Video at: https://youtu.be/jI3yNi5xMJw
RAQUEL: Hello, my name is Raquel Torrent,
psychologist, integral psychotherapist and transpersonal guide. We are here
today because I felt an overwhelming call to action when the Ukrainian
devastation started. And yet the only thing I did was to pray.
Now with the terrors of the humanitarian catastrophe which is taking
place in the Palestinian Gaza Strip that many are calling: "a broadcast genocide"
, I feel the human responsibility of doing what I can to unite my voice to the
choir who is actually making a CALL FOR PEACE. I want to do it from the level
and discipline that I best know.
I cannot envision a better person to make this call than my mentor and
friend, Mr. Ken Wilber, one of the best philosophers and thinkers of our time,
a real activist of the Spirit, founder of the Integral Theory and writer of
almost 30 books translated to more than 20 languages.
Hello, Ken, my dear. Thank you
very much for responding to this call for peace and by accepting this
interview.
KEN : Hello. Sure.
RAQUEL - QUESTION 1
Which would you say that are the real causes of the conflict between
Israel and Palestine, which has provoked this unacceptable atrocity that the
people from Israel first and now from Gaza are experiencing and that represents
a real humanitarian crisis? Would you say it's something historic, political, economical
or religious?
KEN: Yeah. Well,
all of those because we need to take an Integral approach. And so historically,
we see this disjuncture going back, well, almost 10,000 years, because there's
about 10,000 years BC that the Israelites started getting this idea that:
"this land is my land. God gave this land to me". And so the Israel
people have always had a feeling of ownership of that land.
Now, when Muslim era approach came in, both the Israel spiritual
orientation and the Muslim era of orientation, both of them tended to be
fundamentalist. That's very, very bad. Most religions have at least two forms.
One is fundamentalist and one is mystical. The fundamentalist believes in
mythological forms and ideas. So it believes in Zeus and Apollo and Aphrodite
and Jupiter and Mars and so on. And all of those, of course, are mythological
beings. And the ideas connected to those mythological beings are mythological
beliefs, mythological ideas. And that's what most of the world's religions come
from.
Christianity believes that there is literally a biological son of an
almighty God. Are you kidding me? I mean, I got to be kidding. So there's all
of that mythology on the Christian's side. And then there are occasional
Christian mystics. They were caught in what Plato called "the cave of
reality". And the real sunlight of reality is in back of us casting the
light through us to make shadows on the back of the cave. We're all addicted to
the shadows and the back of the cave. We don't have any idea that they're just
shadows that the real realities exist beyond the shadows and more with "the
real son".
So that problem is when you have two mythological forms of religion
opposed to each other. That's what it can lead to a great deal of violence and
antagonism and aggression. Because among other things, the Arabs believe that
the land is actually theirs and they can carve out a part of that land for
themselves. And the Israelites are like: " No, God gave us that land".
This great mythological being who looked all over the world and decided
that he would pump his one and only son down to a very small tribe in a very
dry part of the Middle East -a part that doesn't have any oil, by the way- talks
about bad luck. That story through various historical forces became the major
religion of the West. Another religion grew up in the West, which was the
Islamic. And it had a great deal of initial influence. There was Islamic Empire
and the belief in Allah became almost as widespread as the belief in Jehovah,
although they're both of the same belief and abilities as Zeus or Apollo or
Aphrodite. I mean, they're just mythic imagination and forms.
Those again are different from the mystics that have a direct experience
of what they generally call: " a ground of all being". And that's a
very real metaphysical concept of ground; an infinite ground of all being, the
reality of all manifestation, the reality of the entire universe. That's a very
real metaphysical concept that answers very real metaphysical questions. Like
if everything has a cause, and most things do are caused by something, then
what causes the first cause? Well, there has to be something that's not itself
a cause. And that's the ground of all being. So that's a very real concept. And
what's more, there are mystics who have direct experiences of this ground of
all being. They do feel one with the entire universe. And that's a very real
mystical experience as most of the founders of the great religions, including
Jesus Christ and Mohammed and Abraham felt. They have had some type of this
direct unity experience, as I am the Father
or the ONE.
Jesus Christ clearly believed that he is ONE with this ultimate ground
of ALL being: The Father. And also several other founding religious founders.
But mostly their followers fell into the fundamentalist mythic forms of that
belief, because not everybody has a direct experience of this ultimate reality.
And so they just THINK about it. And when they THINKI about it, they use the earliest
forms of thought, which develops in childhood, around 4,5 or 6 years old. And
they're all mythological forms of thinking. So you get this fundamentalist
belief structure that grows up. And when you put those fundamentalist belief
structures together, and they disagree on the form of the mythological God that
they feel is most real, the problem is created.
