Chapter Eight
The relevance of observations from LSD psychotherapy, experiential approaches to self-exploration, and various forms of spiritual practice exceeds the narrow limits of psychiatry, psychology, and psychotherapy. Many of the new insights are related to phenomena of critical importance that may be relevant for the future of the human race and life on this planet. They involve a new understanding of the forces that influence history, that contribute to the dynamics of sociopolitial movements, and that participate in creative achievements of the human spirit in art, philosophy, and science. This material also throws new light on many obscure chapters of the history of religion by allowing a clear distinction between genuine mysticism and true spirituality, on the one hand, and mainstream religions and the established church, on the other.
These are obviously topics of enormous scope and an adequate treatment of all the areas involved would require a separate volume. Here I would like to offer a very general outline of the new insights into a problem that is of critical importance for all of us—the current global crisis. For this purpose, I will first review some of the new material related to the perinatal and transpersonal dimensions of human history and then focus more specifically on the issues concerning the present situation in the world and the future of consciousness evolution.
One of the central themes of human history is that of aggression and murder, directed toward other races, nations, religious or social groups, clans, families, individuals, and even close relatives. We have discussed the new insights into the perinatal and transpersonal roots of malignant aggression. The relevance of the material from deep experiential work becomes even more obvious when we move from individual psychopathology into the world of mass psychology and social pathology. Many subjects involved in deep self-exploration frequently experience scenes related to wars, bloody revolutions, totalitarian systems, concentration camps, and genocide.
The theme of war is an important standard and characteristic aspect of experiential sessions on the perinatal level. The historical time period, geographical location, nature of weapons and gadgets used, and the specific features of the combat vary within a wide range. Many subjects have reported primitive and brutal fights of cavemen and savages using stone tools and wooden clubs, ancient battles with chariots and war elephants, medieval combats of armored knights on horses, wars involving such twentieth century technology as lasers and nuclear weapons, and futuristic internecine encounters of spaceships representing different stellar systems and galaxies. The intensity and scale of these war scenes and of the experiences involved usually exceed what the subject had previously considered humanly possible. While the general context of these experiences is provided by the perinatal matrices, their specific content frequently includes transpersonal phenomena.
In those individuals who have actually participated in a war as soldiers, or experienced it as civilians, reliving of memories from that time frequently occurs simultaneously with scenes of war from different historical periods in which they have not been personally involved. On occasion, the imagery can be drawn from mythology of various cultures and from the archetypal realms; the destructive potential unleashed in such scenes can surpass anything known in the phenomenal world. The revolt of the Titans against the Olympian gods, the battle of Ahura-Mazda’s forces of light against the dark forces of Ahriman, the twilight of the Nordic gods during Ragnarok, and the archetypal scenes of the ultimate destruction characterizing the Apocalypse and Armaggedon are typical.
The two perinatal matrices from which most of the war symbolism is drawn are BPM II and BPM III. For our purpose, it is important to define the basic difference between these two matrices. Both are closely related to the theme of horror, agony, and death and both are typically associated with the imagery of war and concentration camps. However, they differ in the experiential emphasis and in the nature of the roles available to the subject. An individual under the influence of BPM II is involved in scenes of violence in the position of the helpless victim, whereas the aggressors are always identified as the others. Such individuals experience endless tortures by assuming the roles of civilians subjected to air-raids, persons trapped under the debris of collapsed houses, villagers whose settlements are being burned by vicious invaders, mothers and children attacked by napalm, soldiers exposed to poisonous gases, or prisoners in concentration camps. The general atmosphere of these scenes is that of desolation, despair, anguish, hopelessness, and the absurdity of human existence.
The nature of the war experiences associated with BPM III is very different. Although the actual imagery may be similar, the subject does not identify exclusively with the victim, the oppressed, and the down-trodden. He or she also has experiential access to the emotions and physical sensations of the aggressor and tyrant, and at the same time can assume the role of an observer. In this matrix, all the roles can be experientially explored, but the actual emphasis seems to be on the relationship of the protagonists and their interaction with each other. The predominant emotional atmosphere is that of wild instinctual arousal involving aggression, anxiety, sexual excitement, a strange fascination, a peculiar mixture of pain and pleasure, and a scatological component.
It is interesting to relate the experiential characteristics of these two matrices to the biological situations with which they are associated—the first and second stage of biological delivery. The second matrix, which is related to the first stage of delivery, represents a situation of blockage and energetic stagnation. It seems that the subject reliving it has experiential access only to the emotions and sensations of the victimized child and their psychological correlates and derivatives.
BPM III, which involves elements of propulsion through the birth canal, is associated with a certain degree of energy flow. The subject confronting this phase of the birth process can experientially identify not only with the child, but also with the feelings of the delivering mother, and with the constricting birth canal, including all the related and analogous roles and themes. It is fascinating to realize that all the major experiential facets of BPM III find an ideal expression in the context of the war scenes in psychedelic sessions; it is not necessary to emphasize that the same is true in the case of actual war situations. It is hard to imagine that this connection is purely accidental and does not have a deep psychological significance.
The titanic aspect is represented by the monumental military technology using and unleashing phenomenal energies—from gigantic stone-throwers and ramming devices of ancient armies to colossal tanks, amphibian vehicles, battleships, flying fortresses, and missiles. Here, atomic bombs and thermonuclear weapons seem to have special symbolic significance, as will be discussed later.
The sadomasochistic aspect of BPM III is certainly characteristic for any kind of war situation; however, it is most clearly manifested in close hand-to-hand combat in which hurting and being hurt is equally possible and can even occur simultaneously, for example, scenes of wrestling, boxing, gladiator combats with men or animals, Neanderthal warfare, primitive aboriginal battles, medieval sword and shield encounters, jousting tournaments, and bayonet attacks during the First World War. There seems to be a close parallel between two warriors involved in this intimate, internecine encounter and the symbiotic involvement of the mother and child in the process of delivery. In both situations, the protagonists are locked in a situation of life and death that they must face; each also simultaneously inflicts pain and is hurt by the other. It seems especially significant that the blood spilled on both sides can mix, fuse, and merge.
