“If the truth can be told so as to be understood, it will be believed.

Human history represents such a radical break with the natural systems of biological organization that preceded it, that it must be the response to a kind of attractor, or dwell point that lies ahead in the temporal dimension. Persistently Western religions have integrated into their theologies the notion of a kind of end of the world, and I think that a lot of psychedelic experimentation sort of confirms this intuition, I mean, it isn’t going to happen according to any of the scenarios of orthodox religion, but the basic intuition, that the universe seeks closure in a kind of omega point of transcendance, is confirmed, it’s almost as though this object in hyperspace, glittering in hyperspace, throws off reflections of itself, which actually ricochet into the past, illuminating this mystic, inspiring that saint or visionary, and that out of these fragmentary glimpses of eternity we can build a kind of map, of not only the past of the universe, and the evolutionary egression into novelty, but a kind of map of the future, this is what shamanism is always been about.

A shaman is someone who has been to the end, it’s someone who knows how the world really works, and knowing how the world really works means to have risen outside, above, beyond the dimensions of ordinary space, time, and casuistry, and actually seen the wiring under the board, stepped outside the confines of learned culture and learned and embedded language, into the domain of what Wittgenstein called “the unspeakable”, the transcendental presense of the other, which can be absanctioned, in various ways, to yield systems of knowledge which can be brought back into ordinary social space for the good of the community, so in the context of ninety percent of human culture, the shaman has been the agent of evolution, because the shaman learns the techniques to go between ordinary reality and the domain of the ideas, this higher dimensional continuum that is somehow parallel to us, available to us, and yet ordinarily occluded by cultural convention out of fear of the mystery I believe, and what shamans are, I believe, are people who have been able to de-condition themselves from the community’s instinctual distrust of the mystery, and to go into it, to go into this bewildering higher dimension, and gain knowledge, recover the jewel lost at the beginning of time, to save souls, cure, commune with the ancestors and so forth and so on.

Shamanism is not a religion, it’s a set of techniques, and the principal technique is the use of psychedelic plants. What psychedelics do is they dissolve boundaries, and in the presence of dissolved boundaries, one cannot continue to close one’s eyes to the ruination of the earth, the poisoning of the seas, and the consequences of two thousand years of unchallenged dominator culture, based on monotheism, hatred of nature, suppression of the female, and so forth and so on. So, what shamans have to do is act as exemplars, by making this cosmic journey to the domain of the Gaian ideas, and then bringing them back in the form of art to the struggle to save the world. The planet has a kind of intelligence, that it can actually open a channel of communication with an individual human being. The message that nature sends is, transform your language through a synergy between electronic culture and the psychedelic imagination, a synergy between dance and idea, a synergy between understanding and intuition, and dissolve the boundaries that your culture has sanctioned between you, to become part of this Gaian supermind, I mean I think it’s fairly profound, it’s fairly apocalyptic. History is ending. I mean, we are to be the generation that witnesses the revelation of the purpose of the cosmos. History is the shock wave of the eschaton. History is the shock wave of eschatology, and what this means for those of us who will live through this transition into hyperspace, is that we will be privileged to see the greatest release of compressed change probably since the birth of the universe. The twentieth century is the shudder that announces the approaching cataracts of time over which our species and the destiny of this planet is about to be swept.

If the truth can be told so as to be understood, it will be believed.

The emphasis in house music and rave culture on physiologically compatible rhythms and this sort of thing is really the rediscovery of the art of natural magic with sound, that sound, properly understood, especially percussive sound, can actually change neurological states, and large groups of people getting together in the presence of this kind of music are creating a telepathic community of bonding that hopefully will be strong enough that it can carry the vision out into the mainstream of society. I think that the youth culture that is emerging in the nineties is an end of the millenium culture that is actually summing up Western civilization and pointing us in an entirely different direction, that we’re going to arrive in the third millenium, in the middle of an archaic revival, which will mean a revival of these physiologically empowering rhythm signatures, a new art, a new social vision, a new relationship to nature, to feminism, to ego. All of these things are taking hold, and not a moment too soon.”

