Negative Introject (from Chapter 18 in "Trapped in the Mirror)

[Laura]

When you apply this knowledge to the human brain, with its intellectual center (prefrontal cortex) that can produce all sorts of rationalizations for this dysfunction, the range of potential subjective dream worlds to lose oneself in are endless. Something sets off our hair-trigger defenses, we can't cope with it and we dissociate. Throw in Laura's research on Transmarginal Inhibition and it becomes obvious that to trust one's own mind without objective, third party review is suicidally reckless at best.

Indeed, this part is the most frightening - and, at the same time, liberating - point that can be made:

"But the truth of the matter is that, until we've created and fused our
magnetic center, ALL of our thoughts and feelings are suspect because
they are all the result of faulty wiring in our brains. Here in 3D STS
it is almost never a matter of "this is me and this is the predator and
I can choose to ignore the predator." In the beginning everything is the
predator. The underlying moods that led to the self-defeating thoughts,
any feelings in response to those thoughts, all of it the work of faulty
wiring."

I was searcing for some info on a completely different subject the other day and came across the text I have excerpted below. This guy makes an interesting case for the construction of the "false personality" including the most basic things about us, including what we perceive as "objects of desire."

I read this at almost the same time as reading in a rather problematical book by Kevin Randle, William Cone and Russ Estes which states that about 50% of "alien abductees" are homosexual. That's an astonishing figure - if it is true - which raises some questions as to why that would be the case. One would think that the number would be more or less equal to the normal percentage of homosexuals in any given population.

Of course, since Randle is basically saying that abductions don't really happen, I'm not sure what his point is. That is one of the reasons I would really like for some of you to read this book and help me sort it out.

Anyway, here is the excerpt that concerns me at the moment:

http://personal1.stthomas.edu/ajscheiber/Professional/TURNSCRE.MLA.htm

Desire and Anomie in The Turn of the Screw

Andrew J. Scheiber University of St. Thomas

Dr. Jean Itard's work with Victor, the "wild boy of Aveyron," constitutes one of the axiomatic scientific fables of the Nineteenth Century. First published in English in 1802, it documents the collision of Rousseauistic freedom worship with the suggestion, embodied in the feral foundling Victor, that the individual personality is constructed rather than inhibited by the symbolic systems of culture; the lesson of the fable, as Christopher Herbert aptly summarizes it, is this: "that in order for desire to exist in any coherent, active, and potentially satisfiable form, it must embed itself in a fully social matrix, which is to say, become directed toward objects conventionally defined and symbolically coded as desirable by human society" (Herbert 50). [...]

This culturally deterministic view of human feeling and behavior enjoyed a resurgence in the early 1890's, as sociological pioneers such as Emile Durkheim insisted that "Social facts are not the simple development of psychic facts, but the second are in large part only the prolongation of the first in the interior of consciences" (DL 349). For Durkheim and others, the socially authorized symbolic objects of desire did not in effect limit the avenues of human feeling, but rather constructed those avenues, mapping routes through what otherwise would be a chaotic wilderness of emotions and impulses. In this view, the norms of "civilized" culture were understood not as restraints, as Rousseauistic romanticism would have it, but rather as tools, a kind of technology of satisfaction which provided the necessary matrix for human desires and their fulfillment. (This is, of course, a position similar to that argued by Matthew Arnold in Culture and Anarchy, wherein he characterizes freedom as a form of "machinery" that has become fetishized as an end in itself.) [...]

It's useful to reflect briefly on the relevance of Durkheim's basic conception to some current debates in literary theory. For him human identity is radically embedded in societal and material contingencies; but more importantly, these contingencies are significant principally in their systematic symbolicity, through which they produce and shape human motives and behavior. Desires of all kinds (including sexual ones) are experienced as a valences of identity, and are not only "trapped in the economy of the sign," as Lacan says; they are in fact created by that economy, their expression and satisfaction dependent, as Jay Clayton puts it, on "embodiment in social and historical forms" (82, 83).

As Durkheim and other pioneers of the "human sciences" grappled with the syntax that governed human society and personality, they theorized the apparent materiality of civilization as a semiotic system within which individual self-awareness was itself constituted. For Durkheim individual states of conscience arise "not from the psychological nature of man in general, but from the manner in which men once associated mutually affect one another," and that "individual constitutions are only remote conditions, not determinate causes" (DL 350); in addition, these "mutual associations" are essentially semiotic in nature, since "it is clear that essentially social life is made up of representations" (S 312).

The key point to be grasped here is that in Durkheim's view the semiotic terms that determine self-consciousness include desires and objects-- including sexual ones--that the repression model holds to be pre-civilized, and therefore pre-semiotic; as a consequence, disruptions or deprivations of the socially symbolic arena can lead to crises of both identity and desire. This formulation seems to find some support in Itard's narrative of the wild child Victor. Raised in a state of radical cultural deprivation, Victor despite undergoing the biological upheavals of puberty is unable to focus the the changes in his body into anything approaching sexual desire; "erotically oblivious to women, . . . incapable of recognizing [them] as objects of his sex drive," Victor experiences other, less sexually defined symptoms: not only apathy and lethargy but a series of traumatic sensational responses, including "convulsive frenzies," profuse bleeding from the nose and ears (Herbert 49-50).

Victor's behavior suggests the incoherency of his sexual identity at two different levels. First of all, his anarchic symptoms suggest a kind of bodily semioclasm: he is unable to experience himself as a "sign," a socially constructed combination of bodily signifiers (including sexual desires and responses) and underlying biologically determined signifieds (his procreant organs and capacities); but secondly, Victor's "semiotic emergency" (Lacan's phrase) is caused by a larger disruption--that of the relational nature of sign to sign. Deprived of initiation into the system of representations on which the social and interpersonal dimensions of sexuality are contingent, Victor finds it impossible to construct an individual sexual self-concept as well.

Victor's crisis is, to borrow from Jameson, a "breakdown in the signifying chain" (Jameson's term), a moment in which "the genesis of meaning out of the interplay among signifiers in a total order of meaning is paralyzed by a breach . . . upon which such interplay depends" (Cantwell 292).

Note: Lacan's psychoanalytic model posits as a stage in the development of the psyche a "mirror" image, "through which the I is precipitated in a primordial form," a stage which is followed by a second and dialectical element, its "social determination." The first stage Lacan calls "idealization," and the second "differentiation," with individual self- consciousness a result of the interplay of the two

Lacan, Jacques. "The Mirror Stage as a Formative of the Function of the I." In Ecrits: A Selection, translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1977. 1-7.

Herbert, Christopher. Culture and Anomie: Ethnographic Imagination in the Nineteenth Century. U of Chicago P, 1991.

I thought it might be useful to also have some background on "The wild boy of Aveyron" in order to evaluate the ideas of Itard et al.

http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/itard.shtml

In 1799 three French sportsmen were exploring a wood in southern France when they came upon a young boy. They guessed that he was eleven or twelve years old, and he was filthy, naked, and covered with scars. The boy ran from them, but he was caught when he stopped to climb a tree. The sportsmen brought him to a nearby village and gave him over into the care of a widow. As the story of his capture spread, local residents began reporting that a young naked boy had been seen in the woods five years earlier. It was presumed that he had lived alonefor many years, and that he had survived by eating whatever he could find or catch (Itard, 1801/1962).

The boy escaped from the widow, and spent the next winter roaming the woods alone. He was eventually recaptured and placed in safe custodial care. An official in the French government heard about him, and suggested that he be taken to Paris where he could be studied as an example of the human mind in its primitive state (Itard, 1801/1962). However, the prominent Parisian physicians who examined him declared that he was not "wild" at all; their collective opinion was that the boy was mentally deficient, and that he had been recently abandoned by his parents. The famous psychiatrist Philippe Pinel put it succinctly when he said that the boy was in fact "an incurable idiot" (Gaynor, 1973).

Itard disagreed. He believed that the boy had survived alone in the woods for at least seven years, citing as evidence his "profound aversion to society, its customs, and its artifacts" (Itard, 1801/1962). He asserted that his apparent mental deficiency was entirely due to a lack of human interaction. Moreover, he believed that this could be overcome. He brought the boy-whom he eventually named "Victor"--to The National Institution for Deaf-Mutes, and devoted the next five years to an intensive, individualized educational program (Humphrey, 1962; French, 2000). This was the first example of an IEP, and the beginning of modern special education (Gaynor, 1973; Humphrey, 1963; Pinchot, 1948).

Itard identified five primary goals for his pupil: 1. To interest him in social life 2. To improve his awareness of environmental stimuli 3. To extend the range of his ideas (e.g. introduce him to games, culture, etc.) 4. To teach him to speak 5. To teach him to communicate by using symbol systems, such as pictures and written words

Itard had been influenced by the empiricist philosophers John Locke and Etienne Condillac, both of whom advanced the idea that all knowledge comes through the senses. Victor's eyesight and hearing were normal, but his responses to sensory input were often sluggish or nonexistent. For example, he would perk up at the slightest sound of a nutshell cracking, but would not startle at the sound of a gunshot. Itard reasoned that Victor could not learn effectively until he became more attuned to his environment. Therefore, his educational approach relied heavily on sensory-training and stimulation. (Humphrey, 1962; Itard, 1801/1962).

Victor improved, but he never approached normalcy. After five years he could read and speak a few words, demonstrated affection for his caretakers, and could carry out simple commands. Itard was disappointed in this lack of progress, but he maintained his environmentalist position, stating that would have been successful if Victor had been a few years younger. (Pinchot, 1948). As it turns out, Philippe Pinel and the other physicians were probably right; modern readers of Itard's personal account usually come to the conclusion that Victor was indeed mentally retarded or autistic (French, 2000; Humphrey, 1962; Pinchot, 1948).

The fact that Itard failed to make Victor "normal" is relatively unimportant to this story. The important thing is that he tried. He was the first physician to declare that an enriched environment could compensate for developmental delays caused by heredity or previous deprivation (French, 2000). Up to this time, it had been assumed that mentally retarded people were uneducable (Humphrey, 1962). As one writer put it, Itard's work with Victor "did away with the paralyzing sense of hopelessness and inertia that had kept the medical profession and everybody else from trying to do anything constructive for mental defectives" (Kanner, 1967).

Itard's influence was further extended through the work of his pupil, Eduard Séguin. Séguin improved and expanded his teacher's sensory-training approach, and put it into practice in special schools for retarded students. He earned fame both in Europe and abroad for his nonverbal intelligence test, which also had its roots in Itard's work (French, 2000; Humphrey, 1962; Kanner, 1967). Maria Montessori developed her methods in large part by modifying Séguin's educational approach. Through her, Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard has had an impact on thousands of normally developing schoolchildren all over the world (Frankel, et al., 1975; French, 2000; Humphrey, 1962)

 

[Laura]

I found some stuff Randle wrote on the subject of his demographics. Curiously, I see that it was just posted on Aug. 23!! Talk about strange timing.

