unsuccessful analysis self-analysis becomes a

kind of cleansing ritual not because one is so concerned with one's ego but because one wants to free Oneself from egoism by analyzing its roots self-analysis becomes a daily practice that permits one to be minimally concerned with oneself the the rest of the day finally it becomes unnecessary because there are no more obstacles to full being I cannot write about this state because I have not attained it at the end of this discussion of psychoanalysis I believe one further qualification is necessary which holds True for all psychological knowledge if one starts out with a psychological

understanding of one person one is concerned with his suchness his full individuality unless one has a picture of his individuality in all its details one cannot begin to understand this particular person if one's interest in a person shifts from the more superficial to the deeper levels it shifts necessarily from the particular to the universal this Universal is not an Abstraction not a limited Universal like the instinctive nature of man it is the very essence of human existence The Human Condition the needs that follow from it the various answers to these needs it is the content

of the unconscious which is common to all men because of the identity of the existential condition of all men and not because of some racial Heritage as Yung believed one then experiences oneself and one's fellow man as variations of The theme man and maybe man as a variation of the theme of Life what matters is that which all men share not that in which they differ in the process of the full penet ation of one's unconscious one discovers that we differ considerably in the quantitative aspects but are the same in the quality of our strivings

the exploration of the unconscious in depth is a way of discovering Humanity in oneself and in Every other human being this discovery is not one of theoretical thought but of effective experience however stressing the one in man must not in an undialectical fashion lead Le to the denial of the fact that man is also an individual that in fact each person is a unique individual not identical with anyone ever to be born perhaps with the exception of identical twins only paradoxical thinking so much a part of Eastern logic permits Expression of the full reality man

is a unique individual man's individuality is sham and unreal man is this and that and man is neither this nor that the paradoxical fact is that the deeper I experience my own or another's unique individuality the clearer I see through myself and him the reality of Universal Man freed from all individual qualities the Zen Buddhist Man Without Rank and without title these considerations lead to the Problem of the value and the dangers of individualism and related to it the psychological study of the individual it is very apparent that at present individual ity and individualism are

highly esteemed and widely praised as values and as personal and cultural goals but the value of individuality is very ambiguous on the one hand it contains the element of Liberation from authoritarian structures that prevent the autonomous development of a person If self- knowledge serves to become aware of one's true self and to develop it rather than to inject a foreign self imposed by the authorities it is of great human value in fact the positive aspect of self- knowledge and psychology are so widely emphasized that it is scarcely necessary to add more words to this praise

but it is extremely necessary to say something about the negative side of the cult of individuality and its Relation to psychology one reason for this cult is obvious the more individuality disappears in fact the more it is exalted in words industry television habits of consumption pay homage to the individuality of the persons they manipulate there is the name of the bank teller in his window and the initials on the handbag in addition the individuality of Commodities is stressed the alleged difference between cars Cigarettes toothpaste which are essentially the same in the same price class serve

the purpose of creating the illusion of the individual man or woman freely choosing individual things there is little awareness that the individuality is at best one of insignificant differences for in all their essential features Commodities and human beings have lost all individuality the apparent individuality is cherished as a precious possession Even if people don't own Capital they own their individuality although they are not individuals they have much individuality and they are eager and proud to cultivate it since this individuality is one of small differences they give the small trivial differences the aspect of important meaningful

features contemporary psychology has promoted and satisfied this interest in individuality people think about their Problems talk about all the little details of their childhood history but often what they say is glorified gossip about themselves and others using psychological terms and Concepts instead of the less sophisticated old-fashioned gossip supporting this illusion of individuality through trivial differences contemporary psychology has a still more important function by teaching how people ought to react under the influence of different stimuli Psychologists become an important instrument for the manipulation of others and of oneself behaviorism has created a whole science that teaches

the art of manipulation many business firms make it a condition for employment that their prospective employees submit to personality tests many books teach the individual how to behave in order to impress people of the value of their own personality package or of the value of The commodity they sell by being useful in all these respects one branch of contemporary psychology has become an important part of modern society while this type of psychology is useful economically and as an illusion producing ideology it is harmful to human beings because it tends to increase their alienation it is

fraudulent when it pretends to based on the ideas of self- knowledge as the humanistic tradition up to Freud had Conceived it the opposite to adjustment psychology is radical because it goes to the roots it is critical because it knows that conscious thought is mostly a fabric of Illusions and falsehood it is salvific because it hopes that the true knowledge of oneself and others liberates man and it's conducive to his well-being for anyone interested in psychological exploration it is necessary to be intensely aware of the fact that these two kinds of psychology Have little more in

common than the name and that they follow contrary goals part five 14 on the culture of having living has two Dimensions man acts does produces creates in brief he is active but man is not acting in a void not without body and not in in an immaterial world he has to deal with things his acting refers to objects animate or inanimate which he transforms Or creates the first thing he has to deal with is his own body later he has to deal with other things with wood for fire or for shelter with fruits animals and

grain for food with cotton and wool for clothing as civilization develops the realm of things man has to deal with enlarges many times weapons houses books machines ships cars planes come into existence and he has to deal with them All how does man deal with them he produces them he changes them uses them to make other things consumes them things themselves do nothing except when man has constructed them in such a way that they do produce things by themselves with every culture the proportion between things and acts is different in contrast to the great multitude

of things modern man is surrounded by a tribe of primitive hunters and food gatherers for instance Deals with relatively few things a few tools a few Nets and weapons for hunting hardly any cloth some jewelry and pots but no fixed shelters food had to be eaten quickly in order not to become spoiled as against the number of things a person is involved with or simply surrounded by is to be considered the weight of his doings of course he feels sees and hears because his organism is so constructed that he has virtually no other choice he