So Allah versus Jehovah, then you've got the grounds for a historically
prolonged violent conflict. And that's the Historical difference.
The Political difference has come down to the politics of ownership.
This land is my land. God gave this land to me. And the Muslims are: " no
wait a minute. Allah gave this land to us". Oh, yeah, well, take that,
take that and they react. And those are the Political reasons.
On the Economic side, the Muslims for whatever reason have done -in
general- very little to develop a vibrant Economy. And whereas Israel,
Israelites, Jewish people have very aggressively engaged in Economic forms that
are very profitable. And so Jews are worldwide fairly wealthy people. And when
you get Wealth versus Poverty, that's another form of conflict. Particularly the poor people feel like the
wealthy people are oppressing them.
That's the basic form of political belief in the West. It's called: oppression
paradigm. Because what happens when you have somebody who's very poor,
they feel that they are being oppressed or held down all the time, or that
somehow, somebody else is taking all the money. That would be the Jews in this
case. So you have victims and the oppressed. And then you have the oppressors.
And you can be one or the other. You can't be both.
This was actually made into a very elaborate doctrine by Karl Marx,
where he saw all of History as a conflict between oppressors and oppressed. And
the oppressors generally are oppressing the poor people and the disadvantaged
and so on. And so that has become a deep source of conflict with various groups
of people, and particularly the Muslims and the Jews.
RAQUEL: What about
this reality that during many, many occasions, the Israelites have been getting
onto the Palestinians in various conflicts, historically, you know? Really
getting onto them, because they want something from them. It's clear that I'm
not a politician at all, or even a historian and yet, I think that the
Palestinians had a land and the British divided their land to give it to the
Israelites. So this is something which the Palestinians felt like they have
been taken off something which was theirs.
KEN: Well, that simply
adds to their sense of being oppressed, taken advantage of, fit them out. And
there is truth to that. Yeah, and that's
a problem. But the problem is compounded by the fact that members of, let's say
Hamas really have psychological problems: anger, hatred, aggression, jealousy,
envy, attack mode. Many Arab Muslims
have this personality disorder where they go out very willingly to kill men,
women, children, and babies. And in October 7th of this month, Hamas attacked
Israel and took 36 hostages, including babies, women, men, and children. So one
of the main problems we have is a psychotherapeutic problem that affects Hamas
more than it affects the Jews. Jews, of course, had their own psychotherapeutic
problems too.
RAQUEL: Do you really
find acceptable what the Jews are doing now with the people? it's a real
humanitarian crisis, what they are creating,
because I understand that they want to kind of respond to what Hamas
did. And yet the atrocity that the civilian who are just children, and women
are suffering so much without water, without hospitals. More than 60% of
hospitals are now smashed completely.
KEN: Right. Well,
again, it's a difficult problem because to take the hospitals, for
example. One of the reasons they're not
functioning is that for at least 10 years now, in 2014, the New York Times and
the Washington Post, both reported that Hamas is using hospitals for their main
headquarters. So when Israel attacks
them, they're going to kill civilians. And then Hamas can throw its hands back
and say: "well, they're killing all our women and children". Well,
get out of the hospitals of your own people. That's the cure for that And
Israel, it's true that there are women and children suffering, but it's because
they're being used as shields for Hamas.
Now, that's just the opinion of the New York Times and the Washington
Post. I'm not making this up. It's not my particular regimen, it's a viewpoint.
But I think there is some truth to that because Hamas -it can be demonstrated-
that they locate their headquarters in hospitals, in schools, among civilian
populations.
RAQUEL: I understand
that Ken. And yet, do you find it equal? Because you were talking about
psychotherapeutic problems from the Muslims side. What about the Jews' side?
Now taking the water and the food and not permitting the people to go down to
the South to escape all these things. Don't you think that is a
psychotherapeutic problem as well?
KEN: Well, yes, but
what do you do with the standard Jewish procedure of not attacking and deliberately
stopping all attacks during particular times of each and every day so that
those people Muslims who want to leave the area can do so without being
attacked?
RAQUEL: They are not
doing that very easily and they have taken a long time until they have accepted
to do that. That's with what they are
negotiating right now. Before that, they have avoided the possibility of
entering humanitarian aid for the people which was inside of those blockages.
So I find that psychotherapeutic crazy as well. Because it is like really
trying to make the people die directly. And they are not from Hamas. They are
just Palestinians. So that is what I don't find like sound. They say they want
to get rid of Hamas and yes, terrorism is not acceptable in any form, that 's
for sure and yet don't you think that Hamas is also an ideology and they try to
get rid of an idea, a belief?