On occasion, LSD subjects mention other forms of internecine dyadic interlocks that seem to be related to the dynamics of BPM III. The relationship and interaction between the partners in sadomasochistic practices has already been discussed. Another interesting example is the relationship between the pre-Columbian high priests and their victims. Among the Aztecs this relationship had an explicitly filial nature and involved a close emotional tie. On the frescoes in the ancient Mayan center, Bonampak, representing a sacrificial festival, the priests are shown injuring their tongues so that their own blood can mix with that of the ritually killed captives. We have already discussed the deep psychological similarity between the Inquisitors and the satanists or witches whom they persecuted. The sadistic methods of the Inquisition, their torture chambers, bestial intruments of torture, autos-da-fé, as well as their interest in the sexual and scatological behavior of their victims, reflect essentially the same deep motivational structure as the performance of the Black Mass or participation in the Witches’ Sabbath.
Fig. 45. A picture showing the ritual practices of the Aztecs. According to the Aztec belief, the sun god Huitzilopochtli had to be nourished with offerings of the “red cactus fruit”—human hearts and blood.
In recent years, reports of murderous riots in several American prisons have brought into focus another characteristic dyad of this kind, namely that of the prisoner and the prison guard. The bestial nature of these riots might be incomprehensible and puzzling for psychiatrists and psychologists with Freudian or behaviorist training who are trying to explain such extreme behavior from biographical material. They are not at all surprising to one who has even a superficial knowledge of the perinatal dynamics. Such riots are obviously induced by prison conditions that activate perinatal ma-terial—including cruel treatment and overcrowding—and the behavior of the rioting inmates has classical perinatal features. Recent investigations of the behavior of police officers and their frequent abuse of power also provide interesting insights into the dyadic interlock existing between policemen and criminals.
There are two additional examples that have great social and historical relevance—the autocratic tyrant and the revolutionary, and the ultrarightist politician and the radical leftist. (Both dyads are discussed later in the context of social upheavals and revolutions.) In all these instances, the protagonists in the interlock are trapped in destructive interaction and both are psychologically enslaved by it regardless of their role as victim or aggressor. One can say that, in a certain sense, they actually create each other by feeding each other’s behavior. The ultimate solution for such situations, offered by many of the spiritual paths and by transpersonal psychology, is not to win or get on top, but to step out of the psychological bondage of “us and them” thinking and move toward synergistic strategies.
The sexual aspect of the third perinatal matrix is expressed in many different ways during wartime. The general population usually shows a vast moral and sexual slackening and increased interest in erotic activities. A similar effect is also observed in situations that involve major natural catastrophies and epidemics. It has been referred to as avant deluge or carpe diem psychology and is usually interpreted as a reaction to impending death. It has been emphasized that a heightened interest in sex increases the rate of conception and is nature’s compensation for the mass killing that will occur. The alternative suggested here is that it reflects the powerful sexual component of perinatal dynamics and is thus an inherent aspect of the unleashed elemental instinctual forces.
The explicit promises of military leaders before important battles frequently include that of sexual access to women of the conquered villages and towns. It would be superfluous to emphasize the high incidence of rape in the wars throughout human history and the number of illegitimate children conceived both in voluntary and involuntary sexual interactions during the time of war. Also, the sexual crimes committed in concentration camps have been widely publicized and are well known.
The scatological aspect is a characteristic concomitant of the war scenes of all times. It is one of the most typical features of war to destroy order and beauty and leave debris, chaos, and decay. Total disarray, piles of rubble and garbage, generally unhygienic conditions, colossal pollution of many different kinds, massacred and disemboweled bodies, and panoramas of putrefying corpses and carcasses represent a mandatory aftermath of the wars in all ages.
Further, the pyrocathartic aspect of BPM III is a standard and important element of most of the scenes of war destruction. The concrete situations involving this element can take many different forms, from pouring burning resin from the ramparts of fortresses and destroying conquered villages and towns by fire, to bombs exploding in air raids, the mass rocket flames of “Stalin’s organ,” and nuclear warfare. The element of fire can be seen as ominous and destructive, but more frequently the subject experiences it with the fascination of a pyromaniac and draws satisfaction from its power and purging action. Many individuals who have experienced war recall that they could not resist the pull of its archetypal power when they actually got involved in a life-and-death confrontation. This feeling usually sharply contrasts with one’s attitudes and standards in everyday life. Freud (1955a; 1955b) described the psychological changes that occur under such circumstances in terms of mob psychology and the development of “war superego.”
The visions accompanying the experience of birth in the context of BPM IV frequently include scenes symbolizing the end of war, or the victory in a revolution. Celebration of a military triumph, cheering processions, waving banners, dancing in the streets, and fraternizing between soldiers and civilians belong to common images reported by subjects who have relived the moment of birth. This period of carefree jubilation before the call of new duty following a major war or revolution seems, thus, to be psychologically equivalent to the short period after birth before the newborn encounters the difficulties and vicissitudes of his or her new existence.
All these observations can be summed up in the surprising conclusion that the human personality structure contains, in the unconscious repertoire of the perinatal level, functional matrices the activation of which can result in a complex and realistic reproduction of all the experiences of horror, agony, polymorphous instinctual arousal, and strange fascination associated with the various forms of war.
On many occasions, subjects experiencing perinatal elements in their sessions have also reported many interesting insights into other sociopolitical situations closely related to the theme of war. These involve the problems of totalitarian systems, autocracy, dictatorship, police states, and bloody revolutions. Deep experiential confrontation with the elements of BPM II is typically associated with images of, and identification with, the population of countries oppressed by a dictator, subjected to a police state, or living in a totalitarian regime, such as Czarist Russia, Nazi Germany, or one of the Communist or Latin American countries. Such empathic identification can also involve a severely persecuted minority group, or a category of people in a particularly difficult predicament.
Examples of such experiences are sequences involving Christians at the time of the emperor Nero, serfs and slaves, Jewish groups at various historical periods and geographical locations, prisoners in medieval dungeons and concentration camps, or inmates of insane asylums. Some Czech patients who had had painful experiences with either the Nazi occupants during the Second World War or with the Communist regime, frequently relived their memories of actual political traumas, such as scenes from a concentration or labor camp, brutal investigations, imprisonments, or episodes of brainwashing. According to the insights from psychedelic sessions, there is a deep psychological connection and similarity between the atmosphere in an oppressed country, or the experience of a persecuted group, and the experience of the fetus in the clutch of the birth canal.