Sees an animal that he can kill for food he hears a noise that warns him of a danger hearing and seeing serve a biological purpose that of survival but man not only hears in order to survive he can also hear as an extravagance biologically speaking serving no specific biological purpose except the aim of increased Life Energy well-being aliveness when he hears in this nonpurposeful way we say that he listens he listens to the birds songs to the Raindrops patter a human vo's warm Timber a drum's exciting Rhythm a song's Melody a Bach Concerto hearing becomes

trans biological humanized active creative free rather than a merely biologically necessary response the same is true of seeing when we see the beautiful ornaments of even the oldest clay vessel the movement of animals and men in a cave painting from 30,000 years ago the radiance of a Loving face as well as the horror of the destructiveness done by a human hand we also have shifted our inner gears from the biologically necessary act to the realm of freedom from animal to human existence the same holds true for our other senses Tak tasting touching smelling if I

need to eat because my body requires food the usual symptom of this need is hunger if one wants to eat because one enjoys tasty food one speaks rather of Appetite Exquisite food is as much a product of cultural development as our music and painting with smelling it is not different phenetically smelling is the primary sense of orientation for Animals just as seeing is for men the enjoyment of pleasing smells as for instance in perfumes is an old human Discovery it is in the sector of luxury and not in that of biological necessity less clearly discernable

but undoubtedly present is the same difference with Regard to touching perhaps I have only to remind the reader about people who touch others as they touch a piece of cloth in order to appreciate its quality as against those whose touch is warm and tender the difference between biological necessity and instinctive urge they complement each other on the one hand and joyous free exercise of the senses on the other can be recognized clearly in the sexual act in which all the Senses participate sex can be the uncultivated expression of biological necessity I.E driven unfree and undifferentiated

excitement and it can be free joyous active a true luxury not serving any biological Purp purpose the difference to which I allude here is that between two kinds of doing passive driven doing and active productive creative doing later on this difference will be discussed at greater length at this Point I want to stress that while the sector of things is immensely smaller for the Primitive Hunter than it is for cybernetic man the sector of human activity does not show any such discrepancy in fact there are good reasons to assume that primitive man did more and

was more than industrial man let us have a short look at his situation to begin with all physical work that had to be done he did himself he had no slaves who worked for him Women were not an exploited class he had no machines nor even animals to do work for him he depended on himself and nobody but himself as far as physical work was concerned but so will the standard objection run this held true for his physical activity ities with regard to thinking observing imagining painting speculating philosophically and religiously prehistoric man was Far Behind

man of the Machine Age this objection seems valid because we are Influenced by the idea that increased schooling is commensurate with increased intellectual and artistic activity but this is by no means so our education is not conducive to increased thinking or the development of active imagination the the average man today thinks very little for himself he remembers data as presented by the schools and the mass media he knows practically nothing of what he knows by his own observing or thinking nor does His use of things require much thought or skill one type of Gadget requires

no skill or effort at all as for instance the telephone another type of Gadget the automobile requires some initial learning and after a while when it has become routine only a very small amount of person Al effort or skill is needed nor does Modern Man including the educated groups think about religious philosophical or even political problems he ordinarily adopts one or the other of The many cliches offered him by political or religious books or speakers but the conclusions are not arrived at as a result of active and penetrating thinking of his own he chooses the

cliche that appeals most to his own character and social class primitive man is in an entire L different situation he has very little education in the modern sense of spending a certain amount of time in an educational institution he himself is forced to Observe and to learn from his observations he observes the weather the behavior of animals the behavior of other human beings his life depends on acquiring certain skills and he acquires them by his own doing and acting not in 20 quick lessons his life is a constant process of learning WS Laughlin has given

a succinct picture of the Primitive Hunter's wide range of mental activities there is ample documentation though surprisingly few systematic Studies for the postulate that primitive man is sophisticated in his knowledge of the natural world this sophistication encompasses the entire macroscopic Zoological world of mammals marsupial reptiles birds fish insects and plants knowledge of Tides meteorological phenomena generally astronomy and other aspects of the natural world are also welldeveloped among some variations between groups with reference to the sophistication and extent of their Knowledge and to the areas in which they have concentrated I will here only cite the

relevance of this sophistication to the hunting Behavior system and to its significance for the evolution of man man the hunter was learning animal behavior and Anatomy including his own he domesticated himself first and then turned to other animals and to plants in this sense hunting was the school of learning that made the human species self-taught WS Laughlin 1968 another example for a distorted evaluation of civilized man's mental activity is the art of reading and writing contemporary man believes that to master this art is an unquestionable sign of progress the greatest efforts are made to eradicate

analphabetism almost as if it were or a sign of a mental defect the progress of a nation is measured aside from the number of automobiles by the percentage of people Who can read and write such value judgments ignore the fact that people among Whom The Art of reading and writing is only the Monopoly of small groups of priests or Scholars or does not exist at all have extraordinary memories modern man finds it difficult to understand that a whole literature such as the vas the Buddhist texts the books of the Old Testament the later Jewish oral

tradition were transmitted Faithfully from generation to generation For many hundreds of years before they were written down on the contrary I have observed among people for instance Mexican peasants that even if they can read and write but do not do so very frequently the memory is especially good because they do not write down things everyone can make a similar observation with himself as soon as he writes something down he SE ceases to make the ACT an effort which memorizing requires he does not have to engrave as It were the data in his brain because he

has stored them in an auxiliary instrument parchment paper or tape he feels that he does not need to remember because the content is safely deposited in the notes he has made the faculty of memory thus suffers from a lack of practice today one can observe how people want to avoid active thinking even in small doses for instance when a salesperson in a store adds up three figures on the machine rather than Do them herself the same principle of Greater activity by primitive man can be seen in art the Primitive hunters and food gatherers about 30,000

years ago painted the extraordinary scenes of animals and Men a few of which have come to us well preserved in caves of Southern France and Northern Spain these beautiful paintings are a delight even for Modern Man Who is familiar with the painting of the great Masters of the last several centuries but even if he would say that the cave painters were Geniuses the D Vines and Rembrandts of the last ice age this can hardly be said for the ornamentation of pottery and tools dating back to the oldest prehistorical times it has often been said that

the cave paintings as well as these ornaments had Practical Magic purposes such as to contribute to the success of the hunt to fight evil spirits and so on but even granted this Whatever the practical purposes may have been it was not required that things be made so beautiful besides the ornamentation of the pottery canot have been the creation of so many Geniuses that every village had its own style of ornament often varying only slightly proves that these people had an active aesthetic interest I have spoken so far of the most primitive cultures the Primitive hunters

and food gatherers and what we Know and can surmise of their cultures at least since the full emergence of homo sapiens sapiens around 40,000 to 50,000 years ago they made few things with their hands yet they were very active in applying their own faculties of thinking observing imagining painting and sculpting if one wanted to express the relation between the thing sector to the doing sector in quantitative terms one could state that among the most Primitive people it is 1 to 100 whereas the proportion for modern man would be 100 to1 note these figures should only

express symbolically the quantitative relation between the two sectors end of note history offers us many variations between these two extremes a Greek citizen in the period of the flowering of Greek democracy was certainly surrounded by more things than the hunter yet he was actively concerned With the Affairs of State he developed and used his reason to an extraordinary degree he was engaged both artistically and philosophically what more do we have to know of a population than that the dramas of Sophocles and escalus formed the artistic nurture of an Athenian Citizen and what does it say