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/08/abduction-enigma.html

The Abduction Enigma

(Note: Russ Estes, Bill Cone and I published a book called The Abduction Enigma about a decade ago. We saw it as a way of changing abduction research for the better by pointing out the weaknesses in the field. Of course we were attacked for our heresies and our suggestions were ignored. Instead other researchers asked for our demographics and wanted to know our methodologies. The following, originally published in The Anomalist, provided that specific information.)

In July 1996, at the MUFON Symposium held in Greensboro, North Carolina, Budd Hopkins was disturbed by my paper about pop cultural influences on the imagery of alien abduction. He approached me and said, "You´re not an abduction researcher." I reminded him that he used information about an abduction I had investigated in his first book on the topic. I have been investigating alien abductions since the mid-1970s and apparently before Hopkins started.

Four years later, that same comment was made, even after having published a number of articles on the topic, and having written two books about abduction. The second of those books, The Abduction Enigma, written with Russ Estes (seen here) and Dr. William P. Cone, has created something of a fire-storm, with many attacking without attempting to understand the reason the book exists.

Before moving on, it is necessary to provide some background information on both Estes and Cone. Estes, as a documentarian, has been investigating UFOs, and by default, alien abductions, since the late 1960s, which puts him ahead of most in the field today. He has interviewed and video taped literally hundreds of abductees and was responsible for some of the insights published in The Abduction Enigma.

Dr. Cone is a licensed psychological clinician with more than twenty years experience in the field. He has worked with, again literally, hundreds who believe that they have been abducted. Some of those believed the abduction was at the hands of worshipers of Satan, but dozens of others believed that they had been abducted by alien creatures. When we begin to talk of experience, as a psychologist and an abduction researcher, Cone has credentials that are as impressive as any of those working in the field today. Unlike some who gained their experience in the ivory towers of academia, Cone gained his experience in the field working with real people who had real problems.

Of course none of that means anything to the critics of our book. They simply begin attempting to pick apart some of our basic assumptions. For example, those believing that alien abductions are taking place have asked what is our definition of an abduction. They are attempting, I suppose, to understand the process we used to select the participants in our survey. The flip answer would be that we used the same definition that they used and the same people they used. It allows us to dodge the question without answering it.

The real answer is that our sample was taken from those who had been identified as abductees by others. That means that our sample was made up of those who were accepted as abductees and that we identified no one from the general population who hadn´t been accepted by the "mainstream" of abduction research. It means that the abductees were those identified by Hopkins, John Mack, John Carpenter, Yvonne Smith, Richard Boylan and so on. It means that we did not identify them as abductees but relied on the definition used by those others and the identification of those others. Therefore, as mentioned, abductees in our sample are the same as the abductees used by the other researchers.

The interesting thing here is that there seems to be no universal definition of who is an abductee. Jerry Clark, in the second edition of his The UFO Encyclopedia wrote, "Abduction reports concern alien entities who capture humans from their bedrooms, vehicles, or open air, transport their captives inside a UFO, and subject them to a bizarre, sometimes painful physical examination before returning them to the capture site." That seems to define the abduction event but not who, or what, an abductee actually is.

David Jacobs, in Secret Life provided a description of the typical abduction. He wrote, "An unsuspecting woman is in her room preparing to go to bed. She gets into bed, reads a while, turns off the light, and drifts off into a peaceful night´s sleep. In the middle of the night she turns over and lies on her back. She is awakened by a light that seems to be glowing in her room. The light moves toward her and takes the shape of a small `man´ with a bald head and huge black eyes. She is terrified. She wants to run but she cannot move. She wants to scream but she cannot speak... This is the typical beginning of an abduction." Again, this addresses, more closely, what an abduction is as opposed to who is an abductee.

Raymond E. Fowler, in The Watchers, also tells us what an abduction is and provides a few clues about who the abductee is. He wrote, "...credible witnesses who claim not only to have observed but to have been taken abroad a UFO by alien creatures ...the alleged abductee claims to have been examined and operated upon with foreign instruments. Almost always, communication is accomplished by telepathy." By the way, I have seen no complaints about Fowler´s suggestion that communication is telepathic, and I have seen no one howling for demographic data to prove this bold assertion.

The closest that anyone comes, at least in the literature search I made, was from the "Abduction Code of Conduct" published in the Journal of UFO Studies. The authors wrote, "As there exist a number of possible causes for a reported abduction experience, investigators and MHPs [Mental Health Professionals] may work with individuals whose reported experiences stem from a variety of factors... abduction experiencer... simply indicates someone who reports experiences in their (sic) life which are consistent with, suggestive of, or thought to be associated with being `abducted´ (i.e., `carried or led away... in secret or by force,´) by apparently nonhuman entities." What this suggests is that an abductee is anyone who reports that he or she is an abductee. It tends to validate our sample because those we used were those who reported they were abductees.

Unlike most of those other researchers, we did not advertize in the backs of books, or in magazines, or on radio programs, suggesting those with specific types of symptoms to write or call to expand our database. Those used in our survey were those who had been identified by other, the "true" abduction researchers. They were the ones who attended the UFO conferences, the symposiums, and the local, small meetings, and those who had joined one of the many abduction groups whose purpose was to gather to discuss abduction. Many of them were names that would be recognized by the UFO community including those who have appeared on television, those who have written their own books, and those who have been featured in the books of the abduction researchers. We defined our sample by who they were and who had hypnotically regressed them. The flippant answer turns out to be accurate because "our" abductees were the same as those interviewed by Hopkins, Mack, Jacobs, Carpenter and many of the other, lesser known researchers.

I might point out here that, somehow, the selection of abductees has been turned on its head. We used those only identified as abductees, yet the other researchers advertize for their clients. Their abductees are "self- selected." Their sample is not random, by the strictest definition and that could skew their results.

The size of our sample was 316 individuals. They were selected because they claimed to have been abducted and "true" researchers had validated their claim. Today, for some reason, everyone is screaming for our demographics, though in the past no one really cared about these numbers, random sampling or even the scientific method.

In the last few months I read again that there is no psychopathology in the abduction population because Hopkins tested for it. What is rarely remembered is that Hopkins selected the sample, so it doesn´t seem to be random and it was only nine individuals. Hopkins has said that he has interviewed hundreds and hundreds of abductees since he began his research. This would mean that the data he presented about nine individuals who were not randomly sampled are invalid. The sample size was too small and not properly selected. Somehow those facts get missed most of the time.

In fact, Dr. Thomas E. "Eddie" Bullard pointed out that the Hopkins´ test was of people who had "achieved a high educational level." He also noted that "In this sense the group is neither adequate in size or suitably representative to indicate what abductees are like... Abductions may still have a psychological explanation, but it belongs in some branch of the field other than abnormal psychology." Bullard agreed that the sample was too small for the results to have any validity, yet champions of alien abduction continue to cite these data.

Our sample was drawn from all parts of the United States and several foreign countries. Each individual was video taped, and each was asked the same questions in approximately the same order. We, or rather I should say Russ and Bill because they did the lion´s share of the interviewing, asked all questions that seemed relevant. We did not limit ourselves by our preconceived notions, nor did we worry about privacy issues because we do not plan to release the names of those who participated in the interviews. In our sample, all those asked sat down in front of the video camera. Some asked to have their faces in shadow, or to be backlit so that it would be impossible to recognize them. Unlike Hopkins, Mack and the others, everyone agreed to go on camera in some respect. In our sample we had one hundred percent cooperation. Each of those interviewed signed a release, each had the right to refuse to answer any specific question, and each had the right to refuse the interview on camera. This too negates the privacy issue that is now so important to some of these researchers.

Here again there are some interesting twists. Yes, when I first approached Pat Roach (who, by the way was self-selected), she asked that I use a pseudonym for her. I called her Patty Price to protect her identity. Within months, she had agreed to go on a syndicated television program and used her real name. So much for the privacy issue here.

The story of Sherry, as related in The Abduction Enigma, is also illustrative. Sherry wanted her identity protected. She wanted to remain in the shadows and have her facial features obscured, up to point. That point seemed to be Disney and the opportunity to appear on a program that would be aired nationally. On television she told a story that was somewhat different than that she had been telling her abduction researcher and that she had told Estes. Not only that, she dragged her daughter into the tales, telling how she had stood by helpless, paralyzed, as the aliens had medically examined her child. Sherry had appeared in front of the camera to tell her horrifying tale.

Finally, before we leave this area, and in contrast to what other researchers claim, Estes noticed that the abductees were often eager to appear on camera. The reason given was that the abductee seemed to believe that sharing the tale might help others and if that was the outcome, then the exposure to possible ridicule was well worth it. If Hopkins and others are having trouble finding people to appear on television programs to help advertize their latest books, then they simply are asking the wrong people. It has not been difficult for us.

One other point about the our sample is important. The range of ages is from 26 to 47. We all decided not to deal with children because the memories of children are easily manipulated as shown by a number of scientific studies. When you begin to interview children under five, the things you learn from them are colored by their sense of wonder and by "magical" thinking. They don´t understand causal relationships and everything is new and wonderful for them.

As children grow, they learn more about the world around them and their view of the planet changes. They learn that some of the myths of childhood have no validity, but they are still confronted by things that are new to them and information that is often difficult to grasp. An authority figure, whether a parent, a teacher, a police officer, or an abduction researcher, can lead them, often without intension, into arenas that are far from the literal truth. We eliminated this problem by dealing solely with adults.

Now, in what has become the strawman of our research, we found a disproportionately high number of homosexuals in our sample. One hundred and seventy-four of them expressed homosexual tendencies. That can be broken down into those who were bisexual (23%) and those who had expressed a homosexual preference but who had not engaged in sexual activity for more than five years (29%). Before anyone claims the percentages do not add up, remember that those who said they were bisexual could also be in the group who abstained. And no, we did not investigate to learn the accuracy of their claims. We accepted, at face value, their reporting of their sexual preferences and activities, just as the other abduction researchers have accepted at face value many of the self-reported facts.

Before we proceed, it might be illustrative to discuss how this discovery was made. It wasn´t a question of sitting down to decide to talk about homosexuality, but an outgrowth of the interview process. Russ Estes had asked about the gender of the alien creatures. He was told, by the females, that most of the abductors were male, but that the leaders seemed to be female. In early discussions, as these distinctions were being made, Estes asked the natural follow-up question which revealed the pattern of gender identity. Once the preliminary observation had been made, the question about sexual orientation, as an outgrowth of an attempt to learn the gender of the alien creatures, was added to the survey.

The statistic became important, not because it deals with homosexuality, but because homosexuals are over represented in our abduction sample. Depending on which psychological or sexual study is cited, the representation of homosexuals in the general population is between 2 and 10 percent. This means their representation in our sample is between six and thirty times what it should be. Given that there is no accurate way to identify a homosexual individual by outward appearances, it would seem that an alien race grabbing people at random would end up with a sample that is statistically within the norms of the general population. This is not the case, based on our findings.