The Shamen & Terence McKenna

“Words are windows or they’re walls.

They sentence us, or set us free.

When I speak and when I hear,

Let the love light shine through me.

When I speak and when I hear,

Let the love light shine through me.”

Jenny Ebermann

 

The purpose: natural giving

The purpose of nonviolent communication is to help you to do what you already know how to do (because sometimes we forget because we have been educated to forget).

The purpose of this process is to connect in a way that makes natural giving possible.

When you take from me I feel so given to… {song on Natural Giving}

That quality of giving, that connection… is what the song is about.

Games we play: punishment and reward

Instead of playing the game of “making life wonderful”, we play “who’s right?”. It is a game where everybody loses. Still, we play it very often, nearly all the time.

That game involves two things: punishment (if you are wrong, you deserve to suffer) and reward (if you are right, you get reward).

What a diabolical game to educate people!

So, no more punishment, reward, guilt, shame, duty, obligation…

When the other is evil, violence emerges

We got off target thinking that human beings are innately evil. And so the corrective process is penitence: to bring about change when people behave in a way we do not like is to make people hate themselves for what they are doing!

So we started developing a language that cuts us off from life – the Jackal language. And makes it very easy to be violent. Domination cultures make violence enjoyable! The hero always kills somebody of beats them up….

The Jackal language

A language of moralistic judgements – who is right and who is wrong: “say you are sorry! (…) OK, I forgive you”.

A language that denies choice or responsibility for our actions: “I had to do it.”.

Everything we do out of punishment, fear, reward, to make people like us, out of guilt, duty, shame… everybody pays for.

Bringing about change…

To try to change or teach somebody about something just creates more problems.

If we cannot change and win, then are we doomed to give up or lose? There is another option. Not out of coercion. To give willingly!

The goal is not to impose change, but to get the quality of connection where everybody’s needs are met.

Expressing what we would like: observations, not judgements

What does he do that upsets you?

Asking for an observation, a concrete behavior, people often provide evaluations, an analysis that wrongness. Fact is confounded with opinion. Even if the judgement is accurate, it is an evaluation, not a description.

All we see is our enemy image. It obscures reality. We do not see the behavior anymore.

To observe without evaluating is the highest form of human intelligence.

For example, using the word “too”, which implies there is just a particular amount of something, then too much and too little, and they know exactly what it is…

Other example of judgement words: blame, insult, yell, refuse, …

“Please” and “thank you”

All you can hear is what human beings have always said: “please” and “thank you”

All the rest are tragic suicidal expressions of “please and thank you”

Tragic cause it decreases the likelihood that we get what we want, and it increases violence.

Two kinds of literacy: feelings and needs

We only judge whether it is serving life or not. Needs are the life seeking expression within us.

Exercise: “When you do A, I feel X”.

But X not as descriptions or judgements of other people (i.e. judged, criticized, ignored, betrayed, intimidated, used, manipulated).

Two not-to-do’s about feelings: “because I think” + “you”

After the feelings we do not go to the head (we stay in the heart). So, do not add “… because I think you…” cause then defensive aggressive reaction follows.

Do not attribute responsibility to the other person. Never say “you make me feel”. J culture is about manipulating people with guilt to bring about change in them.

4 typical disconnects: anger, depression, fear and guilt

Feelings stem from needs. But when the connection is lost, the following appear: anger, depression, fear and guilt. The first puts guilt on others, the last three puts it on the others.

Needs are not preferences

Needs do not specify the means to satisfy them.

Two power models: “with” and “over” people

Power with people: because it increases willing giving to us, to life.

Power over people: because to avoid punishment and get reward,

The nature desire to give is lost when we hear with J ears.

Hearing with giraffe ears: not submission, nor rebellion

No matter what structure you are in, you are always free to chose what you will.

Do not respond either with submission nor rebellion!

They speak about right versus wrong; you hear their poor expression of their needs.

Never hear an expectation, cause these are thoughts, not needs.