about the aesthetic and emotional passivity of a contemporary New Yorker if we think of the plays and movies that excite him different and yet in many ways similar Is the picture we get from the life of a medieval Artisan his work was done with interest with care it was not boring the making of a table was a creative act in which the table was the child of his efforts his experience his skill and his taste most of what had to be done he had to do himself he was also actively engaged in many common activities

such as singing dancing and church services The Peasant was much worse off materially he was not a free man yet he Was not quite a slave either the work in the fields may not have given much satisfaction action I speak here especially of the period before the position of the peasant deteriorated considerably in the 16th century yet he participated in and enjoyed a culturally rich life based on his specific folk culture neither he nor the artisen were spoonfed by seeing others making efforts or enjoying themselves or suffering whatever filled Their lives it was largely a

result of their own doing and their own experience even the Artisan economically and soci far superior to the peasant did not have much except his house and his tools and he earned just enough to live according to the traditional standard of living of his social class he did not want to have or to consume more because not the acquisition of riches but the productive use of his faculties and the enjoyment of being were his Goal contemporary man in cybernetic Society is surrounded by as many things as there are stars in the sky to be sure

he has produced most of them but has he the worker in a giant Factory produces no thing surely he participates in the production of an automobile or an electric refrigerator or a toothpaste but depending on the kind of industrial process he makes a few stereotyped movements puts in some screws or the motor or a door only the final worker in The chain sees the finished product the others see it on the streets they acquire and own a cheaper car they see only the expensive car driven by people who are better off but that the single

worker has produced a car can be said only in an abstract sense in the first place machines have produced the car and other machines have produced the car producing machines the worker not as a full man but as an alive tool has a part in the production in the performance of Tasks that cannot yet be done by machines or only too expensively the engineer and stylist may claim that they have produced the car but surely that is not true they may have contributed their share but they have not produce the car eventually the executive or

manager will claim that he has produced the car he thinks that because he directed the whole process he has produced the car but this claim is even more dubious than that of the Engineer we do not know whether the manager was as a physical entity really necessary for the production of the car his claim may be as questionable as that of a general who insists that he conquered a fortress or won a battle when quite obviously his soldiers conquered the Fortress and fought the Battle they moved attacked were wounded or killed while he had made

the plans and saw to their proper execution sometimes the battle is won Because the opposing General is simply more incapable than the winning one and thus the victory is won by The Faults of the opponent the problem here is that of the productive role of the directing and managing function which I shall not further pursue except to say that for the manager the car has been transformed from the physical appearance of the car as it leaves the assembly line into a commodity this means the car to him is not primarily interesting because of its Real

use value but because of its fictitious use value suggested by advertising that bamboozles the mind of the prospective buyer with all sorts of irrelevant data from sexy girls to veral looking cars the car as a commodity is in a sense the product of the manager who orders the real car to be made with profit pregnant features that can give it special sales appeal modern man can produce effects in the material world that are greater than Earlier man never was able to achieve but these effects are completely incommensurate with the physical and intellectual efforts invested in

them to drive a powerful automobile requires neither physical strength nor particular skill or intelligence to fly an airplane requires a great deal of skill to drop a hydrogen bomb relatively little to be sure there are some activities that still require considerable skill and effort those of Artisans Physicians Scientists artists highly skilled workers Pilots fishermen horticulturists and some other such occupations or professions yet these skill requiring activities are increasingly fewer the vast majority of men make a living by work that requires little intelligence imagination or concentration of any kind physical effects results are no longer proportionate

to human effort and this separation between effort and skill and result is one of the most significant And pathogenic features of modern society because it tends to degrade effort and to minimize its significance we must arrive then at a first conclusion in contrast to the generally accepted View modern man is basically very helpless in relation to his world he only appears powerful because he dominates nature to an extraordinary degree but this domination is almost completely alienated it is not the result of his Real human powers but of the mega machine which enables him to achieve

much without doing much or being much thus modern man can be said to live in a symbiotic relationship with the world of machines in as much as he is a part of them he is is or appears to be powerful without them standing by himself using his own resources he is as powerless as a little child that is why he worships his machines they lend him their Strength they create the illusion that he is a giant when without them he is a when man in other ages believed that his idols gave him his strength it

was pure illusion except that he projected his strength into the idol and received some of it back in the worship of it in the worship of the machines it is basically the same to be sure Bale and aarty were only what man thought they were the idols were as prophetic critique put it nothing but pieces of Wood or stone and their power was exclusively that of Man's having transferred his own power to them and getting part of that power back from them machines however Are Not Mere ineffective pieces of metal they do create a world

of useful things man is really dependent on them but just as with the idols it is he who has invented planned and built them they like the Idols are the product of his imagination of his technical imagination which Coupled with science has been able to create things which are realistically very effective yet which have become his ruler according to Legend Prometheus brought man fire in order to liberate him from the control by Nature man at this point of his history has enslaved himself to the very fire that was to liberate him man today wearing the

mask of a giant has become a weak helpless being dependent on the machines he made and Hence on the leaders who guarantee the proper functioning of the society that produces the machines dependent on a well- functioning business frightened to death of losing all the props of being a man without Rank and without title of just being of being challenged by the question who am I in summary modern man has many things and uses many things but he is very little his feelings and thinking processes are atrophied like unused Muscles he is afraid of any crucial

social change because any disturbance in the social balance to him spells chaos or death if not physical death the death of his identity 15 on the philosophy of having that which one has is one's property and in as much as everybody has his body it could be argued that property is rooted in the very physical existence of man but even though this Would appear to be a good argument for the universality of property it hardly serves this purpose because it is not correct a slave does not own his body it can be used sold destroyed

according to his owner's will and whim the slave in this respect differs from even the most exploited worker the latter does not own his body energy because he is forced to sell it to the owner of capital who buys his working power however since he has no choice under the conditions of Capitalism one must admit that even his ownership of his body is questionable what does it mean that I own something when somebody else owns the right to use what I have we are here in the middle of a much disputed problem in which still

a great deal of confusion exists that of property a clear understanding of property has been greatly obscured by the passionate feelings related to the Revolutionary Demands for abolition of private property many people have thought that their personal property their clothes books furniture and so on even their spouses would be taken away and nationalized note I still remember vividly my shock at the Fantastic report of the Frankfurter zitong in many ways an equivalent of the New York Times from Munich in 1919 that Gustaf Landau one of the finest humanists of Germany and at the time minister

of culture of the Short-lived Bavarian rata republ had ordered the nationalization of women end of note of course the swingers today have in fact begun to socialize their wives among each other although otherwise sharing politically conservative views Marx and other socialists had never proposed anything as silly as that the personal property or things one uses should be socialized they were referring to the ownership of capital I.E the Means of production that enable an owner to produce Commodities that were socially undesirable and to impose on the worker his conditions because he the owner gave him work