KEN: Well, sure. But let me try to understand you. Are you
saying that Hamas is not a terrorist organization?
RAQUEL: I am saying
that they are very terrorist. And that the ones who are not terrorists are the
civilians: women and children, who have been without water, food and the possibility to escape for many,
many days. They have been suffering and dying in the streets because they didn't
have anything to eat or anything to drink. That is really insane. it's not
normal. I mean, one thing is I don't want Hamas to be a terrorist anymore. I am
not going to permit that this is going to be repeated in my land. Correct. I understand
that. And yet to treat all those people thinking that they are Hamas is not
recognizing that they are not Hamas, they're just Palestinians.
KEN: Right. Well,
but do you not believe that Hamas frequently headquarters are among the
civilian population in hospitals and schools and places like that? Because we
have evidence that Hamas does that on a
regular basis. And so if you go ahead and attack Hamas and civilians are
killed, what do you do about that?
RAQUEL: Yeah, it's not
an easy task. That's for sure. It is a real difficult situation. And yet the
suffering, I mean, when we see those streets absolutely devastated and all the
women and children -more than 12,000 children have been killed- it's a lot. When
you see it from the outside, it's really terrible. Imagine from the inside.
Families, whole families cut off, without a house without anything and all of
that from this reasoning of I want to kill Hamas. Hamas will not be killed
because it's an ideology.
KEN: Well, right.
As far as I can tell, the blame lies more or less equally with the Palestinians
and the Jews. Yeah. Because Hamas does intentionally infect civilian areas. And
then Israel tries to fight back. Of course, civilians are attacked. But I have
seen some moves on Israel's part to withhold attacking the Hamas headquarters
for certain designated periods, so that civilians may get out.
RAQUEL: Yes. That's what
they are negotiating now. The thing is that it's a real difficult situation. It
seems that Israel has an agenda. It seems they want, to get some kind of an
exit to the sea. Anyway, I don't know exactly know what's the situation but
it's surely not easy. The only thing I know is that I see this humanitarian
catastrophe as a real unacceptable situation.
RAQUEL - QUESTION 2
From an Integral perspective, how would you define what's happening and
which would be an Integral solution that the politicians could implement?
KEN: Well, I think
one of the key factors is that politicians had to start thinking integrally and
they have to start speaking integrally. And that means speaking integrally, politically,
historically, psychologically, economically, sociologically, religiously, and
taking all these different perspectives and making sure that they're
representing all of them. That sounds a little complicated. But it's something
that happens if things are going well among communities, they are thinking
integral. That's why there are no major problems arising between them. Because
if they're thinking integrally and political terms and economic terms and on
religious terms and on sociological terms, then they're looking from all
perspectives. And they're making sure that all perspectives are included in any
decision they make. And those sides are doing that. You're not going to get in
trouble. You can't.
RAQUEL: Do you think
that politicians are willing to learn those Integral Perspectives?
KEN: Well, that's
the thing. How much suffering can they stand? Because most politicians,
frankly, can stand a lot of suffering. Because they bring on a lot of
suffering. Because they don't think or talk integrally. They're not taking all
perspectives into account. They're taking just their perspective into account.
God gave me this land. This land is mine. I'll kill you if you don't get off.
And then the other side says, well, oh, yeah, this land is my land. And God
gave this end to me. And I'm going to kill you if you don't get off. And then
there they go. And they're just on each other's throats around the plot.
Once you think you've got the right to attack somebody else, then that
means you've got the right to do anything. You can torture them. You can murder
them. You can hang them. You can strangle them. It doesn't matter. And that's
why the TV cameras are always there to
catch that action. Oh, look at what they're doing to those poor civilian
people. Or oh, look at the horrible things that are being done to children and
babies. And all of that goes out on the news. And the small percentage of each
side that's trying to include all of these perspectives and to do the right
thing by all of them, those don't get any attention. And so what we get is this
brutal conflict over the Gaza Strip. And it's just horrific what's going on !!!
RAQUEL: Talking about Politicians. Do you remember when Clinton
and Obama were kind of integrally aware? And it seemed that something was going
to be ending and something more positive was going to be starting.
KEN: Yes, they even
read some of my work. I know about it.
RAQUEL: And yet all
that seems that it has been dissolved . Unfortunately, it's like we have gone
back again into blue meme, right? Don't you think that we are back into amber or
even before? Because it's like, oh my God, we are again falling into the right
extreme wings and not thinking socially, just me, me, me, me. And I think it's
really disgusting.