Experiences associated with BPM III characteristically include images and symbols of the oppressive forces, aggressors, and tyrants. The dynamics of this matrix is related to the politics of power, tyranny, exploitation, and subjugation of others, dirty tricks and intrigues, cloak-and-dagger diplomacy, secret police, betrayal, and treason. Many LSD subjects have experienced—in the terminal phases of the birth agony—identification with despotic rulers and dictators of all times, such as Nero, Genghis Khan, Hitler, or Stalin. As a result of this profound experiential identification they stopped seeing dictatorship as a manifestation of genuine strength and power. They realized that the mental set of a dictator has a deep similarity to that of a child struggling in the birth canal. He is torn by a strange mixture of chaotic and incompatible feelings and energies: impulsive aggression intolerant of any obstacles, abysmal self-doubts, inflated megalomaniac feelings, insatiable ambitions, primitive childlike anxiety, generalized paranoia, and great physical discomfort, particularly a sense of choking and strangulation.
Subjects who had first-hand experience of this state realized how disastrous it can be when somebody in this psychological condition manages to get into a position of power instead of therapy, where he belongs. Conversely, they realized that the mass support that a dictator requires at the different stages along his way to power reflects the fact that similar elements are bound to be a standard part of the makeup of the human personality. It becomes obvious that anybody could be capable of committing the same crimes if the corresponding level of his or her unconscious were unleashed and the external circumstances played into it.
The real problem does not consist in isolated individuals or political parties and factions. The task is to create safe and socially sanctioned situations in which certain toxic and potentially dangerous elements of the human personality structure can be confronted and worked through without any harm or damage to others, or society as a whole. Externally oriented radical programs and political power struggles, although of vital importance if challenging a murderous regime of a Hitler or Stalin, cannot solve the problems of humanity without a simultaneous inner transformation. They typically create a pendulum effect whereby yesterday’s underdog becomes tomorrow’s ruler and vice versa. Although the roles change, the amount of malignant aggression remains the same, and humanity as a whole is not helped. The prisons, concentration camps, and labor camps continue to function; they just change their inmates.
Genuine strength does not need ostentatious display ad demogogic rhetoric; its presence is self-evident and obvious. What is experienced by a dictator is not strength, but an agonizing inferiority complex, an insatiable hunger for recognition, an excruciating loneliness, and consuming mistrust. In the course of deep experiential therapy, the “dictator complex” is resolved when the death-rebirth process is completed. The experiential connection with the elements of BPM IV moves one out of the realm of fear and agony and opens up channels for entirely new feelings—a sense of fulfillment, belonging, and security, a respect for life and creation, understanding, tolerance, a live-and-let-live attitude, and an awareness of one’s cosmic significance associated with humility.
The tyrant and the rebel represent an internecine dyadic interlock; their deep psychological motivations come from the same source and are of a similar kind. The state of mind of the angry dictator and that of the infuriated revolutionary do not, at the time of their murderous encounter, differ from each other in their deepest nature. There are obvious differences in their ideologies and moral justifications for their actions. Occasionally, there can be significant difference in the ethical and social value of the systems they represent. However, they have in common a fundamental lack of genuine psychological insight into the real motives of their behavior. It is therefore a situation with no gain, only loss; no matter who wins or what the moral judgment of history may be, a real solution escapes both parties.
Both sides are under the influence of a basic confusion, trying to solve an intrapsychic problem by manipulations of the external world. This is clearly documented by the fact that visions of bloody revolutions inspired by utopian ideals and alternating identification with the oppressors and the revolutionaries are characteristic of the dynamics of BPM III. They become psychologically irrelevant and disappear from the picture when the individual reaches BPM IV. The concrete images characteristic of the third perinatal matrix cover a wide range from the revolt of Roman slaves led by Spartacus through the conquest of the Bastille in the French Revolution to such recent events as the Bolshevik takeover of the Winter Palace of the Czars and the victory of Fidel Castro in Cuba.
Subjects involved in LSD therapy and other forms of deep experiential self-exploration quite independently report their insights into the reasons for the tragicomical chronic failure of all violent revolutions, despite their high ideals and the general appeal of the radical philosophies on which they are based. It should be mentioned that all the LSD subjects in Prague had a first-hand experience with communism and Marxism-Leninism, in theory and practice, and many of them had also experienced nazism. Essentially, the external situation of oppression—real or imaginary—becomes confused and identified with the inner psychological imprisonment from the unconscious pressure of the memory of the birth trauma. The intuited possibility of liberation by the instinctual unleashing characteristic of BPM III is then projected and translated into a concrete plan for overthrowing the tyrant. Thus, the actual motive and driving force behind violent revolutions and plans for social utopias is an unconscious need for freeing oneself from the repressive and constricting influence of the birth trauma and connecting experientially to the nourishing feelings associated with BPM IV and BPM I.
What makes communism a particularly powerful and problematic force in today’s world is that it presents a program that is true psychologically when applied to the process of inner transformation, but is deceptively false as a recipe for social reform. The basic notion that a violent and stormy upheaval of a revolutionary nature is necessary to terminate the condition of oppression and institute a situation of harmony and satisfaction reflects correctly the dynamics of the inner transformation associated with the death-rebirth process. For this reason, it seems to communicate some fundamental truth and has the widespred appeal of a plausible and promising political program.
The basic fallacy lies in the fact that the stages of archetypal unfolding of a spiritual process are projected onto the material reality and camouflaged as an atheistic recipe for a social transformation of the world; it is quite obvious that in this form it cannot possibly work. One need only look at the present fragmentation of the communist world, at the hostility among the nations pursuing the ideals of Marxism-Leninism, or at the walls, mine fields, barbed wire, and trained dogs that these nations are obliged to use to keep their populations within the confines of their social paradises, to judge the success of this fascinating experiment.
The study of history indicates that violent revolutions are unusually powerful and successful in their destructive phase, when they are using the unleashed perinatal forces to destroy the old corrupted regime. They tend to fail inevitably in the following stage, when they try to create the paradisean condition that they had promised and the image of which was the driving moral force of the revolution. The perinatal forces that are instrumental in such sociopolitical upheavals are not consumed or worked through, they are simply activated and acted out. Thus, the elemental forces that were so useful during the destructive phase of the revolution become the seed of corruption of the new system and continue to operate after victory within the camp of the architects of the new order. These are, in a nutshell, the insights from experiential work explaining the frequently stunning military successes of radical revolutions and their equally astonishing failure to deliver the utopia, the vision of which the leaders use as the carrot for the masses.