Expressing our unmet needs

All needs are universal. We are all created out of the same energy.

The strategies we have been educating for meeting the needs is what varies a lot.

Beware demanding needs that only you can meet (i.e. freedom).

I need: respect, acknowledgment, privacy, predictability, friendship, understood, heard, love…

When we put the other in our needs, we shrink the world: a need for love, not a need that you love me, but a strong preference that you love me.

Remember that the goal of this process is to meet needs without coercion.

Do you love me?

Being very clear about needs and requests:

Do you love me? Are you using the word love as a feeling? Yes. So, you mean am I feeling certain warmth, cause we use love as a need, not feeling. Do you love me? When? Now!? No, but try me again in a few moments.

Can you tell me what you mean by loving you? Can you tell me what you want me to do to meet your need for loving? You know! I am not sure I do.. Please can you tell me? It is hard to say in so many words… So imagine how hard it is for me to do it.

Do we want others to guess what we need before we can even articulate it?

Making requests: positive and action-based

Positive: Saying what we don’t want does not make clear what we want. We say what we do want, not what we don’t want. Plus, saying “not this” induces violence more easily, cause getting rid of makes violence seem attractive.

Action-based: very concrete requests, not “to be good, to love me, etc…” but to do this. “Let me… allow me… give me the freedom to be myself…”. And a request that the other can do something about it.

Requests, not demands

Be true. For instance: “do X, but please do as I request only if you can do so with the joy of a little child feeding a dog, but do not do if there is any fear of punishment or out of hope for rewards, nor guilt, shame, duty, obligation.·

Create trust. Otherwise, it will take the joy out of giving. So, if you request and others say they cannot, do not blame! “if you love me, why did you do that…?”. We cannot tell from how nicely is asked, we need to see how they treat us when we do not fulfil they requests.

I make a request, they hear a demand.

Try this out: “Sir, could you tell me how I could let you know what I was requesting so I would not sound as if I was telling you what you had to do?” Or “How can I express request to you without sounding as I am bossing you around?”

If they hear our requests as demands, they have two options: submission or rebellion. And so the connection is lost.

So, reflect, how we treat people when they do not do as we want…?!

If I request that you like what you don’t like, how are we going to understand each other?

And those who say “sure, I will do it”… Sooner or later, after giving in to hearing demands, people explode.

I think, therefore… 

To start with “I think…” is an error. I judge (and then lose the connection)

Never hear what people think, or expressed as thought.  Never hear a criticism.

Giraffes are not nice; don’t mistake nonviolence with being nice.

It is always better to wrongly guess a feeling or needs that to hear what people think.

Beware with “OK” as an answer

“OK” is usually bullshit. Why not saying “I am feeling uneasy with your OK. I wish I could but I don’t understand it. Could you spend a moment to tell me what you mean?”

I can only control what I hear, not how people respond.

Building up empathy through attention to feelings and needs

“Are you feeling X because you need Y?”

Take yourself out of other people’s needs: they can live without you!

If your attention is here (at the heart), you don’t need to do this out loud.

Pain: the solution by not trying to fix anything

Jackals try to fix people’s pain. They cannot stand it. They then cause more pain.

Don’t do anything that isn’t playing.

Self-full-ness, not self-less-ness.

Hold your sadness. She still needs more empathy.

Empathic connection is needed before education.

The solution will find us when the connection is there.

Anger: hear their needs

What they need is most likely not what they say.

Never put your “but” in the face of an angry person.

Enemy image prevent us.

No compromise is needed since everybody’s needs can be met. Giving in implies both parties pay the price.

No

How to say “no”. Do not say “no time”, “I can’t”, “not possible”.

No is a poor expression of a need.

Express your needs too.

Expressing apologies: sad, not bad!

Sad, not bad!

Sorry does not mean anything. And feeling wrong is useless.

More about helping out: just presence is required

Don’t tell me to have confidence in myself; tell me what to do to experience it!

Never say “that isn’t what I said”, but “thanks for telling me what you hear”.