as a reaction against socialist demands the professors in political economy asserted that property was a natural right inherent in human nature and that it had existed as long as human society attending several courses on economic history in 1918 and 1919 I Heard two at the time outstanding professor's lecture in all seriousness that Capital was not characteristic of capitalism alone but that even the Primitive tribes who used cowy shells as a means of exchange thus proved that they had Capital Ergo that capitalism was as old as mankind their example from primitive peoples was actually badly chosen

we know now even better that the most primitive peoples had no private property except in the things that Served their immediate personal needs such as cloth jewelry tools Nets arms and weapons in fact most of the classical accounts of the origin and function of private property have taken for granted that in nature all things were held in common the views of anthropologists I have presented in the anatomy of human destructiveness even the Church fathers indirectly accepted this view according to them property was both the Consequence and the social remedy for the sin of covetousness that

came with the fall of Man in other words private property was a result of the Fall just as was male domination over women and the conflict between man and nature it is useful to distinguish between various concepts of property that are sometimes confused first there is the view of property as an AB absolute right over an object living or non-living regardless Of whether the owner has done anything to produce it or whether he inherited it received it as a gift or inheritance or acquired it by theft aside from the latter point which requires certain qualifications

both in the relations between nations and the laws in Civil Society the Great Law systems of Rome and of the modern State speak of property in this sense possession is always guaranteed by national or international law law I.E fundamentally By the violence that enforces the law a second concept particularly popular in the philosophy of the 18th century Enlightenment stresses that one's title to possess something depends on the effort one has made to create it characteristic is John Lock's view that if one adds one's labor to something that at this point is nobody's property race nus

it becomes one's own property but Lock's emphasis on one's productive part in establishing property originally Loses most of its significance by his additional qualification that the title to property one has established could be freely transferred to others who had not worked for it lock apparently needed this qualification because otherwise he would have run into the difficulty that workers could claim the products of their work as their property a third concept of property which transcends the aforementioned essential legal Concepts and is based on The meaning of property for man metaphysically and spiritually comes from those promulgated

by Hegel and Marx for Hegel in his philosophy of right sections 41 and 45 property was necessary because a person must translate his freedom into an external sphere in order that he may achieve his ideal existence since property was the first embodiment of freedom and so is in itself a substantive end well legal statement may sound at superficial Reading to be nothing but a rationalization for the sacredness of private property it is indeed much more although space does not permit an exposition of hegel's philosophy that is necessary for a full understanding Marx formulated the problem

entirely ad personam and without any philosophical mystification as with Hegel property was for him an externalization of the human will but as long as the property created was not his but the OWN owners of the Means of production as long as man was alienated from his own work property could not be his property only when Society was organized in a common Enterprise where the full development of the individual depended on the full development of all mine or thine were meaningless Concepts in such a community labor itself I.E unalienated labor note Marx's attitude toward unalienated labor

remains contradictory sometimes he seems to consider unalienated labor the Highest achievement of life but his final conclusion is that free time and the unalienated use of it are the supreme goal of life end of note labor itself I.E unalienated labor would become pleasureful and possession aside from the objects that one used an absurdity everybody would receive not according to the amount of work he did but according to his needs needs here of course real needs of man and not synthetic damage needs suggested to him By industry a radically different distinction is that between property for

use functional property and property for possession non-functional although there are many blendings of these two types in German the difference between the two kinds of properties is made clear by the use of two different words bits and AUM Bitz comes from ziton and means literally that upon which one sits it refers to that which one controls Legally and factually but it is not related to one's own productive action AUM on the other hand is different while a is the Germanic root of habin to have it has changed its meaning in the course of many centuries

so that Meister ehart could translate it already in the 13th century as the German equivalent of the Latin word for property proprias proper corresponds to anen it means that which is particular of a person as in proper name entum equals Proprias property refers then to all that is particular of a person as a specific individual his own body the things that he uses daily and to which he gives some of his individuality by this daily acquaintance even his tools and Abode all that forms his constant surroundings it is perhaps difficult for a person living in

today's cybernetic society in which everything is obsolete in a short time and even if it is not it will eventually be exchanged for Something newer to appreciate the personal character of the things of daily use in using them one imparts something of his life and of his personality to them they are not lifeless sterile or changeable things anymore that this is true has been clearly demonstrated in the custom of many earlier cultures by no means only primitive to put in a person's grave the very things of his personal and daily property the equivalent in modern

Society is a person's last will in Testament which may have its consequences for years after his death but his objects are not his personal things but precisely the impersonal private property he owned such as money land rights and so forth we can conclude then that the most fundamental difference is that between personal and private property which essentially is the same as that between functional and Nonfunctional dead property this difference is by far more fundamental than that between private and public property since as many many examples have shown the legal form of a public or national

or socialized property can be just as coercive and alienating as private property provided it is managed by bureaucrats who only in name but not in fact represent the interests of the workers and employees functional and dead property Appear often in their pure form but they are frequently Blended as we can easily see in the following examples the most most Elementary example is the body the body is the only property everybody has it is as it were a natural property for the infant as Freud is so brilliantly shown the excrements are probably experienced as a still

more extreme form of possession they are his the product of his body he gets rid of them but need not fear this Loss too much because every day replenishes the loss of the previous day but the body in contrast is not only a possession it is also an instrument which we use to satisfy our needs and furthermore it changes according to the use we make of it if we do not use our muscles they become weaker flabbier even to the extreme point of becoming unusable on the contrary our body becomes stronger and healthier the more

it is used of course within certain Limits in the case of having a house or a piece of land the situation is different because we deal here with a social category and not with a natural one as is the case with the body let us think of a nomadic tribe they did not own land they lived on a piece of land for a while used it built their tents or huts on it and after a while abandoned it the land was not their private property nor was it communal property it was not property at all

but an object of Use that was theirs only in the very restricted sense that they used it the same holds true for tools such as fishing nets Spears axes and so on they were possessions only in as much as they were used the same principle exists in certain agricultural cooperatives today where the individual does not own land I.E where he cannot sell it and has a right to it only as long and to the extent to which he cultivates it among many primitive cultures without Private property the same principle applies to the relationship of man

to woman and to the institution of marriage a relationship is socially recognized as marriage as long as the man and the woman love each other want each other and want to stay together when the relationship loses this function each one is free to leave because no one has the other in contrast with regard to institutional property the law states That my house or my land or my tools or my wife or my children are my property that I have them and it does not matter whether I care for them in fact it is my right