Maybe it should be pointed out here that African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians are vastly under represented in the abduction population. Again, you would expect that all racial and ethnic groups would be represented as they appear in the general population, but this doesn´t seem to be the case. Yes, Hopkins, Mack and Jacob all say that the representation of these groups is normal but the individuals in these sub-groups simply do not report their abductions. Of course, if they don´t report them, then we can´t know for certain that they are properly represented but I see no one suggesting that abductions researchers explain this abnormality. No one is asking for proof that these other racial and ethnic groups are properly represented in the abduction populations. Instead the pronouncement that these other groups are properly represented but don´t report their abductions is accepted at face value without questioning the validity of the claim.

All of this leads to a number of other statistical surveys that could be made. By changing the variable from sexual preference to college education, or incident of divorce, or religious choice, or right and left handedness, further statistical abnormalities might be identified, and that might provide clues about the nature of alien abduction. If another population, one which has no outwardly visible signs is overly represented, then we would have learned something about those who report abductions and that might provide clues about abductions in general.

And while we´re attacked for not providing precise demographic data, other abduction researchers are not asked similar questions. Using Budd Hopkins again, he has said that 20 to 30 percent of the abductees have conscious memories of their abductions so that hypnotic regression is not a factor. No one has asked any specific questions about this information. For example, what exactly does Hopkins mean by conscious recall? Does this mean a vague feeling of unease, the memory of awaking paralyzed and the belief that something is in the room with them, or is it just the memory of a vivid dream?

Hopkins reported that "Steve Kilburn" had a conscious recall of a vague feeling of dread about a segment of highway. Under hypnotic regression, this feeling of dread was expanded into an abduction experience. Is Kilburn counted in this 20 to 30 percent?

Does the conscious recall include what is properly termed sleep paralysis? Depending on the study used, as many as half the people in the general population have experienced an episode of sleep paralysis. The symptoms match, exactly, those Jacobs outlined as his typical abduction experience cited earlier. No one has asked if the abduction researchers have taken care to separate the abduction experience from that of sleep paralysis.

In fact, abduction researchers have claimed that sleep paralysis does not explain alien abduction. They cite differences such as those who were allegedly abducted while fully awake. That does not mean that a percentage of those now identified as abductees did not have, as the precipitating event, an episode of sleep paralysis.

I should point out here that we attempted to gain the cooperation of a number of abduction researchers in a general survey of sleep paralysis in their abductee populations. It seemed to us that such a statistical analysis would provide some independent corroboration of some our findings. Of our 316 individuals, nearly half reported an episode that mimicked sleep paralysis and seemed to be the event that caused them to search for additional answers. None of the abduction researchers were courteous enough to even respond with a negative answer. Instead they ignored our requests for assistance and this was long before the book was published.

We can expand our database by searching through the abduction literature. Hopkins´ tale of a man he called Philip Osborne provides us with some clues. Hopkins wrote, "I noticed his interest in the subject [UFOs] had a particular edge to it. It was almost as if he accepted too much, too easily." Hopkins believed "that someone with a hidden traumatic UFO experience might later on be unconsciously drawn to the subject."

Osborne called Hopkins after an NBC UFO documentary and said that he had been struck by Steve Kilburn's remark that anyone could be the victim of abduction. According to Hopkins (seen here), Osborne had been searching his memory for anything in his past that would indicate some sort of strange experience. Then, one night after the NBC program, Osborne awoke in the middle the night, paralyzed. He could not move, turn his head or call for help. The experience was over quickly, but it reminded him of another, similar event that happened while he was in college. That earlier event had one other, important addition. He felt a presence in the room with him.

Hopkins, along with others, met Osborne a few days later to explore these events using hypnosis. During the initial hypnotic regression, Osborne gave only a few answers that seemed to direct them toward an abduction experience. According to Hopkins, Osborne told them that he "had more or less refused to describe imagery or events that seemed 'too pat,' too close to what he and we might have expected in a UFO encounter."

During the discussion after the hypnosis, Osborne told Hopkins that "I would see something and I would say to myself in effect, 'Well, that's what I'm supposed to see.'"

And, in a second hypnotic regression session held a few days later, while under hypnosis, Osborne said, "I'm not sure I see it... I think it's my imagination... It's gone now."

Osborne, it seems, had recognized one of the problems with abduction research, had communicated it to Hopkins, and then had it ignored. Osborne was wondering if the "memories" he was seeing under hypnosis were real. Hopkins believed they were so took no notice of Osborne's concern. Hopkins believes in the reliability of hypnosis as a method for uncovering the truth. We, however, see those statements by Osborne as extremely important in attempting to understand the context of alien abduction.

The fact that seemed to be overlooked, once again, is that Osborne's initial experiences are classic forms of sleep paralysis. Even the belief that an entity is in the room happens in about eighty percent of the cases of sleep paralysis. While Osborne certainly has some form of conscious recall of an event, it wasn´t until hypnosis was introduced that the memories moved from those that sound suspiciously like sleep paralysis to those that are now a complete and full blown abduction. The key here, with Osborne, as it has been with so many others, is the use of hypnosis and the validation provided by the abduction researcher.

And now we reach the reports that can be classified as vivid dreams. Betty Hill remembered nothing of the abduction until she began to dream about it. On the advice of friends, she began to keep a journal of those dreams and when interviewed by UFO researchers about her sighting, told them of the dreams she was having. That aspect of the case, the abduction told through dreams, was virtually ignored until she, along with husband Barney, were hypnotically regressed. Then, because the memories were accessed through hypnosis, they seem to have been validated. The point, however, is that the conscious memories of the abduction surfaced through dreams.

So, there are a number of reports that represent conscious recall. Unfortunately, that conscious recall isn´t of an abduction itself, but of a dream, or possibly sleep paralysis, or of vague anxieties that emerge under hypnosis.

Yes, we know that Eddie Bullard, in his report for FUFOR noted, "Only a minority of cases include hypnosis in their discovery and investigation. For 212 cases the reports include no mention of hypnotic probes, and undoubtedly in most instances no mention means no hypnosis." Of course, this is an assumption on the part of Bullard. Since his report was published in 1987, that situation has changed. But the real point is that we have no demographic information about where Hopkins obtained his 20 to 30 percent suggesting no hypnosis necessary for recall of the abduction event.

But all of this, the demands for demographic data and definitions of abduction are red herrings because they mask the real issue. In The Abduction Enigma we addressed many of these issues, but more of the criticisms focused on either the lack of demographic data or that we had found an anomaly in our statistical sample. That is, the homosexual population was over represented. We thought this strange statistic should be reported simply because none of the other abduction researchers had explored this ground. When questioned about it, they thought nothing of it.

Overlooked, however, are the facts we uncovered about abduction research itself. These facts are mentioned, in passing, by other researchers, but the significance of them is downplayed. Searching the abduction literature, we found, expressed by other researchers, another part of the abduction answer. It was an answer that each of the researchers offered to explain the mistakes of their fellows, but a criticism that did not apply to the researcher making the claim.

Jacobs, in The Threat, wrote, "Many hypnotists and therapists who work with abductees adhere to New Age philosophies and actively search for conformational material. During hypnosis, the hypnotist emphasizes the material that reinforces his own world view. If both the subject and the hypnotist are involved with New Age beliefs, the material that results from the hypnotic sessions must be viewed skeptically, because their mindset can seriously compromise their ability to discern facts."

John Mack (seen here) said something similar. He said, "One of the interesting aspects of the phenomenon is that the quality of the experience of the abductee will vary according to who does their regression."

Mack also told C.D.B. Bryan, "And there´s another interesting dimension to this which Budd Hopkins and Dave Jacobs and I argue about all the time, which is that I´m struck by the fact that there seems to be a kind of matching of the investigator with the experiencer... And the experiencers seem to pick out the investigator who will fit their experience." This is, of course, a ridiculous explanation offered to explain why the investigations of a specific researcher match the data gathered by that researcher, but not necessarily that of another.

Mack then goes on to explain it. He said, "It seems to me that Jacobs, Hopkins and Nyman may pull out of their experiencers what they want to see." Mack has just provided an answer about the abduction experience if he could understand what he implied. He has explained why Jacobs finds hybrid invaders, Hopkins finds alien scientists and Mack finds eastern philosophers. They pull from their experiencers what they want to see.

Evidence of this is seen from the earliest investigations into alien abduction. When I arranged for Dr. James Harder, at the time the APRO Director of Research, to use his hypnosis skills on Pat Roach, there weren´t many people claiming to have been abducted. His motivation was a validation of the Hill abduction. If there were additional abductions in widely separated parts of the country, Harder believed that the testimony would be persuasive evidence of alien abduction.

A close reading of the transcripts of Harder´s hypnotic regression sessions with Roach point to his leading her to the place he wanted to reach. For example, when Roach mentioned that she believed she had been examined by the aliens but didn´t really remember it, Harder asked her if it had been a G-Y- N examination. There certainly was no reason for Harder to limit it to that one specific kind of examination, other than his desire to validate the Hill case.

There is another point that is not evident on the tapes or in the transcripts because the intervals between the hypnosis sessions were not taped. These discussions provided some insight into the researcher methods. At one point, before the session in which Roach revealed she had been examined, Harder (seen here with Pat Roach and her daughter) had told her of Betty Hill´s quasi-medical examination on board the UFO. It was in the very next session that Roach told that she thought she had been examined and Harder asked about the G-Y-N.

In fact, a close examination of the Roach case revealed where most of her inspiration could be found. Harder was inducing it during his questioning under hypnosis and in his discussions with her between those sessions. At the time, to me, it seemed to be a good technique because it assured her that she was not alone in her memories of alien abduction. It was supposedly a relaxing technique that reduced her anxiety. In the end, it was a subtle prompting that took Roach in the direction that Harder wanted her to go. I doubt that Harder realized what he was doing. I certainly didn´t see the harm in 1975 as we interviewed Roach.

I tried to find out how pervasive such coaching might be. Looking at the Herbert Schirmer abduction from Ashland, Nebraska in 1966, I saw that Dr. Leo Sprinkle, working with scientists from the notorious Condon Committee, had met with Schirmer during one morning to explain how they planned to proceed with their investigation. Notes and information about the hypnosis sessions were included in both the official report issued by the Condon Committee and in books written by Coral Lorenzen. Neither of those sources provided the answers that I wanted.

Working with Jerry Clark, we began a long distance investigation. We asked Dr. Michael Swords, who has been through the Condon Committee files, and who is quite familiar with the case, if there were any notes that would tell us what happened before the hypnosis session. Unfortunately, there was nothing available in that source to clear up the questions.

Clark, who is friends with Sprinkle, agreed to approach him to see if notes or minutes or some sort of record of those earlier sessions existed. Sprinkle responded quickly to Clark´s request, but only to say that everything he had was published and he gave the same sources that we had already checked.