We did not cause your pain and we don’t try/have to fix it.

Healing energy flows when we do nothing; just empathy is needed.

Empathy requires presence.

Doing nothing presently creates a precious connection.

We can then enjoy that despite/throughout the pain.

Finally: celebration!

Celebration is the fuel to stay giraffe in a jackal world.

Celebration comes from gratitude.

How a jackal expresses gratitude

But beware: Now praise, no complement. Never say thanks as a reward! Otherwise, trust in gratitude is lost.

If you say I am a kind person, you implies there are unkind people and you are the judge.

“You are X” as no information whatsoever.

Not what I am (praise), but what I did (appreciation)

How a jackal deals with gratitude

Gracias -> De nada…

Note that they have to deserve it…

So they are scared to receive gratitude…

How a giraffe expresses gratitude

First, concrete observation. Concretely bring attention to what he has done to make life more wonderful.

Second, concrete feeling. How we feel about the fact that he did that.

Third, concrete need. What need was fulfilled.

Final note

“It is our light, not our darkness, that scares us the most”

 

SUMMARY OF San Francisco Workshop 2000 BY

Marshal B. Rosenberg

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwXH4hNfgPg

 

(1) The classical split: Consciousness as a matter of the soul.. (but found in the pineal gland), in the old but still pervading dualism [Descartes].

(2) The neurobiological approach: Consciousness as emergence (whatever free miracle that means!) studied through the neural correlates of visual awareness [Koch]. Dismissing centuries of deep thought about the issue by means of showing off a complex network of neural connections that aims at intimidating anyone not familiar with the macaque visual system anatomy. A pragmatic approach which degrades consciousness to visual perception, at the same time that excludes necessary forces from other disciplines.

(3) The antiscientific reaction: Consciousness, yes, but never via scientific means (from ultra-reductionism and physicalism to the other side of the duality. There we all lose, and not to gain much in return).

(4) The pseudo-Maya argument: Consciousness is illusory [Dennett]. But then the door, my car, my wife, water, and everything is illusory too. And so, what insights do we learn from tagging them as an illusion apart from selling a few illusory books, perhaps wasting many illusory people’s reading time and cutting a few more trees from the illusory forests?

(5) The hard problem: Consciousness as a hard problem [Chalmers]. It looks very real! It looks very hard! So, face the bull, you chicken! An effort to grant consistency with science while departing from materialism, employing the notion of supervenience, and feeling at ease with a bit of dualistic salt and pepper. Admirable (rhetorics?) indeed!

(6) The progressive layers: Consciousness unfolding in levels. A serious approach [Damasio]: the proto-self (or homeostasis: I can breath and so don’t die), core consciousness (or feedback: I am aware of what I just did, and so I can tell myself from the world), extended consciousness (memory, prediction and my tendency towards timelessness) and collective consciousness (willing to die for my family, for my ideals, for my country, etc.. still very much in progress. In fact, may so-called human beings barely make it to level two..).

(7) The anthropological/historical perspective: Consciousness after bicameral men’s mind stopped doing what the voices told them to do [Jaynes]. Making the back-to-the-future exercise is always educative because, no matter how incredible this may sound, homo sapiens did not have iphones, democracies, fridges, nor most of what we see and do now, for most of their past existence. The rear-view mirror does not feel like the windshield, does it?

(8) The driver-vs-reporter experiment: Conscious decision comes later than the ramping of neural activity of that decision [Libet]. It is a remarkable finding. Perhaps puzzling. But, it makes sense, no?, since there are many possibilities but, at each moment, there is only one actuality, one determination… [let us invoke Whitehead’s help]

(9) The linguistic remark: Consciousness as the metaphor of the day: maps of consciousness (middle ages), layers of the subconscious (when geology was fashionable), reacting chemical components (when chemistry ruled the scientific thought), steam that needs to be released to the conscious (as the industrial revolution shined with trains), conscious computers (when we started using them all day long), consciousness as -well, some claim is– a network (in the era of internet and social media)… So, let us be humble and not think we got it right now, and the other poor ignorant people were just using petty images (cause that is how our mind works! [let us invoke Bergson’s help]). Or, the world is made of language [watch McKenna’s youtube videos]

(10) The holistic view: Consciousness already present in the atom [Bailey]: the rock is aware of the ground as it hits it. In fact, the metaphysical 3rd Law [Descartes] said it so clear that we missed it: action-reaction awareness all along!