to destroy everything that is my property I can burn my house or a painting even if it is a unique work of art I do not owe an account to anybody for what I do with what is mine This legal right is effective because the state supports my claim with its power in the course of history the concepts of Property rights over wives and children and the corresponding laws have changed today to kill one's wife is a crime that is punished as murder to kill one's child is also considered a crime but endless cruelties and

brutalities by which parents assault their children is within the exercise of their legitimate Authority I.E property rights unless it goes to extremes that cannot be ignored nevertheless in one's relationship to his wife and children There have always been elements trans sending pure possession they were living beings they were living in close contact with their Master he needed them and they gave him pleasure hence there was also an element of functional property in addition to Legal property property in the form of capital is the extreme form of legal possession property it could be said that capital

is not different from a tool for instance an ax that its owner uses but in the case of The axe it becomes valuable only by it's serving its owner's skill I.E as functional property in the case of capital the owner has it even if he does nothing with it it remains valuable even if it is not invested but if the owner invests it he does not have to use his skill or make any commensurate effort to bring him profit the same holds true for the oldest form of capital land my legal right that makes me

the owner permits me to gain profit from it Without making any effort I.E without doing any work myself it is for this reason that non-functional property may also be called Dead property dead or nonfunctional property has its legitimacy in conquest or in law but the law itself is backed up by force and in this sense the difference between conquered property and legal property is only relative also in the case of legal possession Force con institutes right Because the state guarantees my property right by force of which the state has the Monopoly man cannot exist without

having but he can exist very well with purely functional having and has existed so for the first plusus 40,000 years of his history since he emerged as Homo sapiens sapiens indeed he can only as I shall argue later only exist sanely if he has mainly functional property and a minimum of dead property Functional property is an existential and actual need of man institutional property satisfies pathological need conditioned by certain socioeconomic circumstances man must have a body shelter tools weapons vessels these things are necessary for his biological existence there are other things that he needs for

his spiritual existence such as ornaments and objects of decoration briefly artistic and sacred objects and the means to produce them they can be Property in the sense that an individual uses them exclusively but they are functional property with an increase in Civilization functional property in things increases the individual may have several suits or dresses a house labor saving devices radio and television machines record players and recordings books tennis rackets a pair of ski Keys all these possessions need not be different from those functional Possessions that exist in primitive cultures they need not be but they

often are the change of function happens at the point where possession ceases to be an instrument for greater aliveness and productivity but is transformed into a means for Passive receptive consumption when having has primarily the function of satisfying the need for ever increasing consumption it ceases to be a condition for more being but is basically no different from keeping Possession this statement may sound strange since keeping and spending are opposites this is so indeed if we look only at the surface but seen dynamically they share one fundamental quality The Miser as well as the waster

is inwardly passive and unproductive neither is actively related to anything or anybody neither changes and grows in the process of living each only represents one of two different forms of non- Aliveness showing the distinction between possession having and use having needs to take into account the double meaning of use passive use the consumer and productive use the Artisan artist skilled worker functional having refers to productive use also possessive having can can have another function than that of gaining without having to make an effort in the first place dead property gives power to its owner in

a society centered around Property the one who has much property is usually politically powerful he appears to be a great man because he is a powerful man people admire his greatness because they prefer to admire to being afraid the rich and powerful man can influence others by intimidating them or by buying them hence he acquires the possession of fame or admiration Marx has given a beautiful analysis of this last Point that which exists for me through the medium of money that which I can pay for I.E which money can buy that I am the possessor

of the money my own power is as great as the power of money the properties of money are my own the possessors properties and faculties what I am and can do is therefore not at all determined by my individuality I am ugly but I can buy the most beautiful woman for myself consequently I am not ugly for The effect of ugliness its power to repel is annulled by money as an individual I am lame but money provides me with 24 legs therefore I am not lame I am a detestable dishonorable unscrupulous and stupid man but

my money is honored and so also is its possessor money is the highest good and so its possessor is good besides money saves me the trouble of being dishonest therefore I am presumed honest I am stupid but since money is the real Mind of all things how should its possessor be stupid moreover he can buy talented people for himself and is not he who has power over the talented more talented than they I who can have through the power of money everything for which the human heart longs do I not possess all human abilities does

not my money therefore transform all my incapacities into their opposites if money is the bond which binds me to human life and Society to me And which links me with nature and man is it not the bond of all bonds is it not therefore also the universal agent of separation it is the real means of both separation and Union the galvano chemical power of society since money as the existing and active concept of value confounds and exchanges everything it is the universal confusion and transposition of all things the inverted world the confusion and transposition of

all natural and Human qualities he who can purchase bravery is brave though a coward money is not exchanged for a particular quality a particular thing or a specific human faculty but for the whole objective world of man and nature thus from the standpoint of its possessor it exchanges every quality and object for every other even though they are contradictory it is the fraternization of incompatibles it forces contraries to Embrace let us assume man to be man and his relation to the world to be a human one then love can be exchanged for love trust for

trust Etc if you wish to enjoy art you must be an artistically cultivated person if you wish to influence other people you must be a person who really has a stimulating and encouraging effect upon others every one of your relations to man and to nature must be a specific expression corresponding to the object of your will Of your real individual life if you love without evoking love in return I.E if you are not able by the manifestation of yourself as a loving person to make yourself a beloved person then your love is impotent and a

misfortune these considerations lead to the conclusion that the conventional classification of property in private and public nationalized or socialized property is insufficient and even misleading what matters most is whether The property is functional and hence non- exploitive or whether it is dead exploitive property even if the property belongs to the state or even if it belongs to all those who work in the factory it may give the command over others to the bureaucrats who control production in fact purely functional properties such as objects for use were never considered by Marx and other socialists as private

property that Should be socialized nor does it matter whether the functional property is exactly equal for everybody this concern with equality of property was never one of the Socialists it is in actuality deeply rooted in the spirit of property that engendering Envy looks for the avoidance of any inequality because it would generate Envy the central issue is whether possession furthers the activity and aliveness of an individual or whether it paralyzes his activity and Furthers indolence sloth and unproductivity 16 on the psychology of having with this last remark we enter into the discussion of having as

a mental and effective phenomenon speaking about functional property first it is clear that I can own no more than I can reasonably use this coupling of owning and using has several consequences one my activity is constantly stimulated because having Only what I use I am constantly stimulated to be active two the greediness to possess avarice can hardly develop because I can only wish to have the amount of things that fit my capacity to use them productively three I can hardly develop Envy since it would be useless to Envy another for what he has when I

am busy using what I have and four I am not worried by the fear of losing what I have since functional property is easily Replaceable institutional possession is an entirely different experience it is aside from functional having and being the other Elementary mode of experience of oneself and the world these two modes of experience are to be found in almost everybody rare are those who do not experience having at all far more numerous are those for whom it is almost the only experience they know most people are characterized by The particular blending of the having