KEN: Yeah, that's
exactly right. And that's what happens when you get two sides of what turns out
to be an argument. Because they both have certain fundamental beliefs that
disagree with each other because they're fundamentally mythic beliefs. And when
you have mythic beliefs at each other's throat, there's no reality that you can
appeal to that will resolve that because myth is not reality. Myth obscures
reality. Myth is hiding reality.
if you're actually going to believe that there's a guy walking around, that's
the ONE and only biological son of the ONE and only Creator of the entire Universe,
and there's only one of them, the son of God. Well, I'm sorry, that's not
reality. That's not anything near a reality. And so when both sides are full of
those types of thoughts, there's nothing you can appeal to that will end that
conflict. Because if you are going to believe your myth, and you're going to keep
on believing your myth; you're going to
believe in your Jehovah, and you're going to believe in your Allah, well,
there's nothing that's going to make you give up that belief. And so wait, no,
my Jehovah's right, and your Allah is bad. No, my Allah is good and your
Jehovah is the source of all evil. Well,
then you pick up your guns and your knives and your swords and your torture
mechanisms. And you go at each other, and there's nothing that can be done that
will stop that.
RAQUEL: Yet, don't you
think that Jehovah or Allah have something in common, which could be kind of
like the common thread, let's say the common unity for a solution? As Allah has love and wants love, Jehovah has and wants the same. So I will
understand that if they center in love (love for people, love for life, you
know, respect for life-, because love is also respect-) don't you think that
love is the only answer?
KEN: Well, if
you're a mystic, it is. But if you're not a mystic, it isn't. And the reason it
isn't is if I believe that Jehovah is the ONE and only God of all things. And
you believe, no, not Jehovah is Allah. And Jehovah gave me this chunk of land.
And I want you off of it. Oh, no, Allah gave me this chunk of land. I want you
off of it. Well, everybody that believes in Jehovah or Allah is not believing
in LOVE. Because if you have your firm belief that Jehovah is the ONE and only
God, and you're facing somebody who believes in Allah, and you're both fighting
over a piece of land, and you believe Jehovah gave this land to you and I
believe that IT gave this land to me, then we're not going to love each other. We're
going to hate each other. You won't get off my land. I hate you. Oh, no, you
won't get off my land. I hate you. And religion is the source of this much
hatred as it is love. Now, obviously, some people that believe in religion do
have a sense of love, but not everybody. Many people that believe that Jehovah
is my ONE and only God hate people that don't accept their belief. And that's
the problem and the contrary. More wars have been caused by religion than by
any other factor in human History. And it's terrible, but that's the way human
beings are. And that's why I put this as
the deep causes of this conflict, I put fundamentalist religion right at the
core of the problem. And I think that's historically undeniable. And it's a
shame.
If you have a mystical experience, it's of love. And love means a oneness
with something. If I love ice cream, I want to become one with ice cream, or
whether I love my dog, I want to be one
with my dog , or whether I love you, and I want to become one with you. And
that's wonderful. So a mystical love, if all religions were mystically loving,
there wouldn't be any warfare because nobody would want to hurt anybody else.
You want to love them. You want to embrace them. You want to become one with
them. And then that's great. But the percentage of religious believers that are
actual mystics is relatively small. It's about 5%. And so that's not enough
RAQUEL: Even among Catholics,
you know, Christians. Mysticism has only been accepted like 25 years ago. It
has been kind of denied. If I have a direct experience of God. Oh no, that's
forbidden. Who are you to have a direct experience of God? No, no, no. You have
to come through me, because I am the priest !!!
KEN: Yeah, and
that's the way religions went. Most world famous religions started with a
mystical experience. Yes. Very powerful experience by a single person. And then
they taught it to their followers. And not all the followers had that
experience. And so they started repeating it in mythic forms. And they let
their own self, and an aggrandisement self aggression took over. And that's
what got spread as religion. And that's one of the truly sad, sad realities of
History.
RAQUEL - QUESTION 3:
Due to the excess of information and devastating images that we see
about this war, we have death in the soup while, we're having lunch. Something
like televised horror, as we said before. So how do you think this affects
human consciousness? Will our ethics and moral loosens in the long run because
of such exposure to violence? Or will increase judgment, repulse and/or fear?
And what about disinformation and fake news also?
KEN: Yeah, what all of these have in common,
including our shadow material, is that they're all distortions of reality. So
where we should feel love, we don't see love, we see hatred or
self-aggrandisement or selfishness or something that's not a real reality. It's
not the fundamental reality, which is love. But again, that's not the primary
experience that most humans have. Or they love occasionally, or they love a
little bit their girlfriend, their boyfriend, or whatever. But it's not a
powerful, overwhelming mystical unity. And so they all end up being to the
extent that they turn into hatred and self-aggrandisement and jealousy and all
of those. They end up being distortions of reality. They're just not
fundamental realities. They're distortions.
