Pictures to accompany "Dragons"

BLUE DRAgON ZEN TEMPLE

Eugene, Oregon

Harmony, OBD

First Student

This priest’s works are freely given nothing asked.

He avoids doctrinal dispute sand relies on experiment.

Presently staying with Jim Guthrie at 1475 S. Brooklyn. Eugene Oregon, 97403.

Gifts are welcome; we need all the help we can get.

Redacted 11-11-11

ABSTRACT

The author was trained as a psychodiagnostician at a teaching mental hospital and also served the public in private practice. When experience often showed so-called “mental illness” to be a state of Spiritual confusion, he gave everything else up to study Religion and its relation to  Consciousness. False assumptions in the present conceptualizations of Statistics and Evolution were noted.

In a sincere and impartial study of religion, one can experience strange “coincidences”. Called synchronisms (Sys) in these papers, these coincidences are the same as those described by Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli as simultaneous events  meaningfully but not causally related. The meaning of a synchronism is often  related to a choice one can make to undertake certain actions or behaviors. If one chooses to perform the actions, something is learned; otherwise no expansion is made in a person’s consciousness. The papers in this website summarize the findings of one investigator who followed these synchronisms with determination for some  thirty years. These findings are presented in plain language to simplify the understanding of destructive or Evil behavior and provide ways to avoid being caught in it either as a victim or as an unwitting accomplice.

Consciousness is viewed as a fifth dimension of Nature internally perceived and accessed but not generated by people.  These results replicate the findings of previous students of Consciousness.  Nature is found to be startlingly different from what we were taught at University and it was indicated the public may soon witness open displays of Spiritual Powers. The method used to make progress in expanding Consciousness is described in detail to enable the ordinary family to safely reunite with Nature. No drugs were used or recommended. Description of some ways Ideas animate people is provided by ann analysis of wartime and other prison camps.

On the

MANIFESTATION 

Of

CONSCIOUSNESS

Introduction & Overview

Harmony 

Blue Dragon Temple

Eugene Oregon

It is the motto and avowed intent of the Order of the Blue Dragon (OBD) to transform Noble Ideas and High Ideals into Historical Facts.

The author is deeply grateful for the opportunity to participate in the present work. In his application for graduate study in Psychology in the fall of 1968, he expressed his hope to someday make a contribution to the Human Enterprise. This wish has not only been granted in a way beyond his wildest dreams, but has also resulted in one hell of a kick-ass adventure. Eat your heart out, Indiana Jones!

Harmony

Eugene Oregon,

Nov 11, 2011

Introduction  & Overview

This volume contains three papers written by a former clinical psychologist who became a homeless Zen priest. On the Path in the Street details the method he used in the study of the “coincidences” (Synchronisms) which led him to learn not only from a wide variety of teachers in churches and religious programs, but also from the life of a homeless person on the Street. Credentials gives a short summary of his professional qualifications, tells of his itinerary and lists people he met while on his Spiritual Path. Dragons: Corporate Super-organisms is based on these experiences and presents an over-arching theory of human consciousness which combines Religion and Science and further considers the problem of Evil. 

In his treatise On the Wealth of Nations, which was published in 1776, Adam Smith outlined an economic system which he thought would serve the public’s every need as if by an "invisible hand.” According to his idea, the profit motive would impel individuals to invest their resources in ventures that resulted in benefit not only for the investor, but the public as well. The basic thrust of this formulation, that an over-arching Idea would organize people into an articulated Society in which everyone benefited is similar to that of most Religions where the Idea of Love is expected to articulate humanity into an Organism often spoken of as a “mystical body” animated by a Spirit voluntarily accepted by everyone. In one Idea, however, the motive is for individual gain while in the other Idea, the motive is contribution (Love.) Although his economic work seemed to give carte blanche to selfishness, Smith was clearly not of one mind about this, for in an earlier work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he had identified "Sympathy" (which could also possibly be understood as empathy or compassion) together with beneficence and justice as virtues necessary for a successful society. 

Historically, it appears that people were intimate with Nature, but as the sizeof social units became larger, rulers named themselves divine, told others what they had to do and used force to compel obedience. Called the Pyramid age” by Lewis Mumford (2003), he went on to tell how this  turned individuals into  mere cogs in what he called a “Megamachine.” Unity with Nature was lost as successive generations identified themselves with the Ruler and emphasized obedience over instinctual feelings. The present author sees early religion as an effort to codify and tell of the way people could best relate to Nature, but Rulers made Religion servile to their own authority and it became okay to do anything that was legal. Crime was disobedience to the Ruler, disobedience to religious codes unimportant. 

 The divine kingship of the Pyramid Age has been replaced by what Mumford called “a military-scientific-industrial elite” that presents itself as having “infallible computerized intelligence.” But the social structure of the Pyramid Age is unchanged and continues to serve those at the top. Swearing allegiance to Temporal authority is still required regardless of one’s religion. Righteousness is foolish. Force is used to compel behavior judged to be good; the only difference is the number of people who judge what is Good and Evil. An action may be legal, even required by Law but is it in accord with Nature? That is a moral or religious question beyond the power of any Parliament or magistrate. Temporal power may discover it is not unlimited.

In practice, Adam Smith’s economic ideas have had spectacular success in meeting the needs of most everyone except for a percentage of individuals like monks who could not or would not participate as directed; yet would Smith be pleased with the way his ideas have developed, or would he wish he had further stressed virtue? The religious model of contribution by Love has fared poorly partly because individual gain is so seductive a motivation, partly because the Society as a whole has a counter momentum, and partly because people have largely paid only lip service to the idea of Love but never really tried it. What precisely are the behaviors associated with Love and who is our neighbor? The person who dwells in the house next to ours? The guy on the same seat on the bus? The person one meets by coincidence? The present author had never had any problem competing in the world of Adam Smith; how would he fare testing the idea of Love on the Street? This was to be Philosophy Laboratory 101: Was it more reasonable to believe in the invisible hand of Adam Smith than it was in the invisible hand of Love? Was there a way to reunite Reason and instinctual Feelings?

The English language has many words for groups. We speak of schools of fish, a pride of lions, packs of wolves and even a murder of crows. The group word indicates that a collection of individuals also has a social behavior that is generally the same wherever the species is found. Unlike the other creatures, people seem to have a choice of more than one social principle. While the other creatures form groups on an organic and instinctual basis, people historically have organized themselves on rational or philosophical principles enforced by government. Smith’s ideas are in this realm. These papers consider the possibility that there is also a realm of organic or instinctual behavior for people to freely choose which is activated by love, compassion or empathy. The word Dragon is used to indicate a group of people with a given principle of social behavior. The rationale for this terminology will be made clear in the papers that follow.

The Path refers to an internal Spiritual Journey of increasing awareness of the role of Consciousness in Nature which might take place in a monastery or secluded hermitage, while The Street is emblematic of the world as it is today with all it's imperfections. Hence, the first paper, The Path in the Street sets out guidelines or survey markers on how to make spiritual progress in the ordinary world and makes a first consideration of the topic of Evil. Dragons: Corporate Super-organisms treats Evil in detail.

Lest the reader believe that the use of the word Dragon is vague or fanciful, a preview of the scientific definition used n the paper Dragons” corporate Super-organisims is presented here to enable the reader to accustom himself to some rather unconventional views.  First, the notion that Consciousness is a immanent in  Nature and that it is not ideas that belong to people, but  people that belong to Ideas. Dragons are Ideas together with their accompanying emotions as they manifest themselves through the actions of those people who subscribe to them. Just as people are multicellular organisms, they also voluntarily comprise the Super-organisms here called dragons. The Red Dragon uses a combination of Lies, Pride, Fear, Greed and anger to control It’s adherence while the Blue Dragon adherents practice righteous behavior because it is in harmony with Nature, but also in the hope it will evoke similar behavior in others.  Mistaken beliefs, false assumptions and delusions that constituteLies are simple, but are so subtle  as to have seduced even our best minds and are repeated  at the graduate level in a Nation’s most prestigious Universities. The basic assumption of statistics, for example, is that the Universe is an Ignorant Machine in which events are randomly generated, yet folk wisdom insists that it is not. and that “As ye sow, so shall ye reap” which is the religious idea of Karma: that Nature responds to each individual according to the way they have treated It; or as expressed on the street in the USA:“What goes around comes around. These “superstitious” ideas were simply discarded because they did not fit the theory and were never tested. As most all areas of science test their experimental results with statistics, almost all scientific results are  thrown into doubt and confusion.

When the present author began having spiritual experiences as a result of his religious studies he realized that psychiatric diagnoses were also based on false assumptions. He had studied at one of the best universities and served for more than nine years as a diagnostician at a first rate teaching mental hospital. This generated some degree of Pride in his ability as he received promotions and monetary rewards as well as other honors.   Nevertheless, he realized that Spiritual Awakening was frequently confused with so-called “mental illness”. Thinking he was doing the right thing, he had often misdiagnosed individuals who subsequently got improper or even destructive treatments as a result. He had been misled in the worst possible way. Moreover, when he presented these views to his colleagues, he was immediately disregarded as “mentally ill” and ostracized. Fear of the rejection and ridicule of his former colleagues, his loss of stature in the community, or the impossibility of getting funding for future studies had to be ignored and tolerated.. Conscience ruled and he determined to continue his spiritual progress regardless of the cost. Having made this confession he will do all he can to redress his errors. An analysis of Mysticism, psychosis and differential diagnosis will be found in On the Path in the Street. 

The Theory of Evolution also assumes that random  variations in individuals are acted upon by natural selection to produce speciation as well ass adaptability in organisms. This notion has even been extended to  behaviors and ideas. Some well-meaning evolutionary psychologists have even assumed that because  some ideas exist that hey must have evolved. But what data shows this variation to be random instead of purposeful? The paper Credentials details the journey of the author as he relied entirely on unsolicited gifts to replicate the results of previous investigators.

 If events were randomly generated, he should have starved to death. Instead, he survived for twenty-nine years without even asking for anything. Is the random generation of events a false assumption? Without testing alternatives, the Theory of Evolution rests not on firm ground, but on assumptions that are very likely false. We are not helpless globs of glop on an ocean of emotion. Survival may be enhanced by individual purposeful behavior. What behaviors permitted these rather remarkable findings and how can other ordinary people employ them to get similar results?

The Manifestation of Consciousness refers to the choices people make as to their behavior and the way in which events arise from their wishes, thoughts and actions. More precisely, when people wish to do things, they access diverse thoughts and participate in transforming opportunities into achievements. Manifestation is loosely visualized as a six-part process that involves first a wish to change a situation, a goal in which specific elements of Consciousness are accessed, an opportunity for participation, contributory behavior and an achievement followed by an evaluation as to how satisfying the process was. Because people have a variety of thoughts to access that are less available to the other creatures, they have, in a sense, a choice as to their “instinctual” behavior. When accessing thoughts, people willingly become part of a super-organism, a Dragon that builds specific kinds of “nests” to fulfill specific goals. The following illustrations may help to clarify these thoughts: It is said that “Faith can move mountains” and an old joke adds: “with a good steam shovel;” but if one wants to see a mountain that was moved by Faith, all they need to do is visit the great pyramids of Egypt where it is seen to be literally true: Mountains were torn down and rebuilt in the form and place the architects wanted them; manifestations of Consciousness. Related phenomena include the great cathedrals of Europe, the immense statues of Asia and even the New York Stock Exchange where ideas, beliefs and expectations are regularly associated with busts and booms. The ability to fly had long been sought by humanity and at one time, it was thought that the only way people could fly was by magic as a carpet or broom; but understanding of the Laws of Physics and Chemistry has resulted in elegant “carpets” that carry hundreds of passengers faster than the wind. All of these accomplishments were attained by meditation on the desired goal, the accessing of useful thoughts and their completion through cooperative utilization of available materials. On a more subtle level are the desires

 that urge people toward different goals, the Ideas that articulate the cooperative and complex behaviors required to accomplish them and at the deepest level is the way in which the Universe provides opportunity by serving up the necessities to accomplish the secret wishes of the heart. All these phenomena must follow Rules

 just as the rest of Nature does, and the effort to identify and understand these Rules comprises the main interest of these papers. We are now poised to examine the consequences of the ways in which we apply the Rules of Consciousness. The following papers present the results of scientific experiments in this inquiry.

References

Mumford, L. (2003). Tool users vs. Homo sapiens and the megamachine. In Scharf, R. & Dusek, V. (Eds) Philosophy of Technology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers

Smith, A. On the Wealth of Nations. See Wickipedia

Smith, A. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. See Wickipedia

BLUE DRAGON ZEN TEMPLE

Eugene Oregon

CREDENTIALS

The documented account of the transformation of the Licensed Clinical Psychologist Dr. Leonard F. Brockway, (Ph.D.) into the homeless Zen Priest  Harmony

A scientific inquiry into Faith, Prayer & Meditation

with names, dates, places and references.

BLUE DRAGON ZEN TEMPLE

Credentials

Harmony

This information is not provided as part of any application for a subordinate position, nor to assert a superior one. In the past, I have kept the Rule of whatever Temple I was visiting; it is now time to assert and keep the Rule of the OBD. I am prepared to discuss Spiritual Matters with equals who also want to re-integrate with Nature and implement the Will of Heaven, not just talk about it. I live in silence & seclusion, but will come out to share what I’ve learned with others; then return to the Cloister. I may not accept titles nor use them in addressing others. People are expected to show me the same respect I show to them; the kowtow is neither welcome nor appropriate. 

A full list of my pre-professional experience is available from personnel files at VA Medical center St Louis, MO. Among other things, I did sub-professional civil engineering work for the City of Seattle and later a consulting firm. A friend, co-worker and some-time business partner who knew me from 1964 to 1968 while I was working ½ time to pay my way through the UW was Richard T. Birch (presently of 7278 N. Mercer Way,  Mercer Island WA 98040 tel: 206-232-0781)    I received the BS in Psychology from the U of Washington June, 1968 at age 34 without getting student loans.

Sept 1968 to July 1974: Psychology Trainee, Veteran’s Administration Medical Center, St Louis MO. Rotated through all inpatient and outpatient Psychology Services: Chronic & acute inpatient psychotic psychiatric units; acute outpatient Mental Hygiene Clinic; Outpatient psychiatric day-treatment; Alcohol Treatment; Encounter & Group Therapy Units; Training Seminars, etc. I also did clinical practicums at State and Children’s hospitals, attended a Hypnosis training seminar and so on. 

July 1974 to July 1975: Psychology intern VA Medical Center, St Louis. Mental Hygiene Clinic: do intake interviews, psychodiagnostics and individual psychotherapy with people referred for a variety of problems from chronic psychoses to transient personality disorders.   

July, 1975: Attended Washington University, St. Louis (1968-1975) with tuition-remission scholarships. Received the Ph.D. Degree in Clinical Psychology under the name Leonard F. Brockway. with usual awards and honors. Hew had a Social Security Number, but I do not use a SSN, may not accept one as part of my Spiritual Path. Dissertation: Attentional disturbance and thought disorder in schizophrenia as measured by eye-movements and conceptual performance. (Copy of Dissertation Abstracts attached.) Chairman: John Stern Ph.D. (www.artsci.wustl.edu~jastern) committee member Richard Kurtz  Ph.D.(www.rmkurtz@artsci.wustl.edu tel: 314-935-6520). Paid my own way with VA trainee stipends, never borrowed money. 

July 1975 to July 1977: Postdoctoral; VA Medical Center St Louis Mental Hygiene Clinic continued service to the public. Provided supervision for advanced psychology students and also received supervision from senior staff members to meet Missouri State license requirements. Promoted to Supervising Senior Psychologist and received Missouri State License. Complete records available from personnel files.

July 1977 to July 1982: Owner, director and lead psychologist for Clinical & Counseling Psychologists, Inc. 930 Paul Brown Bldg St Louis Mo: Provided services to the public and various government and corporate organizations; Missouri and Illinois Departments of Vocational Rehabilitation providing psychodiagnostic evaluations and vocational recommendations; St Louis Regional Center for the Developmentally Disabled providing evaluations and treatment programs for a wide variety of their clients ranging from retarded children to parents in situational stress or dealing with personality problems. Doing individual counseling with local business people dealing with a wide variety of inter- and intra-personal  concerns. David P. Grace Ph.D. (dpg0005@aol.com) was an associate who can verify the existence of my private practice, although he had limited contact with the Corporation.

Upon receiving the Doctorate, I immediately took up the study of religion with the intent of determining how it affected people’s ideas, actions and lives. As an Agnostic, I studied all religions objectively, mostly through reading but also wishing I could get some first-hand experience, especially in areas of faith-healing. After some experience it became clear that there was indeed some substance to religion and I began to pursue the topic in a more vigorous manner. By July 1982, it was also clear that my best opportunity to learn was to let go of conventional methods and experiment with the principles I had learned from esoteric reading about the Spiritual Path. In the course of my practice, I had seen more then 2,000 people in diagnostic situations, and found it easier to interpret the results with Spiritual rather than Psychological principles. Moreover, I  experienced Synchronisms (“coincidences”) which led me from one situation to another, and as I followed them, it became clear that the scriptural dictum: “Knock and it will be opened unto you, ask and it will be given “ could quite realistically be relied upon. Even before I closed my practice, I was entered into the Masonic Brotherhood as an apprentice. I also began a practice in Zen meditation at Missouri Zen Center, (220 Spring St. Webster Groves, MO www.missourizencenter.org), a Japanese Soto Zen group led by Osamu Yoshida who was also a professor at Webster College. (His religious name is Rosan Daido; he is now professor of comparative religion at Toyo University in Tokyo and divides his time between Japan and St Louis. He can be reached through the Center) He might recall me as Doctor Brockway who attended the Center in 1980, told the congregation of his bicycle trip across Tennessee and later telephoned him from Washington State to tell him he had had spiritual experiences. My practice of Zen was strictly experimental and involved no dedication to any dogma.  

Familiar with Twelve-Step recovery programs, I found it instructive to listen carefully to everything that was said in them and anonymously attended hundreds of meetings where I heard people openly describe a wide variety of experiences they would otherwise keep secret even in psychotherapy. For example, I learned that the so-called “ideas of reference”

 which are widely held to be symptoms of “mental illness” are really quite common and experienced by a large proportion of the population. If one wears a “Big City Doctor” badge and attends meetings on the seventh floor of the Hospital, he will likely see and hear little, but someone who is humble enough to admit to his own problems (At the time I thought I too might be alcoholic, but it turned out to be a Blessing: It was important that I have the experiences that are related here), and who is willing to go to the “back-room-sickie” group at a Big City AA club, may see and hear the human spirit in it's true form. The initial steps of these programs require one to admit they have not managed their lives well and to ask for help from a “Higher Power” People desperate for freedom from addictions are encouraged to choose any Higher Power from a light bulb or brick to a fanciful Being named “Herman;” the important thing to do is to pray as if it could help you. People who had enough faith to at least try,  invariably got favorable results. Those who experimented then realized that there was something to the prayer business after all and took it up more seriously. Watching the progress of these groups without personally intervening in any way, it was still possible over a period of time to see marked improvement in the participants without any therapist present. That is to say, the active elements of the process were internal to the participants and relied only on the  Spiritual Steps in order to operate. Unconditional acceptance of the group was helpful but unnecessary (others might even eat, sleep or read through meetings.) These were people with severe disturbances (Imagine a patient population defined by alcoholics as “back-room-sickies”) far beyond simple addictions, yet they continued to improve as they “worked their programs.” The potential for delusion was also clear: if someone received benefits from praying to an idol, they might really believe the idol helped, and this had some explanatory power for the early history of human cultures. (The whole notion of monotheism is that there is only one source that answers prayers and that belief in multiple sources is illusory.) The benefits to the participants were so far and away superior to anything I had seen in my professional education, that I determined to study spiritual principles as intensely as possible. This was not a serendipitous “discovery,” it later became clear that these things had purposely been demonstrated to me. I found that the prayer “Show me your Will and give me the power to carry it out” regularly got answers, and that if I had the Faith to do what was put in front of me, I invariably learned something. In 1980 or 1981, I had an epiphany in which I became aware that the success of my practice was not due to my own efforts, but resulted from a Higher Power working through others. Simultaneously, I also realized It now wanted me to be poor and when I saw expenses rise as profits fell, I realized it was time to “let go.” Always ready to devise my own learning programs, and burning with curiosity about the “coincidences” so common in Spiritual Programs, after five years of successful practice, I closed it in July, 1982, and entered the homeless phase of my Spiritual Path.