and being mode in their character structure yet simple as the concept and word having seems to be to describe the experience of the having mode is difficult especially because such a description can succeed only if the reader responds not only intellectually but tries to mobilize his effective experience with having perhaps the most helpful approach to the understanding of having in the nonfunctional sense is to Recall one of the most significant insights of Freud he found that after the infant goes through a phase of mere passive receptivity followed by one of aggressive exploitative receptivity the child

before it reaches maturity goes through a phase that Freud designated as the anal erotic phase which often remains dominant in the development of a person and leads to the development of the anal character in this context it is of Little importance that Freud believed a special phase of the libido development was primary and that character formation was secondary whereas in my opinion as well as in that of authors closer to Freud like Eric Ericson the relation is in the reverse what matters is the view that the predominant orientation toward possession is seen by Freud as

the period before the achievement of full maturity and as pathological if it Remains permanent in other words for Freud the person exclusively concerned with having and possession is an erotic mentally sick person this point of view may have been a bombshell within a society that is based on private property and whose members experience themselves and their relationship to the world predominantly in terms of possession yet as far as I know no one protested against this Attack on the highest values of Bourgeois Society while Freud's modest attempts to DD demonize sex were met with a howl

by all Defenders of decency it is not easy to explain this paradox was the reason that scarcely anybody connected individual psychology with social psychology was it that the Supreme moral value of ownership was so Undisputed that nobody picked up the challenge or was it that Freud's attack on middle Class sexual Moors was so bitterly scorned because the attack served as a defense against one's own hypocrisy while the Public's attitude toward money and possessions was completely genuine and no aggressive defense was needed however this may be there was no doubt that Freud believed that possessiveness as

such I.E having was an unhealthful orientation if it was dominant in an adult person he brought to bear several kinds Of data to establish his theory first of all those Rich data in which excrements were symbolically equated with money possession and dirt there is indeed ample linguistic folkloric and mythical data to bear this out Freud had already in a letter to fly of December 22nd 1897 Associated money and miserliness with feces in his classic paper character and anal eroticism 1908 he added more examples to this symbolic identity the connections between the Complexes of interest in

money and of defecation which seem so dissimilar appear to be the most extensive of all every Doctor Who has practiced psychoanalysis knows that the most refractory and long-standing cases of what is described as habitual constipation in neurotics can be cured by that form of treatment this is less surprising if we remember that function has shown itself similarly amenable to hypnotic Suggestion but in psychoanalysis one only achieves this result if one deals with the patient's money complex and induces them to bring it into Consciousness with all its connections it might be supposed that the Neurosis is

here only following an indication of common usage in speech which calls a person who keeps too careful a hold on his money dirty or filthy but this explanation would be far too superficial in reality wherever Archaic modes of thought have predominated or persist in the ancient civilizations in myths fairy tales and superstitions in unconscious thinking in dreams and in neosis money is brought into the most intimate relationship with dirt we know that the gold which the devil gives his paramor turns into excrement after his departure and the devil is certainly nothing else than the personification

of the repressed unconscious instinctual life we also Know about the Superstition which connects the finding of treasure with defecation and everyone is familiar with the figure of the of duckets Dukat and Shyer indeed even according to ancient Babylonian Doctrine gold is the feces of Hell Mammon equals elu Mammon thus in following the usage of language Neurosis here as elsewhere is taking words in their original significant sense and where it appears to be using a word figuratively it is usually simply Restoring its old meaning it is possible that the contrast between the most precious substance known

to men and the most worthless which they reject as waste matter refu has led to this specific identification of gold with feces a few words of comment are indicated in the Babylonian notion that gold is the feces of Hell the connection is made between gold feces and death in Hell meaning the world of the Dead the most valuable object is feces and this Brings together the notion of money dirt and the dead the last of the two paragraphs quoted here is very revealing of Freud's dependency on the thinking of his day seeking the reason for

the symbolic identity of gold and feces he proposes the hypothesis that their identity may be based on the very fact of their radical contrast gold being the most precious and fees the most worthless substance known to man Freud ignores the Other possibility that gold is the most precious substance for civilization whose economy is generally based on gold but that this holds by no means for those primitive societies for which gold may not have had any great value more importantly while the pattern of his so Society suggests that man think of gold as the most precious

substance he may unconsciously carry a notion that gold is dead sterile like salt without life except when used in Jewelry that it is a massed labor meant to be hoarded the foremost example of possession without function can one eat gold can one make anything grow with gold except when it has been transformed into Capital this dead sterile aspect of gold is shown in the myth of King Midas he was so avaricious that his wish was granted that everything he touched became gold eventually he had to die precisely because one cannot live from gold in This

myth is a Clear Vision of the sterility of gold and it is by no means the highest value as Freud assumed Freud was too much a son of his time to be aware of the negative value of money and possession and hence of the critical implications of his concept of the the anal character which I discussed above regardless of the merits of Freud's scheme of libido development his findings about the receptive and possessive stages as one of the earliest Stages of human development make much sense the first years in the child's life are necessarily a

period during which the infant is not capable of taking care of itself to form the surrounding world according to its wishes under its own powers it is forced either to receive to snap match or to possess because it cannot yet produce thus the category of having is a necessary transitional stage in the child's Development but if possessiveness Remains the dominant experience in the adult it indicates that he is not achieved the goal of normal development to productivity but has become stuck in the experience of having because of this failure in his development here as with

other orientations what is normal at an early stage of evolution becomes pathological if it occurs at a later stage possessive having is based on the Reduction of the capacity for productive activity this reduction can be traced to many factors by productive activity I understand the free active expression of one's faculties not the actions motivated by instincts or by the compulsive need to act in certain ways this is not the place to take up this discussion suffice it to say here that we must look for factors such as early intimidation lack of stimulation over pampering both

individually and Socially but the sequence also goes the other way round the having orientation and its satisfaction weakens the effort and eventually the capacity to make productive efforts the more a person has the less is he attracted to making active efforts having and inner laziness ultimately form a vicious circle reinforcing ing each other let us look at an example of a person whose total orientation is one of having The Miser the most obvious object of possession for him is money and its material equivalents such as land houses movable property Etc most of his energy is

directed toward keeping it more by Saving and non-use rather than by business activities and speculation he experiences himself as if he were a fortress nothing must leave it hence nothing must be spent beyond what is absolutely necessary and what this absolutely Necessary is depends on the degree of his miserliness it is exceptional though not rare that a person would deprive himself of all amenities of life such as pleasant food nice clothing and decent housing in order to reduce his expenses to almost nothing the average person is puzzled why a person should deprive himself of all