RAQUEL: Yeah, and they
spread like crazy. The distortions. When we see these horrors in television
over and over again, and we are eating lunch or dinner, we are seeing a baby
cut into pieces and things like this. In which way do you think that this
affects our consciousness and our morals? Where are our ethics going to go?
Where are our morals going to go?
KEN: Well, where
are we going to go? It's down the toilet. Because when you see a repeated,
like, baby's cut into, and it just eats away as your own moral and ethical
sense. Because who's doing that and how do they allow to do that? Why is it
happening? And why am I always seeing it? And it just slowly eats away all your
ethical stance. And that's one of the horrors of a history that is
fundamentally lacking love. It's promoting
self-promotion and self-aggrandisement and self-aggression and so on. And unfortunately,
that is the story of human History. And it's war after war after war. What
historians have calculated is that for
every one year of peace and humankind's history, there have been 13 years of
war.
Now, just think about that and think about the constant influence of
this war like sensations that we're getting. And as interrupted every now and
then by one year of peace, oh, thank you very much. That's wonderful. I can't
thank my God enough for that one year. It's just terrible.
What that means is that not everybody's perspective is being honored.
Very few perspectives are being honored. Just my perspective and my land and
get off of my land or I'll kill you. And that's what 13 years of human History
have been about for every one year of peace. And it's just horrifying. But it's
a truth. And it's just something that human beings have to deal with.
RAQUEL: And that's why
it is so difficult for Evolution to keep on going because, we're making regressions all the time. We evolve and then
we regress and then we evolve and then we regress. Evolution is trying to
really push it on. And it's not easy. That's why there's only 5 or 7% of the human population, who are
really trying to pull everyone forward. And it's very difficult because when it
seems that we are really going a little bit, then we fall again. It's really
impressive.
RAQUEL - QUESTION 4
How do you see the role that the United States and Europe are playing in this horrendous conflict or
crisis or war, whatever we want to call it, Israel/Palestine. And what else do
you think that the United States or Europe could be doing in this situation?
KEN: Well, I hate to sort of be repetitive. But the one
thing that all world leaders need to do is actually lead. And that means that
they have to be an example to all of their followers. And that means they have
to take into account the perspectives of virtually every God. And that means
they take an integral viewpoint. And it's easy enough to say, but you can also
teach an integral viewpoint. You can teach, well, there's this perspective and
there's this perspective and there's this perspective. You can start with the
four quadrants.
RAQUEL: You cannot teach those who do not want to
hear, Ken
KEN: Right, that's
right and that's the problem.
RAQUEL: The question
has to do with what it's been said in
general. I've heard that the European Community
-and the West, in general- are not doing enough to end these horrors. We're
like holding back. The United States,
which has historical been very helping the peace, saying they want to help the
oppressed, now it seems they're kind of held back and Europe is kind of like
the same. Nobody is really doing anything sound to stop this catastrophe.
KEN: Yes and if
people is held back (with their arms crossed)
that means: " I'm not going
to look at it the same way you see it". I'm not going to take Europe's
perspective. I'm not going to take the United States' perspective. I'm just not.
And so we refuse to take an Integral viewpoint. And that's something we
actually do, refusing to see the world through various perspectives.
We actually refuse to do it although we all have the capacity to take these
many perspectives. We can all look at the world through 4 major Quadrants or 4
major perspectives. And each of those Quadrants of Reality have 2 other
different perspectives. So we actually have 8
Zones of different perspectives. We can adopt any one of those 8 Zones
fairly easily if we are willing to do so.
If we know that there are people out there that are looking at the world
through these different perspectives (represented in those 4 Quadrants and 8 Zones),
then we would know what perspectives we should
take if we want to see the whole world away. We'll understand what others are
seeing.
When we see the world through a different perspective, then that'll be
part of our leadership. Because we say, Oh, I have to talk to that perspective.
Oh, and I have to talk to that person and their perspective. And I have to talk
to that other person. And each of them are seeing the world differently. And I
know that. And I can take their perspective. And when I do that, I'll talk to
them. And I'll provide leadership for them. And they'll trust me because I can
see the world the way they're seeing the world.
So if we have real leadership, that's something that I think people
intuitively respect. Like when we see an American running for president, and we
listen to them talk or debate, we can tell the ones that have a very wide
perspective. We can just feel it that they're looking at the world the way I'm
looking at the world. And they're talking to that. And I can spot that and I
like that. I think that's one of the things that was so impressive about John
Kennedy, for example. He really talked
to people and people adored him. He was just loved. And occasionally somebody
will come on the political scene that has that capacity. And we really respond
to them. So it can be done. And what of course in my wildest pipe dreams, what
I would like to see is a school for politicians where they can actually learn
how to take all these different perspectives and learn how to talk to each one
of them.