July 1, 1982 to July 1988 Leavenworth and Cashmere Washington: Lived alone in the mountains with an Encyclopedia of Philosophy and studying Spiritual Principles; took up and  maintained a practice of prayer and meditation; left Twelve-Step groups behind; toured all the local churches and observed the local ministers. I had previously attended Friends meetings as a young man. I began study with Jehovah’s Witnesses in Cashmere. I made side-trips to different Spiritual Programs such as the one Rajneesh had at Antelope Oregon, studied with a local Muktananda group, visited with American Indian groups, studied Eckankar and so on. I read widely about magic and the occult, but refused to experiment with it.  TV proved a good way to study a variety of religious leaders. The 3ABN  Channel was also studied closely as well as the TBN. I also attended Sakya Tegchen Choling (Tibetan) monastery in Seattle when they were near the UW campus and also again later at their present location (108 NW 83^rd St Seattle WA 98117 tel: 206-789-2573; www.monastery@sakya.org) Dagchen Rimpoche probably won’t remember me; if he does it will be as the man who asked if Faith and Faith alone were enough for Spiritual Progress. I had some powerful experiences there during the Chen-Re-Zhi meditations. I also consulted with Chagdud Tulku Rimpoche and received the Red Tara initiation from him in 1983 or 1984. He has since passed on, but his assistant at the time will remember me as the psychologist who sent her photos from Leavenworth including one which showed a Buddha statue mounted as hood-ornament on a 4x4 Plymouth Trail-duster. She responded, saying she was sure we’d all see each other again as that was the common way of Karma. She is now Lama Tsering Everest and can be reached at www.snowcrest.net or Chagdud Gonpa Odsal Ling; Rua Bras Cubas 25 CEP 04109-040, Aclimacao, Sao-Paulo Brasil tel-fax 011-55-11-5579-3379)    Told several times that my efforts were appreciated, and that I need not continue, I nevertheless persisted asking where I belonged, and on Jan 11, 1987  I had experiences that indicated I was acceptable as a monk for independent study provided I understood that I would have to suffer as Job had done, leave everything and everyone behind, and accept whatever job I was given. When I agreed,  without asking for them, I was given robes made by a local seamstress but also instructed not to wear them until told to do so. I began a Rule of Silence in August 1987. After a summer of intense experiences both internal and situational, I wintered with Joyce and Darrel Fleischman in Electric City WA (Presently at 408 Highland, Elmer City WA tel: 509-633-2615) who had asked me to cook for them while they both worked. They will remember me well; knew me from Leavenworth and we often laughed about the bizarre coincidences that furthered my Path. As I recall, in Electric City, I studied at the Assembly of God. Another reference from Leavenworth is Lyle Warman (7300 Deadman’s Hill Peshastin WA tel: 509-348-7589) I last saw my children Alan, Erica and Blythe in the Spring of 1988 and didn’t see them again until they sought me out in Eugene Oregon in August of 2003. Blythe Brockway who very well remembers the beginning of my Silence can be reached at blythelyfree@hotmail.com Until they exposed me, I had remained entirely anonymous.

Yakima WA Feb 1989 to Nov 1991:  Waiting to be invited or sent places rather than being proactive; telling no-one who I was, what I was doing or why; giving freely and refusing pay; dressed in plain clothes and keeping a Rule of Silence, I was moved away from Cashmere, and arrived in Yakima in the bitterly cold winter of 1989. I was first billeted at Union Gospel Mission  when they were still on Front St. (now at 1300 N 1^st Yakima WA 98901 tel: 509-248-4510), then asked to cook for the priests at St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church by Fred Mercy, a Jesuit brother there.(I looked him up on the Net and it seems he is now in Omak but can be contacted at mercy@televar.com. One of the priests was named Carrol, but I’ve forgotten other references. Fred had a strong interest in psychology and put on a number of workshops. Asked to cook not only the priest’s daily meals, but also for workshops similar to those that I had formerly led as a psychologist, it became clear that what Heaven wanted was humble service and not professional direction. In summer of 1989, I was asked by a Jesuit brother named Jerry(?) (Fred will know his name) to help restore an old church on the Colville Indian Reservation near Inchelium WA. (I believe this is St. Michael’s parish, but I’m not sure tel: 509-722-4592) I had studied Francis of Assisi, who had a similar experience, and understood this assignment figuratively to mean “Restore my Church.” I also helped Jerry add a room to the Priory and install a metal circular staircase. In the fall of ’89, I returned to Yakima with the 4x4 truck and travel trailer I still had from my previous life, then gave it all away. When it is time to move on, I am typically required to abruptly sever all contact so I broke with the Yakima Catholics. I was then asked to become a staff member at Calvary Rescue Mission (1223 S 6^th St Yakima. Tel: 509-248-0120) At that time, it was run by an old man named Troy who has likely passed on by now. Troy’s son Roger might remember me or perhaps another minister named Harold. At this Protestant Mission, I cleaned toilets, made beds, polished the chapel, cooked breakfast daily and dinner two or three times a week for staff and all the other tramps who stayed. I was there for some months learning the “nuts and bolts” of Monastery operation. At no time did I accept pay for anything. Growing flowers for the chapel and making it shine raised everyone’s spirits.

While in Yakima, I also studied with Seventh Day Adventists (202 fifth St. Zillah WA 98953 tel: 509-877-4414) where I raked leaves, did grounds work and attended a series of “Crusades” which led me to an understanding of how such meetings are organized, led and controlled. For example, the audience is “salted” with congregation members who wear secret ID symbols enabling them to recognize each other; these people get up and go to the altar with others who answer the “call,” then seek to incorporate the newcomers into their local churches. Perhaps three-fourths of the people making altar calls are of this nature. 

Children I met on the street in Yakima insisted that I attend their vacation Bible School at First Christian Church (221 E “B” St. Yakima WA 98953 tel: 509-248-4434) and wouldn’t take “no” for an answer, so the pastor and others had little choice but to include me as a scruffy tramp. After weeks of talk, following Sunday services, they had the children playing musical chairs in the church recreation hall, completely unaware that the game is diametrically opposed to their teaching. This was typical of almost all the places I studied: The actions of the congregation were seldom in accord with the teachings, yet they were completely unaware of it.

Also in Yakima, I often camped along the tracks with other tramps, ate at the Union Gospel and Calvary Missions and listened attentively to literally hundreds of sermons based on many different parts of the Bible. I was invited to internal meetings of the Jehovah’s Witnesses where they demonstrated and practiced role-play methods of overcoming objections offered by the people they approached. In other meetings, they practiced meditative rehearsal and public affirmation of the things they were taught by church leaders. By the fall of 1991, people began to become aware of who I had been in my previous life. Someone sewed a pullover-type shirt for me as an outer garment, bought me a bus ticket and I left Yakima with a duffel bag and a few dollars in my pocket. 

November 1991 to August 1992  Eugene Oregon:     Here I studied intensively with Baptists at the downtown church and lived on a construction job where I also acted as carpenter’s helper. i refused pay, but accepted gifts. Asked to travel East in a step-van with others, I was abandoned in North Platte Nebraska where they drove away with all my belongings. A stuff-sack caught in the front wheel of my bicycle and I got a bad black-eye when I fell in the street. A young woman who saw me fall took me to the hospital. Her mother came to the hospital and was very helpful. They gave me a place to sleep in their basement, then a local church got me a motel room until the family took me to Lincoln. The Vickie Larson-Brown family will not only remember me, they took a family photo that included me. Her husband’s surname was Brown and he worked at the hospital where I was treated. (Great Plains Medical Center; 601 Leota St. North Platte NE tel: 308-696-8000) This was typical wherever I went; when I made mistakes, I had to take the lumps, bumps and falls in order to learn, but there was always someone close at hand to help me get up again. 

Lincoln Nebraska August 1992 to July 1994: First of all, I learned how to survive life on the Street as a homeless monk. I made a great cope…sort of a cape and sleeping-bag combined that covered me and the bicycle which contained all my worldly possessions.  One winter when it was as cold as fifteen below zero, I had no regular place to stay, but each day as night approached, I would walk through the streets pushing my bicycle until someone invited me in. or told me where to go. Daily, some small miracle would occur that provided me with shelter. Thus, I learned how to meet the public in an entirely new way, while I simultaneously relied on the Spirit to provide for me through kind people. I studied intensively with the Mormons for quite a long while, went to their meetings and workshops, studied their methods and teachings. (I have no reference for them, for they were four teen-age missionaries from other areas who took me around to local meetings. There is however, an LDS center near the UNL campus which may recall me.(1030 “Q” St. Lincoln NE 402-435-6328) All this time I was dressed in plain-clothes, but always in black. There was a Homeless Shelter there called Daywatch  (1911 “R” St., Lincoln NE with a minister/director named Nancy tel: 402-435-5233 who was confined to a wheelchair.) She may recall me as the man who took care of a lady (Donna ?) with a broken leg in the winter of ’93, but certainly as the man in black who never spoke. I also spent a lot of time at the Coffee House (1324 “P” St. Lincoln NE 68508 tel: 402-477-6611) often talking with U of Nebraska students many of whom were philosophy graduate students in Ethics. One named Tracy got her Ph.D. and a job at Creighton University in Omaha, I heard, but I can find no reference for her.) If the same owners of the Coffee Shop are still there, they will certainly remember me. I was also taken to St Mary’s Catholic church several times where the priest was puzzled by my silence. (!420 “K” St. Lincoln NE 68508 tel: 402-435-2125) Sent to St John of Kronstadt Orthodox Church (2800 Holdredge Lincoln NE 68503 tel: 402-475-7716), I also attended another Orthodox facility, The Catacomb Bookstore (2408 “J” St. Lincoln NE  68510 tel: 402-474-3535) where Maximus very likely will recall meeting me as the monk who camped on the prairie.. I also studied the Way International, observed the Nebraska Zen Center staff (Nonin Chowaney, et al) at Lincoln meetings, then the Jewel Heart society in Lincoln (Gehlek Rimpoche.) and attended Lincoln Christian Church, a division of Boston Church of Christ; all as an ordinary tramp off the street, except later I wore robes to a presentation of Sant Mat. I recall being sent to a Symposium on Religious Cults, but have no references for this. I was also taken to Arkansas. where for only one or two days I met and was invited to stay with Shalom Miller (#1 Washington Eureka Springs AR 72503) while I served a Zen nun I knew as Miau who ran Devachan Temple (5 Dickey St. Eureka Springs AR 72672),  then I was returned to Lincoln NE. The person who took me on this trip was a woman named Vida; I later performed a Spiritual wedding ceremony for her and Robert Eckerson, an immigration attorney practicing in Lincoln (941 “O” St. Suite 705 Lincoln NE 68508 tel: 402-476-3551), and later at Linh Quan Temple dedicated their daughter Zaia to the Spirit of Love. He was quite a skeptic, but then at one time, so was I. Vida gave me material & lining for a new robe; it was almost as if I were given my own wedding robe. She will know many people who helped me there.  Paul Anderson (919 S 12^th St. Apt 2 Lincoln NE 68508 tel: 402-438-3485) was often of great help to me while I was there; at one time let me stay with him for a week as I recovered from an attack of gout.  

Lincoln Nebraska July 1994 to June 1999:  In July 1994, I had an experience in which I was given my Asian name (Harmony) and it was further indicated that I was to wear robes from then on. Having left the original robes behind, I hand-stitched new ones based on the original design and began wearing them daily; there were a few brushes with a social worker empowered to detain and question street people, but nothing serious. I had a library card at the University of Nebraska under the name Brock Brockway,  found it necessary to leave it and the U of Nebraska behind and instead go to Nebraska Wesleyan University Cochran-Woods Library where the librarian Janet Lu (tel: 402-826-8245) was very kind and gave me a courtesy card with my new Asian name. She may remember me as the man who didn’t talk, studied Chinese on his own and was a monk at Linh Quan Temple. She also gave me some calligraphy, and these credentials bear the mark of  an inkan I carved from her work. 

Lincoln Nebraska January 11, 1997 to June, 1999: Ten years to the day after I had been given robes and accepted as an independent monk, I was waiting for a bus on a cold winter morning and a Vietnamese man named Loc Tran saw me, parked his car and came to invite me to stay at Linh Quan Buddhist Temple, (216 West  “F” Street Lincoln Nebraska) where I remained until spring of 1998. (Loc Tran tel: 402-438-4719; the best time to call is Sunday as this is the Temple number. Also say hello to Chau for me?) They will remember me by the name Ho which arguably is the Vietnamese pronunciation of my Asian name.  They made brown Vietnamese robes for me which I wore while I was there, but my own black robes when on the street. The only monk in residence, I was at all of the rituals and services, and very much enjoyed all of the congregation many of whom had spent time in Reeducation Camps before being allowed to emigrate from Vietnam.  In Spring, 1998, I moved out to camp on the prairie at the edge of town. That Spring, a young man named Ron Decker (I have no contact information for him) took me to Conception Abbey Benedictine Monastery in Missouri for a day visit, and later in August of ’98 to St Herman’s of Alaska Russian Orthodox Monastery at Platina California where I stayed for ten days or so attending all the services and carefully learning their teachings and rituals. Fr. Gerasim was the abbot. (St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood; PO Box 7010 Beegum Gorge Rd. Platina CA. Tel: 530-352-4430 or email: stherman@crl.com) On this trip, I also stopped at Shasta Abbey Soto Zen Monastery where I unsuccessfully attempted to obtain a copy of the professional resume I had previously sent them in 1985 while considering entry into their order. The person who was taking me on this tour got tapes of the Abbot’s sermons and I listened to them on the automobile tape deck. We also visited a monastery of the Thai forest tradition where I had an unpleasant experience. Although I take a daily vow to love and to serve all beings, at times there are conditions where I must refuse service to people and I found it necessary to do this with the co-abbots at Abhayagiri. If they remember me, it will probably be unpleasant. Of course, as with all the Temples I visited, they had no idea they were subjects of study. (www.abhayagiri.org/who.htm)  .

Returned to Lincoln, I spent more time at Linh Quan Temple. A professor  brought his comparative religion class to the Temple and the vice-president Dao told him I was a Zen Master and lent me to him so that later in early 1999 I silently demonstrated Zen practice for his class. (Richard Wolters Ph.D. Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Doane College, Crete NE: dwolters@doane.edu.)  In June of 1999, I was taken  by a group of teenagers (Debbie, Matt & John-Paul) on a cross-country trip from Lincoln to Salida Colorado and after a total of four weeks on to Eugene. When one travels this way, (figuratively called “walking on the Wind”) one never knows for certain where one is going, must be prepared to jump at any time and start all over in a new location just as I had previously done in North Platte eight years before. 

Eugene Oregon, July 1999 to Aug 2007:  When I first came to Eugene, I camped with my bicycle in a wild place on the McKenzie river near Vida. There is a two-week limit for camping on Government property, and as my time expired, I met a young man on the bus. That was on a Friday, and he told me that all I had to do was get through one more day, and that a person at Saturday Market would know of another place to camp. The next day, the person he spoke of was not available at Saturday Market, but his lady-friend told me to ask at Jim Guthrie’s house in Glenwood. Following these directions, I knocked on Jim’s door,  asking if he knew of a place to camp. Without pause, Jim offered to let me camp in his backyard or even to live in his back-bedroom if I wished. I chose the back-yard and said I would come the following day. While packing up my gear at the campsite, a Ranger named Wes came by and wanted to know how soon I’d be gone as my time was up. I said as soon as I could move all the gear by bicycle 3 miles to the bus and make three trips into town. He offered to help me, so we loaded everything into his truck and drove to town. I set up camp in Jim’s (beautiful) back-yard. Later, Jim invited me to move down the street and camp in a run-down mobile home where it was possible to survive the winter. I have lived here for five years chopping wood for a stove and carrying water in jugs. At first there was a toilet that I could flush with a bucket, but when t became unusable, it was necessary to take wastewater in containers to a porta-potty at Jim’s.There is a good deal more to the story of my arrival in Eugene, but these skeletal facts serve to further illustrate the preposterous “coincidences” that provide for me and anyone else who lives by Faith as I do. I may no longer be a psychologist, for I am now a priest,  but I am still a scientist and all these events are data that can be verified. Similar clues, cues and hints have prompted me to compose this summary of my credentials. In general, my mystical experiences are composed of flashes of psychological insight or understanding; I don’t hear voices or have visions; I follow my feelings, pay careful attention to what is happening around me and try always to move in harmony with the flow I perceive in Nature. I consider this to be supra-rational thought

: Just as we do not believe that a spider logically plans it’s web, or a swan rationally uses map and compass to migrate, neither need we assume that humans are incapable of such intuitive behaviors, and it is these that I have developed and honed into skills that can be taught (coached). Enfolded in Nature, I further It’s rather than my own agenda as It leads me from one event to the next. To extend the spider comparison, it could be said that I have been “spinning a web” of interpersonal relationships over the past two decades, but it is only now that we may perhaps discover it’s shape and it’s purpose. I keep a backpack with me that contains my medications, clean underwear and other essentials so that when I’m suddenly required to spend a few days with someone, I'm not unprepared. Jim Guthrie is still my mentor and can be reached at 1475 S Brooklyn Eugene OR tel: 541-746-0667.

In Eugene i also met with David Oak”s psychiatric group Mindfreeedom for a while. When it was necessary to move on, he seemed to take it personally. Sorry, David: it takes what it takes and i do as i must. I spent some time attending Services here with the Salvation Army (1275 Mill St. Springfield OR tel: 541-747-6229 where my contact was Jim Cady); the United Methodist Church (532 “C” St. Springfield OR tel: 541-746-3513); St Mary’s Episcopal Church (1300 Pearl St. Eugene OR tel: 541-343-9253 where my lead-person was named Angel); Newman Center (1850 Emerald St. Eugene OR 97403 tel: 541-343-7021) for a symposium of University Religious professors; the Eugene Priory offshoot of Shasta Abbey Zen Monastery (8514 Teague Loop tel: 541-344-7377) and anonymously to St Mary’s Catholic Church at 11^th and Charnelton. I also met with many groups serving the poor: specifically, Love-Link Ministries the now defunct agency that had a soup kitchen in the Paramount shopping center (21^st & Main Springfield OR run by ministers named Ada and Phil); the Hope Center House  (759 Mill St Springfield OR); the Victory Outreach where my contact was Robert Thompson (3055 Kinney Loop Eugene OR 97408 541-484-3173) and I also attended a number of dinners for the homeless where my contact person was Mark Karr (442 16^th St. Springfield OR. no phone) who also allowed me to do laundry and shower at his house. I further attended some psychiatric facilities: SAFE, Inc, an outpatient facility run by psychiatric patients for psychiatric patients where I spent considerable time. (230 Main St. Springfield; Elizabeth Snow; tel: 541-988-9570) and also Laurel Hill, a psychiatric outpatient facility at 2145 Centennial plaza, Eugene (tel: 541-485-6340) The treatment staff will remember me well, for I attended many sessions there wearing my robes and never speaking. There is always a “lead person” to take me to such places (otherwise I wouldn’t know where to go), and in this case it was Maxine Edell (5335 Main St. Springfield tel: 541-746-1230) who also bought me new shoes and other things I badly needed. Other people of local help were Steve Kingsley a neighbor at (259 ½  N Brooklyn, Eugene tel: 541-741-8353); and Matt the homeless Springfield tramp and his dog Lady who kept me advised of free dinners and good deals here and there. While I anonymously lived with the Homeless in Eugene, I was often at White Bird Clinic (341 E 12^th Eugene OR 97401; tel: 541-342-8255) but when in March, 2003 as my children searched for me, White Bird learned of my past life, I never went back.  St Vincent De Paul’s Eugene Service Station (450 Hwy 99 N tel: 541-461-8686) was of help as was the Springfield Community Center (125 G St. Springfield OR tel 541-747-0221) and Catholic Community Services (1095 W 7^th Eugene OR tel: 541-345-3642 I also “touched base” with SGI, several other Buddhist temples outside of Eugene, studied Sant Mat (Thakar Singh in person) as I had his representatives in Nebraska, and “Maharaji” (Prem Pal Rawat) at local videotaped presentations.

Just as I spent time with different religions, so too in Eugene I have built friendships and then moved on to build another after another. Letting go is of importance on the Spiritual Path, for there are many things that cannot be done simultaneously. Typically, a situation will develop which requires me to abruptly sever all contact with whomever, then continue to the next assignment. There has been no effort whatever to build up a “following” of any sort, for followers can get in the way of understanding and following the synchronisms which guide one on a Spiritual Path. If one always has a rowdy mob in the front yard, it isn’t possible to see or to hear the soft hints that Nature offers. I have, therefore, moved from one person to another just as I had previously moved from one religion to another, and now live in a cloister. Celibacy has been important because it is not possible to be intimately involved with more than one person at a time, and the Person in my life has needed all of my attention. Also I have also gotten a badly needed rest and it seems apparent that because I’m “going public,” I’ll be used in an entirely new way. 

Eugene OR Aug 2007 to Jun 2009: Stayed once again in Jim Guthrie’s back bedroom.

Eugene Oregon Jun 2009 to Aug 2011: stayed  the wooden building at 286 NBrooklyn.

Eugene Oregon Aug 20 2010 to Sept. 2011: Stayed in a tiny travel trailer on property rented by Steve Kingsley 259 1/2 N Brooklyn

Eugene Oregon Sacred Heart Hospital: In March, 2011, there was a Project Homeless Connect held for the homeless and i was invited by Steve Kingsley to go with him. It soon became clear that i was having difficulty breathiing and Steve got a wheelchair for me. We went to the medical section where one of the doctors sent me to Sacred Heart Hospital Emergency Room where i was subsequently admitted.. i was there until March 24th. 2011 when i was discharged. although my discharge papers state i had pneumonia, i had not been treated for it. Instead, hospital workups showed i had two terminal conditions: Congestive heart failure and metastacized prostate cancer. When i refused to take the Social Security Number (SSN), i was denied the recommended open heart surgery treatment an discharged. The Physicians Assistant assigned to my case said that it was a “death sentence,” but that i had “tied their hands.” (literal quotes). i had already composed a meditation on Psalm 91, knew it by heart and put it in a letter to a friend including the part that says: i fear nothing; not wild wolves in the night nor slings and arrows of day; not disease that prowls in darkness nor sudden Death that erupts at noon....etc.”  Fear is a manifestation of the Red Dragon and i will not allow It within me. This meditation helped me to keep my center and deal with my emotions. i completely dismissed the idea i  had been abandoned by the Spirit. It was simply required for me to deal with this nasty surprise and muddle through as best as i  could. To accept the SSN was to “fall through”and lose my Spiritual support. It was a test of my resolve. If i could not pass the test, i was certain to fail at more difficult future situations. 