enjoyments but one must not forget that this is not really the case the Meiser finds the greatest enjoyment precisely in the experience of his possession to have is for him a sweeter pleasure than Beauty love or any sensuous or intellectual pleasure the rich Miser presents a picture that is sometimes less obvious he may even spend millions in philanthropy or for art because it is an expense that aside from tax advantages is demanded by his social status and because of the publicity value of a Favorable image but he may go to Great Lengths to set up

a control system that ensures him against any unnecessary expenditure of postage or he may make compulsive efforts to prevent his workers losing even one minute of their working time Bennett even reports that Henry Ford the founder of the automobile Dynasty wore socks until they could hardly be mended anymore and being afraid of his wife secretly buying new Socks in a store changed them in his car and threw away the old ones on the way The Miser is not only driven by the passion to save things but equally by that of saving energy feelings thought or

anything else that one can have for him energy is a fixed amount which he has and which cannot be replenished hence every expenditure of energy that is not absolutely necessary must be avoided because it diminishes his stock of it He avoids unnecessary physical efforts does everything in the shortest possible way usually he works out pedantic orderly methods for maximal reduction of energy consumption this attitude often becomes manifest in his sexual behavior this manifestation is obviously to be found mostly among men to him semen is the most precious product but limited in quantity whatever is spent

of it is lost forever that he knows intellectually That this is not so has little effect on the way he feels about it therefore he must reduce sexual intercourse to a minimum in order to lose only a minimum of semen I have known quite a number of men who had worked out a system to achieve the optimal compromise between the demands of saving and of Health which they thought Demands a certain amount of sexual activity this complex is sometimes at the root of male impotence in the same way The Miser Tends to save words feelings

and thoughts he does not want to spend energy in feeling or thinking he needs this energy for the necessary and unavoidable tasks of life he remains cold and indifferent to the joys and Sorrows of others even his own as a substitute for a live experience he substitutes the memory of past experiences these memories are a precious possession and often he goes over them in thought as he would count His money his cattle or his industrial stocks in fact the memory of past feelings or experiences is the only form in which he is in touch with

his own experiences he is feeling little but he is sentimental sentimental being used here in the sense of feelingless feelings the thought of or the Daydreams of feelings rather than felt feelings it is a well-known fact that many possessive cold and even cruel people and the three Belong Together who are Not moved by human suffering that is real can shed tears when a movie presents one of those constellations that they remember from their own childhood or that they think of in Daydreams we have so far ignored the differences in the objects possessed along with the

respective difference in the experience of possessing them probably the most important difference is between non-living and living objects non-living objects money land And jewelry do not oppose their owner the only opposition could come from social and political forces that threaten the safe and secure possession of property the most important guarantee for this security is the law and the exercise of force by the state which make it effective those whose inner security is by and large based on possession are necessarily conservative and Ardent Opponents of movements that want to reduce the state's Monopoly of force for

those whose security rests on the possession of living beings especially of human beings the situation is more complex they too are dependent on the state's capacity of enforcing the law but they are also confronted with the resistance of the human being to being possessed to being transformed into a thing that can be had and controlled this statement may be Questioned by some they will point out the fact that millions of people are satisfied with being ruled in fact that they prefer control to freedom in a escape from Freedom 1941 I attempted myself to point to

this fear of freedom and to the attraction of unfreedom but the apparent contradiction is not insoluble to be free rather than to have security is frightening to anyone who has not acquired the courage for the adventure of being he is willing to give Up his freedom if his coercion is made to appear as non-coercion if the controller is given the features of a benign father if he feels he is not a thing controlled but a loved child guided but where this disguise is not used and the object of possession is aware of what happens to

him his first reaction is that of resistance in all forms and with all means the child resists with the weapons of the helpless sabotage and obstruction more Specifically his weapons are bed weding constipation temper tantrums and so on the helpless classes react sometimes by sabotage or inefficiency but as history shows Often by Frank rebellions and revolutions which are the birth Pains of new developments whatever form the fight against domination takes it has a deep influence on the one who wants to control he must develop the passionate striving to control others and this Drive becomes a

passion charged with lust the attempt to possess have human beings necessarily leads to the development of sadism one of the ugliest and most perverted of passions the ultimate object object of having is to have oneself I have myself means I am full with myself I am what I have and I have what I am the true representative of this type of person is the full-fledged narcissist he is filled only with Himself he transforms the whole world into something he owns he is not interested in anything or anybody outside himself except as objects to be incorporated

into his sphere of possessions a mode of experience that is fundamentally akin to that of having is consuming again we can easily distinguish between functional rational and nonfunctional irrational consumption if I eat because my Hunger indicates my body's need for food or Because I enjoy food my eating is functional and rational in the sense that it serves the healthful operation of my entire organism including my educated taste but if I overeat out of greed depression or anx xiety my eating is irrational it harms and does not further me physiologically or mentally this holds true for

all consumption which is rooted in greed and has an obsessional character in avarice drug addiction in the consumerism of today And for sexual consumption what appears today as a great pleasure producing sexual passion is actually only an expression of greed an attempt to devour each other it is an attempt of two people or one of two to to take full possession of the other people sometimes describe their most Ardent sexual experiences in words such as we fell upon each other indeed they do they fall upon each other like hungry Wolves and the basic mood is

that of Hostile possessiveness and not that of joy not to speak of love to fill oneself up with people food or other things is a more archaic form of possession and having in the latter case the object I have can still be taken away from me by Superior Force trickery and so on my possession requires a social situation that guarantees my title if I inject the object I want to keep it is safe from all interference nobody can rob me of what I have Swallowed this first type of having can be clearly seen in the

infant's attempt to take things into its mouth this is his first way of securely having but of course as far as physical objects are concerned the method of injection is extremely limited strictly speaking it can occur only with objects that are edible and not harmful to the organism cannibalism may have one of its roots here if I believe that the body of a man especially of a strong and brave man Gives strength eating it would be the archaic equivalent of acquiring a slave but there is a type of consumption that is not necessarily by mouth

the best example is the private automob mile it can be argued that such is functional property and for this reason not equivalent to dead possession this would be true if the private car were really functional but it is not it does not stimulate or activate any of Man's powers it is a distraction enables a Person to run away from himself produces a false sense of strength helps to form a sense of identity based on the brand of car the man drives it prevents him from walking and thinking is sufficiently exacting to make a concentrated conversation

impossible and stimulates competition one would need to write a book in order to give a full description of the irrational and pathogenic function of the type of consumption that the private automobile Represents to sum up nonfunctional hence pathogenic consumption is similar to having both types of experience weaken or even destroy man's productive development deprive him of aliveness and transform him into a thing I hope the experience of having and nonfunctional consumption will still become clearer as we go on contrasting it with its opposite the experience of being part six 17 from having to well-being if