What I wanted to know, and what is important here, is how Sprinkle had approached Schirmer. What did he say to him about the reasons for wanting to hypnotically regress him? It would seem that if Sprinkle mentioned that he thought there might be more to the original UFO sighting, if Sprinkle mentioned the possibility of an abduction, then the session would be tainted. That is not to suggest that Sprinkle mentioned abduction, or that one of the scientists from the Condon Committee mentioned abduction, but there is no way of knowing this in today´s world.

If we extrapolate from the problems with the Roach investigation, the possibility of implanting memories by discussing hypnosis, and from Mack´s theory, we can see that each of the researchers is finding an abduction where nothing of the sort might exist. All we have to do is return to the initial hypnotic regression sessions, as published by the abduction researchers, and we find, time and again, how, originally, the subjects said there was nothing there. The researchers, however, using various techniques, "strengthen" the state of hypnosis and eventually break through the mental blocks erected by the abductors.

I think we need to note here that it doesn´t matter how skilled the hypnotists are, or how sophisticated the alien abductors might be. Everyone who tries is able to break through the mental blocks to learn all that the aliens try to hide. It would seem that an alien race who has defeated the problems of interstellar flight would understand enough human psychology to hide their actions if they wanted to do so. Yet their attempts fail as the weekend hypnotists, as well as though with extensive training, are able to learn the alleged truth.

Eddie Bullard in his report for FUFOR noted, "At no time in any of the reports on record has an abduction appeared out of nowhere to someone undergoing hypnosis for unrelated reasons." Bill Cone reinforced that, saying much the same thing. In our survey of 316 individuals, all of them had gone to an abduction researcher. All of the individuals found an abduction experience, even when the reason for beginning the search was little more than a very vivid dream.

In a corollary, it should be pointed out that we know of no case in which someone approached an abduction researcher, was taken on, and failed to produce an abduction experience. Yes, we know that one researcher screens those who write to him, suggesting that he can tell the "nut cases" by the number of times confidential is written on the envelop and how much tape is used. The point is that all those who have been accepted have produced the required tale, with the proper elements that reinforce the specific researcher´s belief structure.

In one of the most important of the revelations in The Abduction Enigma, we found a clue about the nature of the abduction phenomenon and we have discovered why the stories, used as proof that abductions are real, seem to match so well. The researchers are directing the stories as they are being told. This observation was one that was made by Mack and Jacobs. There is no reason to reject it as an explanation. Both have suggested, as noted, that the researcher finds what he or she wants to find.

But, rather than discuss this revelation, rather than suggest that we have misinterpreted what they said by claiming it is inaccurate, they begin to complain about demographic material, source of interviews, and the fact that a disproportional number of gays were found in our abductee sample. These researchers and critics don´t know if our sample was skewed because none of the other researchers asked these basic questions. Instead they suggest that we were asking questions that were none of our business. This from people who are not mental health professionals but are using hypnosis and commenting on psychological principles that they have not studied and about which they know very little.

And if it is true that the researchers are pulling from the abductees what they want to find, and we certainly saw corroboration of it in our research, then hasn´t the case for alien abduction been seriously damaged? Haven´t we reported on a flaw that has been virtually ignored as researchers continue to gather data? If we are correct, then shouldn´t abduction research, as it is now conducted, be reevaluated to eliminate these problems? Remember, we are not the only ones to find this problem but we did suggest it as a major reason that abduction research should be altered. Instead of considering this possibility, the critics and abduction researchers begin to focus on demographics and trivia rather than confronting the issue.

Case study research, which is what the lion´s share of abduction investigation has been for the last twenty to thirty years has yielded all the results we can expect. There are now, literally, thousands of case studies, beginning in this country with Barney and Betty Hill and continuing to Linda Cortile (Linda seen with Budd Hopkins) of Witnessed fame. These latest studies provide nothing that is actually new or important but become one more stone to throw onto the pile. But case studies are not going to advance our understanding of alien abduction. Instead, they conceal understanding under a mountain of paper and transcripts. The real point of The Abduction Enigma was that abduction research has stagnated. Abduction research is caught in a cycle that allows for no new revelations or understanding. When we suggested that such was the case, when we presented evidence that such was the case, the attitude was to ignore these criticisms and attack demographic information that has little overall importance.

This report provides the sort of demographic information that other abduction researchers have refused to supply. It also points out where abduction research should go if it is going to survive in the future. We understand the case studies, we understand that the abductees are telling all the truth as they understand it, but we must now determine if that truth is of alien visitation or if it conceals something else. That was supposed to be the message in The Abduction Enigma but too many chose to ignore it or fail to see it. They would prefer that we stay where we are, placing the unsuspecting under hypnotic regression in a thinly veiled attempt to maintain the status quo. Let´s look beyond that and move the research into an arena that can provide some answers and that will actually help those claiming abduction. To do any less would be to ignore the situation.

 

[Bo]

great thread!

The negative introject for me has always manifested as "shyness" in the general sense. That is, an inability to interact with others in an open and considerate manner due to social anxiety while simultaneously letting predatory people walk all over me out of fear of defending my own boundaries.

Shyness was also a big problem for me, I always have a voice in my head that sometimes talks to me, it's like talking to yourself but like it is someone else, let me say first that I listen to these voices with critical thinking, some examples

voice: ''don't do that they probably will think you are stupid'' which is caused because of my ''shyness'' in early days when I was also not aware of self observation or C's , when I was sad the voice in my head also said ''don't waste your energy to negative emotions what do you gain by that?'' and usually I agreed with it, because it sounds logic and stopped wasting energy on negative emotions,

now these voices in my head were really a mix of good suggestions and very evil suggestions, I knew this after I started self-observation and after I read the wave and adventure series, I started to pay attention ''up there'' in my mind.

one of the evil voices was : ''Who cares if the girl is stupid, it's about getting laid anyway'' these kind of voices I started to ignore immediately, as I understood it's intention.

I had seriously so many talks with voices inside my head , and now when I look back I see the very evil ones and also the good ones, one of other reasons that made me search for ''something'' which then led me to this forum was also thanks to the voice that kept repeating the following line inside my head: ''what if you wake up one day and realize that everything was an illusion?'' at first I did not understood it, but when I started to fantasize of waking up and realizing that everything around me was an illusion, I started to get a bit afraid , bit weird to explain. But mix that with lots of free time on the internet , I started to search for something more then this life etc.

 

[anart]

I found some stuff Randle wrote on the subject of his demographics. Curiously, I see that it was just posted on Aug. 23!! Talk about strange timing.

Interesting. I've not read the book, but from this article, he certainly makes a lot of jumps in logic to support his own point of veiw. What really jumps out is the idea that just because the people he spoke with were not overly concerned with privacy, that this means when this issue was brought up by other researchers, it was subterfuge or 'not true'. That simply doesn't logically follow, especially when he uses willingness to be on camera as a factor. Sociologically, much has changed very recently with 'being on camera' - it is not a big deal anymore, as it once was - especially with the advent of sites like utube and cheap digital video cameras.

So, he is basically backing his own point of veiw using really shaky evidence, osit - just because the people he spoke with didn't mind, doesn't mean the people spoken with earlier didn't mind - it's a faulty premise, but he states it as clear evidence. Perhaps it is the way he states it - in such a 'sure' way that is the dead giveaway.

The homosexuality aspect is bizarre, simply because bisexuality alone is evidenced in a much larger percentage of the population than 2 to 10 percent - at least according to the studies I've read. Strict homosexuality is evidenced to a lesser extent, although it tends to hover around ten percent - and from the way he describes asking the question - well, 'tendencies' is pretty vague - and can mean anything from fantasizing occasionally to actually have sex - and since sexuality is much more a 'scale' than and 'on/off switch' - I think he once again is jumping to conclusions that might evidence his own lack of understanding or internal biases about sexuality. Just some things I picked up on - fwiw.

 

[Joe]

Anyway, here is the excerpt that concerns me at the moment:

http://personal1.stthomas.edu/ajscheiber/Professional/TURNSCRE.MLA.htm

Desire and Anomie in The Turn of the Screw

Andrew J. Scheiber University of St. Thomas

He seems to be saying that we are nothing but what our society or social environment makes us, or what we learn from it and the people in it. We are essentially blank slates and without the opportunity to absorb the structured learning from our environment and the people in it, both intellectual and emotional learning, we would be just basic-needs driven animal-like beings. It's a scary hypothesis and goes against everything that just about everyone thinks about themselves - uniquely conscious individuals. It 's like hes saying that, like genes, there is a finite number of socialised templates that create our characters or personality types.

Depending on the original number of options, there could be several hundred or thousand or hundreds of thousands of people remarkably like you or me, from a personality POV. The important question of course is: is there a way to be truly unique, or: is there anything truly unique about each person? An obvious answer seems to be to go a long way to removing the socialised traits. But then what are we left with? The feral us? What good is that? Maybe the answer is that repeated life experiences and lives of being socialised in the way described grows something more than the original basic feral being in us or maybe it matures that basic feral aspect into something more evolved. Basically, if we aspire to be a unique individual in some way, we need to spend a long time being totally false.

The other question it brings up for me is; if we all started out as feral/"Neanderthal -like beings, then how did we manage to evolve to the point where we have a significantly greater range and depth of experiences. Of course, without data from experiments conducted with people being brought up in different environments or access to what it was like for "neanderthal man", it's hard to know for sure if we are in fact more evolved, but I am accepting the argument that:

"the socially authorized symbolic objects of desire did not in effect limit the avenues of human feeling, but rather constructed those avenues, mapping routes through what otherwise would be a chaotic wilderness of emotions and impulses. In this view, the norms of "civilized" culture were understood not as restraints, as Rousseauistic romanticism would have it, but rather as tools, a kind of technology of satisfaction which provided the necessary matrix for human desires and their fulfillment."

Which then brings us to the question of how society evolves, who directs or influences it, who are they and what is their agenda. Did someone at some point in our evolution "help" us to evolve a little? If so, for what purpose and is this someone then still controlling our society and therefore the extent of our social development and experiences and therefore our ability to evolve? If so, who are they and what the hell do they want with us?!

Then again, we can dress up a "feral human being", or an animal, like a sheep for example, and make it, oh so civilised, but its essence remains that of a sheep. Like the story of the magician who told the sheep that they were eagles etc. simply to facilitate his fleecing of them.

It seems reasonable to assume that for something real to grow in a person there must be something in them to begin with that can actually facilitate the growth of something real. Without soil, you can sow as many seeds as you like and nothing will grow. That is not to say that growth cannot be stunted, it seems that this is what actually happens to most people with a potential for real growth. It's not to hard to see that our current evolved society is nothing but a sham. Any potential for true evolution has been subverted through the imposition of the mere trappings of "evolution". Behind them lies the reality of our global society which is based on little more than basic animalistic impulses.

When looked at in this way it appears that the evolution of the human race has been deliberately curtailed.

Joe

 

[John G]

He seems to be saying that we are nothing but what our society or social environment makes us, or what we learn from it and the people in it. We are essentially blank slates and without the opportunity to absorb the structured learning from our environment and the people in it, both intellectual and emotional learning, we would be just basic-needs driven animal-like beings. It's a scary hypothesis and goes against everything that just about everyone thinks about themselves - uniquely conscious individuals. It 's like hes saying that, like genes, there is a finite number of socialised templates that create our characters or personality types.

Depending on the original number of options, there could be several hundred or thousand or hundreds of thousands of people remarkably like you or me, from a personality POV. The important question of course is: is there a way to be truly unique, or: is there anything truly unique about each person? An obvious answer seems to be to go a long way to removing the socialised traits. But then what are we left with? The feral us? What good is that? Maybe the answer is that repeated life experiences and lives of being socialised in the way described grows something more than the original basic feral being in us or maybe it matures that basic feral aspect into something more evolved. Basically, if we aspire to be a unique individual in some way, we need to spend a long time being totally false.

That blank slate isn't totally blank since as you mention there is the genetic part to personality (as well as a bounce around before birth part). Two Jungian scales can be noticed in babies. This baby test worked perfectly for my son who is now 9 and highly polarized for those two scales. I'm still not sure about the other two scales (which can be first noticed around 4 or 5), he may be much more in the middle for those.

Although personality biases may be something you are born with, society has a huge effect on maturing one's personality. Everything else being equal you would tend to mature more for the traits you are biased towards but environmental effects can come from schools, different treatment based on gender, etc.

http://tap3x.net/ENSEMBLE/mpage3c.html

 

[Laura]

He seems to be saying that we are nothing but what our society or social environment makes us, or what we learn from it and the people in it. We are essentially blank slates and without the opportunity to absorb the structured learning from our environment and the people in it, both intellectual and emotional learning, we would be just basic-needs driven animal-like beings.

Yeah, that seems to be it but I don't think that this is all there is to it. Remember Gurdjieff's discussion of essence and personality in ISOTM and the demonstration he gave using the two men, one of whom seemed to have nothing inside?

Conversations in groups continued as usual. Once G. said that he wanted to carry out an experiment on the separation of personality from essence. We were all very interested because he had promised "experiments" for a long time but till then we had seen nothing. I will not describe his methods, I will merely describe the people whom he chose that first evening for the experiment.

One was no longer young and was a man who occupied a fairly prominent position in society. At our meetings he spoke much and often about himself, his family, about Christianity, and about the events of the moment connected with the war and with all possible kinds of "scandal" that had very much disgusted him.

The other was younger. Many of us did not consider him to be a serious person. Very often he played what is called the fool; or, on the other hand, entered into endless formal arguments about some or other details of the system without any relation whatever to the whole. It was very difficult to understand him. He spoke in a confused and intricate manner even of the most simple things, mixing up in a most impossible way different points of view and words belonging to different categories and levels.

I pass over the beginning of the experiment.

We were sitting in the big drawing room.

The conversation went on as usual.

"Now observe," G. whispered to us.

The older of the two who was speaking heatedly about something suddenly became silent in the middle of a sentence and seemed to sink into his chair looking straight in front of him.

At a sign from G. we continued to talk without looking at him.

The younger one began to listen to the talk and then spoke himself.

All of us looked at one another.

His voice had become different. He told us some observations about himself in a clear, simple, and intelligible manner without superfluous words, without extravagances, and without buffoonery. Then he became silent; he smoked a cigarette and was obviously thinking of something. The first one sat still without moving, as though shrunken into a ball.

"Ask him what he is thinking about," said G. quietly.

"I?" He lifted his head as though waking up when he was questioned. "About nothing." He smiled weakly as though apologizing or as though he were surprised at anyone asking him what he was thinking about.

"Well, you were talking about the war just now," said one of us, "about what would happen if we made peace with the Germans; do you still think as you did then?"

"I don't know really," he said in an uncertain voice. "Did I say that?"

"Yes, certainly, you just said that everyone was obliged to think about it, that no one had the right not to think about it, and that no one had the right to forget the war; everyone ought to have a definite opinion; yes or no-for or against the war."

He listened as though he did not grasp what the questioner was saying.

"Yes?" he said. "How odd. I do not remember anything about it."

"But aren't you interested in it?"

"No, it does not interest me at all."

"Are you not thinking of the consequences of all that is now taking place, of the results for Russia, for the whole of civilization?"

He shook his head as though with regret.

"I do not understand what you are talking about," he said, "it does not interest me at all and I know nothing about it."

"Well then, you spoke before of your family. Would it not be very much easier for you if they became interested in our ideas and joined the work?"

"Yes, perhaps," again in an uncertain voice. "But why should I think about it?"

"Well, you said you were afraid of the gulf, as you expressed it, which was growing between you and them."

No reply.

"But what do you think about it now?"

"I am not thinking about it at all."

"If you were asked what you would like, what would you say?"

Again a wondering glance-"I do not want anything."

"But think, what would you like?"

On the small table beside him there stood an unfinished glass of tea. He gazed at it for a long time as though considering something. He glanced around him twice, then again looked at the glass, and said in such a serious voice and with such serious intonations that we all looked at one another:

"I think I should like some raspberry jam."

"Why are you questioning him?" said a voice from the corner which we hardly recognized.

This was the second "experiment."

"Can you not see that he is asleep?"

"And you yourself?" asked one of us.

"I, on the contrary, have woken up."

"Why has he gone to sleep while you have woken up?"

"I do not know."

With this the experiment ended.

Neither of them remembered anything the next day.

G. explained to us that with the first man everything that constituted the subject of his ordinary conversation, of his alarms and agitation, was in personality. And when his personality was asleep practically nothing remained.

In the personality of the other there was also a great deal of undue talkativeness but behind the personality there was an essence which knew as much as the personality and knew it better, and when personality went to sleep essence took its place to which it had a much greater right.

"Note that contrary to his custom he spoke very little," said G. "But he was observing all of you and everything that was taking place, and nothing escaped him."

"But of what use is it to him if he also does not remember?" said one of us.

"Essence remembers," said G., "personality has forgotten. And this was necessary because otherwise personality would have perverted everything and would have ascribed all this to itself."

"But this is a kind of black magic," said one of us.

"Worse," said G. "Wait and you will see worse than that"

There are several curious elements in this little recitation, not the least of which is the description of the two subjects, including what they were wont to talk about and how.

Notice this about the man who had "no essence":

"Well then, you spoke before of your family. Would it not be very much easier for you if they became interested in our ideas and joined the work?"

"Yes, perhaps," again in an uncertain voice. "But why should I think about it?"

"Well, you said you were afraid of the gulf, as you expressed it, which was growing between you and them."

This person obviously thought that he was making great progress in the work, that a gulf was opening between him and his family as a result of how much he was "changing." But it was all "personality" and nothing was really happening.

There were other interesting comments that Gurdjieff made about "essence" that I would like to bring to everyone's attention.

Next time G. began again with the question of will.

"The question of will, of one's own will and of another man's will, is much more complicated than it seems at the first glance.

A man has not sufficient will to do, that is, to control himself and all his actions, but he has sufficient will to obey another person. And only in this way can he escape from the law of accident. There is no other way.

Notice that G's description of DOing is "to control himself and all his actions."

"I mentioned before about fate and accident in man's life. We will now take the meaning of these words in more detail.

Fate also exists but not for everyone. Most people are separated from their fate and live under the law of accident only.

Fate is the result of planetary influences which correspond to a man's type.

We will speak about types later. In the meantime you must grasp one thing. A man can have the fate which corresponds to his type but he practically never does have it. This arises because fate has relation to only one part of man, namely to his essence.

"It must be understood that man consists of two parts: essence and personality.

Essence in man is what is his own.

Personality in man is what is 'not his own.' 'Not his own' means what has come from outside, what he has learned, or reflects, all traces of exterior impressions left in the memory and in the sensations, all words and movements that have been learned, all feelings created by imitation - all this is 'not his own,' all this is personality.

Which, of course, suggests that the predator, in Castaneda's term, and the "negative introject" in modern psychological parlance, is "personality", or at least a part of same.

"From the point of view of ordinary psychology the division of man into personality and essence is hardly comprehensible. It is more exact to say that such a division does not exist in psychology at all.

At that time, it didn't - or the theories were vague and misleading.

"A small child has no personality as yet. He is what he really is. He is essence. His desires, tastes, likes, dislikes, express his being such as it is.

This last is what attracted my attention in relation to the previously quoted piece about the "Wild boy," where it was said that "that in order for desire to exist in any coherent, active, and potentially satisfiable form, it must embed itself in a fully social matrix, which is to say, become directed toward objects conventionally defined and symbolically coded as desirable by human society" and "human identity is radically embedded in societal and material contingencies; but more importantly, these contingencies are significant principally in their systematic symbolicity, through which they produce and shape human motives and behavior. Desires of all kinds (including sexual ones) are experienced as a valences of identity, and are not only "trapped in the economy of the sign," as Lacan says; they are in fact created by that economy, their expression and satisfaction dependent, as Jay Clayton puts it, on "embodiment in social and historical forms".

This idea that how we express desire - "I want" - even to the level of how we are oriented sexually, being a consequence/result of programming strikes me as being worthy of consideration and investigation. That's why I thought it was interesting that at the time that certain questions arose in QFS, I ran across this material, including Randle's remarks about homosexuality and so-called "alien abduction." How do these elements relate to one another (if they do at all)?

"But as soon as so-called 'education' begins personality begins to grow.

Personality is created partly by the intentional influences of other people, that is, by 'education,' and partly by involuntary imitation of them by the child itself.

In the creation of personality a great part is also played by 'resistance' to people around him and by attempts to conceal from them something that is 'his own' or 'real.'

"Essence is the truth in man; personality is the false. But in proportion as personality grows, essence manifests itself more and more rarely and more and more feebly and it very often happens that essence stops in its growth at a very early age and grows no further.

It happens very often that the essence of a grown-up man, even that of a very intellectual and, in the accepted meaning of the word, highly 'educated' man, stops on the level of a child of five or six.

This means that everything we see in this man is in reality 'not his own.'

What is his own in man, that is, his essence, is usually only manifested in his instincts and in his simplest emotions.

There are cases, however, when a man's essence grows in parallel with his personality. Such cases represent very rare exceptions especially in the circumstances of cultured life.

Essence has more chances of development in men who live nearer to nature in difficult conditions of constant struggle and danger.

This takes us back to Castaneda's ideas about petty tyrants. It also suggests that today's world, controlled by psychopaths, is actually a growth medium for essence, at least for those who are in the "right conditions."

"But as a rule the personality of such people is very little developed. They have more of what is their own, but very little of what is 'not their own,' that is to say, they lack education and instruction, they lack culture.

Culture creates personality and is at the same time the product and the result of personality.

We do not realize that the whole of our life, all we call civilization, all we call science, philosophy, art, and politics, is created by people's personality, that is, by what is 'not their own' in them.

"The element that is 'not his own' differs from what is man's 'own' by the fact that it can be lost, altered, or taken away by artificial means.

"There exists a possibility of experimental verification of the relation of personality to essence. In Eastern schools ways and means are known by the help of which it is possible to separate man's personality from his essence. For this purpose they sometimes use hypnosis, sometimes special narcotics, sometimes certain kinds of exercises.

If personality and essence are for a time separated in a man by one or another of these means, two beings, as it were, are formed in him, who speak in different voices, have completely different tastes, aims, and interests, and one of these two beings often proves to be on the level of a small child.

I can certainly verify this after many years of experience with hypnotherapy.

Continuing the experiment further it is possible to put one of these beings to sleep, or the experiment may begin by putting to sleep either personality or essence. Certain narcotics have the property of putting personality to sleep without affecting essence. And for a certain time after taking this narcotic a man's personality disappears, as it were, and only his essence remains.

And it happens that a man full of the most varied and exalted ideas, full of sympathies and antipathies, love, hatred, attachments, patriotism, habits, tastes, desires, convictions, suddenly proves quite empty, without thoughts, without feelings, without convictions, without views. Everything that has agitated him before now leaves him completely indifferent. Sometimes he sees the artificiality and the imaginary character of his usual moods or his high- sounding words, sometimes he simply forgets them as though they had never existed. Things for which he was ready to sacrifice his life now appear to him ridiculous and meaningless and unworthy of his attention. All that he can find in himself is a small number of instinctive inclinations and tastes. He is fond of sweets, he likes warmth, he dislikes cold, he dislikes the thought of work, or on the contrary he likes the idea of physical movement. And that is all.

And that is exactly what was seen in the experiment quoted at the beginning.

"Sometimes, though very seldom, and sometimes when it is least expected, essence proves fully grown and fully developed in a man, even in cases of undeveloped personality, and in this case essence unites together everything that is serious and real in a man.

"But this happens very seldom. As a rule a man's essence is either primitive, savage, and childish, or else simply stupid. The development of essence depends on work on oneself.

"A very important moment in the work on oneself is when a man begins to distinguish between his personality and his essence.

A man's real I, his individuality, can grow only from his essence.

It can be said that a man's individuality is his essence, grown up, mature.

But in order to enable essence to grow up, it is first of all necessary to weaken the constant pressure of personality upon it, because the obstacles to the growth of essence are contained in personality.

'If we take an average cultured man, we shall see that in the vast majority of cases his personality is the active element in him while his essence is the passive element.

The inner growth of a man cannot begin so long as this order of things remains unchanged.

Personality must become passive and essence must become active.

This can happen only if 'buffers' are removed or weakened, because 'buffers' are the chief weapon by the help of which personality holds essence in subjection.

"As has been said earlier, in the case of less cultured people essence is often more highly developed than it is in cultured man.

It would seem that they ought to be nearer the possibility of growth, but in reality it is not so because their personality proves to be insufficiently developed.

For inner growth, for work on oneself, a certain development of personality as well as a certain strength of essence are necessary.

Personality consists of 'roles,' and of 'buffers' resulting from a certain work of the centers. An insufficiently developed personality means a lack of 'roles,' that is, a lack of knowledge, a lack of information, a lack of the material upon which work on oneself must be based.

Without some store of knowledge, without a certain amount of material 'not his own,' a man cannot begin to work on himself, he cannot begin to study himself, he cannot begin to struggle with his mechanical habits, simply because there will be no reason or motive for undertaking such work.

"It does not mean that all the ways are closed to him. The way of the fakir and the way of the monk, which do not require any intellectual development, remain open to him.

But the methods and the means which are possible for a man of a developed intellect are impossible for him.

Thus evolution is equally difficult for a cultured or an uncultured man.

A cultured man lives far from nature, far from natural conditions of existence, in artificial conditions of life, developing his personality at the expense of his essence.

A less cultured man, living in more normal and more natural conditions, develops his essence at the expense of his personality.

A successful beginning of work on oneself requires the happy occurrence of an equal development of personality and essence. Such an occurrence will give the greatest assurance of success.

If essence is very-little developed, a long preparatory period of work is required and this work will be quite fruitless if a man's essence is rotten inside or if it develops some irreparable defects. Conditions of this kind occur fairly often.

An abnormal development of personality very often arrests the development of essence at such an early stage that the essence becomes a small deformed thing. From a small deformed thing nothing else can be got.

"Moreover, it happens fairly often that essence dies in a man while his personality and his body are still alive. A considerable percentage of the people we meet in the streets of a great town are people who are empty inside, that is, they are actually already dead.

One wonders if this is how Gurdjieff saw OPs and/or psychopaths?

"It is fortunate for us that we do not see and do not know it. If we knew what a number of people are actually dead and what a number of these dead people govern our lives, we should go mad with horror.

And indeed people often do go mad because they find out something of this nature without the proper preparation, that is, they see something they are not supposed to see.

In order to see without danger one must be on the way.

If a man who can do nothing sees the truth he will certainly go mad.

Remember how Gurdjieff described DOing? "... to control himself and all his actions..." This, again, reminds us of Castaneda's ideas about petty tyrants and the "Three Phase Progression."

My benefactor used to say that the warrior who stumbles on a petty tyrant is a lucky one. He meant that you're fortunate if you come upon one in your path, because if you don't, you have to go out and look for one."

He explained that one of the greatest accomplishments of the seers of the Conquest was a construct he called the three-phase progression. By understanding the nature of man, they were able to reach the incontestable conclusion that if seers can hold their own in facing petty tyrants, they can certainly face the unknown with impunity, and then they can even stand the presence of the unknowable.

"The average man's reaction is to think that the order of that statement should be reversed," he went on. "A seer who can hold his own in the face of the unknown can certainly face petty tyrants. But that's not so. What destroyed the superb seers of ancient times was that assumption. We know better now. We know that nothing can temper the spirit of a warrior as much as the challenge of dealing with impossible people in positions of power. Only under those conditions can warriors acquire the sobriety and serenity to stand the pressure of the unknowable."

Only this rarely happens. Usually everything is so arranged that a man can see nothing prematurely.

Personality sees only what it likes to see and what does not interfere with its life. It never sees what it does not like. This is both good and bad at the same time. It is good if a man wants to sleep, bad if he wants to awaken."

An interesting little gem there at the end, eh? "Personality sees only what it likes to see... it never sees what it does not like."

Another excerpt on the subject:

"For a man of Western culture," I said, "it is of course difficult to believe and to accept the idea that an ignorant fakir, a naive monk, or a yogi who has retired from life may be on the way to evolution while an educated European, armed with 'exact knowledge' and all the latest methods of investigation, has no chance whatever and is moving in a circle from which there is no escape."

"Yes, that is because people believe in progress and culture," said G.

"There is no progress whatever. Everything is just the same as it was thousands, and tens of thousands, of years ago. The outward form changes. The essence does not change. Man remains just the same. 'Civilized' and 'cultured' people live with exactly the same interests as the most ignorant savages. Modem civilization is based on violence and slavery and fine words. But all these fine words about 'progress' and 'civilization' are merely words."

This of course produced a particularly deep impression on us, because it was said in 1916, when the latest manifestation of "civilization," in the form of a war such as the world had not yet seen, was continuing to grow and develop, drawing more and more millions of people into its orbit.

We, of course, spend some time agonizing over the state of the world NOW, which is no different, it seems, than the state of the world back in 1916. That is to say, it seems that Gurdjieff was right. There is no progress: modern civilization is based on violence, slavery and fine words.

Of course, Gurdjieff didn't talk about psychopaths and OPs as we know them, though he certainly had some insight and discussed elements of the problem without sharp divisions.

Another series of comments about the development of essence and the role that knowledge plays:

"There are," he said, "two lines along which man's development proceeds, the line of knowledge and the line of being. In right evolution the line of knowledge and the line of being develop simultaneously, parallel to, and helping one another. But if the line of knowledge gets too far ahead of the line of being, or if the line of being gets ahead of the line of knowledge, man's development goes wrong, and sooner or later it must come to a standstill.

"People understand what 'knowledge' means. And they understand the possibility of different levels of knowledge. They understand that knowledge may be lesser or greater, that is to say, of one quality or of another quality. But they do not understand this in relation to 'being.' 'Being,' for them, means simply 'existence' to which is opposed just 'non-existence.'

They do not understand that being or existence may be of very different levels and categories.

Take for instance the being of a mineral and of a plant. It is a different being. The being of a plant and of an animal is again a different being. The being of an animal and of a man is a different being.

But the being of two people can differ from one another more than the being of a mineral and of an animal.

Here is where we catch a glimpse of Gurdjieff's possible awareness of psychopathy and OPs, etc.

This is exactly what people do not understand. And they do not understand that knowledge depends on being. Not only do they not understand this latter but they definitely do not wish to understand it. And especially in Western culture it is considered that a man may possess great knowledge, for example he may be an able scientist, make discoveries, advance science, and at the same time he may be, and has the right to be, a petty, egoistic, caviling, mean, envious, vain, naive, and absentminded man. It seems to be considered here that a professor must always forget his umbrella everywhere.

"And yet it is his being. And people think that his knowledge does not depend on his being. People of Western culture put great value on the level of a man's knowledge but they do not value the level of a man's being and are not ashamed of the low level of their own being. They do not even understand what it means. And they do not understand that a man's knowledge depends on the level of his being.

"If knowledge gets far ahead of being, it becomes theoretical and abstract and inapplicable to life, or actually harmful, because instead of serving life and helping people the better to struggle with the difficulties they meet, it begins to complicate man's life, brings new difficulties into it, new troubles and calamities which were not there before.

"The reason for this is that knowledge which is not in accordance with being cannot be large enough for, or sufficiently suited to, man's real needs. It will always be a knowledge of one thing together with ignorance of another thing; a knowledge of the detail without a knowledge of the whole; a knowledge of the form without a knowledge of the essence.

"Such preponderance of knowledge over being is observed in present-day culture. The idea of the value and importance of the level of being is completely forgotten. And it is forgotten that the level of knowledge is determined by the level of being. Actually at a given level of being the possibilities of knowledge are limited and finite. Within the limits of a given being the quality of knowledge cannot be changed, and the accumulation of information of one and the same nature, within already known limits, alone is possible. A change in the nature of knowledge is possible only with a change in the nature of being.

"Taken in itself, a man's being has many different sides. The most characteristic feature of a modem man is the absence of unity in him and, further, the absence in him of even traces of those properties which he most likes to ascribe to himself, that is, 'lucid consciousness,' 'free will,' a 'permanent ego or I,' and the 'ability to do.' It may surprise you if I say that the chief feature of a modem man's being which explains everything else that is lacking in him is sleep.