RAQUEL: Do you know Ken that I proposed that in 1985. A school to form
Integral politicians. And yet because I don't have any money to promote such a
thing, I never arrived anywhere because you need to have money to make
marketing and to really let the politicians know that you exist. Right?
KEN: Right. That's
right. Unfortunately, this Integral for Politicians doesn't exist.
Another problem that we're dealing with, talking about the
psychotherapeutic contributions to this problem -on the side of both Hamas and
Israel-, is that they both have psychotherapeutic issues. Yes. They have issues
with anger, hatred, aggression, jealousy, envy, attack modes, and so on. And
you actually have to address those shadow issues that people can learn to deal
with. Oh, I see that I have that. I don't want to have that. I will stop having
that.
We have to put pretty much all of Hamas and all of Israel through a Psychotherapy
session or several. And without that, they're not the individual soldier who's
killing the baby or stabbing the woman or shooting people. They're not going to
stop doing that if they still not cut the impulse arising to do that. And that
puts an enormous strain on this problem. And it's one of the reasons that the
Israeli error problem is so recalcitrant and so unyielding and has been around
for so long and shows no chance of resolving. But there's neither side is
willing to do what's necessary to give it up. And that is just an impossible psychotherapeutic mess !!!
RAQUEL: I understand
100% what you say, Ken and I agree. On top of the psychological issue, there's
an energetic issue. Like, for example, when people look at the TV and they see
all these horrors and they go into the
reflection of their own shadow; they
judge. Oh that's horrible ! I hate those
ones! I hate the others ! And all the reflection of their shadow comes in. Oh, I am fearful, or am I going to die?, or are
they're going to kill me? or whatever.
I always say: "don't do that".
If you do that, you're adding energetically the same thing that you were
receiving. Therefore, don't do that. Don't judge. Don't be fearful. Don't do
hate. Don't do all these negative things that people send to Netanyahu or to
Hamas or to whatever. I say, don't do that.
You are adding negativity to negativity. That's negativity to the
square. If you are able to see that and send love, you are changing the energy,
you are transmuting, at least the energy you can manage. That way you're giving a chance, energetically, to that Netanyahu or to that Hamas, to receive waves of love.
If they do receive waves of love… maybe some time, they will get a little
bit of that and a new day will open to the light, for the people and for
Humanity. And then they will say, Oh,
I'm not going to kill this woman or baby or: " I'm going to take
psychotherapy", or they will do something different.
Yet, if we don't do that, and every time we see the horrors in the TV,
we keep of sending more horror… hatred and judgment and fear and all these
negative things, we're contributing to the negativity of the conflict and of
the war and of the problem. And we are killing the woman and the baby. And we
are energetically responsible, then, of maintaining the craziness. Would you
say that?
KEN: Yes, surely, and
yet what that really implies is that virtually every person who's involved in
what you're saying needs some form of Psychotherapy. Because it's usually ONLY
in a psychotherapeutic situation where a person will look at their negative
feelings. And in a sense, judge them as negative, correctly, and then seek to
replace that negative with a positive. So if they feel hate, they'll learn to
replace it with love. They feel jealousy, they'll learn to embrace it with
appreciation and so on.
It's in the psychotherapeutic setting that they actually learn to see
and make those changes. And that's what psychotherapy is, changing all of your
negatives for positives. And that means you have to recognize all your
negatives, your jealousy, your envy, your hatred, your on and on. And you have
to recognize them when they come up in regard to your therapist, and you have
to talk about them, and then you have to say, okay, I don't want to express
that hatred. I want to feel love. And you actually practice replacing hatred
with love. And when you complete that process fairly well, that's the end of your
Psychotherapy. You've completed the learning. You can go.
That's what's so important about Psychotherapy. It's really almost the only setting where
human beings practice replacing negativity with positivity. And it doesn't
matter with what school you're working with: Freudian, Jungian, Gestalt, it doesn't matter.
They all aim at doing that. That's what it makes that decisions are such a special
important endeavor.
RAQUEL - QUESTION 5: . In
which way do you think that Western civilization has contributed to the hatred
that radical Islam have against Westerners? And why would you say that many
people are also against the Jews? And why also Westerns criticize Muslims in
general?