It seems obvious that individuals who have not been able to solve their own intrapsychic problems and reach inner peace and harmony are not the best judges as to what is wrong in the world and what should be the means to correct it. The basis for a real solution would be to connect experientially with the feelings of BPM IV, BPM I, and the transpersonal dimension of one’s own psyche before venturing on a crusade to transform the world. This is essentially identical with Krishnamurti’s statement that the only revolution is the inner one. Military revolutions, although they frequently represent some degree of historical progress, are bound to fail in their utopian efforts, because their external accomplishments are not matched by the inner psychological transformation that would neutralize the powerful destructive forces inherent in human nature.
This point can be illustrated by insights of LSD subjects who saw a parallel between the situation of the revolutionary overjoyed by his victory on the barricades and that of a newborn child overwhelmed by the explosive liberation from the oppressive grip of the birth canal. The neonate’s feelings of triumph are soon replaced by distress brought on by the newly discovered and quite unexpected sensations of cold, wetness, hunger, and emotional starvation. The revolutionary, instead of attaining and enjoying the promised paradise, must now cope with the vicissitudes of his new situation, including a modified version of the old repressive system insidiously developing on the ruins of the utopia.
As the newborn goes through life, he or she will be increasingly harrassed by the shadow of the perinatal energies that have not been confronted and integrated. In a similar way, the perinatal energies that were instrumental in the revolution will continue to emerge within the political structure of the new regime. Unable to comprehend the fundamental fallacy of their approach to reality, the revolutionaries have to find explanations for the failure of utopia, as well as culprits—their comrades who contaminated the true doctrine by deviating too far to the right or to the left, indulging in some obnoxious leftovers of the old regime’s ideology, or manifesting some other of the many children’s diseases of the revolutionary movement.
This does not mean that we should give up our attempts at just political and social reforms or stop challenging tyrants and totalitarian regimes. It suggests that ideally leaders of such movements should be those who have done sufficient inner work and reached emotional maturity. Politicians who convert their inner emotional turmoil into a program of a bloody revolutionary massacre are dangerous and should not be trusted or supported. The real problem is to raise the consciousness of the general public so that it is capable of recognizing and ignoring public figures who belong to this category.
Another area into which observations from experiential psychotherapy offer revealing insights is that of concentration camps, mass murder, and genocide. It has already been mentioned that experiences of BPM II typically involve identification with the inmates of prisons and concentration camps, including feelings of despair, hopelessness, helplessness, extreme anguish, starvation, physical pain, and suffocation in gas chambers. This is usually associated with a profound existential crisis. The sense of meaninglessness and absurdity of human existence alternates here with an excruciating desire and need to find meaning in life against the background of this apocalyptic reality. In view of this fact, it does not seem accidental that Victor Frankl (1956), the father of logotherapy or existential analysis, developed his insights into the importance of the sense of meaning in human life during his long stay in a Nazi concentration camp. When the images of concentration camps occur in the context of the third perinatal matrix, subjects experience not only identification with the tortured helpless victims, but also with the devious, cruel, and bestial Nazi officers, or red commissars of the Gulag Archipelago.
Closer examination of the general atmosphere and specific living conditions in concentration camps reveals that they are a vivid, literal, and realistic enactment of the nightmarish symbolism of negative perinatal matrices in the material world. The pictures from these camps of death show scenes of insanity and sheer horror. Emaciated naked bodies can be seen piled up in gigantic heaps, strewn all over the roads, and hanging half-burned in the barbed wire fences—anonymous skeletons stripped of all human dignity and identity. Among the specters of watchtowers equipped with fast submachine guns and high-voltage electric fences, sounds of shots are heard almost incessantly and the fiendish Kapos with their trained half-wild Alsatian dogs walk around looking for victims.
Violence and sadism, so typical for perinatal experiences, was manifested here on a scale that is hard to imagine. The unbridled fury and pathological rage of the SS officers, their capricious cruelty and boundless desire to ridicule, humiliate, and torture, went far beyond what was necessary for the alleged goal of the camp system, which was to deter the enemies of the Third Reich, to provide slaves, and to liquidate individual adversaries of the Nazi regime and “racially inferior groups.”
This is particularly clear in regard to the scatological dimension, which presented a striking aspect of life in the Nazi concentration camps. In many instances, prisoners were forced to urinate in each other’s face or into each other’s mouths. They were allowed to go to the latrines only twice a day and those who tried to get to them at night risked being shot by the guards; this forced some prisoners to use their eating bowls as chamber pots. In Birkenau, soup bowls were periodically taken from the prisoners and thrown into the latrines, from which the prisoners had to retrieve them.
The inmates in the Nazi camps were literally drowning in their own waste, and death in and by excrement was quite common. One of the favorite games of the SS was to catch men during the act of relieving themselves and throw them into the pit; in Buchenwald, ten prisoners suffocated in feces in a single month as a result of this perverted entertainment. These practices obviously represented a severe hygienic risk and health hazard and were thus directly contrary to the usual meticulous concerns about epidemic control in prisons, armies, or any situation of communal living. Thus, they must be interpreted in psychopathological terms, and viewing them in the context of perinatal dynamics seems to provide a plausible explanation.
The sexual aspect of perinatal experiences was also amply displayed in the conditions of concentration camps. The sexual abuse of prisoners, both heterosexual and homosexual, including rape and manifest sadistic practices, were perpetrated on a mass scale. In some instances, SS officers forced prisoners to engage each other in sexual activities to provide entertainment. Selected women and girls, including those in their early teens, were assigned to houses of prostitution to satisfy the sexual needs of soldiers durig their furloughs. A shattering description of the sexual practices in German concentration camps can be found in House of Dolls, by the legendary Israeli writer who uses as his pseudonym the index name he carried as a concentration camp inmate, Ka-Tzetnik 135633 (1955).
