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Abstract

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What we call ‘science’ begins with a hypothesis, a theoretical proposal, followed by a series of repeatable experiments that attempt to prove or disprove the theory. Over time, assumptions about proof or truth become fixed. Dogma replaces inquiry, leading to social, educational, political, and profitable institutions built on what is believed to be ‘the truth.’

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“A misuse of memory,” Alan W. Anderson, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religions, summarized his eighteen-hour dialogue with J. Krishnamurti. “That is the root.” Couple this with Einstein’s protégé, David Bohm’s observation;

Joseph Chilton Pearce spoke and wrote passionately on the way medical-technological birth negatively impacts what was generally termed ‘bonding,’ the continued merging, shared meaning, and reciprocal dynamic imprinted during pregnancy and extended after. Bonding, in this primal meaning, is not simple affection. It is an identity-defining, and self-world view forming “experience,” not something abstracted by the intellect, as a name and social expectations. (see Pregnancy, Birth and Bonding and Bonding and the Intelligence of the Heart.)

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“Why, with a history so rich in noble ideals and lofty philosophies that reach for the transcendent, do we exhibit such abominable behaviors? Our violence toward ourselves and the planet is an issue that overshadows and makes a mockery of all our high aspirations. Sat Prem, a French writer transplanted to India following World War II, recently asked this question: “Why, after thousands of years and meditation, has human nature not changed one iota?” In the same vein, this book asks why, after two thousand years of Bible quoting, proselytizing, praying, hymn singing, cathedral building, witch burning, and missionizing has civilization grown more violent and efficient in mass murder?”

Compulsory schooling was designed to imprint conformity, obedience to authority, and negate creativity and personal sovereignty to domesticate our uniquely human nature, open-ended development, to fit into “the system.” This fundamental design has been intensified by surveillance technologies being seamlessly infused into the curriculum, every click from birth being mined, including every response, or its lack, in school. That is a lot of personal data gathered to domesticate more effectively.

Perhaps, you have had the personal experience of someone you trusted, a wife, close friend, a son, doctor, or business partner, doing ‘something’ that harmed you, even deeply, knowing what they were doing. I have, more than once. The feeling is betrayal.

If you can, I ask you to reincarnate that feeling of personal trust betrayed, or imagine what it must feel like, and magnify it, apply it to 7.9 billion people, each one just like yourself, just like your wife, husband, and precious son or daughter.

That, indeed, is the question.

First, we must distinguish between the virtual reality thought and imagination create and lived, embodied, direct perception with its own qualities and knowing. Nature intended us to live in this embodied, present, immediate state of direct ‘knowing,’ and use thought as a creative tool in the service of this, our true ground and nature. Love, compassion, empathy, wisdom, appropriateness, care, attention, joy, ecstasy, beauty, telepathic resonance, immanence (the sacred that permeates all of nature), feeling our interdependent-entanglement with all of nature, all abide in this realm and all these are absent in the dream we falsely consider to be ‘reality.’

Speaking with James W. Prescott today, now in his late 80s, after more than fifty years of passionate scientific research into the embodied roots of love and violence, I shared the essence of my last conversation with Ashley Montagu, of similar tenure, with over fifty books on being human.