KEN: Right. Well, I would say that the Western
contribution has been this ownership mentality of somebody saying, God gave
this land to me. This is my land. You have no right to be here. Yeah. And
that's just bad. That ownership mentality is just what it divides the earth up
in little segments and puts owners on each one. And the owners don't like any
of the other owners. And it's just us. And for whatever reason, that got a real
start in the West. And of course, culminated in like a Marxist notion of
ownership as Capitalism and all of the things that are wrong with that
supposedly.
And as for why would you say that many people are also against the Jews?
That's just standard anti-Semitism. And that goes back at least 5 or 6 thousand
years in the West. And it got its start with beliefs such as Jews killed Jesus.
And they're worth aiding that we don't want anything to do with them. And also
Jews were allowed to bank money and to loan money. And many people saw that as
evil and Jews were just the source of all that evil. So there are a lot of
causes to anti-Semitism, but it's a very well recognized human fault. And it
just seems to spring up almost wherever Jews are. Some of these ideas about
loaning money or killing Christ or something of that sort always pops up with
them.
Each of those ideas induce to hatred and negativity, spreading it around
and the Jews are the cause of that. So many hate them. And that's just the way
that goes.
And then why the West criticizes Muslims in general? That can be traced -almost
like all forms of hatred- within some minor truth.
The small truth of the Jews is that we could make the case, as we said, that Jews killed Christ. There were Jewish
leaders that predominantly brought charges against Jesus and turned them into
the Romans. So they could make a small fruit out of that case.
The small truth from the Muslims comes from the Koran. Large portions of
the Koran instill warlordship. It instills a worship of war and fighting and
killing. I mean, Muhammad notoriously went to those sections when he felt
problem seized getting on his warlordship to
go out and kill. People reacted to that. They didn't like that
warlordship part of Muslim code. And again, it was based on a small amount of
truth. But it was a truth they could dependably turn to and find good reasons
to hate those war loving Muslims.
And I mean, as I say, we're what we're looking at when we talk about
these negatives, they're just a list of
the number of negatives that humans are open to. When we look at those, what we
find is that History is just dominated by those negativities. They give us 13
years of war to just one year of peace. And that's just a very sad commentary
about the human condition.
RAQUEL: Absolutely. Regarding the
Westerners seen by the Muslims and I would say the radical Russians too, don't
you think that they see the West and they hate the West for reasons maybe like,
not having a consistent and maintained argument, behavior and manners in the
political scene? Because it seems that the West all of a sudden wants this and
now wants that. We're not maintaining, as Westerners, a sound consistency and a
sound reality that can be traced and recognized as the Western truth. No. We are
divided. Everyone thinks differently. I think they see us as little truth. There's a lack of something that they can
say: " okay, that's what they think. We like it or not, but that's what
they think" No, it's like they get crazy because one day, we say one thing
and another day, we say another thing. And we, Westerners pardon the debt of these, but not of those.
And so they don't know go where to go. They don't know where to stand with us.
So, don't you think that such situation has also something to do with the
hatred of the Muslims and Russians toward the West?
KEN: Yeah, in large part, it's because the West does have
so many different ideas. And it's sometimes amazing that they can call all of
them: "The West".
About the only thing that the West has in common is that it's been
fairly economically successful. So it's a fairly wealthy economic system. And
that's more or less true. There are plenty of poor people in the West and
plenty of hungry people. But it's been the hunger on the West the one that has
been highly reduced, much of it in the last 30 years, to where it's less than
10% of the population. And that's amazing!!! That's largely because we are
fairly wealthy. And we can afford to pay off poverty. And that's about it.
Not everybody believes in the same Philosophy. Not everybody believes in
the same approach to Politics. Certainly not everybody believes in the same
approach to Religion. So that's a real problem for the West. And there was a Century,
the XVIII and XVIII , where virtually every Western country was at war with
every other Western country. And it was just, you know, not only the 100 Years'
War and the "War of the Roses",
but it was just the French versus the German, the English versus the Continent,
Hungary versus Poland. I mean, everybody was at everybody's throats. That was
not exactly a unified condition. So it's funny that the West has nonetheless
emerged as a fairly unified place. And it still doesn't have a unified Philosophy or
anything like that. So that's just the History of the West and we still call it
that way. And that makes no sense.
RAQUEL - QUESTION 6: Without any
doubt, we are in a moment of terrible despair and horror regarding peace and
commitment to human rights and people's well-being. So what's your integrated
personal intuition and gut feeling about the future of this escalation of
violence and absurdity that doesn't really show any evolution of human
consciousness at all?
KEN: Yeah, I think
it's certainly a close call. And it very well might be that we go through a
period of increasing violence and aggression. In the long run, we do have
Evolution on our side. Everything that goes from moment to moment transcends
and includes the previous moment. And that turns involve principles of love and
inclusion and care and concern. And that's why if we look at the law hall of
Western History, we see a dramatic increase in degrees of belongingness and
care and loving.