(11) The AI fuzz: Consciousness in machines [Kurzweil]; and the singularity point, and the ultimate reverence to the computer mono-myth [talk to Campbell]…, and the recent quite good movie called ‘Transcendence’, etc, etc. We pretend we are so afraid of (or, alternatively, so excited about) machines taking over, that we do not realize that speciation has always taken place. So, evolve or stagnate! One more remark: yes, deep blue beated Kasparov, but very few computers can move like a child does. Embodied consciousness it is, after all!

(12) The QM buzz: Consciousness from unintuitive effects (microtubule quantum mechanics) or weird new laws (the quantum-gravity omelette) respectively [Penrose, Hameroff]. Why not? In fact, QM was one of the greatest conceptual and experimental leaps of the last century. We still simply do not wish to embrace it. We love science as long as it does not interfere with our belief system. We prefer billiard balls and molecule conformational changes than wave-function collapse and true uncertainty. May the nausea (noise) become real?

(13) The psychedelic trip: Consciousness and its manyfold states revealed directly through the drug experience, in particular, via mushrooms [McKenna]. Don’t be scared. All civilizations have their favorite drugs (which reveal what is important in them): ours has coffee breaks (caffeine to be alert and productive; ultimately, we are post industrial revolution fleshy machines), beer sessions (alcohol to disinhibit our wrapped up egos a little bit), chocolate (sweets to compensate for our unmet need for tenderness) and cigarettes (where thanatos finds a handful doses a day of habitual expression). Let me rephrase this: some drugs cause psychotic behavior in those who not take them.

(14) The dark pool of light: Consciousness as “what the fuck is this?” and Existence [Grossinger]. Dark Pool of Light is a personal, honest and monumental journey through the neuroscience, psycho-spiritual and psychic ranges about the crisis and future of consciousness. A light goes on, a light goes off, and that was not even a light…, Richard says to paraphrase modern science’s view on “the” topic.

(15) The spiritual evolution: Consciousness understood in the East. Joder! Yes, people beyond Istanbul said interesting things before we even knew how to make bread… Why do we systematically ignore the incommensurable tradition of India, China, etc? Bollywood and rice is more than the average academic knows about them… Sat-Chit-Ananda as Force-Consciousness-Bliss  [the Upanishads & Sri Aurobindo]. Kind of an upgrade to the Father-Son-HolySpirit trilogy, don’t you think? The Force that dynamizes Nature, Self Consciousness of the Absolute, and Delight of Existence (most likely I did not get it perfectly right; sorry for that). Merge the Vedas with the evolutionary synthesis of SriA and we have the greatest and most obvious realizations of all: consciousness is existence evolving for its own delight. And, as a corollary: man is a transitional being (i.e. if you are against creationists, then why don’t you embrace Darwin’s future prediction?). What is it? Ready (it sounds scary)? The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth.

 

 

“It is terrifying because the universe is so vast, our place so threatened, our time in this state so succinct. But it is our party and epiphany too because nothing really had to happen at all, ever, and certainly not us.

Take a chance. Deepen with everything here. With everyone. Everyone.

Explora the terror and wonder, to whatever degree you feel them, and at the same time, the sheer joy and beauty, the magnificence of this, in each other’s immaculate presences.

Allos this amazing situation to sink in. We will die, but are alive at this very moment.

We are each individual, unique, aware, on a planet, in a circumstance we didn’t create, at least not by anything we consciously recall, that has no context to explain it, or us. We are strangers met in a ceremony that transcends us, we are bound by ties that cannot sever. We made it, we got in, and we’re still here.