The perinatal experience of ego death commonly involves feelings of complete humiliation, degradation, debasement, and defilement. What the psyche of LSD subjects retrieves from the rich repositories of unconscious matrices, in the form of inner experience and symbolic imagery, was enacted in the concentration camps with frightening realism. Prisoners were stripped of all their possessions, clothes, hair, and name—anything that they could have associated with their identity. In the conditions of camp life, an absolute lack of privacy, unimaginable dirt, and the inexorable dictates of biological functions were amplified to grotesque proportions. This then became the baseline for a more specific program of dehumanization and total debasement carried out by the SS in as methodical and systematic a way in its general strategy as it was capricious, erratic, and unpredictable in its daily manifestations.
The series of uncanny parallels between the experiential elements related to perinatal matrices and concentration camp practices also includes the element of suffocation. The Nazi program of systematic extermination was carried out in the infamous gas chambers where the victims choked to death in overcrowded, confined spaces by inhaling toxic gases. The element of fire has an important role in the symbolism of both the second and the third perinatal matrix. In BPM II it is part of the atmosphere of the archetypal infernal scenes in which condemned souls undergo inhuman tortures. In BPM III it appears in the final pyrocathartic stage of the death-rebirth process, characterizing termination of agony and heralding transcendence. The glowing furnaces of the crematoria were both part of the hellish scenery of the camps and places for the disposal of dead bodies, where the last biological remnants of the tortured victims were eliminated without a trace. This aspect of perinatal symbolism was expounded with frightening power in another book by Ka-Tzetnik 135633, Sunrise Over Hell (1977).
It must also be mentioned here that the Nazis seemed to focus their perverse fury especially on pregnant women and little children, which further supports the perinatal hypothesis. The most powerful passage from Terrence des Près’s The Survivor (1976), is without doubt the description of a truck full of babies dumped into fire; it is closely followed by a scene in which pregnant women are beaten with clubs and whips, torn by dogs, dragged around by the hair, kicked in the stomach, and finally thrown into the crematorium while still alive.
Professor Bastians, from Leyden, Holland, has had extensive experience in the treatment of the so-called concentration camp syndrome—a complex of emotional and psychosomatic disturbances that develops in former inmates after a delay of several decades following their incarceration. He has been conducting a unique program for individuals suffering from these belated psychological consequences of an ordeal that ended a long time ago. Under the influence of LSD, former inmates are encouraged to relive, abreact, and integrate various traumatic experiences from the camp the memory of which still holds them in thrall. In his paper describing this program, Bastians came to a conclusion very similar to the one presented here, although in a far less specific form. He pointed to the fact that the idea of a concentration camp is a product of the human mind. No matter how unacceptable this may sound, it must therefore represent a manifestation of a certain aspect of human personality and the dynamics of the unconscious. This was succinctly expressed in the title of his paper, “Man in the Concentration Camp and the Concentration Camp in Man” (n.d.).
These observations reveal a surprising fact about the psyche and the human personality structure. As with wars and revolutions, the unconscious also has functional matrices that can, under certain circumstances, generate the entire gamut of both passive and active experiences related to concentration camps, reflecting their general atmosphere, as well as specific details. In addition, many other powerful images and experiences involving mass extermination and genocide in different cultures and historical periods are extremely common in perinatal sessions. They represent an important channel for the extraordinary amount of aggression that is associated with the dynamics of the third perinatal matrix.
In recent years, an unexpected confirmation of the relationship between perinatal dynamics and important sociopolitical phenomena came from a completely independent source. Lloyd de Mause (1975; 1982)—journalist, psychoanalyst, and foremost proponent of psychohistory1 —has analyzed speeches of important military and political leaders and other material from periods of history immediately preceding and associated with major wars and revolutions. His fascinating data bring convincing support for the thesis that regressive infantile material, particularly that related to the process of biological birth, plays an important role in a variety of serious political crises. His analytical method is altogether unique, imaginative, and creative. In addition to traditional historical sources, de Mause draws data of great psychological relevance from jokes, anecdotes, caricatures, dreams, personal imagery, slips of the tongue, side comments of speakers, and even scribbles and doodles on the edges of documents.
The results of de Mause’s study of a wide variety of historical crises suggest that political and military leaders, rather than being strong oedipal figures, seem to function as “garbage collectors” for various repressed feelings of individuals, groups, and entire nations. They provide socially sanctioned channels for the projection and acting out of emotions that cannot be kept under control by the usual systems of intrapsychic defenses. According to de Mause, in the psychology of large groups the psyche regresses to archaic modes of relating that are characteristic of the preverbal stages of infancy. The infantile emotions and sensations emerge from all levels of psychic organization, not only the oedipal and phallic, but also the anal, urethral, and oral.
In analyzing the historical material from the times immediately preceding the outbreak of wars or revolutions, de Mause was struck by an extraordinary abundance of figures of speech and images related to biological birth. Thus, politicians of all ages, when declaring war or describing a critical situation, typically refer to strangulation, choking, a life-and-death struggle for breath or living space, and feelings of being crushed by the enemy. Equally frequent are allusions to dark caves and confusing labyrinths, tunnels, descents into an abyss, or, conversely, the need to break through and find the way to light out of darkness. Additional images include feeling small and helpless, drowning, hanging, fire, falling, or jumping from a tower. Although the last three images seem to have no immediately obvious relation to birth, they are common perinatal symbols that occur in the context of BPM III, as indicated by observations from psychedelic therapy and from Nandor Fodor’s analytical work with dreams (1949). The fact that pregnant women and children are the center of the war fantasy deserves special attention.
Lloyd de Mause’s psychohistorical illustrations are drawn from many historical periods and different geographical regions. Examples from world history, involving such famous personages as Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and Hitler are complemented by those taken from remote, recent, and contemporary history of the United States. Thus de Mause analyzed the psychohistorical roots of the American Revolution and discussed its relation to birth practices and the specifics of child rearing. He was able to find striking elements of birth symbolism in the statements of Admiral Shimada and Ambassador Kurasa before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Particularly chilling was the use of perinatal symbolism in connection with the explosion of the second atomic bomb. The airplane that carried the bomb was given the name of the pilot’s mother as a nickname; the bomb itself bore the written title “The Little Boy,” and the code wired to Washington after successful detonation was: “The baby was born.”