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 My refusal to use a SSN also made me ineligible for other treatment programs at Volunteers Un Medicine Clinic or other places except White Bird Clinic. i had previously been seen by Dr. Brady Walker, a urologist who had advise me to have my testicles removed. This medical advice had conflicted with Spiritual synchronisms however, and i followed what i considered to be Spiritual rather than Medical advice. This kind and generous man has agreed to treat me for free and on our last meeting in October reminded me that even though he was pleased with my progress, i would certainly lose out in the end. The same day i received Spiritual advice reassuring me that not only would i survive, but that my vigor would be restored. It now seems clear that all of my interactions with this man have been one long syncronism in which Ideas contend for our subscription or belief. Clearly, one of us is deluded; his medical training has led him to an incorrect view of Nature or i am as crazy as all of my fellow mental health professionals seem to believe. Sure of the Spirit and confident of my own assessment of the situation, i expect to be vindicated. In any event, this will be decisive. Decisive, but not conclusive, for it is certain that the Red Dragon will provide a gadzillion “reasons” my data is invalid.

The hospital also referred me to eye specialists where i was diagnosed with macular degeneration and referred on to Dr. John Karth. When i flatly told him that i had no money, he ignored me and commenced treatment immediately in an effort to save as much of my vision as possible. Later, i learned his practice had a medical assistance program and after i filled out the proper forms, was awarded a 100% grant. i had also suffered from gout for a number of years and Synchronisms sent me to a holistic practitioner named Rita Anne Hartman at Holistic Consulting ( holiticconsultingonline.com ) who provided me with free electrical foot-baths that resulted in a 100% cure. These events were typical on my Path; whenever i needed medical or other treatments, synchronisms sent me to the appropriate people: Chiropractors, Naturopaths, Medical or other doctors. The non-existent “Dental Plan” was another matter. i have also been cured of heart flutter, degenerated neck vertebrae and various other conditions. i often had to abruptly leave kind and generous people without thanks; i hope these papers make up for it. When one acts on Faith rather than reason, one never knows “why” one is doing as they do and simply performs the action.. So it is that i find myself in a situation which seems completely  untenable when any reasonable person would give up all hope. But as i act on Faith, i have left poor, sad, lonely and deceitful “Reason” behind. Any fool will tell you  that it is impossible to rely on prayer as i have done, and i have heard the Red Dragon’s litany of logical  impossibility for thirty years, yet somehow, some way it works for me, and i am still here. To me, the prostate cancer is only more of the same and i expect my  life to be  extended to allow me to finish the job i signed on to do. This is a scientific prediction based on the method,  theory and data presented in these papers. 

Finally,at different times i offered my free services to several clinics including White Bird , Volunteers in Medicine, Riverstone and others, but none of the physicians were able to hear me and i was dismissed as ”off my nut.” It is now clear that only Divine Intervention will be able to awaken these sleeping children; they are well beyond any human help and certainly beyond mine. If i die as the doctors expect, they may be relieved at the passing of yet another madman who actually believes the Creator is capable of speaking to us. If i do not, the world will need to adjust itself to a New Age in which Prayer, Miracles and Magic once again dominate our concerns. The Creator can and will perform Miracles for us when and if it feels like it, but what It wants appears to be for us to  see the Miracle in the Ordinary and voluntarily join with It in providing services to each other based on the Love It wishes to give to each of us. We have had a money economy and it will not be easy to switch over to freely given nothing asked, but neither will it be impossible. It is truly said that Character determines Destiny. Let each mind be illuminated to make the choices that will last forever!

To my surprise, after 29 years of never asking for anything, Sys suggested i beg for medicine and as i held a sign asking for medicine, i was given a note directing me to the Eugene Zendo. i presented the resident priest with an unedited copy of this document and found that Ejo not only could hear me clearly, but also ad a student who was willing to help me set up a web page to publish the complete set of papers on the Net. He also contacted my initial teacher at Missouri Zen Center Rosan Osamu Yoshida who i had not seen for thirty years. It is interesting that i am still advised not to engage in commercial activity or to sell anything. It is also interesting that holding a sign asking for help is “panhandling” while holding one advertising used cars is “working.” Presently, there is no physical building for Blue Dragon Temple. It is Ideas that raise Temples,Gothic Cathedrals, Central Banks, Courts  or Concentration Camps. the Blue Dragon will raise the Temple where i will only be the first student. My dreams pictorially indicate BDT will be part Monastery, part Hospital, part University, and part Sewage Treatment Plant.

NOTES

Over the years, I experimented with a wide variety of variables in an effort to determine which ones affected results and which were irrelevant. For one example, a great variety of foods

 are prescribed or proscribed in different religions, but as I tried them one at a time, I failed to find any difference in them. At no time did I try drugs or even marijuana, although it was clear that other people had spiritual experiences while using them. I often found it advantageous to drink beer with a great variety of people. Over this period, having lived in tramp camps, abandoned buildings, under bridges and so on with all the gypsies, tramps and thieves, it has been difficult and I had to get used to abject poverty, but I have always been provided for without ever asking for anything beyond what was freely available to the general public. I have been protected as well. One dark night when a tramp was going to beat my brains out with wine-bottles, I removed my hat, held my hands behind my back, bowed my head low to give him the best possible shot at it and silently prayed: “Father, I am in your hands.” To my astonishment, instead of the blow that I expected, I heard a shriek and when I looked up, saw him storming away through the dark in a terrible rage. This is perhaps the most dramatic of a number of such incidents.   

Licenses, scientific and professional memberships have all been allowed to expire.

Science: Briefly, recent developments in Physics have shown that consciousness and matter interact. Traditionally, Science has considered the Universe as an object of study separate from the experimenter. (Hence the word “objective”) The rediscovery that the observer is inseparable from the Universe calls for a new paradigm: If we ask for it, the Universe will teach us through experiential incidents and events; by giving us ideas for experiments; and at times by direct infusion of understanding experienced as flashes of clinical or philosophical insight. It will enlighten us in many other ways as well.  Based on subjective experience, this methodology nevertheless leads to verifiable empirical results. This paper documents a few Lessons given to one experimenter-clinician who sought to alleviate human suffering and set Wisdom above personal gain.

Buddhism: For me the Buddha Dharma is first and foremost a psychological method; a lifestyle  that works to facilitate Spiritual Awakening independently of dogma or religious affiliation and allows access to  Wisdom that transcends the small self. If one experiments, they can get empirical, individually verifiable determination of Spiritual Reality for themselves. Like most other religions, Buddhism has become cluttered with non-essential elements, but at it’s core it is systematic meditative practice; a vehicle that people of any religion can use to further their own spiritual growth. I have wanted to be ordained, but on reflection understand why it is important that I have not been. First, it shows favoritism; second, it would require submission to an authority other than Heaven Itself, and third because it would continue a false distinction between Science and Religion. When I took the Ph.D., it was as a person dedicated to the benefit of others; what more needs to be said? Let me emphasize that because I know all the religions are essentially true (or at least work), I am willing to switch from one to another at any time simply to benefit the people I am talking to. Faith works, Prayer works, Meditation works, Chanting works, Ritual works; it all works and the main delusion we face is that one tradition is superior to others for non-essential reasons; the active elements are the same in all of them. As a sub-variety of prayer, Magic works too, but I want nothing whatever to do with it. Hence, asking to be shown how to use understanding to benefit others, one must make a continuous and voluntary effort to follow where they are led. At times one might ask for favors where Magic would demand them. Another pitfall is that Education and Wisdom are two different things: Doctors of all kinds: philosophers, psychologists, physicians and ministers of one faith or another may build an unrealistic pride in their “knowledge” which leads them to believe they have the right to tell others how to live their lives. Further, in studying subtle variations in theories of the Trinity, for example, I kept asking myself how any of the alternative theories would help me to serve homeless people or retarded children. If the theories had no practical application, I simply set them aside as irrelevant for my purpose of doing things to benefit others. (If one lives the principles in the book of James and keeps their mouth shut, there is no way to tell one religion from another.)  Further, just as most of us don’t know how an automobile transmission works, retarded children don’t need to know all the details about how Spiritual matters work; if they know how to love and be loved, that’s enough. I once asked Heaven directly: “What is the true, right, good, just and desirable way to live?” The answer that I got was: “YOUR WAY.” So it seems that free will gives each of us the right to follow whatever protocol we please whether we have all the details correct or not. I am simply here to facilitate people and never to interfere with their free will, tell them what to do or how to think, all of which makes enemies for Heaven and judges rather than accepts people. Knowing all religions work and are essentially acceptable if they foster Love, I have no wish or need to persuade anyone of anything; the main reason I’m a Buddhist, is because that seems to be what is wanted.

Supra-rational thought includes other modes of thinking such as following inner directives, instinctive, intuitive thought and also “thinking in pictures” as animals seem to do. Even whimsey is admissible at times. Above all, conscience and moral values determine what behaviors are selected. One must be alert for and dedicated to the Truth. 

 Unsatisfied with my understanding of Islam or Judaism, i took  classes in them at the U of Oregon. Poems of the Islamic Sufi Rumi are similar to Zen stories and it is clear he had equal understanding. The Old Testament Prophets were not difficult to understand because in many cases their experiences were similar to my own. The difference is that they spoke for God; i am only writing a psychological report that includes method, theory and results. Others can replicate my findings as they please.  Quite sure that I’ll  find it necessary to serve both Jews and Moslems so it is only natural that they have some evidence that I’ve studied their tradition at least enough to show proper respect for it. As a Senior Citizen, I get free tuition, but it will still be necessary for me to be given books. Poverty is useful in this regard, for if I’m not provided with books, it is an indication I am not to take the courses. In general; if things don’t effortlessly fall together, I am not going in the right direction. i have audited some ten (?) courses at UO. Perhaps the most influential of these were taught by Dan Falk or especially The Dark Self taught by Mark Unno which prompted me to write Dragons. The incremental way in which these Ideas took place within me cannot be overemphasized; a great many people have contributed to this volume. EvenTim the hot-dog vendor who gave me an occasional left-over. We are all in this together! Mark noticed the intense attention i paid in class as i sought to determine which  events had Spiritual meaning i needed to digest. At ties it was much like working a jig-saw puzzle, yet anyone who has gotten a Ph.D. degree will recognize the difficulty organizing such a thirty-year mass of observations. It was reassuring to know i could and would be corrected in important matters.  Nevertheless, readers should recognize that these papers are only the best a very human person can do an are most certainly not infallible in any sense.

  

Faith: When I need to know something, it is common for me to be given books; one such book contained a statement so meaningful to me, that I copied it and carry it in my wallet: “Faith is different from belief, belief in God or orthodox opinions. Faith is trust in something logically inexplicable: willingness to follow God’s command with an outcome unknowable until it is obtained.” A second quote I carry is about a Taoist sage or wise man: “When he acts in advance, Heaven does not contradict him; when he follows, he adapts himself to Heaven’s time.” Even though I am once again separated from my children, I fully expect to be reunited with them, but it will be in Heaven’s time, and I’ll wait until it happens. It is risky to be proactive; I’m only an ordinary man with limited skill and mistakes cannot only be disastrous, but even fatal. Coaching is necessary to safely learn these skills and even then there is no guarantee.

Dangers: I have studied Jonestown, Heaven’s Gate, Waco and other disasters, feel I have a full understanding of how and even why these things occur. My first impulse was to “blow the whistle” on situations like these, but it has developed that Heaven has other plans which as it is said: works It’s wonders in strange ways. After contemplation, it seems that if I were to dwell on such disasters, I would become an expert on what is wrong with the Spiritual Path rather than focussing on what is right with it. I do, after all want to build things up rather than tear things down, and so it is better to ignore such disasters and concentrate on doing good. . It seems Heaven wants each of us to work through our own personality quirks without being told what to do or how to do it, and especially not to learn how to mouth all the right words without living up to any of them. Moreover, I understand enough to write out a complete and thorough mind-control system and NO WAY am I going to put that down on paper; there are already more than enough other people who not only understand it, but use it as well. I renounce any efforts to do so.

 Other dangers concern the proliferation of meditation programs: Every Tom, Dick and Harry has a flyer on telephone poles, bulletin boards, in newspapers and so on. Meditation is even taught in Gymnasium classes. While it is true that meditation can help someone think very clearly,and perform well,  it is also true that it holds a myriad of subtle traps for the unwary. One such mistake is to over-evaluate one’s own understanding and prematurely assume a teaching role. We’ll be seeing some very confused people in the clinics as a result of this trend. The Universe Itself is the Teacher; the best we people can do is become adequate assistants. This author would easily have made the same mistakes if he had not always been pressed to do better. In this way it was learned that difficulty is a Blessing, submission a necessity to find one’s proper place in Nature.

A final danger concerns a recent article in the British Medical Journal

 which indicates that there is a plan to screen the entire US population for “mental illness” and establish mandatory drug use. Psychiatry and psychology have largely been controlled by what government was willing to pay for and drugs have been stressed as the cheapest solution to complex problems; emptying the hospitals (and filling the prisons.) As the results of my experience over the past 30 years indicates, poorly understood and confused Spiritual Experiences are often misdiagnosed as “mental illness,” and people are simply drugged until they no longer have them. There are of course, still  organic conditions and other disorders, but to mistakenly consider drugs the treatment of choice  for confusion common in advanced meditation practice or spontaneous Awakening would be a colossal disaster on a national scale. From the beginning it was clear that the whole situation was far too complex for any human mind to handle, consequently I have focussed all my efforts on tapping into the Wisdom immanent in Nature which is equally available to all of us.

Most recently, i am attending the First Christian Church, Lane Independent Living Alliance Peer Support Club and eating at the lane County Food Bank Dining room where Charles takes good care of me as Gwen did at Olive Plaza. i can’t name y’all doing scullery, but love you too! Once again in Jim Guthrie’s back bedroom, i pretty much keep to myself. Ejo continues to assist me in putting these papers on the Net. These papers are copyrighted to ensure they are not changed and are provided freely given, nothing asked as a public service. We are all in this together.

REFERENCES

Updating will be necessary

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On the Path in the Street

Harmony

Blue Dragon Temple

Eugene Oregon

For You

Introduction

The primary purpose of this paper is to provide students of Consciousness with a practical, “how to” manual to facilitate their own progress to full awareness. It is written in a format similar to an experiment in Psychology which used methods the reader may try to whatever degree they please. References have been kept to a minimum for the ordinary reader; professionals won’t need them anyway. Anyone can look up sources easily via the Internet. A separate paper details the author’s Credentials, gives a summary of his itinerary on the Path and provides names of many people with whom the Experimenter (E) served and studied. While the Path is primarily an internal journey of increasing awareness of the role of consciousness in Nature, it is simultaneously based on external experiences of a private nature. The private experiences discussed here are of the type of so-called "coincidences" reported by millions as they pursue Spiritual goals in different religious traditions. Although they will experience it differently, the Path is replicable by other individuals and in this sense is empirical. Readers are invited to test these principles for themselves. The only prerequisite is to be a human being.

Definitions, a review of psychological principles and other considerations pertinent to interpreting the data are presented prior to the results of the experiment itself. The readers may find these rather tedious, but also to help them understand frightening experiences associated with meditation and other tools of mysticism. Drugs of any kind are not recommended. There is enough confusion without any complications.

Mysticism

In his 1907 lectures on The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James (2007) said: "The words 'mysticism' and 'mystical' are often used as terms of reproach, to throw at any opinion which we regard as vague and vast and sentimental, and without a base in either fact or logic." (p.294) He suggests a more useful definition as including two primary features: First, that it is not possible to speak of mystical experiences, and secondly that they also seem to be: "...states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect." (p. 295). There is even a Zen riddle which asks: “Why does the enlightened man not stand on his feet and explain himself?”  (The Gateless Gate, #20) The present paper also considers mysticism as having these features and further compares it to a private experience analogous to that of Love. 

Most everyone agrees that Love exists even though it is not palpable in the same sense that matter is. Further, Love is known only by inference from observed behavior and by the verbal reports of those who experience it in a private way. However, there is some objective evidence of Love: Babies are so dependent on altruistic love, that without it, Humanity would not exist. Neither is it possible to objectively demonstrate that there is such a thing as a sexual orgasm even though most adults not only believe that it exists, but have had such an experience themselves. Children or a few unfortunates are left to wonder if such things actually exist or not. These are private experiences known objectively only by the verbal report of those who have experienced them. These then, are basically “mystical” experiences which are fairly easily understood. It is unnecessary to talk about them because they are inexpressible. If one hasn’t experienced it, it does no good whatsoever to try to explain it to them.

If one accepts this rather mundane “demystified” understanding of private mystical experience, it is not much of a jump to consider the verbal reports of those who have had private experiences which involve expansion of Conscious awareness above and beyond that attainable by rational thought. This paper offers a verbal report of such supra-rational experiences presented in the language of Psychology. This paper will then, break with the tradition of the ineffability of mystical experience, not only describing them, but giving reasons why it is dangerous to speak of such private experiences, offering a theory as to how such events arise and interpreting them by psychological and scientific principles.

Mysticism, psychosis and differential diagnosis

In accord with James’ previously quoted view that Mystical experiences are "...states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect," it seems that mystical perceptions are often irrational in the usual social sense. Because psychotic states are also characterized by irrational thought, it may be easy to mistake one state for the other; to misidentify Mystical Perceptions as Psychotic and incorrectly diagnose a person having a Religious Experience as psychotic and in need of treatment which will stunt their growth and impair the process so that they are caught in an incomplete state of consciousness, neither fish nor fowl. As the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) shows, Psychiatry has long focused on categorization of states of consciousness which are considered to be relatively stable conditions if left untreated. The present author suggests that all states of consciousness are transitory to a significant degree and that it is more useful to think of them as analogous to a standing wave in a river where what seems to be a distinct “thing,” a Wave, is actually created by a continually renewing stream of water molecules. The Wave, in a sense has no existence independent of the antecedents which attend it’s manifestation: Stream flow, the shape of the river-bed, rocks tumbling in the current, turbidity, and so on. Similarly, a state of consciousness may be perpetually renewed and changeable provided one does not stop the process, and it is here that the danger of misdiagnosis reaches a peak: To tell someone they are “crazy” and put them on medications to stop a Spiritual  process is to interfere with their growth. 

Another analogy might be to take a photo of an ambulance rushing to the scene of an accident. Everything in the photo is clearly seen except the motion which is, after all the most important feature of the event. The danger for mental health professionals is to stop the process of a Mystical  Experience which is entirely a natural phenomenon, “freeze” the person in a state socially defined as debilitated and prevent them ever going beyond it. Behavior acceptable and even admired in certain churches is viewed very differently in hospital day-rooms. People who have not had mystical experiences have no ability to assess them, and none of us have any right or authority to judge each other. The assumption that mystical ecstasy is only a “hysterical state” is not only unwarranted but an arrogance that arises from the belief that one’s training has provided them with a superior view of Nature. If a person has not “been there and done that,” they have no experience on which to base their opinions. Without experiment, such views have no more weight than any other dogma. Even if undisturbed, there is also a chance that people will get “stuck” at various junctures in their mystical experiences as well, and it will not be easy to assist them there either. There is often a stage in which people see themselves as some prominent religious figure and it may take time for this to “wear off.” A more realistic view might be that one is manifesting the same spirit as other prominent religious people of the past. The E didn’t have this problem, but often found the Sys to be so funny that he laughed to the extent that others thought it inappropriate. To assert control over people is to deprive them of their free will and is simply interference no matter how helpful one wishes to be. People have the right to be wrong.

As a Mental Health professional who did his dissertation on Schizophrenia, and who had extensive experience in a mental hospital and psycho-diagnostics, the E became aware that the strange “coincidences” called Synchronisms (Sys) were often at the root of so-called mental disorders, especially “Schizophrenia.” There are said to be five major characteristics of cognitive disturbance in so-called Psychosis: 1.) Ideas of reference. 2.) Delusions, 3.) Paranoia. 4.) Magical thinking, and 5) visual or auditory hallucinations. Minor features are often identified as making over-inclusive concepts, failure to accurately perceive common social themes and poverty of social interactions. The four major features are considered here in both Psychotic and Mystical frames of reference with the aim of facilitating differential diagnosis. 

Sys are defined as two or more simultaneous events meaningfully but not causally related. The idea that meaning can be derived from what is assumed to be “coincidence” has been rare in modern times because contemporary society assumed that the Universe is an Ignorant Machine. Newton’s Laws of Motion led people to believe that the Universe is like a set of balls on a billiard table. If one knew the position and motion of all the balls, one could predict every future event. This belief led to the view that every event has a cause and every cause an effect. Illogically, the idea of random distribution was also introduced; consequently, a “meaningful” connection between events other than one in which one event “causes” the other is impossible. The idea that both “cause” and “effect” arise simultaneously was dismissed without inspection even though it is a central concept in the Theory of Dependent Origination in Buddhism and also a theme in some philosophical works like those of Heidegger. Are people “wavelets” on an “ocean” of a more basic Reality that remains hidden because people prefer to perceive themselves as prime movers? If events arise as a function of Will, what are the Mechanics of Consciousness and how can we learn to act in Harmony with It? 

Newton’s other works (a million words on Alchemy, a treatise on the Biblical Book of Revelation, etc.) were ignored or considered as mentally unbalanced so that while he himself perhaps sought for alternative explanations of his own observations of Nature, causal thinking became so firmly established that any other explanations were dismissed immediately as “Mental Illness.” Although the world’s major religions held that there are volitional Factors in Nature, the Idea that the Universe Itself might initiate voluntary action was considered ridiculous. It now seems necessary to review these assumptions.

A common explanation to the public of "Schizophrenia" as a "chemical imbalance" rests not on experimental data but on the assumption that there must be a “cause” for the “effect” of a state of consciousness misunderstood by the Diagnostician. The diagnostic paradigm of Medical Dogma holds that every “disease” must have a “cause” and that interrupting the relationship between the “cause” and the “effect” will cure the “disease.” While this view has been very helpful when applied to a large number of medical conditions, it may be inappropriate to apply it to Consciousness. Consider, for example, the well-known Placebo effect in which a “disease” is “cured” by an inactive agent the patient believes will relieve him of symptoms. “Magical Thinking” apparently has some advantages, but aside from this, one must accept the possibility that if the Placebo effect “cured” the “disease,” perhaps it may also have “caused” it to begin with. 

A second assumption that led to the unfounded assertion that a “chemical imbalance” “causes” “Schizophrenia” is that it is more rational to explain a mental state in terms of a physical state than it is to explain the physical state in terms of a mental state. If both events occur simultaneously, what makes us believe that one by necessity “causes” the other? Or are we to believe that salivation causes thoughts of food? Do sweaty palms cause anxiety? Most likely, both chemical and mental states are manifestations of an organism with an inseparable body-mind.

It must be remembered that “Schizophrenia” is only a concept, a name that may or may not correspond to some real state of consciousness. As presently used, “Schizophrenia” may be a “junk” diagnosis that includes a variety of mental states, some of which are not only healthy, but representative of Spiritual Advancement. Is the present concept of Schizophrenia useful, or can it be improved by more detailed understanding of the variables involved? The role of Consciousness in Nature is subtle, immensely powerful and far-reaching; we have yet to explore even its simplest manifestations. It is amusing to think that it may be “delusional” to believe that a “chemical imbalance” “causes” “Schizophrenia,” but the definition of a delusion as a ”fixed, dominating or persistent false mental conception resistant to reason” easily fits many scientific misconceptions of the past. If he had not abjured, Galileo may well have been martyred for a belief in the heliocentric theory of the solar system. If the reader chooses to experiment by taking up a Spiritual Path, they will also discover that the belief the Universe is an Ignorant Machine is a World-wide delusion. We have been lied to in the worst possible way.

With these considerations in mind, one type of Mystical Experience to be analyzed here is Synchronicity which will be presented in the next section. For now, just let it be said that these “coincidences” are so ordinary that almost everyone has had them even though they are most common in religious groups asking to know the Will of the Creator. Seeking to act in Harmony with Nature is virtually the same endeavor expressed in different language. Millions upon millions of people have these experiences and many organize their lives around them, basing their actions on Faith rather than Reason. That is to say, such people seek to understand how they may fit into the Whole rather than serve their own individual selves. They perceive an Order and Wisdom in Nature that they may voluntarily use to determine and fulfill the role Nature has for them. This paper seeks to facilitate that process, but first it is necessary to clearly state the difference between Mystical experience and Psychosis. Those who don’t concern themselves with “unrealistic fantasies” either don’t experience Sys or perceive them as useless “coincidences.”

When, in the course of his study of religions the E began experiencing Sys, he initially thought they were Ideas of Reference, and wondered if he had somehow slipped into a psychotic state, but so many other people around him were having similar experiences that simply couldn’t be the case. What then was the nature of these strange coincidences, what caused them and where would they lead? It was also clear that people in religious programs understood them as answers to their prayers for guidance and not as “symptoms” of any kind. Outside of religious programs, people who experienced Sys were often puzzled by them. Many thought there was a group of people who were “in on the know,” somehow and were guiding or controlling them by messengers. This then, seemed to be the root of Paranoia or other Delusions. That is to say, the notion that “They” were controlling one somehow was a rational effort to explain the Sys. There are many people with psychiatric diagnoses who puzzle as to “how can these people know?” all the things they would have to in order to take part in such a bizarre collection of events (as the Sys) that seem to compose a conspiracy. The mistake is made when people attempt a rational explanation for something that is not rational. The important difference between Mystical and Psychotic interpretations is that Paranoia is a rational attempt to explain Natural Phenomena which isn’t “crazy,” it’s just wrong. Delusions of grandeur, for example resulted from the belief that one was being groomed for an important position of some sort; delusions of persecution that one was to be punished for some transgression. Both result from an effort to find a “reason” for the Natural Phenomena of Sys. One must also consider how realistic the “Delusion” is: In a sense, all conspiracy theories are “delusional” because they pose an unknown group said to have sinister intent. There is no way to disprove such a conspiracy because it is secret and unknown, yet it is historically accurate that conspiracies have existed and do exist in modern times. At one time, Catholics were said to have guns in the basements of their churches, Masons to assert secret control, Jewish leaders to be under secret protocols, Communists to control the film Industry and so on. While these fears were mostly fanciful, it is entirely believable that there were actually people who did attempt such conspiracies. In any event, the internment of Japanese in WWII and McCarthyism demonstrated how a few kernels of truth can grow into a Delusional system that threatens a free society. The point is that a rational fear may grow into a delusional fear. Thus, it makes more sense to think of “delusions” as comprised of a continuum and not a discrete condition. When a fear begins to threaten unpopular groups, it is almost certainly at a delusional level. Present day fears of secret, unknown groups (terrorists) may be at delusional levels. 

The mystical interpretation of Sys is that there is in Nature a Principle which will organize people into an Organic Whole if they allow It to do so; that the Universe, can and does Act through the consciousness of individuals, but only those who wish It to do so. In general, It will do anything people want It to do, including act like an ignorant machine. That is to say, religions are correct in holding that there are volitional Factors in Nature: The Universe is not an Ignorant Machine, but does things just because It wants to. It wants us to be It’s children but doesn’t require us to return It’s Love. To love one another is to Love It. People may do as they please; do not always have to be rational, may dance, sing, play and make merry simply because they want to. If this view is correct, then following Sys should have beneficial results. This is not quite the hypothetical-deductive scientific method, but it is close enough. It is based on experiment, albeit one in which the E is not the controller, but the guinea pig. The belief that Nature contains a Factor that will guide and benefit those who apply to It constitutes Magical Thinking, the fourth major “symptom” said to apply to Psychosis. The E has no data on the fifth major “symptom” of hallucinations either visual or auditory. Those who have them are very guarded in speaking of them and it is not clear precisely how these experiences arise. It is, however, entirely believable that they are genuine experiences entitled to serious study in their own right; to dismiss them as unfounded aberrations is to throw out the basic data of Psychology: the verbal report. Something is happening to these people and it is a real experience. The fact that voices tell many people to hurt others suggests there may also likely be a volitional factor in Nature that prompts diabolical acts. Professionals need be very careful in this regard lest they be caught up in something dangerous they don’t understand. The E has seen bizarre events close-up and first hand that are utterly inexplicable by any known scientific laws. Organic, toxic and other psychoses certainly exist, but it is clear that many people have been misdiagnosed and suffered because of it. In any event, the E had already learned enough to make him believe that returning to his previous efforts to be of service to others was woefully inadequate in comparison, so he chose to forge ahead. Magical or not, the proposition was testable, and the E decided it was a worthwhile effort on which to spend his life. This paper presents the results of these experiments.

Synchronicity

Is considered a property of Nature that manifests itself in the events here called “Synchronisms” (Sys): two or more simultaneous events that are meaningfully but not causally related. (Pauli & Jung, 2001.) An example of a Sy related to the present paper concerns an event in 1983 in which the E received the same message from three different sources: A letter from someone telling of how much Buckminster Fuller had learned from a two-year trial of Silence; seeing a second written message which said “Shut up so you can learn,” and a third message from an unrelated source with the same content. On an intuitive hunch, the E took up a silence and in the short space of a week was amazed at how much he learned about other people as they struggled in different ways to interact with him as he neither spoke nor wrote. The Faith to attempt such a strange activity resulted in Understanding. To have waited for Understanding before attempting the Silence, would have had no results whatever. Consequently, readers are encouraged to do similar experiments, perhaps in a strange city or neighborhood. This is one way people can open themselves to the possibility of private experiences; many other suggestions are presented in this paper.

Other private experiences are the perception of a spoken word or written text as “flashing” or standing out in some way. Noticing something novel for the first time in old situations is also common or interpreting various scriptures in a new way with an “aha!” experience. The Bible, Zen koans, Islamic poetry and other spiritual texts are full of double-meanings, puns and clues, cues and hints of all kinds.

Having learned so much from one Sy, the E eagerly followed others and in every case something was learned. This was the beginning of a strange and often bizarre Odyssey that has, after more than  25 years, resulted in the present paper.

Important Sys often involved being given books or took the E to classes, sermons, films or other events that offered explanations to problems or circumstances. The most common mistake people make when listening is to paraphrase…”In other words, you’re saying…” and in doing this they add their own idea of what the speaker means rather than seeking to grasp the sense of his intent. In this way, they set up an internal argument between themselves and their idea of what the other person is saying. They are, so to speak, arguing with themselves in the mirror, and this process has little or nothing to do with the speaker proper. A second mistake people make is to ready a rebuttal or alternative opinion instead of carefully weighing what the speaker says. This possibly results from the competitive training one learns in formal schooling, but whatever the cause, the net result is the person doesn’t truly listen to the speaker in any cooperative sense so that the first word they use when it is their turn to speak is “but” rather than a more cooperative word like “and.” A third and the worst mistake is to dismiss another person’s presentation as a worthless spiel by a group known to be incorrect for one reason or another. For example, who in the USA is willing to listen to any Communist or even Socialist speaker? In this way, the baby is thrown out with the bathwater, and the “Listener” fails to hear good ideas lurking in the text. A fourth mistake is for the Listener to assume he already knows what the speaker wants to tell him and consequently disregards his presentation. Finally, the Listener may consider the speaker as “another one of those” and lump him in with others the Listener has pre-judged. In order to avoid these mistakes in listening in Sys, it is necessary to be willing to attend any sect or religious denomination, pay intense attention to every word that is said, and to seek the gist of what is intended without parsing, editing or paraphrasing. Sometimes in Sys like these, only one sentence in an hour-long sermon was relevant to the E. Often it might take days of meditation before the full meaning might become apparent. At times, Sys were redundant until the E came to an understanding of the significance of the event. Occasionally, it took years before full understanding was achieved. 

Sys were often metaphors or used language in other than a literal sense (trope). At times, it was necessary to interpret meaning as in dream-language. For example, at times people would relate their dreams to the E who found them meaningful in just the same way Jung had noticed a Scarab beetle crawling on his windowsill as a patient spoke of her dream. (Roth, 2002). That is to say, the dream contained an allegorical “message” not only for the dreamer but also for the E. A film with an allegorical theme was An Officer and a Gentleman where the protagonist found it necessary to first purify his own inner self before graduating to get Flying Lessons.  

These and many other Sys provided clues, cues and hints as to behavior the E might voluntarily attempt in order to progress to the next level. Once the E was able to clearly state the Lesson he had received, an event might relieve him of that activity; usually another "assignment" followed within a week. At times, it was necessary to write out a paper which demonstrated understanding of what was required. These might be as long as forty pages or more. 

Diagnostic Summary

 1.) the ”Ideas of Reference” said to be symptoms of psychosis are found to be common experiences for people on a Spiritual Path; 2.) Fixed and persistent false beliefs said to constitute delusions were not only historically true of previous scientific theories, but may presently be true of concepts of “mental illness;” 3.) Paranoia can be considered as an effort to apply reason to events that are not rational, and 4.) ”Magical thinking” said to be a symptom of “mental illness” can be evaluated by the reader himself by following the experimental instructions found in this paper  under preyer. One parsimonious explanation of these observations is that the Universe is not an Ignorant Machine but responds differently to each person as an individual. The person who asks for God’s direction is using his consciousness effectively while the person who decides for himself how best to proceed has already subscribed to the proposition that he doesn’t need God. Because there are only two Sources of consciousness, he has unwittingly chosen a “false god” or idol and aligned himself with Evil. As Evil is basically destructive, he gets unpleasant results and presents himself as “sick.”  Until now, professionals have accepted this view. With greater understanding, it may be possible to develop more effective methods to alleviate the distress of those previously considered “Mental Patients.” These people have been misled and the question is no longer what is” wrong” with them, but how professionals can best help them to overcome the natural result of poor choices together with other pathogenic antecedents. Moreover, it is unrealistic to expect desirable results in a society that has so completely separated itself from and arrogantly asserted dominance over Nature. Nature does not belong to us, we belong to It, and as long as we try to pretend otherwise, we will will not only feel incomplete, but BE incomplete.

Preparatory Service

Initial experiences began in 1975 when, as a Mental Health professional, the E sought to understand the views of his clients and took up an objective study of religions in general. At the time, however, the ease with which he found books and visited various sects seemed to be pure coincidence and it was only in retrospect that he realized he had been assisted in his efforts. For example, to find an eight-volume set of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy in the free box, and to be initiated into private religious organizations. After closing his practice in 1982, it slowly became clear that food and shelter would also be provided. At this point the E realized the Truth in the saying “knock and it will be opened, ask and it will be given.” None of this was easy, however and the E was repeatedly challenged in many ways. The E came to understand this period as equivalent to the Novice status in many religious orders where a person is tested as to their sincerity and ability to meet the challenges of the Religious Life. Sys indicated that a new Order of the Blue Dragon (OBD) would be established in which the E was to serve provided he could pass the course.

Beginning full Service

In 1986, the E was asked in Sys to complete a pamphlet of sorts that outlined basic instructions for beginners in Zen meditation. At that time he thought he would be traveling about in a small travel-trailer introducing meditation practices to interested people in churches or similar places. After presenting basic information and directions, this paper listed an updated version of the Four Great vows common to Buddhism. After completing that pamphlet, meditating on and practicing these vows became central to E’s progress on the Path, so they are reproduced here. 

1. However many earthly attachments there are to people, to places, to things; to Ideas; to rewards or to punishment, to criticism or approval; to humiliation or to prestige, I vow to let them all go.

2. Even if sentient beings are countless, I vow to Love and to serve each and every one.

3. If there are ten-thousand mountain passes on my Dharma Path, I vow to climb them all.

4. The Way of the Dharma is without equal; I vow to manifest it.

In 2000, after eighteen years on the Path, Sys indicated it was necessary to add a fifth vow to stop the endless advantage people took of the E. This was: I vow to refuse service to anyone who fails to treat me with respect. If others failed to initiate or return courtesy, they were reluctantly stonewalled. There were other times when it was necessary to do so as when E was mistreated, etc. (See also shunning).

As E progressed on the Path, the depth of his understanding grew. Although the 1986 pamphlet was completed and given to the parties indicated, it was never published and it became clear that E was not to introduce Zen meditation to churches after all. This Idea was only the first thing he had to let go of, as later would be the travel trailer he had at the time.  These Sys were typically baffling, often contradicted each other, or abruptly initiated an entirely new direction. The E was reminded of military close-order drill where the soldiers learn to follow orders instantly without thought or reflection. The reader will note, for instance, that the first two vows are contradictory. One cannot simultaneously serve and let go of a person. It was also necessary to tell no-one who he was, what he was doing or why. This was done as a matter of Faith; some reasons for doing so will become clear in the results section. Remaining silent and anonymous allowed the E to study social interactions without interfering in them or drawing attention to himself. It further became clear that E was required to leave his children and become a “deadbeat dad” in order to serve not as a Zen teacher, but anonymously as a cook in a Catholic Church. (See Credentials.) It will be noted that this "surprise" required the E to actuate all four of the vows simultaneously. Other Sys also made it clear that there was a deliberate effort to test the E, to see if he would “wash out” under stressful circumstances. These experiences will be revealed in another paper; for now just let it be said that those who wish to serve in the OBD will have all they can handle. The task of the OBD will become clear by the end of the papers.

Usually, the next “assignment” came within a week, but at times, there were short vacations. Some assignments were short, while others lasted for years.

The Problem

Initially, the E attempted to tell others of the “coincidences,” but met not only with disbelief, but an extraordinary amount of anger. As Shakespeare wrote, “Methinks thou protesteth too much.” As this anger seemed to display a vicious spirit, it also became clear that to continue efforts to gain the ear of others was not only fruitless, but dangerous as well. What was the source of this inappropriately aggressive response and why was it so difficult to get people to listen to what should be interesting stories of remarkable coincidences? This anger which often became vicious is one reason people refuse to speak of their private experiences; others are noted below.

The main Problem is that Sys are genuine Natural Phenomena that many experience almost daily, yet cannot speak of for many reasons. These sub-problems center around Denial on the part of the general public which impairs their ability to see or hear any content contrary to the Dogma of  rational thought espoused by the Establishment. As a manifestation of Pride, most people believe that they know most everything worth knowing and that no-one could possibly know anything they aren’t aware of; some pretend to accept whatever you say as “old news” while they privately entertain other opinions like what a “nut” you are. There are also many who believe that if you really knew anything, you’d be rich or at least famous, and in order to “get you on the right track,” are more than willing to tell you of their superior Pastor, Teacher or Guru. From a psychological point of view, the most common reaction is to preserve their own sense of superiority. Readers can test this for themselves by asking questions to which they know the answers. People make up absurdities just to have ready answers and few will admit they don’t know. Hitler took advantage of this by making outlandish claims presented as obvious. Careful observation may reveal that everyone is so sure they know the true, right, good, just and desirable way to live that everyone talks but almost no one listens. When E told one of his early teachers that he intended to expose the entire situation he was asked, “Who’s going to hear you?” Well, we’re going to find out, as this paper will show.

Mental Health professionals are a key element in maintaining the status quo; so too are the Governmental Systems which license and control them. Any effort to speak of Sys immediately raises the question of mental illness, rejection by friends and various sanctions. A common joke on the street popularized by Lili Tomlin asks: "Why is it that when you talk to God, you're praying, but when God talks to you, you're schizophrenic?" No matter that these experiences are coincidences, rather than visions or other more esoteric experiences of the mediaeval saints, people refuse to hear anything whatever about them. It is taken for granted that even if there were a God, He would be incapable of communicating with any of us, and the E began his objective study of religion leaning in this direction.

The Public in general doesn’t want to hear anything different than they get at the present time, and even ordinary, common people get very aggressive, even assaultive in their efforts to silence other opinions. Especially, no one wants to hear about God or anything remotely related to Him except in a carefully controlled context commonly dominated by authority figures and dissent. These sub-problems that disrupt efforts to make progress toward greater awareness of the role of Consciousness in Nature are treated more fully as follows:

Family constraints 

Most families have unconscious “agreements” to continue behaviors counter to what might be considered virtuous. These behaviors might be constant criticism, bickering, putting each other down, baiting by nearly professional “victims” together with violence, excessive domination, etc. People come together for various reasons and often it is to form relationships that perpetuate behaviors damaging to the participants. Consider the woman who trolls bars for husbands, then after five failed marriages complains that all men are "drunken bastards." To a great degree friends and family want their members to stay the same; to maintain their assigned "role" in the family's departure from virtuous behaviors. Any effort to become virtuous will often prompt efforts to restore one to his “old self” again. (“Well, I ain’t no saint, but just look at old Johnny here.”)  

Mental Health professionals must beware of “Doctor Shoppers” who unconsciously seek out a professional who will provide them with both the diagnosis and treatment they want to get. These are commonly people who are addicted to behaviors they want to perpetuate yet simultaneously deny the wish to do so; the Professional’s role is to provide an excuse to continue because they are “sick” in some way and simply “cannot” do other than they do. There are also those who want to blame others and want treatment for various other family members. Some want a "judge" for "marital problems" they wouldn't have if they put someone else's needs and wishes before their own. Depression is a common ailment for teenagers, we are told. “What is the matter with them?” we are asked. Well, they aren’t happy, that’s what’s “wrong,” and they should be, we are told. But the very fact the parent brings the child to be “fixed” shows a critical attitude that may very well be the problem. For a professional to enter into such “therapeutic” relationships may perpetuate the very behavior they are supposed to correct. The “symptoms” generated by an excessively critical attitude may often appear as a behavioral aberration not in the source, but in another person. In the so-called “bipolar disorders”, the E has never seen a case that did not include excessively high expectations for one’s own performance. When the person meets these expectations, they feel they can do anything, and become flushed with success to the point of mania, but because their expectations are so high, they cannot possibly meet them for long and an emotional crash ensues. Where did these unrealistic expectations originate and what keeps them in place? Are family members active in maintaining them? Altogether, it may be unproductive to treat them as this draws further attention to them. Will drugs really be of any benefit beyond a temporary alleviation of “stress?” Alternatively, one may benefit from letting go of old ideas by filling with new ones with appropriate meditation. 

The notion that children should be something other than what they are is a delusion in it’s own right. If our children aren’t happy, it is because they aren’t having any fun. Perhaps they don’t want to play the endless game of “keep ahead of the neighbors” with all of the put-downs and discourtesies so common in today’s society. Do we need to look at ourselves instead of our children? Unlike Lake Woebegone, all of our children simply cannot be above average. On every single measure, precisely half of the population is below average. Is the role of Humanity really to direct and correct the Universe? To “fix” all of the “defective” children It gives us? Or could our role be to love all of them regardless of their endowments? If we are given greater talents, is it an opportunity to share them or a reason to claim a larger share of Nature’s bounty? Yes, there are children who need to be cultivated by people-gardeners, but let us beware lest we set ourselves up as Judges. Much is said of the canary in the coal mine. Perhaps we need to heed the children in our own homes. Is intimidating everyone into a lock-step competitive march going in the right direction? School violence indicates otherwise.

Sys and Mental health

The E noted scores of people in various Religious programs as they experienced Sys from various sources. As example, while the E was riding in a car with a woman, she pointed out a song on the radio that had meaning for her. This was correctly seen as a private, “mystical experience” rather than as a “symptom.” For the woman, the radio triggered a psychological insight she was ready to accept which was experienced as if it were a “message.” This was not an external message, only an internal understanding produced by the opportunity of an appropriate song on the radio. While this is an example of an internal Sy of opportunity, being given a book one needs to read is a good example of an external Sy. Aside from this observation, the only meaning the event had for the E was as a confirmation that others share similar experiences, learn to keep silent about them and stay out of the way of Mental Health Professionals eager to dope them up and lock them up. Because of his extensive experience, the E was nearly immune to accusations of “mental illness,” but a number of authority figures aren’t easily dismissed. Upon hearing of the “coincidences,” the reaction of other professionals was either to receive him as a quaint quack playing St. Francis, or to shake their heads sadly and knowingly, and then break off all contact with him. The general public can be absolutely vicious. When one begins to live in Harmony with Nature, one does not have to reject the World; the World will reject you. This addresses some of the social deficits associated with “schizophrenia.” Thousands wander the streets confused and homeless; shunned and mistreated. They live on the strip between the Tracks and the River; many have become as shy and elusive as deer; they are the Universe; they are us.

The Medical-Political Establishment

The Establishment and the Mental Health Professions form a single unit in which conformation to the Medical Dogma of the day is a requirement for licensing, controls behavior and funding, and requires obedient reports to Government officials, the insurance industry, hospital and other agencies of one kind or another.  Slowly, people who wanted to serve others, or perhaps the poor come under the control of managers who decide what they may or may not do when, where and with whom. Paperwork proliferates and individual enterprise is strangled. Physicians and others are trained in an authoritarian atmosphere in which acceptance of the Hierarchy is decidedly important and intelligence is used to intimidate rather than help others. The Placebo effect is commonly credited to actions of the professional when it in fact is most certainly due to the client's state of consciousness. In order to maximize the Placebo effect, physicians and others often take a “Doctor knows best” stance intended to benefit the patient, yet this approach perpetuates an incorrect perhaps even dishonest interpretation of the benefits a person receives from treatment. One example of this is the benefits many receive from twelve-step programs in which there is no therapist. Some people, however, have taken credit for, asserted control over and adopted the same methods. The less they interfere with the process, the better; the clients improve, the true reason the patient benefits is obscured and a free treatment has suddenly become very expensive. They have the right to do this and it can be convincingly argued that the public is better off for it. But is it truly honest? Similar things happen in the Religious Industry. The momentum of the Societal Network propels the entire System in a way that discourages, even prevents the development of other, alternative theories or treatment Systems. If it doesn't make money, there is no place for it; submit to control, and charge whatever you please.

In modern times, giving everything away to live in Poverty seems completely insane, yet makes perfect sense when considered from the Spiritual point-of-view, explained as follows.

Method (Dharma)

In usual Psychological Experiments, the E controls and manipulates certain variables in order to determine their effect on behavior. However, in studying Sys, the E found it necessary to vary his behavior in order to determine which of his actions affected the frequency and quality of the Sys. In other words, how to act in order to elicit Sys from the Environment, Secondly, he needed to learn how to interpret the meaning of the event, and finally, to “follow” the behaviors which led to the next Sy. In the absence of any scientific theory of Sys, the behaviors recommended by the Rules of various Religious Orders were tested to determine which did or did not have an effect on the frequency of Sys. Benedictine, Franciscan, Dominican and Jesuit traditions were studied and Protestant traditions were considered as well as the writings of the Zen master Dogen (Masunaga, 1986) whose works were invaluable in developing strategies for following the Sys. Modern writers like Alan Watts, Ram Dass, Krishnamurti and others were consulted. By 1980, E had read all the available English books on Zen which numbered about 100 at the time. Marilyn Fergusen’s book The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980) also helped the E to muster the Faith to continue. Biblical Books were also helpful, especially that of James, as was the Poetry of Khyaam, Rumi, Hafiz, Ryokan, Bashoo and others. The Tao Te Ching, (English & Feng, 1972) was clearly Inspired and the writings of Chuang-Tzu (Merton, 1969) illuminating. Nyogen Senzaki was especially helpful as a modern example of the old-time Zen masters because of the way he carefully avoided initiating works or taking credit for the things he was pushed into doing. If only the E could continue to follow in his steps! Multiple translations of the Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, Nag Hammadi and other sources were consulted, seeking different nuances that might reveal the intent of the original sources. Any source with even a hint of insight was seriously perused in order to cobble together whatever Rule of Behavior might possibly work, and then the behaviors were empirically tested on the Path and in the Street.  It should be noted that these various Scriptures are not considered “equal,” rather that they support each other in fostering cooperation rather than competition, and complement each other as well. As example, it is absurd to think of Jesus the Christ and Siddartha the Buddha competing for “followers;” the E will gladly hold the door open for either. Mohammed the Prophet revered both Jesus and Moses. The “old boys” who wrote in ancient China were of similar mind. The E refuses to compete with, critique or persuade anyone; attempts to act in harmony with the Creation as best as he understands It.

In the melee of everyday life on the Street, it wasn’t possible to make systematic observations, nor was it desirable to do so, for the end result was a learned skill at interacting with the Environment better analogous to dancing rather than calculating from some theory or Dogma. In short, it became clear that it was the Environment that was controlling the E instead of the other way around. In this sense, it was found that the Universe will teach us if we ask for It to do so.

Behaviors found to be important. Numerous different behaviors are presented here, and this is not an exhaustive list.

Apologies: When the E was wrong or had imposed on someone or bent the Rule of behavior, it was best to admit his mistake immediately and ask for forgiveness from the offended party.

Asking for nothing: Rigid adherence to this behavior made it clear that the E was provided for. As example, someone would offer to buy his medications on the very day he ran out of them. Begging or wheedling was never necessary at any time. Sys provided people who took the E to the grocery store after meeting him on the bus, sent him bicycle-tire repair kits when needed, repaired tires on vehicles in which he was being transported, and so on. Love takes care of It’s own. Nor was there any need to ask for anything, for E learned that if he didn't have something, he didn't need it.

Avoid disputes: It can accurately be said those who are arguing about what God’s message to man is, simply hasn’t gotten it: Don’t Argue. Silence helped the E to keep a low profile to begin with, and if accosted in any way, he tried to get away immediately with as little conflict as possible.

Be yourself, follow your heart: This ancient Asian advice is well taken; see also Let go, let God.

Centering:  First achieved during meditation, purging one's self of selfish desire and surrender to the Will of the One brought a sense of emotional balance to the E who later was able to accept with equanimity circumstances which might otherwise seem outrageously unfair. The Path requires suffering and E learned to accept it with grace.

Chastity: was clearly important to continue on a Path which required discipline equivalent to a military level. There is nothing whatever “wrong” with Love or sex, but attachments prevent a Student from meeting the requirements of full participation with the Environment. For example, it was repeatedly necessary to drop everything, move to another city and start all over; a task one cannot expect of a family. Sexual relationships commonly include a subtle web of obligations so firm commitment to chastity also helped the E to avoid being caught in unhealthy or destructive relationships.

Cloister: At first the E waited for others to approach him and when they did he was openly friendly to all of them. Later, as he more frequently encountered aggressive and hostile interactions, it was necessary to become more reserved. Initially, it was most desirable to remain open to contact with other people, but this varied according to circumstances, locations and even the level the E had attained. At present, for the most part he remains secluded from others. 

Competition: was avoided in favor of cooperation. The E recognized a “killer instinct” in himself when he played chess. Saying: “I don’t like what I become when I play chess,” he gave up the game. It was recognized that when he won, he simultaneously lost because of the pain his playmate experienced. While it was nice to be smart, it was smarter to be nice, so he extended these considerations to other situations as well.

Correction:The E found it to be a mistake to ever correct another person because to do so requires one to feel superior and is a manifestation of Pride.  If falsely accused of a misdeed, for example, the E did not reply, argue or offer excuses because to argue about Good and Evil is to be caught  in the Red Dragon’s Consciousness. Keeping a Silence caused many to make up stories about the E’s stupidity, deafness, etc. Quite simply: What other people think of e is none of my business.  

Confession: To tell another person of one's misdeeds has an undeniable benefit. It makes no difference who one tells them to, nor if they are great or small on the list of transgressions. Even some insignificant foolishness admitted to an old lady on the Greyhound relieves the spirit. E did this several times with Mental Health Professionals, Catholic priests and ordinary people. Therapy groups were also a good place to do this.

Courage: is certainly a desirable quality in any situation, but it is unnecessary to have huge amounts to begin with as the Sys presented a series of experiences of increasing difficulty until the E was able to function comfortably in situations that most people would find intolerably stressful. It is often said that God will not present you with more than you can handle and this was found to be essentially true, even though it was often as much as E could do, and came in repeatedly higher doses until a high tolerance for stress was attained. 

Defense: was left to the E's Higher Power. When threatened, he locked his hands behind his back, his right hand grasping his left wrist, bowed his head, remained motionless and silent. At no time did he offer excuses or explanations nor did he beg or wheedle his way out of any situation. The reasoning was that if the Sys were indeed due to a Higher Power he was supposed to be in trouble, and the Sys could just as well get him out of any trouble they had gotten him into. 

Doing nothing: was probably the most useful thing for the E who had a great deal of trouble with this in the beginning. As a doctor, (Ph.D. Psychologist,) he was used to making efforts to help others become happier and more settled in their lives, and the notion of standing by and watching others suffer when it was unnecessary was abhorrent to him. In a Sy, he was given a book titled City of Joy in which the protagonist is a Catholic priest who goes to a slum in India to love the residents as they are without trying to change them. Later, when E heard of the movie, he found that the plot had been changed to depict a Doctor who goes there to "fix" everyone. This just about sums up the problem: Heaven or Whatever-It-Is-That-Answers-Prayers hasn't told us to "fix" each other, It has told us to Love one another, and this is sometimes best accomplished just by listening to someone or perhaps sharing an umbrella or other ordinary act of compassion. Thus, the E learned to “do nothing” in a corrective sense, but to accept people as they were and seek to help them in attaining the goals they set for themselves. Doing nothing and "centering" is especially important when one is in doubt.

Drug use: This seems to be contraindicated simply because it unnecessarily complicates ones experiences. Even the ubiquitous and supposedly harmless marijuana was noted to debilitate some individuals. It was clear that people had Spiritual experiences on some chemicals but the drugs themselves became such a problem that the individuals were effectively destroyed by them. The E was willing to try chemicals, but the Spirit never led him to such experiences. Once offered cocaine, he asked the person if knowing what they know, they would advise him to try it. The answer was a resounding: “NO!” OD’s could probably never be Spiritually beneficial.

Dumpster-diving, collecting bottles and cans, camping beside the tracks or sleeping in abandoned buildings with other homeless, attending Missions, etc. are valuable ways of knocking Pride down. It is said that Myocho Shuho (1282-1338)lived under the fifth Street bridge in Kyoto for 20 years before founding his temple.

Enlightenment: This term is commonly used to indicate one has attained some level of expanded awareness as to the way the Universe truly functions. The term dis-endarkenment is probably more accurate because it more truly reflects  the process of regaining abilities rather than adding them. “attainment” smacks of Pride. Humility serves, Pride controls

Faith: The Sys seemed to make it clear that there had to be a force immanent in Nature something like a God or other Higher Power that interacted with people under certain circumstances. The terms God, Nature and the Universe are used interchangeably in this paper, for while it is clear that Something interacts with people through Natural Phenomena, there is no way at present to tell precisely What it is or how It does so. One thing is certain: It is a Higher Power than people are able to muster on their own. The E reasoned that if one could determine the conditions under which these interactions occurred one could get close to if not to isolate this active element in Nature. As Faith has always been identified as the one thing God wants most from people, the E determined to provide Faith in a rather arrogant and aggressive way, taking outrageous risks in order to see if he could elicit responses as advertised in the various Scriptures. Behavior has it’s consequences, so after a series of lumps, bumps and thumps, while it was clear that the E would be protected, it was also found to be more prudent not to test one’s wings by “jumping off the barn roof.” Faith was found to be best understood as requiring an action from E: Following a Sy without knowing why inevitably resulted in learning something.

Focusing attention: On one thing at a time was essential. “Multitasking” prevents one from adequate involvement and impairs one’s ability to perceive Sys. Those deeply involved in worldly concerns typically are blind and deaf to the subtle hints Nature provides to those who are attentive and alert.

Giving freely: Everything the E did for anyone way always freely given, nothing asked. Contract or quid pro quo agreements were never entered into nor were gifts with “strings attached” ever accepted. 

Humility: was so important that the E went through countless Sys which resulted in embarrassment, humiliation, and worse. He had been trained as a psychotherapist and even though his motives were good, the practice of his profession was prideful for it required him to "teach" a "better way" to others who had equal rights and responsibilities. He learned that there is only One Authority in the Universe, and it was necessary for the E to recognize that he didn't even have a junior role in the matter. The dictum to love one another is the same for all of us and there are no exceptions. If someone has a problem of some kind, it is up to them to work it out with their Higher Power themselves. It took some five years for the E to learn enough humility to be accepted as a student in what would later become the OBD. This paper is written as a result of Sys, not as an individual effort.

Let go, let God: This commonly used phrase indicates he value of relying on inner directives(feelings) rather than Dogma, formulas or protocol Thought). Like everything else, moderation is important as well.

Manifest & Latent meanings: The E was often sent places for manifest reasons, for example to get a pair of shoes his size. However, the latent reason for going to that location was often found to be different; perhaps to help someone in distress, perhaps simply to attend a new church service. On arrival at a new location, The E always asked himself: “Why am i here and how can i best serve these people?”

Meditation: can be of many types. Contemplation of the lives of the saints can be helpful for example, but quietly reflecting on a Sy until an "Aha" experience revealed it's meaning was most important. Many people on the Path wake early in the morning; E was regularly awake between two and four AM; as ideas came he jotted them down to work on later if not at the same time. E also had formal instruction in traditional Zen meditation which he practiced until age demanded different postures. "Monkey-mind," where the mind jumps repeatedly from one topic to another probably results from distractions and training of the world and need not be a concern for the beginner. Sitting in quiet and patient surrender got results. An important principle in meditation is: “Bring the body and the mind will follow.” Sitting perfectly still will gradually still the mind as well. People will think up “reasons” why they did something even though their initial participation may have been coerced.

Mistakes: were generally of two types: False positives where real coincidences were mistakenly perceived as Sys, and second, failing to perceive Sys in time to take appropriate action. It seemed better to under-react than to be overconfident. At times E took outrageous risks so it was also necessary to become inured to social criticism or rejection. If something didn’t work by trial-and-error, it was simply accepted as another mistake, then the E gave up quickly and tried something else.

Moderation: Politeness, respect for others and their opinions was essential. Sharing food, serving others before one’s self, never taking the first nor the last morsel, and similar gestures were well appreciated, and facilitated functioning in tramp and hobo camps, street missions and other places where the homeless collected. Miss Manners suggests that etiquette is a desirable alternative to Law and at one point E consulted such sources for social guidance especially concerning shunning behavior.

Neatness: It came as a surprise to the E that neatness didn’t seem to count, for outside of formal churches and religions, dedicated people were often seen to live in a great deal of clutter. This was interesting because the E served as cook, dishwasher and janitor to keep many temples clean, but few would voluntarily do the same. After serving as janitor, the E was required to stop and rely on others. But as the E may not tell anyone what to do, someone who can’t see what needs doing is of little help. On one occasion, as E was consulting with someone for free, the person complained about the grounds being less than presentable. This man was a professional janitor and could have offered to clean it up, but did not. This raises the question as to how far a provider should go in serving others. To continue to serve those who do not reciprocate is to foster infantile dependence. That said, everyone seems to like things neat and clean, but no one wants to do it.

Nice guys finish last: This may have been true in the past, but those days appear to be coming to an end. 

Obedience: Surrendering Control was of primary importance in keeping the sequence of Sys moving. It was clear that the E’s involvement had to remain voluntary. Any willful action was found to shut off the Stream. Comparable to the vow of Obedience in many Religious Orders, this was obedience to Principle, not superiors or Religious Dogma of one kind or another. Each Sy put the E under the control of a “Lead-man” or woman who was accepted as a Teacher in an experiential rather than a didactic sense, although at times, didactic teachers were met as well. Briefly, a Sy often led the E to a new church or denomination where he learned the rudiments of their practices as a common street tramp rather than a “Big City Doctor.” A list of the places he was taken is found in a separate paper titled Credentials. It was important to avoid choices so that others would direct his course, consequently it was necessary to develop a skill at detecting what others wanted and doing that instead of one’s own will. Beyond a certain point, it became clear that in order to continue it was necessary to accept Discipline that came with the Sy under certain circumstances. The E chose to accept this Discipline, considering it as analogous to joining the Military in Lay life. Readers are left to their own decisions. Sys determined the way E dressed and groomed himself. From 1982 to 1994, E had long hair and dressed as an ordinary person except that he always wore black. After July, 1994 his head was shaved and he wore robes similar to the ones he has at present. In a Worldly sense, obedience results in being served by more people, while obedience in a Spiritual sense results in serving more people.

One day at a time was all the E could handle, but it was enough to get through most anything. One simply cannot control everything, much less Tomorrow.

Patience: was found to be imperative as it takes time for the Universe to respond. Moreover, It does so at It’s leisure and in It’s own way, so that the E was typically surprised in the ways the Sys manifested themselves. A good rule of thumb is that if E could imagine or anticipate a Response, it wouldn’t happen that way, but in a totally unpredictable fashion. It was easier to consider the Path as analogous to a sailing trip, following the Winds as they blew and changed, adapting one’s behavior to the Wind and the Water. A direct Path from one Sy to another was a rarity. Although the E considered his path as the most important thing in life, he recognized that it was always necessary to defer to the priorities of others because to assert his wishes over those of others was to fail to stay on the Path.

Paying careful attention when it seemed something was “wrong.” This is perhaps best presented by the following example: While attending a class at the University of Oregon titled “The Dark Self,” E was repeatedly asked what his term paper would be about even though as a senior student he wasn’t required to and seldom wrote any papers. Seeing this as a “hint,” he considered comparing the experiences of Viktor Frankl at Auschwitz to those of prisoners in the Confederate prison at Andersonville, and looked it up in the UO Library catalog. To his surprise, the computer served up a reference for a book by Bacque about Allied prison camps in WWII. Repeated efforts to get books about Andersonville got the same strange, “wrong” results, but when he went to the reference desk, the catalog worked perfectly for the librarian and at that moment, the E realized it was a Sy and was stunned: Nothing was “wrong,” with the Library catalog, it was a Sy that indicated the E needed to read the Bacque book! This was the seminal event that led to the paper Dragons: Corporate Super-organisms which the reader will find in this volume.

Perseverance: Appears as one of the Great Vows where it is compared to climbing a mountain pass on foot, following the switchbacks to gain altitude, then descending into the next valley before rising again to the next pass. The Path is an internal journey of increasing psychological insight, yet if one follows the Sys, is also based on external experiences. The E came to accept this as the entire purpose of his life. Others may do as they please. The E doesn't know how it will end and cannot advise anyone.

Poverty: Although it was unnecessary to take a formal vow of Poverty, it was required to give freely and ask for nothing. When one follows this behavior, which is really basically serving others as an act of Love, one gets what one asks for, which is nothing or so close to it that one is always on the brink of doing completely without. Poverty was useful, however, in following the Sys because it helped to identify them. If the E was presented with a bus ticket to another city while he simultaneously found it necessary to leave an assignment, it was clear he was needed to perform tasks elsewhere. This is very different from deciding on one’s own to travel somewhere which would be a willful act that could get one completely off the Path. At times the E had a little money to be used for food or personal expenses. This was seldom a significant amount. It was astonishing how often the E “found” money when it was needed; from five-dollar bills blowing in the Wind, to paper money floating in the river to wallets containing $150 and no ID, etc. When he became eligible for Social Security sixteen years ago in 1995, the E refused to acknowledge his number or apply for benefits. Independent of a Government that overrules Nature, he relies entirely on the Spirit of Love to provide for him.

Prayer: There is no doubt prayer gets results, especially if it is to know the Will of Heaven and to be given the power to carry it out. The E seldom asked for anything for himself beyond an occasional piece of blueberry pie, a bottle of cold beer or similar low-level things. Frequency of prayer, intensity of feeling in prayer, careful wording and so on seemed to be important, but the one that worked the best was “Thy, not my will be done.” By surrender to the Higher Power, it was always possible to come away with a satisfied feeling. Incidentally, submission to the Will of Allah is one definition of a Muslim. 

The reader is invited to perform the following experiment: Sincerely ask to do God’s Will, then sit alone in a public place such as a bench on the street or perhaps a neighborhood café or meeting place. Sincerely seek to perceive God’s will and just sit quietly and wait while watching everything that happens around you and carefully noting everything that is said. “Flashing” on signs or hearing snatches of conversations may be important. Don’t initiate conversation with anyone, but respond to anyone who might approach you with the expectation that they may indeed have the answer to your prayer. It may often happen that these people may be repulsive to you or repel you in some way and the very act of being kind to them may be what is asked of you. Sys of this type are often reciprocal: both people benefit in some way. If you are given books or papers peruse them carefully. The answer to prayer can be very subtle and you may not recognize it until days later during meditation. Don’t be discouraged, take risks and follow whatever seems to be asked of you. You might for example, be taken to a movie or asked to attend a certain church or meeting where things are said that you will find important. One sentence in an hour-long sermon may be helpful to you. Being ‘in the moment’ and paying intense attention is absolutely imperative. If you allow yourself to start daydreaming, think of yesterday or worry about tomorrow, you may very well miss the Answer that comes as a clue, cue, hint, metaphor or parable. It may take days to understand the Sy. The Universe will never boss you around; you must repeatedly offer to be of service.  The E has used this repeatedly and taught it to several other people. However, the Universe, like another person may respond or not as It pleases, and often indicated that while It is willing to give general guidance does not want the E to be too dependent. The reader will notice that this is the “MagicalThinking” said to be a “symptom” of “mental Illness.” The experimental fact is that it works!

Promptness: When E realized what was needed, he wasted no time in doing it. Leaving a book unread or a video unwatched was found to stop progress. At times it was laborious to plow through a 900 page book or some such, but it was just part of the job. It makes it easier if one accepts the tasks as if one were still in school and gets a quiz every now and then. Different people will get different tasks, of course. If someone doesn't keep up, or sets different priorities by putting their Path on the "back burner," they get left behind.

Refusing nothing: It was often found that Sys provided what was needed for the next “assignment;” If the E were offered a tent, for example, he might well need it within a very short time. Unnecessary things also accumulated, but it was much easier to leave them behind than to do without essentials on the next place the E was sent. 

Remaining choiceless: From the beginning it was clear that people really do have free will as voluntary effort was always required of the E. However, it was found that when he made choices, E stopped the Sys. It was as if the Universe were asking “Is this what you want?” and was prepared to leave E with whatever he chose as his dearest wish. The present paper attests that E continued to follow the Sys as his dearest wish even though he was free for many years to quit any time he pleased. (see Obedience).

Science: It was once thought that the Will of the Creator could be understood by learning to understand the Book of Nature. This suggests that every scientist is studying God's Will. One doesn't need to learn Hebrew or Latin or Pali or Greek or Sanskrit; the Book of Nature is always right in front of us. open to the page we need to read and will "speak" to us in our own language, be it Biology, Physics, Geology, Archaeology or whatever. Hence, E has written these papers in plain language intended to reach ordinary people in the modern world. Very little of this is "Supernatural," "Magic" or arcane, it is only an alternative view of the Universe: It is not an Ignorant Machine, but a Loving Parent that will not boss us around, and will help us to learn a better way if we listen to It. Moreover, It can and will help people of all intellectual abilities or mental states if It is asked to do so.

Selfish desire: can be an elusive factor. One can fall in love and wish to serve another person, or perhaps a good cause of some kind. That's what free will is all about. In a sense, the E's desire to find the Root of the Sys is selfish. It was reasoned that the E wanted most of all to act in everyone's best interest and the best way to do so was to repeatedly ask to do God's Will even though it was not at all clear how this might do so. Also, there was the thought that if there truly is a God, and if doing his Will doesn't work, then nothing ever will. Consequently, the E determined to see it through to the end; he had, after all, nothing better to do, and it was all too complex for any human to figure out. So he so he gave up and quit trying on his own at least.

Sharing: The E maintained respect for private property and never took anything that was not explicitly offered. It is a mistake to assume that others are willing to share things. In a way, Love depends on private property; if everything is always shared, and there is no alternative, then how can one give anything to anyone? If you entertain OBD students, don’t assume that they can help themselves to what’s in the refrigerator. If you help yourself to their things, they may have to do without as they cannot ask to share your things. This may include being offered salt and pepper at the table, etc. Monks seek to b become keenly aware of the needs and wishes of others. 

Shunning: At times it was necessary to abruptly discontinue Service to others when it became apparent that their behaviors indicated that they were going in the wrong direction on the Path. Facilitative behaviors included accepting a person exactly as they were. That is to say that the E had no right to correct others even though it was apparent to him that their behavior could lead to their destruction. They were, after all, only exercising their free will and had just as much right to do so as the E. Consequently the E found it necessary to shun those who were acting counter to their own best interests. If it were allowed to scream a warning to them, he would have done so. Shunning or snubbing often prompted an aggressive response apparently animated by a vicious spirit, but there is nothing to complain about, for people have the right to manifest that spirit if they wish to do so. At times, the E’s Silence prompted similar responses and it was not uncommon to be vilified for failure to respond to usual conversational formulas, comments about his dress or demeanor and so forth. The E takes no pleasure whatever in shunning, but it is an important part of his Path and he continues to do it as required. It is clearly necessary to avoid being caught up in destructive relationships or interactions. Moreover, it is supported by books on etiquette as an appropriate response in such situations.

Silence: Was helpful in multiple ways. Short notes with limited vocabulary concealed the E’s education and revealed a great deal about others. People responded to Silence in a wide variety of ways which usually were projections of their own inner state of consciousness. Those who thought the E to be crazy or retarded, for example, either sought to help or to disadvantage him in various ways while those who thought him “trying to get away with something” were almost uniformly hostile to the point of being dangerous. At no time did the E lie or deliberately mislead anyone; it was only necessary to remain silent and to refuse to correct anyone. An immense amount of talk is pure bullshit which has no other purpose than to inflate the egos of those involved as they prove to each other how wonderful they are. Talk is so important to some on cell phones that they walk through traffic like zombies. This constitutes an addiction to Pride even more powerful than drugs and conversation degenerates to the Spirit of Pride preening itself through the participants. To keep a Silence prevents continuation of this insidious habit and also prevents reflexive retorts when one is insulted or offended. There are many other benefits to Silence that must be experienced to be appreciated.

Smiles and Frowns: were emblematic of attitudes which the E used to guide his Path. As a general rule, he moved toward those people he perceived as pleasant and accepting and away from those who were critical or rejecting. While many people do this, it was taken to an extreme where he would walk or bicycle miles or perhaps simply do without things to avoid unpleasant people.  Relying on his clinical skills of observation, he assessed the internal spiritual state of individuals and in this way he "surfed" the Collective Unconscious as he was effectively "handed off" from one person to another by the Sys. Over a period of more than two decades, this was most clearly not a chance phenomenon. 

Suffering: There is a humorous maxim on the Path which says that “No good deed goes unpunished,” and there is some truth to it, for those who choose to serve others frequently meet those who seek to disadvantage others. When the E found a man attempting to pick the lock on his bicycle, for example, and the man instead of fleeing, tried to fix the clogged lock, it seemed clear that he was to be treated gently. When, in this Sy, the man’s cell phone was stolen as he attempted to right his wrong, it was easily seen that he needed to be reminded that “What goes around, comes around and there is no way to avoid it.” This Sy can be interpreted as Spiritual Combat, where two opposing Factors in Nature meet each other and compete for the hearts and minds of the individuals involved. The Universe apparently saw this person as worth saving and arranged the event to give the man a Lesson as well as the E and now to the reader. Anyone who takes up the Path must be prepared for repeated experiences of this kind. The uninitiated may expect that God’s Love will manifest itself as an unending stream of blessings. On the contrary, the reward for doing good is the power to do more good. It is also expected that “much will be asked from those to whom much is given,” consequently, one is continually challenged to manifest the Love immanent in Nature in more and more difficult circumstances, and this may require meeting some very unpleasant people so it may seem that good deeds are “punished.” Moreover, Spiritual leadership is not accomplished from the rear by telling others what to do, but by setting an example and meeting the dark side with equanimity. Teresa of Avila has been quoted as saying in her prayers to God: “No wonder You don’t have any more friends than You do, the way you treat the ones You do have.”

Truth: is of the utmost importance, as it was generally observed that the Universe would act to confirm whatever statements people made. If a person repeatedly complained of being a Victim, for example, and apparently got some satisfaction from playing that role, they were observed to experience a series of Sys which fulfilled their expectations. It is thus imperative that people be brutally honest with themselves as to how they get their satisfactions. The Buddha is reported to have warned: “Nothing is so dangerous as one’s own thoughts unguarded.” At times it becomes a choice between being right, and being happy. You call up your own experiences.

Waiting for invitation: Initially, the E chose churches to study. After being accepted as a Blue Dragon student however, it was necessary to wait until he was sent or invited to visit different places or people for it would clearly be an imposition to study anyone without their permission or cooperation.

When all else fails, look through the trash for the directions: This humorous maxim relates to the idea that people have already been given the answer but have disregarded it because they think they know better. When still in private practice, the E often reflected that if people simply lived by the tenets of their respective religions they wouldn't have problems. In this way he came to see many “disorders” as a matter of choice rather than "sickness" of some sort. Yet the choice was often not in the person who displayed the symptoms so that the web of consciousness in a family, business or other situation was too intricate to understand in psychological terms. As example, a parent dismayed by a child’s “mental Illness”may actually be the unwitting source  of the “symptoms” by setting unwise expectations.  A child who hoarded food was found to be responding to anger she could sense even though her mother never openly expressed it.. Where Psychology seeks an answer within an individual, Spiritual understanding reveals a web that may suck the therapist in as well. What real professional wants to treat phantom “disorders?” Now E sees the World's problems as solved simply by following the directions one step at a time, and recognizes that he can do no more than his limited part in it. This means loving people as they are without meddling in their lives. That, and writing these papers so that others can become aware of how Pride, Fear, Greed and Anger can subtly mislead them into causing their own and their family’s problems.

Women 

It  is presumed that inclusion of women and minorities in discussion groups, government institutions and other panels will result in diversity of opinion. Yet these variables are superficial, external human features while internal features like unpopular social views are often systematically excluded. This results in panels that look different but are otherwise homogeneous. The term “echo chamber” has been used to describe such “discussion” groups that systematically exclude unpopular topics. 

“Equality” is a major issue of our time. At the outset it must be noted that “Equal” and “Same” are two different things. Moreover, it is not up to us to judge what “equal” is; rather, the Creator decides who is able to do what and when. We can rankle and moan about the roles that Nature has chosen for us, or we can accept them as the gifts they are. Worldwide, women are awarded child custody as a matter of course; there is little disagreement to this because women are judged to be better equipped to accept responsibility for parenting than men. Even in male-dominated societies, the first move of a father is likely to get a good woman to take care of the child. While there are exceptions, this de facto situation suggests that there is some truth to the notion that women make superior parents even though there may be no data to support such an assumption. Parental rights are not the same for men and women in most countries, but are considered as fair or equal when differences between the sexes are taken into account. 

We are familiar with newspaper accounts that women only earn 83 cents for the dollar that men get for their work, but we are not told if that is adjusted for experience. If women work ten years before before having children and staying home,  we should expect an even larger difference because they never worked long enough to develop the skills that come with long practice. Or even to accumulate ordinary seniority raises. 

Equality is also an issue of Pride; where one is seated at the table becomes important; a concern that one has equal power to make the world over the way the individual wishes it to be. It should also be clear that “Equality” is diametrically opposed to the notion that the Creator alone has the right to judge how the Cosmos is to unfold. Our free will has natural limitations that we may choose to accept or to reject as we please: Like an unfolding Flower, the Cosmos has a future form of which we may be a part if we so choose, but as we are limited to our understanding, we cannot know what that future form will be. Hence, our basic choice is whether we trust the Creator, the Universe  to do right by us or not. In this sense, we are all equal. It is clear that the Creator wants It’s children to be happy. Are we willing to be happy with It’s Plan? Are we willing to surrender our will as a matter of Faith or will we be unhappy, resentful and persist in trying to make the world over to suit ourselves? Complaint or compliance? 

These papers have focussed on accepting responsibility for our behavior so that unintended destructive consequences can be minimized. About 50% of professional psychologists are women who, unlike Scripturally-based approaches, have both equal rights and equal responsibility to determine the Truth. Traditional arguments about who has the right to interpret Scripture do not apply and the same can be said about the other Social Sciences which are just as important and useful as Psychology. The scientific Ph. D. degree insists that we all meet the same minimum standards and adopt our methods to study Nature as well and  as accurately as possible.

Women are different from men in many ways, historically, biologically and culturally. It is suggested that efforts be made to identify these differences without judging them while simultaneously minimizing competition between factions that would divide humanity as a whole: To take a cooperative rather than competitive approach and complement each other’s efforts.  Women are not all the same any more than all men are and it is expected that on many measures, we will find the familiar bell-shaped normal distributions slightly offset on the average with large overlaps. Meanwhile, it seems useful to offer some caveats based on clinical observations. These are presented as temptations women in Western countries seem to have that men don’t seem to share. These are seen as traps women may be unaware of that can be considered and avoided. In each instance, they have been observed to have results destructive to the participants.

These traps and temptations are:

1.) To hold children as hostages to ensure obedience of spouse.

2.) To trade spouses to ensure dominance of opinion on how the family should be run. (Stepfathers have little or no say in how children are raised, those who don’t provide examples of male passivity are dismissed.)

3.) As single parents, to raise boys as ideal husbands, obligating them to provide help ordinarily given by loving companions. That is, to get “love” through control rather than eliciting it by doing things for potential mates.

4.) To hold a grudge against men in general from particular unfortunate experiences. Resentment is poisonous, cripples those who harbor it, repels healthy people and seriously affects children as well. 

5.) Closely related to items 3 and 4, to require grown sons to act as substitute companions in order to avoid contact with healthy males. 

6.) To engage in spiteful behavior that has no other aim than emotional satisfaction. This is exemplified by a child who breaks a toy rather than share it, or by the joke that the divorced Barbie doll comes with all of Ken’s stuff. The author was astonished to see girls as young as ten playing exclusive hostess, “putting down” other children at their birthday parties and similar events. Spiteful behavior is considered petty and effeminate in men who ordinarily expect competitive behavior to produce some real benefit or gain. Professional women are invited to make their own observations on exclusivity in sororities and so on. This is probably more a cultural difference than any basic tendency, yet seems to be worthy of study. Is it true? How far does it go? 

7.) To place children ahead of spouses in the same way that men are tempted to put careers ahead of family. Additionally, to be very selfish in the promotion of their children ahead of other children. This can readily be seen at public easter-egg hunts and the like.

8.) Women often place conditions on sexual intimacy that implies duty or obligation: (“We had sex so now you owe me.”) That is to say, to avoid unconditional love as much as men do. Complaints often arise early in relationships and may begin with the statement: “If you really loved me, you would ... ” There may also be a pool of residual resentment from previous liaisons that prompts sniping and complaints of various types that erode emotional intimacy and lead to a breakup that furthers resentment. The net result is that it may seem the man wanted only sex, yet the woman provided plenty of fuel for the fire of withdrawal. Responsibility is the primary topic of these papers, and the question is raised as to how women contribute to their own problems regardless of how inept their companions may have been. We have all, men and women alike, been misled into the prideful notion that we can correct each other and this is delusional: As soon as you set about to change someone else, they begin to try to change you. Our state of consciousness calls our companions to our door and our expectations elicit the responses we are accustomed to. Those who have been repeatedly disappointed have in some way contributed to the results they have gotten; blaming others will never lead to a solution and the only viable alternative is to accept responsibility. Men are not all the same any more than women are, yet the common Western stereotype of men is so low as to indicate it is important in eliciting commensurate behavior. The expectations we have for our relationships are of the utmost importance in their manifestation. 

9.) Aggressively competitive behavior is not the only route to “equality.” Along with men’s competition, there is also a sense of “fair play” that limits how far one can go and still be acceptable; Conscience cannot be totally disregarded. Further, men  recognize that they are not equal: there are numerous weight classes in boxing and no-one expects bantamweights to mix it up with heavyweights. Even in jail prisoners are concerned with behavior correct according to their standards. “Equality” is a concern of Pride; Humility does not argue. Is being as bad as the worst man equality? As he cared for others, the author was often told that “someday you’ll make someone a wonderful wife.” It seems that the classic role of husband or wife as caregiver is exactly what the Universe wants while the Red Dragon degrades it as much as possible; Power is worshipped and Love demeaned as stupid or nasty.

10.) Seeing a husband who irresponsibly lost family money in a movie prompted one woman to give her husband the “silent treatment” for a week. This sort of thing is utterly incomprehensible to men and probably to most women as well, yet it happens and illustrates how destructive stereotypes can be.

11.) Women in some areas of the world are subjugated and there is a temptation to vote for military solutions to this state of affairs. Beware of efforts to win support for interventions; they only result in opposition and resentment that leads to more destruction. Psychological methods are deliberately used to train soldiers to break things and kill people. This may have been necessary in the past, but we simply must learn more constructive methods. A song in World War II promised there would be “blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover; love and laughter and peace ever after.” It is time to deliver on this promise and we cannot do it with weapons.

The E has often been told by individuals that they can’t do as he has done “Because I’m a woman,” implying that they would not be safe in learning to act without fear. This is reminiscent of a similar attitude noticed in women who had been referred to his office for psychological counseling. These people for example would flatly state: “Well, I can’t work because I’ve got to take care of my kids,” while others would announce “Well, I can’t just stay home, and take care of my kids, I’ve got to work.”  It is clear that the matter was one of choice and not possibility, but the individuals seldom saw it that way and felt as if they had no alternatives. When people rely on a Higher Power to provide for, protect and preserve them, it should be clear that individual differences have little effect, or is God’s arm really too short to protect women? An article in the Register-Guard even tells of a twelve year old girl protected from captors by Ethiopian lions. (2005) This is the same type of protection told of in ancient parables. In fact, the entire thrust of this paper is that it is the behavior of the individual that is important, not other factors like height, weight, sex, religion or skin color and so on. That being said, the E must admit that he has no data for women on the Path and it will take someone who has the courage to attempt a parallel effort and tell us of her experiences. Life for the homeless on the Street is short. The E has known a great many that died before age fifty, both men and women. Finally, the author followed the Directions he was given and it should not be assumed that these Directions would be the same for others; rather, it should be assumed that they would be different for each individual according to their abilities.

Homosexuals

There are probably as many reasons for this activity as there  are homosexual individuals. To lump them all together is utter stupidity; children in a boarding school are not the same as hermaphrodites. The main caution would be about choosing such behavior as a way of expressing anger at the opposite sex.

Race

Presently, there are social proscriptions against studies of racial differences that approach denial. This is to be expected after the horrors of WWII, yet there may indeed be something to be learned if studies are done without prejudice. To assume on the basis of prejudice that there are no differences is to close off areas of investigation that might actually prove whether such differences exist or not. For example, Japanese babies are born with a birthmark on their  right hip; a characteristic that varies as a function of genetic purity. Is this also a marker of behavioral tendency in any way? Similarly, the question can also be raised as to how much culture might affect genetic expression. The human genome project seeks to identify genetic differences between individuals; what is so horrendous about differences between groups? To identify genetic differences is not the same as to judge them as good or evil. 

Unimportant Variables: 

Scourging or other self-punishment was unnecessary as the Path provided plenty of punishment on it’s own. Although the E kept the rules of the various temples and traditions where he was invited to serve, no effects were found due to dietary or similar behaviors. Worry was, of course, of no use whatever. The antidote for unreasoning Fear is unreasoning Faith. The expectation that people can control the Environment is largely delusional. Problems like Global Warming belong to God and will solve themselves if people follow the directions instead of trying to fix it themselves. 

While Prayer was found to be important, the address of the prayer seemed to have no effect. If one prays to God as one understands Him Her or It, the prayer will be heard; if the prayer seeks to benefit others, it will likely get results; if it is an offer to serve others, it will almost surely be answered. Many people were defensive about their religions; as if they expected others to try to strong-arm them to believe in something false or sinister. This was unnecessary as people of good will got satisfactory results wherever they were, and the E attended many churches reputed to be “cults.”  It seemed that the best definition of a “cult” was a religion that the speaker didn’t like or held in low esteem. It was initially surprising to see Christians attending Buddhist Churches, but the unthreatened acceptance of individual differences just added to efforts to discover the Truth in individual ways. Twelve-Step programs were similar in this regard. Whatever works for you, go for it! The place to beware is when the principles seek to exalt the individual, or to accumulate and exalt power and prestige, but even in these locations people were found who were dedicated to the benefit of others. The perceived friction between Science and Religion is largely a straw-

problem as the present paper shows. Newton, Pascal, Fechner, Cantor, Alpert and many others had religious experiences or views which brought them much ridicule and scorn.

Results 

The results consist of five primary features. First, the method resulted in the identification of specific behaviors that maintained the frequency of Sys. Second, after twenty-nine years it was certain that the E would be provided for, protected and preserved within acceptable limits; third that while most religions were served by the E, that there were some he found it necessary to avoid. Fourth, in agreement with religious formulations, there appear to be volitional Factors in Nature that influence or control behavior in humans; that these Factors are wholly opposed to each other and are experienced as internal ethical conflict. Fifth, E was to become a member of the new Order of the Blue Dragon to serve everyone as indicated to the best of his ability.  These results are considered more fully as follows:

The Method began with combing various Scriptures, Books and Religious traditions for behaviors which might likely result in Sys and then trying these behaviors out by trial-and-error while living on the Street as a homeless person. The identification of behaviors that keep the Sys coming was not only necessary to implement the method but also became part of the results. This illustrates the integrated nature of the whole process. The E tried new behaviors that changed him as he developed newer behaviors that became the results that then called for discussion using new principles learned during the Experiment. As he adopted new behaviors and integrated them into himself, the E became a new person with new character and personality in the process, and these changes cannot be separated from the process itself. These behaviors not only enabled the E to interact with Sys, but presently constitute his continued integration with Nature.

Perhaps one of the most important findings is that as promised in various scriptures, if one acts in Harmony with Nature by manifesting behaviors consistent with It’s Design, one is provided for, protected and preserved within acceptable limits. It was not easy, it was often uncomfortable, and many times it was frightening, but over a period of twenty-nine years, it was not only possible, but reliable. It could be argued that the E had been supported by friends and family if he had not had the Faith to leave them all behind and live anonymously as a homeless tramp dependent entirely on people he met in Sys. This underscores the necessity of action before understanding.

Everywhere the E was taken he met good, kind and accepting people who were genuinely seeking the Truth. Within the same group there were also those who were critical and rejecting, and sought to control and dominate others. Those most helpful to the E were often seen to experience Sys and many had psychiatric diagnoses. This was ironic for they were the people he had initially hoped to help in his study of Psychology. It seemed that the most common mistake groups made was Elitism:  An excessive pride in their particular belief, denomination or congregation that resulted in a tendency to be exclusive rather than inclusive. The word excessive is here carefully chosen, for it is expected that people will naturally choose that which is most pleasant and reasonable for their own Path, and they are entitled to do so. Problems arise when people begin to judge and bait each other. Sunni-Shiite, Catholic-Protestant, Religious-Atheist divisions have all led to bloodshed and are extreme examples of Elitism. Those people who believe that they know best how other people should live their lives were also present within every group and if and when these persons gained control, it was a clear sign it was time to move on to the next “assignment.” It will be noted however, that shunning and snubbing may also be considered as elitism. Although shunning was most commonly done in response to specific behaviors, for example anyone seen taking advantage of others was avoided at all costs, at times the E could see no reason whatever why he was abruptly taken to a new location and subsequently required to shun people who had always been kind and helpful. Zen Riddles, conundrums and paradoxes are common on the Path, and this is one of them. In these circumstances, Obedience governed the E’s behavior.  

The results are consistent with a view of the Universe as a Whole as Alive, Conscious, Intelligent, Interactive,Loving and Sensitive. This suggests that Consciousness is an  integral part of the Universe just as matter and energy are, that It is not just an amorphous “blob” that can be shaped any which way, but has an organization that includes Self-Awareness and that the Universe can and does interact with any part of Itself as It pleases. It is described as Sensitive in that It will usually not respond to those who choose behaviors counter to those listed in the present paper. The view that the Universe is Itself alive is of course, the heresy of Pantheism which led to the martyrdom of countless Christian and Islamic saints. The very fact that people were executed for stating such a belief lends credence to its accuracy, but it must be noted that just because the present results are consistent with this view, they do not confirm it. God, Nature and the Universe may well be different things, (God is probably Transcendent as well as Immanent) but at the present time there is no way to experimentally determine if this is so. Moreover, the results do not rule out other interpretations. The reader is asked for patience and forbearance pending the development of ways to experimentally learn more about our role in this Magnificent Thing of which we are a part. 

Regarding the existence of Volitional Factors in Nature, it was observed that Sys repeatedly required the E to avoid people who behaved in certain ways. Significantly, there were religious and Spiritual programs which the E was not taken to experience first-hand, but found it necessary to study at-a-distance on his own from printed matter, websites, visual aids and so on. Through various Sys, it became clear that the E was to neither speak to nor about these groups or their members.  For example, when, after a long delay, E was finally shown a visual-aid presentation of a certain group, the sound-track was not only defective but also obscured by a child’s babbling. It was also observed that many people utilized behaviors in opposition to those listed here. These individuals were not seen to experience Sys, suggesting that the Universe was sensitive to but ignored rather than corrected them. The E recognizes that everyone has free will and is entitled to make his/her own choices without any judgment or even remarks on his part, nevertheless, some comments are necessary in the interest of understanding the results: 

Clinical observations made during Sys at times revealed the presence of conflict as to the behavior the person would choose. This suggests there are two major volitional Factors in Nature that offer alternative principles of organization for people. Subscribing to one Factor or another results in coalition or alliance with a super-organism (Dragon) that organizes and directs the behavior of individuals. These two principles differ mainly in that The Blue Dragon inspires altruistic behavior while the Red Dragon stimulates accumulative behavior. These two Factors are active, diametrically opposed and can be seen to fluctuate in relative strength as a person resolves conflict about which one of them to access. For example, a friendly person giving the E a ride once suddenly turned on him and drove away with all of his possessions. As he sought to act in Harmony with the Universe as a constituent of the Blue Dragon,  the E was required to avoid the Red Dragon at all times, often at significant personal expense. In the Blue Dragon, service is more important than self and action is a consequence of Love; in the Red Dragon, reason is dominant, control is more important than service and actions are compelled by Pride, Fear Greed, Anger or other destructive feelings like Envy.

 Traditional lists of virtues and vices may be appended to these results as the reader wishes; the behaviors listed in this paper result from efforts to manifest the Spirit of Love. While two major Factors have been identified, there are many ways to stray from a Natural Path. Aside from his vows, the best compass for the E was his conscience; he made lots of mistakes, but was able to learn from and correct them. The paper Dragons: Corporate Super-organisms examines the Red Dragon of Evil and some of the “nests” it builds.

Sys led the E to prepare these papers for free presentation to the general public, and to follow future Sys one step at a time in serving people as they indicate. It is clear that the E will not be a "Teacher" in any usual sense of the word, but perhaps may function as a coach or facilitator to help selected students in following their own Path to reunification with God as He expresses Himself through Nature. There is no way to predict what will follow or how the Path will unfold for all of us, but there is no doubt that we are in Good Hands.

Discussion

This discussion will be presented in two sections: First, a few general observations, secondly, some thoughts about disease and its diagnosis.

General discussion

This author conceives of the Cosmos as an Unfolding Flower. In the past we have thought of It as being an Ignorant Machine,but it appears that It is more like a loving but strict Parent that can do anything It wants whenever It wants. It is an active Ting that is in the process of becoming what It wants to be and is by no means “finished” in any sense of the word. We people are invited to grow along with It provided we trust It and choose to adopt certain basic rules of behavior that facilitate our inclusion. These papers aim to identify productive  methods  to reintegrate with Nature after a long time spent with a delusional Consciousness that has misled us. Quite simply, we have been led into false views of Nature and our role in it and need to re-learn how it really works. Importantly, It loves us and will do anything for us. We can have anything we want, but his presents us with serious dangers. For example, if as a doctor you want to cure a dread disease, you may unwittingly call up precisely what you wished for: a dread disease.

The Ten commandments can be understood as a First List of methods for reintegration and the First Commandment as the most important: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” To interpret that as a scientist: If one is not true to their nature, they will be led astray. The results identified a second entity of Consciousness that has destructive intent toward us, and it can now be seen or understood as presenting Itself in a variety of ways as“gods” of different kinds: Power, Wealth, Fame and all the other trapping of the World, but most importantly, Pride as an over-evaluation of the individual small self: the same delusional state that prompted early rulers to proclaim themselves divine. This second Being-of-Consciousness dupes us into thinking we know best and gets us to direct our own course of action by reason instead of relying on Nature to guide us. In this insidious way, we elevated Reason to the status of a God and held it above Nature Itself. Thus separated from our true Source, we have been led to serve ourselves instead of each other. Reason has its place, but as a tool and not a directive. 

No-one is going to push us into Heaven’s Kingdom on a gurney. Reunification with Nature will require our active effort and participation. It seems the next stage in our growth is to free ourselves from delusional thought. This can be don by 1.) Admitting what we have been doing has not been working for us, 2.) Adopting virtuous behaviors. 3.) Recognizing that Sys are not “symptoms of “mental illness” but are events by which Nature communicates meaning to us, 4.) learning through meditation to understand what is wanted, 5.) To follow the Sys with the understanding that doing so will be in our best interests; even though it will almost certainly be vary painful in the short term. 6.) Ignoring those who continue to subscribe to delusive thoughts and the  behaviors they  generate. 

If the Universe as a Whole is truly alive, then It constitutes a Supreme Being which can Act through the consciousness of any person who asks to do It’s will and will do so almost always to benefit It’s children. At no time was the E asked to hurt anyone beyond snubbing them. This was a difficult behavior to learn because E had to unlearn a “clinical skill” of accepting everyone with warmth and respect. Thus, the behaviors listed here as facilitating the progression of Sys are essentially those which the Universe Itself wishes to extend to all of us by the means of our voluntary manifestation of these actions to others; in a word: Love. The snubbing comes as a part of the Discipline the E has learned to accept and reflects the Universe ignoring those who act without virtue. Finally, rational efforts intended to explain the Sys as conspiracies, “chemical imbalances,” “Mental Illness” and so on are inadequate because a more parsimonious explanation is provided by the view that the Universe Itself can and does speak through all of us, our books, our music, art, behaviors and so on. The problem  for the individual who wants to “surf” the Collective Unconscious then becomes how to identify and respond to the Spirits that are acting through others; to recognize them and distinguish truth from the static of deceit.This is a learned skill.

 Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra openly admit on the Public Broadcasting System that God writes their books and they just collect the royalties. The observation that the Universe will teach us if we ask it to do so is of immense importance for Science. Students of all disciplines could benefit immensely from following Sys in their own specialties. The days are waning when individuals can take credit for the gifts that naturally “bubble up” in our minds. We are “Idea Trees.” Those opposed to this interpretation of the data are challenged to compete experimentally rather than with rhetoric.

Overall, it was found that Love was just as reasonable a motive for behavior as the personal profit of Adam Smith. Further, that if one seeks to learn and manifest the principles of righteousness, they never need to worry about anything because what they need will appear without even asking for it. Moreover, it seems that one’s dogma  is much less important than what one does, whatever the reason they do it. (Initially, the E was an agnostic who simply lived by his conscience.) When people are kind and helpful to each other, the Universe functions smoothly. When people squabble and fight, It doesn’t. One does not have to know how an automatic transmission works in order to drive a car. Keeping the rubber side down is enough for some of us.

Diagnostic discussion

Medical Clinics were considered as “Churches” in the sense that their stated mission was to serve others, and they had a carefully constructed Dogma that rested solidly on Medical Materialism. When understanding ignores Choice and assumes that physical and mental conditions can be explained by anatomical, physiological, chemical, genetic and similar factors, there is a decided danger that the Universe will serve up precisely what the Medical Investigator looks for, and recent psychological experiments (Gruber, 1999) indicate that the state of consciousness of the Investigator may well affect the results of experiments, diagnostic or other tests. To try to say this simply in quantum terms: Be careful because By looking for diseases, you may create them. 

 Ancient Scriptures have told us that “the wages of sin is death.” In modern language it might be said that misbehavior leads to physical disorder which may result in disease and death. One example might be the “type A” personality which is prone to heart attacks, or another the person whose worries cause an ulcer and so on. Often “diseases” may be cured by the placebo effect, in which the patient’s state of consciousness affects their health and recovery. It is pertinent to ask the question if a state of consciousness caused the disorder in the first place. 

A spiritual principle holds that nothing is ever “wrong” in God’s perfect Universe and if it seems so, it is because the person perceives it incorrectly. If so, it follows that the correct way to perceive  “disease” is as a  a naturally expected result caused by the improper use of a person’s consciousness. That is to say, if one is not getting good results, it is because they are “throwing the wrong levers” in their minds. While this is arguable, just suppose that it is true? In that case, a Medical Investigator may “cause” a disease in the same sense that observing a quantum particle causes it to manifest itself in a certain form. This point is not asserted, only mentioned as an alternative to assumptions which have been in place so long they have become accepted as fact when they may only be delusional explanations similar to the geocentric theory of the solar system. The assumption that disorders have their source in the hardware of the human organism leaves unexamined the idea that it may be the software that a person chooses that leads to problems; specifically that behavior may lead to death in which the apparent but mistakenly identified “cause” was disease. We can only tell if this is true or not by testing it. 

Evil tells us that we can ignore Conscience and do as we please without repercussion. Once this Idea is accepted, the next step is to explain disagreeable consequences as mere “glitches” which can be easily “fixed” by this or that little adjustment to the Universe. A class in Magic, Religion and Philosophy (Anth. 435) the E took winter term 1967 defined a sorcerer as a person who sought to control Nature by the means of potions as distinguished from a magician who used spells and incantations. Essentially. the aim of both was to “fix” the little “glitches” caused by the person’s behavior so that they could continue doing as they pleased. Today this seems ridiculous, but the reader will note that by the above definition, all physicians are “sorcerers.” Mental Health professionals might be classed as “magicians” to the extent they use language to achieve the same end of symptom relief. Both approaches leave unexamined the possibility that if a person lived in Harmony with the Design of the Universe, they wouldn’t have problems to begin with. To repeat: The problem may be due to the software a person chooses and not their hardware. Moreover, patients will simply shop for a doctor who permits them to do as they please and doctors become accessories by adopting popular misconceptions. In this way, they may become famous for developing treatments for “diseases” that you wouldn’t have if you were in harmony with your True Nature. Established dogma insists the Universe needs to be “fixed” instead of understood. Doctors who won’t pretend patients are “sick” instead of willful are ostracized. 

A more focussed question about behavior might be to ask if Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is caused when a person’s attempts to kill others prompts his immune system to attack his own body. That is to say that while he may not be aware of it, his body “knows” that he and his “enemy” comprise an inseparable whole. Behavior has it’s consequences and if he hates himself, perhaps he brings about his own destruction. For someone clever enough to sort out the variables in a useful way, this is a testable question. 

PTSD and other disorders might possibly manifest themselves in a variety of ways depending on the individual’s constitution such that the same cause appears as a variety of different “symptoms.” More clearly stated: The old paradigm of following “symptoms” to a “cause” may need to be reviewed in favor of asking in what ways the same behavior leads to different physical dysfunctions. What, for example, is the reason military people have a higher incidence of ALS (ALSA, 2007) and how many other disorders share a similar history? None of this is in the E’s area of expertise, but is offered as a speculation others might find interesting. The writings of John Eccles, Bruce Lipton, Gary Schwartz, Rupert Sheldrake, and others may interest the reader. The present work is only that of a grubby mechanic compared to their elegant formulations. Finally, one may ask why PTSD is classed as a “disorder” when it is highly predictable that people who go into combat will acquire it. The Manufacturer recommends against using ourselves this way. Isn’t the result what is naturally expected? If it hurts when you do that, don’t do that!

The Topic of Evil.

Free will means that people may do whatever they please without condemnation or reproach. One has the right to be wrong or choose Evil if they so please. Few people can get it right the first time; many saints were first soldiers or persecutors until they awakened to a better way. Spiritual Combat takes place inside, not outside. People are tempted to accuse, judge and hurt each other; this is self-destructive because it may possibly cause the accuser's own immune system to attack him, but the important point to be considered in this context is that accusing or judging people prompts them to raise counter arguments. Whenever people judge what is best, they automatically raise an opposite view. Similar to Newton’s Third Law of motion, this effect increases in importance in proportion to the emotional content of decisions. Even in simple situations such as which side of the street on which to put a pipeline, two opposing views will emerge with each side striving to get their way because it is judged as better. At the maximum level of importance, all decisive action is impaired. At the time of writing, the Iraqi Parliament is under great pressure to make decisions about their national unity, while the US Congress is similarly unable to deal with four problems of staggering importance: Health Care, Social Security, Immigration, and the GAO Comptroller’s warnings that the USA will be bankrupt shortly unless action is taken, yet Congress remains paralyzed. It seems the Iraqis have learned very well from the USA. But this is not a matter of “blame,” rather, it seems that this is a natural phenomena that indicates there are problems people are incapable of solving by themselves. These are some of the reasons Hitler was able to take power from those he called “weakling parliamentarians.” The alternatives seem to be Harmony with Nature or another Hitler.  So, it is said that only God can judge Good and Evil. People are told to love one another.

If the list of behaviors that integrated the E into Nature were reversed, it suggests that they would lead one to even greater estrangement from the Love that seems immanent in Nature. E was repeatedly led to avoid people who displayed these behaviors, and when others were hostile to him, the E was almost always moved to a new assignment. The presence of a separate Factor which organizes people into actions counter to those reported as facilitating Sys could shed light on the ancient problem of how Evil could exist. Clearly, there could be no free will in a Universe which was exclusively good and loving. Without choice as to whether one could give or not give, there could be no Love. Without the right to undertake other actions people would be equivalent to the social insects; it follows that Evil must exist for there to be choice. After everyone has had the opportunity to choose what they want to be like, Evil may be left behind, not necessarily destroyed. 

Devil is a word which means "the accuser.” To accuse anyone of anything is to manifest a spirit contrary to Nature. This is a rather subtle point which must be carefully considered. Nature consists of a variety of spirit Beings and people who subscribe to them. It does not judge Its children, but loves us as we are. The Devil, however, does not; accuses others of defects and rejects them as unworthy. To subscribe to this Consciousness joins with it in rejecting the offer to grow with the Cosmos. As the Cosmos grows, the Devil( Evil) will be left behind together with those people who reject the principle of Unconditional Love. Our choices made, free will having been exercised, we will be free to participate with the Unfolding Flower. Spiritual freedom seems to lie in ignoring Evil; learning to recognize the bait it uses to entice or provoke us and refusing to have anything to do with it. It is a matter of choice. We do not have to proceed if we do not wish to do so.

Subtly, Humanity has been lured into efforts to make things better on the outside by competing with and correcting each other. Lured is the key word here, for the real struggle for the hearts and minds of people is not outside like where to locate a pipeline, choose an economic system or a religion, but inside; the choice between loving each other or judging each other. Catholics and Protestants in Ireland or Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq were lured into believing they were doing "God's Will" by killing each other. “Christians” have been mortified by Jonestown and other disasters. “Muslims” have similar concerns. There is no organization that can rubber-stamp a person as a “good guy;” nor will any magic words suffice; it is our behavior that is important. Trying to control others inevitably leads to failure; the only thing we can control is ourselves and then only with the help of a Higher Power. Well, people seldom get it right the first time. Will we learn from this or not? To accuse is to lose to the Spirit of Pride, because the Enemy is inside. The E assiduously avoided accusing or judging anyone at anytime and further refused to become caught in defensive arguments because his own free choices need never be defended. Consequently, if accused of something, he simply remained silent, so when some young men were preparing to beat him up for wearing robes which they saw as a "dress," he stood silently with his hands locked behind him. In this instance, a Sy protected him when a big Italian boxer showed up to ask "Hey! What are you doing with my Buddy?" The problem vanished. The E had no need to defend himself. This is not quite the same story as the righteous man protected by a bear that comes out of the woods, which appears in many parables East and West, but it has the same theme. Because he was in Harmony with its design, the Universe had protected him. 

Sys resulted in a separate paper titled Dragons: Corporate Super-organisms which deals exclusively with the topic of Evil. As it seems that Evil does indeed exist, readers are well advised to carefully screen their own thoughts and feelings to be free of it. This will not be easy for Evil is profoundly insidious. What worked best for the E was to concentrate on the good behaviors and ignore others. Using mantras while walking and chants kept destructive thoughts from moving into consciousness. Following the Sys kept the E away from magic or other efforts to dominate Nature or people; nor would he even stay in the same place with those who espoused it. He would not even have taken a University of Oregon course on the “Dark Self,” if Sys had not led him to do so. The safest course is to follow the Sys closely, get away immediately and stay as far away from Evil as possible. What others choose is up to them.

As we really have free will, no one can tell us what to do. Consequently, if we ask for guidance, suggestions typically appear as metaphors or presentations of stories with parallel themes. For instance: When the E asked to get instructions on how best to be of service to others, he was taken to the movie Top Gun where pilots learned to “dog-fight” in aerial combat. Simultaneously, he met very aggressive people who seriously irritated or threatened him in a variety of ways. The Suggestion seemed to be to develop a skill at keeping his professional cool regardless of attack from others. (The attack comes from the outside, but the defense must be made on the inside.) Spoken of Spiritually as keeping one’s Center, the “Combat” was internal: to maintain a helpful attitude regardless of what others did. Blue Dragon students will certainly encounter similar situations and need to hold fast even to death. The OBD needs those who are willing to discipline themselves, but at some point, in order to learn the principles one must accept discipline without complaint or taking it personally. If this isn’t the reader’s cup of tea, there are other places to serve. No one ever has to do anything they don’t want to do.

The most the E can do for others is to follow the Directions; he cannot ask anyone to do anything, tell anyone anything; cannot even warn them beyond these papers. He cannot “save” anyone, is limited in how much he can speak with anyone and must apply discipline as required. May you all fare well!

References

ALSA. (2007). ALS IN THE MILITARY: UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCES OF MILITARY SERVICE. The Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association. Retrieved July 2, 2007 from:

 http://www.alsa.org/files/pdf/ALS_Military_Paper.pdf 

Eccles, J. http://nndb.com/people/041/000129651/

English, J. & Feng, Gia-Fu. (1972). The Tao Te Ching. New York: Vintage Books.