"A modern man lives in sleep, in sleep he is born and in sleep he dies.

About sleep, its significance and its role in life, we will speak later. But at present just think of one thing, what knowledge can a sleeping man have? And if you think about it and at the same time remember that sleep is the chief feature of our being, it will at once become clear to you that if a man really wants knowledge, he must first of all think about how to wake, that is, about how to change his being.

"Exteriorly man's being has many different sides: activity or passivity; truthfulness or a tendency to lie; sincerity or insincerity; courage, cowardice; self-control, profligacy; irritability, egoism, readiness for self- sacrifice, pride, vanity, conceit, industry, laziness, morality, depravity; all these and much more besides make up the being of man.

"But all this is entirely mechanical in man. If he lies it means that he cannot help lying. If he tells the truth it means that he cannot help telling the truth, and so it is with everything. Everything happens, a man can do nothing either in himself or outside himself.

"But of course there are limits and bounds. Generally speaking, the being of a modem man is of very inferior quality. But it can be of such bad quality that no change is possible. This must always be remembered. People whose being can still be changed are very lucky. But there are people who are definitely diseased, broken machines with whom nothing can be done. And such people are in the majority. If you think of this you will understand why only few can receive real knowledge. Their being prevents it.

"Generally speaking, the balance between knowledge and being is even more important than a separate development of either one or the other. And a separate development of knowledge or of being is not desirable in any way. Although it is precisely this one-sided development that often seems particularly attractive to people.

"If knowledge outweighs being a man knows but has no power to do. It is useless knowledge. On the other hand if being outweighs knowledge a man has the power to do, but does not know, that is, he can do something but does not know what to do. The being he has acquired becomes aimless and efforts made to attain it prove to be useless.

"In the history of humanity there are known many examples when entire civilizations have perished because knowledge outweighed being or being outweighed knowledge."

"What are the results of the development of the line of knowledge without being, or the development of the line of being without knowledge?" someone asked during a talk upon this subject.

"The development of the line of knowledge without the line of being gives a weak yogi," said G., "that is to say, a man who knows a great deal but can do nothing, a man who does not understand" (he emphasized these words) "what he knows, a man without appreciation, that is, a man for whom there is no difference between one kind of knowledge and another. And the development of the line of being without knowledge gives a stupid saint, that is, a man who can do a great deal but who does not know what to do or with what object; and if he does anything he acts in obedience to his subjective feelings which may lead him greatly astray and cause him to commit grave mistakes, that is, actually to do the opposite of what he wants. In either case both the weak yogi and the stupid saint are brought to a standstill. Neither the one nor the other can develop further.

"In order to understand this and, in general, the nature of knowledge and the nature of being, as well as their interrelation, it is necessary to understand the relation of knowledge and being to 'understanding.' "Knowledge is one thing, understanding is another thing.

"People often confuse these concepts and do not clearly grasp what is the difference between them.

"Knowledge by itself does not give understanding. Nor is understanding increased by an increase of knowledge alone. Understanding depends upon the relation of knowledge to being. Understanding is the resultant of knowledge and being. And knowledge and being must not diverge too far, otherwise understanding will prove to be far removed from either. At the same time the relation of knowledge to being does not change with a mere growth of knowledge. It changes only when being grows simultaneously with knowledge. In other words, understanding grows only with the growth of being.

"In ordinary thinking, people do not distinguish understanding from knowledge. They think that greater understanding depends on greater knowledge. Therefore they accumulate knowledge, or that which they call knowledge, but they do not know how to accumulate understanding and do not bother about it.

"And yet a person accustomed to self-observation knows for certain that at different periods of his life he has understood one and the same idea, one and the same thought, in totally different ways. It often seems strange to him that he could have understood so wrongly that which, in his opinion, he now understands rightly. And he realizes, at the same time, that his knowledge has not changed, and that he knew as much about the given subject before as he knows now. What, then, has changed? His being has changed. And once being has changed understanding must change also.

"The difference between knowledge and understanding becomes clear when we realize that knowledge may be the function of one center. Understanding, however, is the function of three centers. Thus the thinking apparatus may know something. But understanding appears only when a man feels and senses what is connected with it.

"We have spoken earlier about mechanicalness. A man cannot say that he understands the idea of mechanicalness if he only knows about it with his mind. He must feel it with his whole mass, with his whole being; then he will understand it.

"In the sphere of practical activity people know very well the difference between mere knowledge and understanding. They realize that to know and to know how to do are two different things, and that knowing how to do is not created by knowledge alone. But outside the sphere of practical activity people do not clearly understand what 'understanding' means.

"As a rule, when people realize that they do not understand a thing they try to find a name for what they do not 'understand,' and when they find a name they say they 'understand.' But to 'find a name' does not mean to 'understand.' Unfortunately, people are usually satisfied with names. A man who knows a great many names, that is, a great many words, is deemed to understand a great deal-again excepting, of course, any sphere of practical activity wherein his ignorance very soon becomes evident.

It's a scary hypothesis and goes against everything that just about everyone thinks about themselves - uniquely conscious individuals. It 's like hes saying that, like genes, there is a finite number of socialised templates that create our characters or personality types.

Well, that could also be the result of more or less the same influences from parents, family and culture interacting with the variations of genetic endowment. It may be that the "socialised templates" are in the genes.

Depending on the original number of options, there could be several hundred or thousand or hundreds of thousands of people remarkably like you or me, from a personality POV.

I would say that this is probably so. Of course, there are many layers of socialization. If, for example, there were someone "like you" in China, there would be a layer of cultural input for him that is quite different from yours even if, at many levels, the "type" is similar.

The important question of course is: is there a way to be truly unique, or: is there anything truly unique about each person? An obvious answer seems to be to go a long way to removing the socialised traits. But then what are we left with? The feral us? What good is that?

Well, we are talking about the machine, of course. And Gurdjieff, as you note, talked about individuals whose "essence had died" in one of the excerpts above. This sounds suspiciously like a reference to psychopaths and/or OPs which we understand in a slightly different way. Though, we should note that even if we have a sharper context for those types, it doesn't make any difference in the effects they have as described by Gurdjieff.

Maybe the answer is that repeated life experiences and lives of being socialised in the way described grows something more than the original basic feral being in us or maybe it matures that basic feral aspect into something more evolved. Basically, if we aspire to be a unique individual in some way, we need to spend a long time being totally false.

That's kind of what Gurdjieff was saying.

The personality will interact with the world in certain ways. There may be more or less suffering due to that personality's way of conducting its life. That suffering may begin a process of crystallization of "something," and only later does the false personality have to be shed like a cocoon to reveal the butterfly that has been developing within.

But shedding the cocoon can be painful, as we know. Some of us have suffered a great deal in various ways and to various levels. That is often because of a certain "personality trait" (genetic?) that we might call "stubbornness." This stubbornness can be very helpful in growing essence because it keeps us in our suffering, but when it is time to let go of the false personality, it can get in the way.

" 'A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.'

"In another place it says:

" 'When a man awakes he can die; when he dies he can be born.' "We must find out what this means.

" 'To awake,' 'to die,' 'to be born.' These are three successive stages.

If you study the Gospels attentively you will see that references are often made to the possibility of being born, several references are made to the necessity of 'dying,' and there are very many references to the necessity of 'awakening'-'watch, for ye know not the day and hour . . .' and. so on.

But these three possibilities of man, to awake or not to sleep, to die, and to be born, are not set down in connection with one another.

Nevertheless this is the whole point. If a man dies without having awakened he cannot be born.

If a man is born without having died he may become an 'immortal thing.'

Thus the fact that he has not 'died' prevents a man from being 'born'; the fact of his not having awakened prevents him from 'dying'; and should he be born without having died he is prevented from 'being.'

"We have already spoken enough about the meaning of being 'born.' This relates to the beginning of a new growth of essence, the beginning of the formation of individuality, the beginning of the appearance of one indivisible I.

"But in order to be able to attain this or at least begin to attain it, a man must die, that is, he must free himself from a thousand petty attachments and identifications which hold him in the position in which he is.

He is attached to everything in his life, attached to his imagination, attached to his stupidity, attached even to his sufferings, possibly to his sufferings more than to anything else.

He must free himself from this attachment. Attachment to things, identification with things, keep alive a thousand useless I's in a man. These I's must die in order that the big I may be born.

But how can they be made to die? They do not want to die.

It is at this point that the possibility of awakening comes to the rescue.

To awaken means to realize one's nothingness, that is to realize one's complete and absolute mechanicalness and one's complete and absolute helplessness.

And it is not sufficient to realize it philosophically in words. It is necessary to realize it in clear, simple, and concrete facts, in one's own facts.

When a man begins to know himself a little he will see in himself many things that are bound to horrify him. So long as a man is not horrified at himself he knows nothing about himself.

A man has seen in himself something that horrifies him. He decides to throw it off, stop it, put an end to it. But however many efforts he makes, he feels that he cannot do this, that everything remains as it was.

Here he will see his impotence, his helplessness, and his nothingness; or again, when he begins to know himself a man sees that he has nothing that is his own, that is, that all that he has regarded as his own, his views, thoughts, convictions, tastes, habits, even faults and vices, all these are not his own, but have been either formed through imitation or borrowed from somewhere ready-made.

In feeling this a man may feel his nothingness. And in feeling his nothingness a man should see himself as he really is, not for a second, not for a moment, but constantly, never forgetting it.

"This continual consciousness of his nothingness and of his helplessness will eventually give a man the courage to 'die,' that is, to die, not merely mentally or in his consciousness, but to die in fact and to renounce actually and forever those aspects of himself which are either unnecessary from the point of view of his inner growth or which hinder it.

These aspects are first of all his 'false I,' and then all the fantastic ideas about his 'individuality,' 'will,' 'consciousness,' 'capacity to do,' his powers, initiative, determination, and so on.

"But in order to see a thing always, one must first of all see it even if only for a second.

All new powers and capacities of realization come always in one and the same way. At first they appear in the form of flashes at rare and short moments; afterwards they appear more often and last longer until, finally, after very long work they become permanent.

The same thing applies to awakening. It is impossible to awaken completely all at once. One must first begin to awaken for short moments.

But one must die all at once and forever after having made a certain effort, having surmounted a certain obstacle, having taken a certain decision from which there is no going back.

This would be difficult, even impossible, for a man, were it not for the slow and gradual awakening which precedes it.

"But there are a thousand things which prevent a man from awakening, which keep him in the power of his dreams. In order to act consciously with the intention of awakening, it is necessary to know the nature of the forces which keep man in a state of sleep.

At this point, Gurdjieff launches into the story of the evil magician.

The other question it brings up for me is; if we all started out as feral/"Neanderthal -like beings, then how did we manage to evolve to the point where we have a significantly greater range and depth of experiences (at least it seems to be!).

Do we? Really?

But I think I understand that what you mean is "essence", that some people have something "deeper," as Gurdjieff's experiment with the two men shows.

My thought about this is, again, that Gurdjieff either didn't know about (which I think unlikely), or did not believe in the idea of OPs - OR, far more likely, he knew that people simply could not accept this idea and he framed everything in terms that could be accepted.

It could be thought that even his remarks about "reincarnation" were geared to divest people of their notions that they had something "permanent" with the idea that this might induce them to strive harder to acquire something permanent. I don't know.

I know, from having five children, that babies DO come in with "memories" and there is something there, though it gets "pushed inside" or fades or something, under the influences of the current life.

Then, of course, there is also the possibility that essence CAN die in a person.

Did someone at some point in our evolution "help" us to evolve a little? If so, for what purpose and is this someone then still controlling our society and therefore the extent of our social development and experiences and therefore our ability to evolve? If so, who are they and what the hell do they want with us?!

Indeed. That is the question. And that is why I want to know the details about this business Randle brings up about homosexuality and "alien abduction" and our "sexual programming" and so on. There is something there that is important.

Is there some particular moment in our infancy, a moment of particular imprint vulnerability, where our sexual orientation is "set"? And if so, what are the ramifications? How does this relate to the personality and/or the negative introject as described in modern psychology? Why would homosexuals be particular targets of alleged "aliens"?

Many questions about who and what we really are, and what our real potentials may be, and how those potentials may be side-tracked or subverted are involved here.

 

[Hildegarda]

Here is a little bit more on feral kids and how those cases impact the society's and scientists' view on human development:


Victor of Aveyron has been discovered at the cusp of the Age of Enlightenment. At that time it was held, by Rousseau and others, that society\civilization corrupts man. This has later been extended to the idea of 'noble savage' that held man as naturally good.

Rousseau's idea of education is expressed in his book 'Emile'. He states that children should, in their formative years, be kept away from the perils of civilization, and be raised as close to nature as possible. The child's natural instincts, which at this point are pretty close to those of a wild animal, will do their job in forming an ideal character.

However, that should be done under a proper and wise guidance of the mentor, and this is where REASON enters the picture. It is REASON
and not civilization that the englightenment age held in highest regard.

Maria Montessori has expressed the relationship between the human reason and the natural order of things in the best way -- and I believe that she in her philosophical views, was a true child of the Enlightenment. In paraphrase, it goes something like this:

'The natural methods, when used haphazardly, instinctually and without thinking, produce nothing but disaster; while these same methods, WHEN ORDERED BY REASON and used as a developed and well thought-out scientific system, produce remarkable and successful development'.

Montessori's system relies on sequential developing of the child's senses. This is EXACTLY what Itard was attempted to do with Victor.

Itard's ideas were perfectly within the main paradigm of Enlightenment -- the one on reason -- which I think holds to this day in many ways. It's the Rousseauist idealization of primeval, savage state of human psyche that was defeated, and I think that must have made many people uncomfortable. Social environment all of a sudden looked a lot more important. Additionally, with all his, at the time, novel beliefs in thepower of environment, Itard had overestimated the pliability of a human mind.

It doesn't look like Itard was trying 'to peel the wolf's mask off' of Victor. Rather, he was trying to draw Victor's human nature out through developing his senses. Kamala-the-wolf-girl's case is more about 'peeling off the mask' and is much more poignant:

A poor but relatively well educated man, Singh [the man who discovered the girls] did his best to rehabilitate his charges. Influenced by the horticultural model of child development, he theorised that the wolf habits acquired by Kamala and Amala had somehow blocked the free expression of their innate human characteristics. Singh felt it was his job (not least, for religious reasons) to wean the girls from their lupine ways and so allow their buried humanity to emerge. []

Gesell [an anthropologist who later wrote a book on the subject] summed up Kamala's progress, saying that at the age of 16, after nine years in the care of the orphanage, she still had the mind of a three and a half year old. But slow though Kamala's progress was, Gesell felt her story demonstrated just how mentally naked humans are when born and how much we rely on society to shape us. As he put it, human culture operates on the mind as "a large scale moulding matrix, a gigantic conditioning apparatus" without which we would remain at the level of animals. However, while more open-minded than most about the importance of a social mould in forging man's higher mental abilities, Gesell still was wedded to a horticultural view of mental development. He believed that culture "unlocks" our dormant abilities rather than, as the bifold model suggests, that these abilities are grafted on top of the raw material of the animal mind. So, for example, Gesell saw the gradual appearance of smiles and other sociable expressions on Kamala's face as the result of the loosening of rigid muscles rather than thinking that Kamala might have had to learn such emotional signals through contact with her fellow humans. Like Singh, Gesell spoke of Kamala's wolf-like habits as if they were just an overlay of copied behaviours that thinly papered over her true human nature — or as he put it: "motor sets [which] constituted the core of her action-system and affected the organisation of her personality."

\\http://www.feralchildren.com/en/showchild.php?ch=kamala

***


The fact that Singh was a religious man and a christian missionary, no doubt have contributed to his view of Kamala. Somehow we all influenced by a popular conception of Christianity and imagine the 'immortal soul' as thoroughly human, fully developed and unchangeable, blemish-free like a crystal and just as solidly invincible. And think that it is residing in the body like in a house -- just open the windows of the senses and it will look out.

I think this notion is so ingrained in people -- even those who are atheistic and respect science -- that any suggestion of the opposite -- that there OS NOBODY THERE BY DEFAULT -- is EXTREMELY terrifying.

This is why people seem to be AWFULLY quick to question the base mental abilities of feral children. Somehow, if they WERE mentally challenged to begin with, it all would look a lot less scary. These new attempts to relabel Victor as retarded or autistic, I think, underscore this exact sentiment. Same thing and the same questions show up in the story of a modern-day feral child, Genie, who grew up in extreme neglect and deprivation: \\http://www.feralchildren.com/en/showchild.php?ch=genie


PS Another thing that is obvious is that feral children who have grown up in deprivation or isolation on average seem to do better than those raised by animals. While the first thrive when put in normal environment, the latter don't achieve as much development and even fail to thrive and get sick. This must be due to the difference between the clean slate and a slate with a foreign (animal) imprinting program embedded in it. The other thins is that while for the isolated kids being in a normal environment means less stress, for Mawglies it means being torn away from the social environment of the animals that they perceive as normal, and thus constitutes more stress.

PPS Also, I wanted to mention that the modern day novel 'Parfum' by Patrick Suskind contains what appears to be a parody on the Itard and Victor of Aveyron. The main hero, Grenouille, spends a few years all by himself in the mountains, going completely feral in the process. Then, he is found by a nobleman, whose hobby is science. The nobleman uses Grenouille as a proof of his theory 'environmental' theory that the 'earth fluids' negatively affect health, and to avoid them one must stay as far away from the ground as possible. He cleans up and clothes Grenouille, feeds him in abundance things that fly and grow high in the air and lo! he all of a sudden is 'cured' and looks like a human again. The experimental design is obviously very flawed. And, Grenouille remains completely internally self-contained and self-governed, and -- somewhat disturbed in an autistic kind of way. Really wicked, if you think about it.

 

[Hildegarda]

Heck, shyness is a Maiden role model in russian folklore! If you read these russian fairy tales, it's always the shy sister, who is obedient to the will of her father, or some fairy witch she encounters in a deep well, or in the forest; who gets then married to her prince (or to a honest youth) and returns home with dowry presents. That's quite a shock!

I totally disagree. If you are talking about Vasilisa the Beautiful's story and the like, than it is really not about shyness at all. It is about listening to your instinct and creativity in the face of extreme obstacles. The fairies in the well, Ded Moroz or the Baba Yaga in the forests represents the wild forces in the human psyche that are there to teach you to reclaim your strength. Clarissa Pincola Estes has a good analysis in her book 'Women who run with the wolves'.

 

[Pierre]

Itard's writings and some other ressources relating to Victor can be download here :
http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/itard_jean/victor_de_l_Aveyron/victor.html
Apparently those documents are only available in French. I've started reading it.

Itard who was influenced by Locke, Diderot, Rousseau and Condillac gave a lot of dedication and understanding to the education of Victor.

Itard looked after Victor for six years (1801 to 1806) and finally resigned.

But Victor lived 22 years after this event and finally died in 1828. The science hadn't managed to "straighten him" and he died forgotten in a small house next to the Val de Grace hospital where Mme Guerin would look after him from 1811 to 1828.

At the beginning of the XIXth century, the concept of the "noble savage" developed by Rousseau was being challenged particularly by Kant or Hegel for whom the pure reason should dominate and control the nature.

More concretely, at this time, France had experienced its revolution, Napoleon was about to build his empire, Adam Smith had finalized his economy theories, steam machines were being developed, liberalism and free competition were compulsory (Allarde Act), demographic transition to cities has started and the industrial revolution was on.

The un-humanizability of Victor looked like a failure in the face of this growing model of society (to have a glimpse of Victor life, behind the best period with Itard) you can have a look at this book :
Victor de l'aveyron : Dernier enfant sauvage, premier enfant fou (2004) [ Thierry Gineste ]
http://www.amazon.fr/Victor-lAveyron-Dernier-sauvage-premier/dp/201279212X

 

[cubbex]

Re: Negative Introject (from Chapter 18 in \

I am dealing with a mechanical almost equal problem. I name it negative extroject lol.

I mean, is a program, instead of doing it with me,I do it with people that disgusts me,like if theyr were planing to do something bad to me, but objectively I know that the only one that believes that is me, because I don't get into their minds and I know is just my mechanical kind of hate believing lies. So I stop those ideas but its really hard, i Know that they sometimes do good things for me, and that the past is the past, I can´t stop the time in my mind about others and realize that the circumstances change so they will not react like that,I try too to understand the past and whys of that person,

 

[wmu9]

Re: Negative Introject (from Chapter 18 in \

What kind of shoes do the aliens wear? Do any of the abductees ever mention it?

 

[Alada]

Re: Negative Introject (from Chapter 18 in \

What kind of shoes do the aliens wear? Do any of the abductees ever mention it?

I don't know, will it help us to know it though?

When you have a moment, we recommend all new members to post an introduction in the Newbies section telling us a bit about themselves, and how they found their way here. Have a read through that section to get an idea of how others have done it. Thanks.

 

[Mr.Anderson]

Re: Negative Introject (from Chapter 18 in \

great thread!

Quote
The negative introject for me has always manifested as "shyness" in the general sense. That is, an inability to interact with others in an open and considerate manner due to social anxiety while simultaneously letting predatory people walk all over me out of fear of defending my own boundaries.

Same here. I was programed with Catholicism but later converted to Narcissism.

I'm re-reading trapped in the mirror...

 

[cubbex]

Re: Negative Introject (from Chapter 18 in \

What kind of shoes do the aliens wear? Do any of the abductees ever mention it?

Some say they use "Prada".

Lol what's the matter with it, are you trolling?