In the correspondence between John Kennedy and Khrushchev around the Cuban crisis, there is a reference to a situation that these two statesmen wanted to avoid; it is symbolized by an image of two blind moles who meet in a dark underground passage and get entangled in a life-and-death struggle. Henry Kissinger, when asked if the United States would consider military intervention in the Middle East, touched his throat and answered: “Only if another strangulation occurs. . . .”
Many additional examples could be mentioned in support of de Mause’s thesis. A striking finding in his own studies is the fact that references to strangulation and oppression occurred only in speeches preceding a war, but not during war situations that involved actual encirclement. In addition, the accusations of choking, strangling, and crushing were occasionally made in regard to nations who were not even immediate neighbors. The fact that masses respond emotionally to speeches of this kind, unable to see their obvious irrationality and absurdity, betrays the existence of a universally present blind spot and vulnerability in the area of perinatal dynamics.
Lloyd de Mause has produced ample evidence for the hypothesis that in wars and revolutions nations act out a group fantasy of birth. It is clear from these examples that his findings and ideas are closely related to the observations from psychedelic research. His psychohistorical research represents a continuation of the tradition of depth-psychological analysis of social upheavals initiated by Gustav le Bon (1977) and Sigmund Freud (1955b). Although generally compatible with the conclusions of these two authors, the new data present important specific insights of great theoretical and practical relevance. The shift of emphasis by de Mause from the Freudian individual unconscious to the dynamics of the birth trauma represents a quantum leap in the understanding of elemental social events.
According to the new interpretation, supported jointly by psychedelic observations and de Mause’s psychohistory, powerful energies and emotions derived from, or related to, the birth trauma are a standard component of the makeup of the human personality. Their activation in individuals by factors of a psychological nature, by biochemical changes, or by other influences results in either individual psychopathology or a process of spiritual transformation, depending on circumstances. It seems that, for reasons insufficiently understood at this time,2 the psychological defenses that normally prevent the perinatal energies from surfacing into consciousness can start breaking down simultaneously in a large number of individuals belonging to a social, political, or national group. This creates a general atmosphere of tension, anxiety, and anticipation. The person who becomes the leader of the masses under these circumstances is an individual whose awareness of the perinatal forces is greater than average, and who has the ability to disown them and attach them projectively to events in the external world. He then clearly formulates his own perception for the group or nation, giving an acceptable explanation for the existing emotional climate in terms of political problems.
The pressures, tensions, and choking feelings are blamed on a group of enemies, the sense of danger is exteriorized, and a military intervention is offered as a remedy. The final outcome of the bloody confrontation is then described metaphorically in terms of images related to biological birth and spiritual rebirth. The use of this symbolic language makes it possible to exploit the psychological power associated with the transformation process for political purposes. In view of these facts, it seems extremely important that the findings of psychohistory be publicized and the symbolism of the perinatal process become generally known. It should be possible to create a situation in which demagogic statements about choking, crushing, and a lack of living space would be taken as indications that the person making them needs depth-psychological work, rather than accepted as a valid incentive to start a war. With a little training, the public can learn to decipher and understand the symbolic language of birth and death, just as it has successfully mastered the Freudian sexual symbolism.
Lloyd de Mause’s speculations have been, up to this point, in far-reaching agreement with the conclusions I have drawn from my psychedelic observations. The only major conceptual difference I have found between the general theses of these two interpretations of historical crises involves the explanations of the psychological dynamics at the time of the onset of wars or revolutions. It has been repeatedly stated that, when a war is declared after a period of general tension and anticipation, this paradoxically results in feelings of relief and extraordinary clarity. Lloyd de Mause attributes this psychologically to leaders and nations connecting at this point with the memory of the moment of birth. My own interpretation of the atmosphere preceding a war emphasizes the element of a strong emotional-cognitive dissonance between the existing emotional tension and the lack of a concrete external situation to which it can be attached. When war erupts, the preexisting feelings of the leaders and nations are suddenly in general congruence with the external circumstances. The emotions appear to be justified, and the only thing required is to deal in the best possible way with the dismal reality of the situation. In the course of the war, the nightmarish content of the perinatal matrices then turns into the reality of everyday life, as we have shown. Despite its absurdity, monstrosity, and insanity, the new situation displays a peculiar logic, because there is no major disparity between the events and the emotional reactions of the people involved.
This mechanism has its parallels in individual psychopathology. Persons who are under the strong influence of a negative dynamic matrix of the unconscious show intolerance of emotional-cognitive dissonance. They tend to seek situations that are congruent with their inner feelings, or even become instrumental in unconsciously creating such situations. It has also been repeatedly observed that a wide variety of emotional disorders tends to disappear under certain extreme and drastic circumstances, the infamous examples being the concentration camp, the Foreign Legion, and the old-time whaling ship. The emotional-cognitive dissonance disappears when the external circumstances match or surpass the preexisting neurotic feelings.
This description of the perinatal roots of wars, revolutions, and totalitarian systems reflects only one important aspect of a very complex problem area. The strong emphasis on perinatal dynamics that it entails reflects the purpose of this discussion, which was to communicate new and fascinating material that, in the past, has not been taken into consideration. It was by no means my intention to reduce the problems involved to intrapsychic dynamics and deny or disregard its significant historical, racial, national, political, and economic determinants. The new data should thus be seen as a contribution to a future comprehensive understanding of these phenomena, rather than an adequate explanation replacing all others.
Even from a psychological point of view, this description covers only one important dimension or aspect of the problem. The view that sociopolitical phenomena are meaningfully related to perinatal dynamics is not incompatible with the view that history has also important transpersonal dimensions. Jung and his followers have demonstrated that powerful archetypal constellations do not influence only individuals; they are also instrumental in shaping events in the phenomenal world, and in human history. Jung’s interpretation of the Nazi movement as a mass spell of the Ragnarok, or Götterdämmerung, archetype is an important example (1961). Jung’s understanding of history is compatible with the approach of archetypal astrology, which studies correlations of historical events with planetary transits. I have already mentioned the fascinating research in this area conducted by Richard Tarnas.