Then I am asking you to invite and include those who have passed. Allow them to be here too.

Don’t sabotage it. Don’t sabotage yourself. It is not impossible. It is our choice and their choice too. Because if existence is possible, a wolrd of the living and the dead is also possible. Not only possible but necessary.

Have this crazy belief in us. Believe it not with your mind but with your whole being.

Go into that place where no contrivance can help you, where a noviece gets bitten or killed, or comes away with the whisker of a jaguar and the jaguar’s loyalty and keepsake forever. In this life and after this life. Only it is not a jaguar. We all know this, at our core, beyond what we tell ourselves we believe or don’t believe. ”

Richard Grossinger

“It is not merely the nature of some of his purposes which have endangered man, but purpose itself. Conscious purpose, which aims toward the achievement of specific goals, does not usually take into account the circular structure of cause and effect which characterises the universe, and this cognitive failure leads to disruption.

This is a gloomy analyses, for surely purposefulness, which I take to be a concomitant of consciousness, must have been strangle selected for during much of the 3,000,000 years of man’s span on Earth. Man’s purposefulness could hardly have endangered most of the ecosystems in which he participated as a hunter and gatherer. Moreover, the foresight which forms a component of his purposefulness must have contributed substantially to his survival. A trait that has been adaptive for so long cannot easily be renounced; indeed if purposefulness is a concomitant of consciousness, its renunciation is impossible.”

Roy A. Rappaport

“I was interested in deconstructing it, pinning down what science is actually saying about consciousness, not what it says it is saying or thinks it is saying – because it doesn’t know what consciousness is but likes to pretend that it does, especially to itself.

Scientists and most laypeople will tell you informally that they get what the universe is (more or less) and what we are. Everything not presently accounted for is otherwise under wraps; at least they know what it is supposed to be and how it’s eventually going to turn out.

It takes only a moment’s consideration to realise that that is utter bullshit. We don’t know squat about the universe, and our commoditisation of reality is a hoax.

(…) Yet consciousness is outside corporate science, which not only claims but defines the universe that can be claimed by any rival party – and that universe is all and only and forever physical-material (sustancia) down to its cells, molecules, quarks, bosons, etc.

(…) Tehcnology per se is one thing – we can engage in it without enlisting as well in the belief system that generated it – but ideological science requires that we can’t exist as us (chemicals have no “us” in them), so we can’t exist at all.”

Richard Grossinger

“A variation on the oldest form of thought. It is our view that genetic axis and profound structure are above all infinitely reproducible principles of tracing. All of tree logic is a logic of tracing and reproduction. In linguistics as in psychoanalysis, its object is an unconscious that is itself representative, crystallized into codified complexes, laid out along a genetic axis and distributed within a syntagmatic structure. Its goal is to describe a de facto state, to maintain balance in intersubjective relations, or to explore an unconscious that is already there from the start, lurking in the dark recesses of memory and language. It consists of tracing, on the basis of an overcoding structure or supporting axis, something that comes ready-made. The tree articulates and hierarchizes tracings; tracings are like the leaves of a tree.

The rhizome is altogether different, a map and not a tracing. Make a map, not a tracing. The orchid does not reproduce the tracing of the wasp; it forms a map with the wasp, in a rhizome. What distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real. The map does not reproduce an unconscious closed in upon itself; it constructs the unconscious. It fosters connections between fields, the removal of blockages on bodies without organs, the maximum opening of bodies without organs onto a plane of consistency. It is itself a part of the rhizome. The map is open and connectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification. It can be torn, reversed, adapted to any kind of mounting, reworked by an individual, group, or social formation. It can be drawn on a wall, conceived of as a work of art, constructed as a political action or as a meditation. Perhaps one of the most important characteristics of the rhizome is that it always has multiple entryways; in this sense, the burrow is an animal rhizome, and sometimes maintains a clear distinction between the line of flight as passageway and storage or living strata (cf. the muskrat). A map has multiple entryways, as opposed to the tracing, which always comes back to the same.”

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari