EUROTAS Italy 2009 : OLTRE LA MENTE - BEYOND THE MIND

We can say that every story has underlying assumptions. They form the basis of every scientific theory, discipline or human action. The problem is that many of these assumptions are implicit, after we have acquired them we take them for granted.
As the saying goes: if you don’t know the assumptions on which your actions are based, act on the basis of the assumptions that you don’t know. This means that the assumptions act in your stead. 
When we really want to know what we are doing, if we want to process systems of knowledge which provide a guarantee and are valid, if we wish to increase our degree of freedom and “personal power” we must be fully aware of the assumptions which we base ourselves on.
We intend to list below the assumptions which we share and on which our thinking, feelings and actions, in addition to the Biotransenergetics theory and practice, are based. They are basically a series of assumptions, most of which have been shared for thousands of years by the most diverse of spiritual traditions and other main lines of transpersonal thinking as Charles Tart reminds us in his work Transpersonal psychologies.
The intention is to come up with a proposal which serves as a guide line for drawing up a “Transpersonal Manifesto” to be approved and signed by everybody who recognises it: scientists, artists, intellectuals, spiritual travellers, willing men and women etc.

Transpersonal Manifesto

A word about the universe

• We are all brothers. The universe is a river interconnected by events crossed by an incessant, limitless conscience. Limits only exist in man’s mind.
  The mineral, vegetable, animal and human world, the subtle worlds of the spirit exist within each other and for each other.
• The only universe is not the one known by material science and the five senses.
  There are spiritual events which transcend sensory perception but which are just as real as measurable physical events. Think of phenomena such as the atmosphere, the chakras, spiritual entities, archetypal forces, etc.
• Our comprehension of the universe is directly influenced by our way of being and knowing.
  My vision of the world depends on the position from which I view it, i.e. my state of conscience.

A word about human nature

• Every one of us possesses an “intimate nature”, which is essentially biological, natural and innate. This nature is partly specific to the person and partly to the entire species. It seems “intrinsically good”. It contains fundamental needs, emotions and fundamental human skills, potential, talents, physiological and temperamental balances, the anatomic apparatus etc.
• Education, cultural expectations, conditioning and fear suffocate our “real nature”.
• The existence of every individual is a process of self-realisation of one’s “real nature” or spiritual essence.
• The process of self-realisation does not stop at one’s intellect but proceeds to higher qualities such as: love, sagacity, humility, compassion, trust, consciousness, patience, sharing, solidarity, respect etc.
• An individual does not only consist of the physical parts which make the whole, but as a spiritual-bio-psycho being the individual presents a series of interconnecting levels which range from the physical to the emotional, mental and spiritual.
• An individual’s life does not begin at birth and end at death, but represents a moment in the day of evolution of “universal conscience”.
  The sperm and the ovule which produced me were alive before I was born and the memory of me will continue to exist in the world even after I am dead. When do I begin ? When do I end ? Establishing this is merely arbitrary.
• By interior experience an individual can gradually free himself of his personal history and his psycho-physical attachments, develop his more genuinely human qualities and to realise his “real nature”.
  Internal experiences are like the sculptor’s chisel which, day after day, shape the roughly hewn marble and gradually as the superfluous layer is removed the work of art which was locked inside the block of stone takes shape.
• In addition to physical energy, i.e. food and water which is fed into the body and mind, there are also other forms of energy which we can draw on.
  Think of the force that pushes trees to grow upwards, the fervour of Spring, the freshness of a young girl in blossom, the strength of faith or spiritual yearning, motherly love, a night in the forest or dawn in the Himalayas.
  • Pain, emotional and social conflicts and illness are not simply enemies to be fought, but allies which contain within a potential creative source of meaning, teaching and strength.
  By mastering our hearing and self-observation we can allow the creative potential of the symptom or conflict to pour out through images, emotions, sensations, needs, desires, memories, sounds, actions, intuitions etc.
• The creative process is the result of an archetypal flow which gains access to the conscience of the individual which it creates.
• Art is an archetypal expression; it has no past nor future which finds expression in the immediacy of the act, in the self-presentation of shape and colour.
  Where colour is colour but is triggered from something else which does not have a memory, where a shape is always a shape but draws on another nomadic, universal idea which has no belonging but is alive with spiritual power.
• Love is the source of life. Pain and illness are first and foremost the consequence of our incapacity to love.

A word about conscience

• All forms of life, be they mineral, vegetable, animal, human, spiritual are crossed by the flow of conscience and are worthy of love and respect.
• There are different forms of conscience at different levels of evolution and complexity.
  There are individual and collective types of conscience. There are “superior” types of conscience which help us and direct us. There are “inferior” and/or tolerant types of conscience.
• The brain and nervous system are not the place, but an instrument of conscience which is just as real as the brain itself.
  No adult in full possession of his mental faculties would be so stupid as to think that the show on television actually takes place inside the TV itself. In the same way, believing that conscience is the exclusive product of mental activity does not seem to be a very judicious illation.
• There are different states of conscience, each of which is an expression of the conscience which is realised in that specific context. 
  Just as every radio station can be found on a specific wavelength and transmits a specific programme, in the same way every state of conscience is an expression of a particular vibration and produces certain states of mind, thoughts, memories, behaviours etc.
  • When the mind works in a rational, “dual” mode, it is responsible for ordinary states of conscience. By using inner practice it is possible, to gain access to a “unitive”, ecstatic state of mind, to transcend the ordinary state and to access extraordinary states of conscience.
• Rational conscience is arbitrary, insight or intuitive understanding attainable through the need for the ecstatic mind provides access to the real nature of things as they are.

A word about personality

• Personality represents a complication for the individual, a product of the culture and education which is to be gradually transcended if one wishes to access one’s “real nature”.
• The availability of disassociate oneself from one’s personality is an essential condition in order to access the spiritual dimension.
• Often a personality well adapted to the values of one’s own culture is the result of identification with illusory patterns of thought which are to be brought into question in order to access the real comprehension of oneself and the world.

A word about the mind and body ¹

• Emotional states are directly connected to states of conscience. The repression or rigid control of emotions determines a relapse in the conscience which hinders the process of realisation.
  At school, work, in scientific and dominant religious environments, social relationships, in the great majority of situations in our lives, emotions are considered to be disturbances which are to be repressed or controlled. But emotions are the manifestation, as Reich reminds us, of the “biological exercise of expression” which is the very essence of life.
• Every pathology, even organic pathology, is directly connected to the incapacity to manage one’s emotions. The management of states of emotion is the source of realisation.
  Managing one’s emotions means entering into contact with them, expressing them and transforming them through conscious observation and gradual “disidentification”.
• Love, compassion, solidarity, patience, humility, sharing, the qualities which are more genuinely human which we are able to offer to the world are the first cure for any illness.
• Sexuality expresses the creative strength of life. Examining it means reaching the primary source of our “being in the world”.
• The lack of understanding of the real nature of sexuality, its repression, negation or deliberate mystification have been and continue to be amongst the greatest causes of misery of humanity.
• There is an extraordinary condition of conscience through which it is possible to access extrasensorial realities and to be connected with the entire universe and obtain truths which have always been present at the depths of our being.
• The imaginary, the world of symbols and interior archetypes, the contact with archetypal forces and spiritual entities can be the source of deep comprehension.
• Faith is not the uncritical following of dogmas, but the fruit of interior experience of a spiritual reality.