(orig. published) December 4th, 2006
http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=28319#p28319It seems not that this article is reporting a difference in the physical organ of the pschopaths’ brains, but rather a difference in neural responses. In my opinion, this can indicate that there is a difference in the psychopaths’ model of reality – that they are differently conditioned than more healthy people.I infer from other items I have read on SOTT, both in the forums and editorials, and in the fraction of Secret History of the World I have had a chance to read so far, that basically anyone trying to study and teach about mind/body/spirit issues is to be considered as suspect as an agent of Cointel programs to control the masses. However, from my study of psychology and history, based to a large extent on self-observation and serendipitous experience, I have come to agree emphatically with Eckhart Tolle, among others (principally Zen or Buddhist or Non-Dual teachers) that psychopathology is the result of easily understandable misperceptions of so-called reality. These deeply hypnotic experiences have resulted in the misidentification of apparently stable patterns of behavior, thinking, and “external” threats as being who we actually are and are in conflict with. The result of the tendencies arising from this ideational/energetic complex of misidentifications is a state of chronic “dis-ease,” or unhappiness that covers over a direct experience of our true nature, the natural state spoken of by teachers like Ramana Maharshi or Nisargadata Maharaj. This state of disease runs a very broad range of conditions starting from mere identification of being exclusively a (perhaps quite functional and superior) mind dependent on our body for existence, through reactivity and extreme fear, to the extreme states of pathology exhibited by a Marquis de Sade or a Pol Pot.
According to this approach to understanding our juncture in history, there is now arising in the world an unprecedented possibility of large masses of humans waking up to the reality of who they really are. Of course, if such a thing were to take place the consequences for the entrenched power relationships that support control by people trapped in such extreme states of unhappiness as to be considered insane would be completely intolerable to those people, who need their apparent temporal power as part of the emotional defense structures that protect their fragile and objectively “unreal” identities (all their glorious wickedness…). If we, the “good guys,” identify ourselves as being in opposition to the “powers that be,” then I would suggest that we are involved in a mild, but similar process of strengthening the structures of our misidentifications, and supporting entrapping ourselves in reactivity that prevents our most creative and positively assertive responses to the objectively difficult situations we’re now facing. We need to support each other in waking up at truly profound levels.
Thinking that ascribes the obvious pathology of the “powers that be” to some kind of objective difference between “us” and “them” is, again in my opinion, a dead end that cuts us off from deep compassion for the suffering all all beings now caught in the spiraling descent into automatism that threatens the survival of the living sytems around us. This compassion is the energy we need to facilitate the unique potential for the awakening of a critical mass of people that can help us turn the corner toward healing on a planetary basis.
Namaste, Bruce