A discussion of the transpersonal dimensions of human history would be incomplete without mentioning Wilber’s systematic and comprehensive transpersonal reinterpretation of history and anthropology, described in his book Up From Eden (1981). In his unique way, Wilber was able to introduce unusual clarity into the seemingly impenetrable and unmanageable jungle of historical facts and theories, reducing them to a few common denominators. Wilber basically portrays human evolution as a history of the love affair between humanity and the divine. He analyzes each of the consecutive periods in terms of three key questions: (1) What are the major forms of transcendence available at this time? (2) What substitutes for transcendence are created when these fail—in other words, what are the forms of the Atman project, both subjective for the self and objective for the culture? (3) What are the costs of these substitutes?
As has been pointed out, my own observations differ in certain details from Wilber’s views, and I cannot provide at present a smooth integration between the model presented in this book and his exciting vision. However, the similarities between the two approaches are so far-reaching that such a synthesis should be possible sometime in the near future. I believe that eventually the insights from Jungian psychology, archetypal astrology, psychedelic research, and Wilber’s spectrum psychology will merge into a comprehensive interpretation of the psychological aspects of human history and the evolution of consciousness.
We turn now to the present world situation to explore the practical relevance of the new insights. In recent years, many authors have tried to explain the catastrophic situation humanity has created for itself. The dangerous schism that underlies it has been described in many different ways—as an imbalance between the intellectual development and emotional maturation of the human race, a disproportionate evolution of the neocortex in relation to the archaic parts of the brain, an interference of instinctual and irrational forces of the unconscious with conscious processes, and the like.
Whatever metaphor we use, the situation seems very clear. Over the centuries, humanity has attained incredible achievements. It has been able to release nuclear energy, send spaceships to the moon and the planets, and transmit sound and color pictures all over the globe and across cosmic space. At the same time, it has been incapable of harnessing certain primitive emotions and instinctual impulses—its legacy from the Stone Age. As a result, surrounded by technology approaching science fiction, mankind now lives in chronic anguish, on the verge of a nuclear and ecological catastrophy.
Modern science has developed technologies that could solve most of the urgent problems in to-day’s world—combat diseases, starvation, and poverty, and develop renewable forms of energy. The problems that stand in the way are neither technological nor economical; they are forces intrinsic to human nature and the human personality. Because of them, unimaginable resources are wasted in the insanity of the arms race, power struggle, and pursuit of “unlimited growth.” These forces also prevent a more appropriate division of wealth among individuals and nations, as well as a reorientation of ecological priorities that are vital for survival of life. For this reason, it seems of great interest to look more closely at the relevant material from deep self-exploration.
The psychological death-rebirth process and its symbolic language can be applied to our condition. Even a cursory look at the world situation reveals that we have exteriorized in our present life all the essential aspects of BPM III that an individual involved in a tranformative and evolutionary process must face internally. The third perinatal matrix has a number of important facets—the titanic, aggressive and sadomasochistic, sexual, demonic, messianic, scatological, and pyrocathartic.
Technological progress has provided the means of modern warfare with a destructive potential beyond the imagination. The aggressive impulse has been unleashed all over the world in the form of internecine wars, bloody revolutions, totalitarian regimes, race riots, concentration camps, brutality of police and secret police, student unrest, and increasing criminality.
Similarly, sexual repression is being lifted and erotic impulses are being manifested in a variety of straightforward and distorted ways. The sexual freedom of youngsters, promiscuity, open marriage, overtly sexual plays and movies, gay liberation, pornographic literature, sadomasochistic parlors, sexual slave markets, and the popularity of “fist-fucking” are just a few examples of this trend.
The demonic element finds expression in increasing interest in books and movies with occult themes, such terroristic organizations as Charles Manson’s gang and the Symbionese Liberation Army acting out distorted mystical impulses, and the renaissance of witchcraft and satanic cults. The messianic impulse is prominent in many of the new age religious movements, such as the “Jesus freaks” or the cults expecting salvation from UFOs and extraterrestrial intervention. The fact that extremes of spiritual pathology involving a perinatal mixture of sadomasochism, deviant sexuality, scatology, and self-destructive tendencies today attract thousands of followers can best be illustrated by the tragedy of Jonestown.
The scatological dimension is evident in increasing industrial pollution, the rapidly deteriorating quality of air and water, the accumulation of waste products on a global scale, degenerating hygienic conditions in large cities and, in a more abstract and metaphorical sense, the alarming rise of political, social, and economic corruption. The visions of thermonuclear reactions, atomic explosions, and the launching of missiles are typical images of the transition from BPM III to BPM IV. The perspective of a sudden unleashing of this doomsday technology has become in recent decades a calculated risk of everyday life.
An individual undergoing the death-rebirth process would confront such themes internally as mandatory stages of the process of inner transformation. He or she would have to experience them and integrate them to reach “higher sanity” and a new level of consciousness. Observations from experiential work strongly suggest that the success of this process depends critically on consistent internalization of the experiences involved and their completion on the inner plane. If this condition is not met and the individual begins to act out, confusing the inner process with external reality, he or she faces grave dangers. Instead of being confronted and integrated internally, the instinctual impulses lead to destructive and self-destructive actions. The critical turning point in the process of inner transformation is ego death and the conceptual destruction of the individual’s old world. The extreme end result of the exteriorization of the death-rebirth process and an acting out of its archetypal themes can bring suicide, murder, and destruction. In contrast, the internalized approach leads to ego death and transcendence, which involves a philosophical destruction of the old world view and an emergence of a saner and more enlightened way of being.
Individuals involved in systematic in-depth self-exploration frequently develop, quite independently from each other, convincing insights that humanity at large is facing these days a serious dilemma fully comparable to that described for the process of individual transformation. The alternatives involved seem to be continuation of the present trend toward exteriorization, acting out, and external manipulation of the world, or turning within and undergoing a process of radical transformation to an entirely new level of consciousness and awareness. While the easily predictable end result of the former strategy is death in an atomic war or in technological waste products, the latter alternative could result in evolutionary perspectives described in the writings of Sri Aurobindo, Teilhard de Chardin, Ken Wilber, and many others.
It seems appropriate to review from this standpoint the characteristic changes that tend to occur in individuals who have successfully completed such a transformative process and integrated the material from the perinatal level of the unconscious. This will provide a more concrete basis for the discussion of whether the resulting human type and the corresponding level of consciousness offer a promising and hopeful alternative to the present situation.