well-being in the sense defined in the beginning of this book functioning well as a person not as an instrument is the supreme goal of one's efforts two specific ways stand out that lead to the attainment of this goal breaking through one's narcissism and breaking through the property structure of one's existence narcissism is an orientation in which all one's interest and passion Are directed to one's own person one's Body Mind feelings interests and so forth indeed like Narcissus the narcissistic person could be said to be in love with himself if infatuation may be Called Love for

the narcissistic person only he and what concerns him are fully real what is outside what concerns others is real only in a superficial sense of perception that is to say it is real for one's senses and for one's intellect but It is not real in a deeper sense for our feeling or understanding he is in fact aware only of what is outside in as much as it affects him hence he has no love no compassion no no rational objective judgment the narcissistic person has built an invisible wall around himself he is everything the world is

nothing or rather he is the world the extreme examples of almost total narcissism are the newborn infant and the insane person they both are Incapable of relating to the world actually the insane person is not totally unrelated as it was assumed by Freud and others he has withdrawn the infant cannot withdraw because it has not yet opened up anything beyond a solipsistic orientation Freud referred to this Difference by distinguishing between primary and secondary narcissism However the fact has been neglected that the normal adult can also be narcissistic even though not to the Degree to be

found in these extremes often he shows his narcissism quite openly although he is not aware of being narcissistic he thinks speaks and acts only in reference to himself showing no really genuine interest in the world outside on the contrary the great man finds himself so interesting that it is only logical that he wants us to enjoy the manifestations of his greatness if he is intelligent witty Charming Powerful rich or famous the average person will take no exception to his narcissistic exhibitionism many people however often try to hide their narcissism by being particularly modest and humble

or in the subtle form of being concerned with religious occult or political matters that all seem to point beyond the private interest narcissism can hide in so many disguises that it can be said to be the most difficult of all psychic Qualities to discover and then only as a result of hard work and vigilance yet if one does not discover and reduce it considerably the further way to self-completion is blocked similar yet quite different from narcissism are egotism and selfishness the results of the property or having mode of existence a person living in this mode

is not necessarily very narcissistic he may have broken through the shell of his Narcissism have an adequate appreciation of reality outside himself not necessarily be in love with himself he knows who he is and who the others are and can well distinguish between subjective experience and reality nevertheless he wants everything for himself has no pleasure in giving in Sharing in solidarity in cooperation in love he is a closed Fortress suspicious of others eager to take and most reluctant to give he represents by and Large the anal hoarding character he is lonely unrelated and his strength

lies in what he has and in the security of keeping it on the other hand the very narcissistic person is by no means necessarily selfish egocentric or property oriented he can be generous giving and tender although all these characteristics must be qualified by the fact that to him the other person is not fully experienced as real yet one can easily observe very Narcissistic persons whose spontaneous impulses are generous and giving rather than hoarding and holding since the two orientations narcissism and selfishness are rarely holding differentiated we must accept that for growth a double breakthrough is

necessary that through one's narcissism and that through one's having orientation the first condition for overcoming one's selfishness lies in the capacity of being aware of it this is an Easier task than the awareness of one's narcissism because one's judgment is much less distorted one can recognize facts more easily and because it is less easy to hide of of course recognition of one's egocentricity is a necessary condition of overcoming it but by no means a sufficient one the second step to take is gaining an awareness of the roots of the having orientation such as one's sense

of powerlessness one's fear of Life one's fear of the uncertain One's distrust of people and the many other subtle roots that have grown together so thickly that it often is impossible to uproot them awareness of these roots is not sufficient condition either it must be accompanied by changes in practice first of all by loosening the grip that selfishness has over one by beginning to let go one must give up something share and go through the anxiety that these first Little Steps engender one will Discover then the fear of losing oneself that develops if one contemplates

losing things which function is props for one's sense of self this implies not only giving up some possessions but even more important having habits accustomed thoughts identification with one's status even phrases one is accustomed to hold on to as well as the image that others may have of oneself or that one hopes they have and tries to produce in brief if one tries to change routinized Behavior in all spheres of life from breakfast routine to sex routine in the process of trying to do so anxieties are mobilized and by not yielding to them confidence grows

that the seemingly impossible can be done and adventurousness grows this process must be accompanied by attempting to go out of oneself and to turn to others what does this mean something very simple if we put it into words one way of describing it is that Our attention is drawn to others to the world of nature of ideas of art of social and political events we become interested in the world outside of our ego in the literal meaning of Interest which comes from the Latin interessa I.E to be among or to be over there rather than

to be shut in within oneself this development of interest can be compared to a situation in which a person has seen and can describe a swimming pool he has spoken about it From the outside his description has been correct yet without interest but when he has jumped into the pool and when he has become wet and then speaks about the pool he speaks as a different person about a different pool now he and the pool are not opposing each other although they have not become identical either the development of Interest means to jump and not

to remain an outsider an observer a person separated from what he sees if a person has the will and the Determination to loosen the bars of his prison of narcissism and selfishness when he has the courage to tolerate the intermittent anxiety he experiences the first glimpses of joy and strength that he sometimes attains and only then a decisive new Factor enters into the Dynamics of the process this new experience becomes the decisive motivation for going ahead and following the path he has charted until then his own dissatisfaction and rational Considerations of all kinds can guide

him but these considerations can carry him only for a short while they will lose their power if the new element does not enter experience of well-being fleeting and small as it may be which feels so Superior to anything experience so far that it becomes the most powerful motivation for further progress one that becomes stronger in and of itself the further progress goes on to sum up once more awareness will practice tolerance Of fear and of new experience they are all necessary if transformation of the individual is to succeed at a certain point the energy and

direction of inner forces have changed to the point where an individual's sense of identity is changed too in the property mode of existence the motto is I am what I have after the Breakthrough it is I am what I do in the sense of unalienated activity or simply I am what I am [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] this concludes the reading of the art of Being by Eric FR forward copyright 1992 by Riner Funk this unabridged recording was published by arrangement with the Continuum International publishing Group Incorporated and was produced in 200 six by Blackstone audiobooks

Incorporated which holds the copyright neither this recording nor any portion of it may be Reproduced or used for any purpose without prior written authorization from Blackstone audio books this book was read by Raymond Todd if you would like to obtain a complete catalog of our titles or our monthly update telling you about new releases and our new collection of books on CD and MP3 CD call 1 1800 say book that's 1 800 729 2665 you may also obtain the same information from our award-winning website our address all one word is Www.blackstone.com