The West 2000 years ago was a very barbaric and belligerent and at-war
place. Roman Empire everywhere, picking on everybody and killing people left and
right. And that was our History. Each year, it seems to get a little bit better
and a little bit better and a little bit better.
So when we get to the XX Century, we have three major wars, World War I,
World War II, and the Korean War. And of course we have Vietnam. All of those were
ended fairly peacefully and the countries came back together and we moved
forward.
So I sort of see a continuation of that kind of pattern, that is, clear possibilities of more wars and more
aggression. Yet, in the long run, we get
over that. And love takes all that out and care takes all that out and Evolution
evolves. And that's one of the amazing things about Evolution, its inherent drive to betterness. And that's an actual force in the Universe.
The evolutionary drive is a real existing physical force. It's like gravity and
electromagnetism. and that's the way it is. Those are actual physical existing
reality forces. Due to the fact that those forces are an inherent part of the Universe,
we're going to continue evolving. Things are going to improve, and broadly
said, get better and better and better. And God only knows the impact that our
increasingly sophisticated technology is going to have in this evolution. But
technology certainly has a capacity to increase the betterment of humankind.
And so we've got that working for us as well, without forgetting that there can
always be ups and downs in this. And I don't expect those to go away.
RAQUEL: So could we say
that all which is happening is part of the Evolution?
KEN: Yeah, I
would say that. Those are the good and the bad news.
RAQUEL: So would you dare to give a date on that
betterment?
KEN: Well, if we look at the overall History of
life, we did start out as a single cell;
one cell organism. And look at it with
the multi-cellular organism. So far. And that went to fish and amphibians and
then reptiles and then mammals and then humans and then a whole string of human
life that got progressively more sophisticated and smarter and better and more
loving and more caring. And for certain periods of that, more belligerent and
more loving and then they would go through wars and drop them and then come
back together and more loving and caring. I would say until we get to a fairly
paradoxical state, I would give it about
100 years.
RAQUEL: Okay. So we
will not see it. !!!
KEN: No, I don't think so. I think we'll see
glimmers of it because as we're continuing to move towards it and then we have
little regressions and then we bump down and then we just move back up. And so
as we'll see several move back up phases as we move towards the paradoxical
state. So I think we'll see a couple more of those patterns.
RAQUEL: At least we have some hope that before we die,
we may see evolutionary glimpses. I always say that we who have mystical
experiences are very lucky because I cannot imagine how life would be without
this deep experience of "THIS something else".
So, when I think in my inner experience,
I really thank you, Ken, because you have put words to it. You have been
so wonderful with all your books and your love,
giving us terminology and structure for all those mystical experiences. I'm
really grateful because now I can name it and recognize it and say: " yes,
I thought that. Yes, I see that. Yes, I hold that in myself. And yes, I
experience these four quadrants and yes, I feel them emerging in me".
That's why I say to the people in my consultation or to anyone that
wants to listen to me: "do this
effort of loving; loving everything
-whether it's positive or negative-. Just love, because if you do so, life is
going to return you a lot. You'll have much better results than if you hate or
judge or feel fearful or hatred all the time"
Would you like to add something else, Ken?
KEN: I just like to
leave people with the general notion that things are headed in a positive good
direction. We are evolving. And as we look at overall Evolution, we see ups and
downs. We do. And so if we go through a slight down period, that's okay. It's
not going to be forever. It's going to turn around and head back up. And that's
going in that direction. And it's going
up and up and I can only imagine what increasing technology is going to do for
that, particularly when we get General Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence,
that we have robots that can talk to us and understand us and vice versa. I
mean, that would be great.
That's just going to continue and get greater and greater and greater.
We've seen Artificial Intelligence just explode in the last decade or two !!!
It's really doing an enormous number of things, including many things that we
thought were not possible, like translating well between languages. Oh, yeah,
that's impressive. And it's very impressive what's happening on every day. And
it's already happening now.
RAQUEL: Yes, I know that as it has takes one of my jobs
as a translator !!! And yet it's part of
Evolution, so I accept it and enjoy that I have more time for my Psychology and
my meditation. Great !!!
Okay, my dear Ken. It's been superb. Thank you. I really appreciate this
time with you. As always, it's been a real pleasure to be with you. Thanks a lot above all for leaving us with
this sensation of "everything that happens is for the positive at the
end" and this sensation of:
everything has a reason and Evolution has its own reasons, so, we're
evolving!!! Thank you for being with us
today.
KEN: Okay, thank you. Bye bye. Bye.
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