Numerous observations suggest that an individual who is under. a strong influence of the negative perinatal matrices approaches life and its problems in a way that is not only unfulfilling, but in its long-term consequences destructive and self-destructive. We have discussed earlier the “treadmill” and “rat-race” type of existence and life strategy that characterizes to various degrees those individuals who have not confronted experientially the issue of death or completed the gestalt of birth.
The dynamics of negative perinatal matrices imposes on life a linear trajectory and creates a strong and unrelenting drive toward the pursuit of future goals. Since the psyche of such a person is dominated by the memory of the painful confinement in the birth canal, he or she never experiences the present moment and circumstances as fully satisfying. Like the fetus who is trying to escape from the uncomfortable constriction into a more acceptable situation, such a person will always strive for something other than what the present circumstances offer. The goals the mind will construct in this circumstance can easily be identified as substitutes for biological birth and postnatal care. Since these goals are mere psychological surrogates and unreal mirages, their achievement can never bring true satisfaction. The resulting frustration will then generate new plans or more ambitious ones of the same kind. In this frame of mind, nature and the world are seen in general as a potential threat and something that must be conquered and controled.
On the collective and global scale, this frame of mind generates a philosophy of life that emphasizes strength, competition, and self-assertion and glorifies linear progress and unlimited growth. It considers material profit and an increase of the gross national product to be the main criteria of well-being and measures of one’s living standard. This ideology and the resulting strategies bring humans into a serious conflict with their nature as biological systems and with basic universal laws. Although biological organisms in general depend critically on optimal values, this strategy introduces the artificial and dangerous imperative of maximizing pursuits.3 In a universe the very nature of which is cyclical, it advocates and recommends linearity and unlimited growth. A further complication is that this approach to existence cannot recognize and acknowledge the urgent and absolutely vital need for synergy, complementarity, cooperation, and ecological concerns.
The individual who has completed the perinatal process and connected experientially with the memories of the positive intrauterine state (and to positive transpersonal matrices) presents a very different picture. The experience with the maternal organism on the fetal level is equivalent to the experience of the adult in relation to the entire world and all of humanity. The former in a sense represents a prototypical model and template for the latter. The nature and quality of the perinatal matrix that influences the psyche of the individual will thus have a very profound influence not only on the subjective experience of this person, but also on his or her attitude and approach to other people, to nature, and to existence in general.
When one experiences the shift from negative to positive perinatal matrices, the general degree of zest in life and the ability to enjoy life increases considerably. It becomes possible to draw satisfaction from the present moment and from many ordinary situations and functions, such as eating, sex, simple human interactions, work activities, art, music, play, or walks in nature. This reduces considerably the emotional investment in the pursuit of various complicated schemes from which satisfaction is expected in the future and which fail to bring it whether or not the goals are attained. In this state of mind, it becomes obvious that the ultimate measure of one’s standard of living is the quality of the experience of life and not the quantity of achievements and material possessions.
Together with these changes, the individual develops a deep sense of the critical importance of synergy, cooperation, and harmony, as well as natural ecological concerns. The attitude toward nature (“Mother Nature”) described earlier was modeled after the precarious and conflictful experience of the fetus with the maternal organism in the process of biological delivery. The new values and attitudes reflect the experience of the fetus with the womb during prenatal existence. Mutually nourishing, symbiotic, and complementary aspects of this situation (in the case of a predominantly good womb) tend to replace quite automatically the competitive and exploitative emphasis of the old value system. The concept of human existence as a life-and-death struggle for survival gives way to a new image of life as a manifestation of the cosmic dance or divine play.
It becomes quite clear that ultimately we cannot do anything to other people and nature without simultaneously doing it to ourselves. Any attempt to divide the unity of existence philosophically, ideologically, sociopolitically, and spiritually into independent separate units with conflicting interests—individuals, families, religious and social groups, political parties, commercial alliances, and nations—if taken seriously as ultimate reality, appears as superficial, short-sighted, and in the last analysis self-defeating. From this new point of view, it is hard to imagine, how anybody could be blind to the suicidal perspectives of an increasing dependence on the fast vanishing fossil fuels and would not see as absolutely critical the task of reorienting the world toward cyclical and renewable sources of energy.
As a result of these changes, the consumer strategy naturally shifts from conspicuous consumption and a waste-making psychology toward conservation and “voluntary simplicity,” in Duane Elgin’s sense (1981). It becomes obvious that the only hope for a political and social solution can come from a transpersonal perspective that transcends the hopeless “us versus them” psychology, producing at best occasional pendulumlike changes in which the protagonists exchange their roles of oppressors and oppressed.
The only genuine solution must acknowledge the collective nature of the problem and offer satisfactory perspectives to everybody involved. The deeply felt unity with the rest of the world tends to open the way to a genuine appreciation of diversity and a tolerance of differences. Sexual, racial, cultural, and other prejudices appear absurd and childish in light of the vastly expanded world view and understanding of reality that includes the transcendental dimension.
Having researched the potential of unusual states of consciousness for more than a quarter of a century, I have no doubts that the transformation I have here described can be achieved on an individual scale. I myself have witnessed over the years many dramatic examples of such an evolution while assisting other people in psychedelic therapy and experiential self-exploration without the use of drugs, particularly holotropic therapy. It remains to be seen to what extent the same approach is applicable on a larger scale. Certainly the increasing popularity of various forms of meditation and other spiritual practices, as well as various experiential forms of psychotherapy, represents an encouraging trend.
Whatever questions one may have about the feasibility of this strategy as a world-changing force, it could well be our only real chance under present circumstances. The currently available means and channels for solving the global crisis do not leave a critical observer with much hope. In practical terms the new approach means to complement whatever one is doing in the external world with a systematic process of in-depth self-exploration. In this way the pragmatic technical knowledge of each of us can be complemented and guided by the wisdom of the collective unconscious.
Inner transformation can be achieved only through individual determination, focused effort, and personal responsibility. Any plans to change the situation in the world are of problematic value, unless they include a systematic effort to change the human condition that has created the crisis. To the extent to which evolutionary change in consciousness is a vital prerequisite for the future of the world, the outcome of this process depends on the initiative of each of us.
I have written this book with the hope that the concepts, techniques, and strategies that it describes could be of value to those involved in the transformation process or those interested in pursuing this route. It is an expression of my deep belief and trust in the evolutionary process in which we are all involved.