Ferguson, M. (1980). The Aquarian Conspiracy.  New York: Tarcher/Houghton Mifflin

Gruber, E. (1999). Psychic Wars: parapsychology in espionage and beyond. London:       Blandford.

James, W. (2007). Varieties of Religious Experience: A study in Human Nature. London: Routledge.

Lipton, B. http://www.brucelipton.com

Masunaga, Reiho. (1986). A Primer of Soto Zen. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

Merton, T. (1969). The Way of Chuang-Tzu. New Directions Publishing.

Pauli, W. & Jung, C. (2001). Atom and Archetype/ the Pauli/Jung letters 1932-1958. Ed by C. A. Meier. Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Register-Guard (2005). Ethiopian Lions save girl from captors, June 22, p. A15

Roth, R. (2002). Carl G. Jung’s Scarab Synchronicity. Retrieved July 9, 2007 from: 

http://www.psychovision.ch/synw/scarab_synchronicity_Jung.htm

Schwartz, G. http://www.drgaryschwartz.com

Sheldrake, R. http://www.sheldrake.org

DRAGONS

Corporate Super-organisms

Harmony

Blue Dragon Temple, Eugene OR.

“Ideas set hands about their several tasks.”

                                                                       -Amos Bronson Alcott

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

                                                                     -Pogo Possum

For the Innocent

DRAGONS

Corporate Super-organisms

Introduction

Millions of people believe that a malevolent Spirit seeks to destroy mankind, and explanations of disease that center on Spirit Invasion go back to the beginning of recorded history. Is this folk-wisdom merely superstition, or may there actually be something to it? Early explanations of disease in general and mental disorder in particular tended to be centered on Spirit Invasion. A boil or skin infection clearly showed something under  the skin, for example, and if one thinks of  bacteria as a “Spirit,” or as the mechanism by which a Spirit accomplishes it's invasion, the difference between spiritual and bacterial theories  of disease becomes largely a matter of terminology. Specific examples of this thinking are found in the Damascus Document of the Dead Sea Scrolls and seem to suggest that priest-physicians dealt with “spirits” of both life and death. (Wise, Abegg & Cook, 1996, p.62) A pathogen may take more than one form. Electrocution might even be thought of as a form of “Spirit Invasion;” certainly something “bad” gets inside of you. Similarly, intoxication with “spirits” may have been a way to understand disordered states of consciousness. Today we recognize the mosquito as the true vector of transmission for malaria; called the “lowland disease” by the Romans, it was once thought might be caused by inhaling “noxious vapors,” another variant of “Spirit Invasion.” Even the word "inspiration" suggests the intake of an animating spirit; this time in a  beneficial sense. Perhaps careful thinking might suggest ways that folklore could point the way to improved conceptions of disorder, disease and malevolent behavior. 

In Healing in the Second Temple Period, Hogan gives a wide review of early literature from Josephus, Philo, the Dead Sea scrolls, Hebrew and New Testament Scriptures together with the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha as well as other early books where he identifies five ancient spiritual theories of the cause of illness including: "1) God, for His own purposes, 2) intermediaries of God, 3) evil spirits (devils, fallen angels, Satan), 4) the stars and their movements and 5) sin." (Hogan, p. 302)  A modern interpretation of one cause of AIDS concerns irresponsible sexual activity (unsafe sex) which is close enough to "sin" that it could be compared to the ancient theory. Moreover, it is not either behavior or a pathogen that causes AIDS, but both this and that plus an infected partner as well. Keeping in mind that most conditions arise from such a concatenation, might it also be possible to develop a modern theory of illness, disease or disorder related to disturbances of an internal field or "Spirit" which might prompt or influence behavior? 

Social insects or animals, groups of birds and fish wheel, fly and behave as a group instead as a sequence of individuals. If it could be said that they are organically responding to a “Spirit” that forms them into a set of coordinated parts, might there also be, at a higher order of organization, a similar principle or “Spirit” that articulates people into meaningful and coherent relationships? Just as  magnetic or gravitational fields exert an influence on electrical or massive bodies, could there also be fields or “Spirits” that influence life forms? Is it possible that a Natural Order of human cooperative organization is disrupted by a competing principle? The Spirit of Evil is also said to be deceitful; to conceal It's existence and influence people below their usual level of consciousness, so that they act without full awareness of what they are doing, thinking they are doing good, when, as the doctors who drained blood from their patients in olden times, were doing harm. If such a competing and destructive Spirit exists, it could give insight into some behaviors which are baffling to more conventional understanding; for example the oft-repeated acts of murder-suicide that take place in workplaces, courts, schools, churches, post-offices and restaurants all across the world. The present explanation that someone “snapped” is of no use whatever.

To speak of “mental disorder”  implies that a natural process is somehow disturbed, perhaps for toxic, organic or other causes; to speak of “mental disease” implies that a pathogen is at work and a cure possible by disrupting it's effects; but what of the case of the individual whose thought is neither disordered nor impaired, yet who has become a predator on his own species? If a social insect or animal suddenly turns on it's fellows and exhibits renegade behavior destructive to the others, it is clear that something is “wrong” with the hill, hive or herd because it has stopped acting in accord with it's true or “natural” tendencies. What then is the process by which people become destructive of each other?  The term “sociopath” tells us nothing beyond simple description.

The term "Mental Illness" is of little use except perhaps to mislead the public. The word "ill" itself means of unsound mind or body, but perhaps significantly, another important meaning is "wicked," as in an “ill” wind or omen. Diagnosis can be a very misleading process. If, for example, one views a set of behaviors as "symptoms" of an underlying disorder, one may thereby "discover" a disorder that doesn't exist except in terms of behaviors which in another frame of reference may be entirely acceptable. For instance, it is possible to identify the behavior of people like St. Francis of Assisi, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Thomas Aquinas, (who, after an ecstatic experience renounced all his rational works.) ascetics, hermits and similar people as "schizophrenic" simply because one doesn't understand their supra-rational experiences and interprets them as faulty because they aren't rational in conventional terms. Of course they aren't rational. Dancing, swimming, twiddling thumbs or playing solitaire might also be  "irrational," yet aren't considered "symptoms" because they are so common.  Billions of dollars annually are spent on sports; activities  which have no rational goal, yet to speak of Obsessive-Football-Syndrome would be madness itself. These activities are a matter of choice even if, at times, they may cause problems. In many church groups ecstasy states, speaking in tongues and other behaviors are not only accepted, but honored. It is arrogant to "diagnose" these behaviors from one's own narrow frame of reference. If one wants to understand such behaviors, one must view them from their own irrational frame of reference and cannot remain  a remote and detached observer. 

Mental disturbances may arise from a wide variety or combination of causes including organic  determinants like genetic abnormality, metabolic disorders, physical trauma and so on while early learning and psychological trauma provide other explanations. Toxins, parasites and similar things may also cause disturbances. Importantly, however, there are no modern formulations of disturbance of "Spirit." Science, it seems has assumed that even though Religious traditions have warned us of Evil for thousands of years, there simply couldn't be such a thing, and so it has been excluded as "unscientific." If, however, what appear to be "random acts of violence" are in fact not random but symptomatic of a disturbance in a Field or "Spirit" that organizes the whole of humanity, it follows that these atrocities may be a key to understanding laws that govern anti-social behavior.

The present paper seeks to explore these questions with an open mind as to the possible existence of Ideas which may generate predatory behavior. The human psyche will be examined for phenomena of  consciousness associated with malevolent behavior most apparent in extreme conditions such as those found in concentration camps. Of specific interest are both the Ideas that prompt guards to mistreat  prisoners and also those states of consciousness that help the prisoners to survive. The intent is to provide a view of Consciousness which combines the modern scientific hypothetico-deductive method with more traditional formulations so that a more satisfactory understanding of complex behavior is achieved. 

As the source of malignant behavior, Evil is a distasteful topic. The primary way Evil is said to persist is by remaining hidden; many of the quoted references will be from partisan or controversial sources; there may be some temptation to discard or discount the data prior to considering it.   Moreover, it is difficult to make a fearless appraisal of one's own group or self; it is far easier to deny even the slightest trace of Evil in one's own heart, for there especially, according to tradition, Evil justifies Itself, pretending goodness while It leads the unwary astray. 

Nothing is “proved” in the discussion which follows; it is up to the reader to decide whether the formulation has any utility in simplifying monumentally complex and confusing phenomena. The ultimate test of the concepts presented here is whether they will produce testable hypotheses useful to people working in the field. 

The present discussion focuses on the predatory phenomena of Nazi Concentration camps and the ideas of Eugenics which led to them. Prison camps of both combatants in the American War Between the States will be examined; camps of the Allies during WWII, and of the internment of Japanese-American citizens during WWII. Present controversy about the American camp at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are discussed as part of the War on Terror. A review of the stages of Genocide is presented together with the number of genocides since 1945 and continuing to present day.  The focus is not on finding one party or another culpable, but on identifying possible Dragons of Consciousness: Are there Ideas that contend with each other for the hearts and minds of people? What is the source of malevolent behavior? Does Evil exist?

Dragons

Dragons have been chosen as a metaphor for internal phenomena of consciousness because they follow a natural historical pattern: they already exist as archetypes of human tendencies. Europe and Asia, Swedes and Aztecs, most all cultures have Dragon myths. The way that Dragons appear is by manifesting themselves in the thoughts, words and deeds of those who subscribe to them. Strictly speaking, Dragons have no objective existence, but are phenomena of inner, subjective experience. Nevertheless, on mediaeval maps  in unexplored or unfamiliar places one could often read: “Here be Dragons.” In modern times we are amused by such notions, yet if one interprets this as a projection of the explorer's feelings, it seems quite clear that  it is the Dragon of Fear that is identified as having a specific location on the earth's surface rather than it's true home in the explorer's heart. This projection of internal states of consciousness objectifies or manifests an Idea which may be expressed in many ways as idols, gargoyles, paintings, folk-stories, fables, legends,  and so on. In this way, an Idea or Dragon requires human participation in order to manifest an objective existence.  A winged, fire-breathing Dragon may be understood in allegorical terms as representing omni-present (mobile), powerful people who blast their victims with lies; a red Dragon as one who is consumed with anger or rage and a green Dragon as a manifestation of Jealousy. Colors and other details depend on traditional cultural contexts. Dragons come in more than one variety: opposed to the Great Red Dragon of the Book of Revelation 12:3 which personifies Evil, Rage and Deceit is the Asian Blue Dragon of Love and Wisdom which loyally defends Righteousness. Dragons are traditionally said to have immense wisdom and to be faithful allies as well as fearful foes. The definition used throughout this paper is that Dragons are Ideas together with their accompanying emotions as they manifest themselves through the actions of those people who subscribe to them. Just as people are multicellular organisms, they also voluntarily comprise the Super-organisms here called Dragons. Dragons may be thought of as having motivations of their own: firstly to reduce internal conflict and establish dominance within individuals who subscribe to them, and secondly to propagate themselves interpersonally either by provoking or evoking similar behavior in other people. In general, the Red Dragons are seen as propagating by provoking others to copy malevolent and destructive behavior, while Blue Dragons may  evoke exemplary behavior.  Dragons are both singular and plural in number: To speak of a Dragon may include all of It's subsidiaries and adherents or refer to only one person.

For illustration, if a prisoner who is afraid he will not get enough to eat makes no action, it is only internal conflict. However, if he takes action to get more than his share,  prompts others to do the same and causes a pervading aura of selfishness or a panic, then the entire organic whole of the people, the emotion and the grasping behavior constitutes a Dragon, and it would be entirely appropriate to speak of the Dragon of Panic. The behavior can be either rational as where those responsible for rations might cheat by theft or inaccurate scales; or it may be irrational as grabbing food off another person's plate. Competition between Dragons is common. Sharing, kindness and protecting the sick or weak is diametrically opposed by the Red Dragons. Evil is equated with the Red Dragon: a malevolent Idea, its impelling emotions and the people who manifest it.

With Dragons defined in terms of Ideas, it is clearly necessary to ask what Ideas are, but Ideas are a topic for investigation, not definition. Although undetectable by the five traditional senses, Ideas clearly manifest their existence through people. A building, for instance, is the objectification of an invisible Idea that originated in the mind of it's architect, and archaeologists, historians and others quite rightly seek to understand the Idea that generated the great pyramid at Giza. Similarly, the mediaeval European cathedrals in some cases took centuries to build. For some involved in their construction, it was only a way to make a living; for others, they were an inspiration, a dedication and a life's work. Many, no doubt saw them as a waste of time and money better spent on the poor, or even war. Nevertheless, the Idea persisted even though it's adherents came and went according to their own fluctuating interests and finally their mortality. Today the cathedrals remain as monuments and symbols. Buildings are so important as manifestations of Ideas that the World Trade Center was attacked by those who hated the Idea behind it.

The drawings and book of specifications which tradespeople use to construct a building are, so to speak, Ideas in "hard copy," an intermediate stage in the manifestation of the idea. Only those who know the language of the plans, specifications, mathematics and idiom of the designers will be able to understand the mental image or Idea in the mind of the architect. Plans for the same identical building written in Chinese, for example, are incomprehensible to most Westerners and vice-versa. Similarly, the genocide of hundreds of thousands of Tutsi dramatized in the film Hotel Rwanda (Ho & George, 2004) is impossible for the rest of the world to understand because of an inability to make the distinction between Tutsi and Hutu. Bewildered, it is easier to dismiss the event as incomprehensible rather than to trace back and discover it's origin in the human mind. The fact that similar events happen regularly and repeatedly indicates the necessity for identifying their root source and devising ways to alleviate if not to prevent them. 

Just as the presence of a magnetic field can be inferred from the action of a compass, a building infers the existence of a natural phenomenon as well, and Ideas are thus an object of Discovery rather than Definition. It is appropriate to ask the scientific questions: What are Ideas? How do we get them and where do they come from? What are the Mechanics of Consciousness that result in the objective manifestation of Ideas? This paper, however, has a more immediate objective: What is the nature of the Idea that prompts the construction and operation of Concentration Camps? Do the camps warrant the inference that the Red Dragon of Evil exists?

It is imperative that the reader keep in mind that this discussion does not attempt to “prove” anything; rather, the intent is to provide a sensible model to understand complex phenomena that might bridge the gap between science and religion and to serve only as a guide or framework for the student  to utilize as he experiences these things for him or herself.  

Hitler sometimes spoke of the Nazi party as a “great dragon” and this is not only an appropriate use of the metaphor, but in a sense as the Nazis wound through the streets in their torchlight parades, they formed a visible manifestation of that very Dragon. Similarly, Chinese use Dragons in their festivals: 

The festival of lights on 1/15 honors the resurgence of Yang in the heavens.                             Lanterns are carried through the city and decorate the temples. A huge dragon, 150-200 feet long, dances through the streets in chase of a bright red ball which represents the rebirth of Tao in the cosmos. When the dragon swallows the ball, (end of the procession) the people of the village try to walk under the dragon, to be blessed by Tao present in the belly. The same dragons stand rampant on temple roof tops, waiting to devour the flaming red pearl, a sign of Tao's presence in the village temple. (Saso, 1990, p. 187-188).

Allegorically, the festival ritual acts out the incorporation of the Spirit of Light (Chi or in Western terms the Holy Spirit)

 which appears symbolically in the street as a Dragon composed of It's adherents. Asian dragons however, come in more than one flavor and there are some who may be malevolent as well. 

Modern business corporations, governments, religious or other organizations  which exist as separate entities from both employees and constituents are here considered as mechanisms over which Dragons seek to exert control. Impermanent organizations wax or wane; empires come and go according to cultural and other factors, while Dragons are perceived as timeless Ideas that exist in the Realm or Dimension of Consciousness. Nevertheless, temporal organizations too, may become objectifications of Dragons which act subjectively within individuals. As examples, persons who are enthusiastic and loyal adherents to temporal organizations may often be given the opportunity for increasing responsibility and attain positions of  temporal power, while others who adhere to timeless Principles  may experience “coincidences” (synchronisms) which further their service even though there is no temporal advancement. In the first case, the process is the familiar social advancement  while in the latter case, a person's position is more analogous to changing leadership in flocks of migratory birds. That is, one is dependent on rewards and punishments while the other results from natural organic fluctuations; temporal leaders control by command while genuine leaders, lifted up by their fellows, emerge as examples of a Natural Man who accurately perceives the needs of the Whole and spontaneously steps up to meet them. A modern example will be presented in the text. “Coincidences” which advance natural people may be seen as resulting not from some “conspiracy” or hidden agenda, but as a natural result of dedication to Principle; a person of equal status recognizes another's loyalty and dedication and spontaneously supports it, while temporal advancement is enabled by those higher in an organization. The two words organization and organism may help to elucidate the difference. The folk wisdom of “what goes around comes around” is also a good example: Anyone who consistently benefits others will also benefit simply because just as water runs downhill, the Universe is arranged that way: a person's behavior evokes like actions, and birds of a feather flock together; a “pecking order” is unnecessary.

Stages of Genocide

Before reviewing conditions in Prison camps, we turn for a useful analytical tool to the stages of genocide developed by Gregory Stanton who presents a conceptualization of genocide that differentiates eight stages. In paraphrase and quotation these include: Classification where people are sorted into “us and them” categories; Symbolization by name, appearance, dress or other external characteristics; Dehumanization where the members of one group are equated with diseases, vermin, demons, rotten fruit or other undesirable things.  Organization into labeled  persecution groups like the  Crips or Bloods, Rebels, Yankees, Commies, Terrorists, Heretics, Infidels, Insurgents and yes, even “Bad Apples.” Polarization where moderate leaders are suppressed and extremist groups emerge; Preparation as victims are identified and separated out as lists are drawn up and people are segregated as in the Japanese-American internment camps. The Extermination phase begins because the killers do not believe their victims to be fully human. Stanton continues: 

When it is sponsored by the State, the armed forces often act together with militias to do the killing.

Denial is the eighth stage that always follows a genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. They deny that they committed any crimes, and often blame what happened on the victims. They block investigation of the crimes, and continue to govern until driven from power by force, when they flee into exile. (Stanton, 1996, p. 2-3).^. Italics are those of the present author. 

Nazi Death Camps

In his book Man's Search for Meaning about his experiences in the German camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl asked how it was possible that people could commit such atrocities on each other. At one point he answers this question by saying:

First, among the guards, there were some sadists, sadists in the purest clinical sense.

Second, these sadists were always selected when a really severe detachment of guards was needed. 

There was great joy at our work site when we had permission to warm ourselves for a few minutes (after two hours of work in the bitter frost) in front of a little stove which was fed with twigs and scraps of wood. But there were always some foremen who found a great pleasure in taking this comfort from us. How clearly their faces reflected this pleasure when they not only forbade us to stand there but turned over the stove and dumped its lovely fire into the snow! When the SS took a dislike to a person, there was always some special man in their ranks known to have a passion for, and to be highly specialized in, sadistic torture, to whom the unfortunate prisoner was sent. 

Third, the feelings of the majority of the guards had been dulled by the number of years in which, in ever- increasing doses, they had witnessed the brutal methods of the camp. These morally and mentally hardened men at least refused to take active part in sadistic measures. But they did not prevent others from carrying them out.

Fourth, it must be stated that even among the guards there were some who took pity on us. I shall only mention the commander of the camp from which I was liberated. It was found after the liberation—only the camp doctor, a prisoner himself, had known of it previously—that this man had paid no small sum of money from his own pocket in order to purchase medicines for his prisoners from the nearest market town. But the senior camp warden, a prisoner himself, was harder than any of the SS guards. He beat the other prisoners at every slightest opportunity, while the camp commander, to my knowledge, never once lifted his hand against any of us.

It is apparent that the mere knowledge that a man was either a camp guard or a prisoner tells us almost nothing. Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn. The boundaries between groups overlapped and we must not try to simplify matters by saying that these men were angels and those were devils. Certainly, it was a considerable achievement for a guard or foreman to be kind to the prisoners in spite of all the camp's influences, and, on the other hand, the baseness of the prisoner who treated his own companions badly was exceptionally contemptible. Obviously the prisoners found the lack of character in such men especially upsetting, while they were profoundly moved by the smallest kindness received from any of the guards. I remember how one day a foreman secretly  gave me a piece of bread which I knew he must have saved from his breakfast ration. It was far more than the  small piece of bread which moved me to tears at that time. It was the human "something" which this man also gave to me—the word and look which accompanied the gift. 

From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two—the "race" of the decent man and the "race" of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people. In this sense, no group is of "pure race" --and therefore one occasionally found a decent fellow among the camp guards.

Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its depths. Is it surprising that in those depths we again found only human qualities which in their very nature were a mixture of good and evil? The rift dividing good from evil, which goes through all human beings, reaches into the lowest depths and becomes apparent even on the bottom of the abyss which is laid open by the concentration camp. (Frankl, 1984, pp. 93-94).

It is precisely this rift between Good and Evil which requires our present attention. Frankl concludes that “ ...no group consists  entirely of decent or indecent people.” he also uses the word “race” in a metaphorical manner just the word Dragon is used here. That is to say, the ideas, feelings and behaviors define the Dragon to which a person belongs. Frankl's “races” of decent or indecent men pervade all groups of society and are found everywhere. It is not Ideas that belong to people, but people who belong to Ideas and regardless of the circumstances in which we find ourselves, we always have a choice as to how we respond to those circumstances.  To return evil for evil is a matter of choice.

The blind hero of the French Resistance Jacques Lusseyran who survived fifteen months in Buchenwald wrote  of those who collaborated with the Germans:

They symbolized the fact that Hitler could count cowardice without a country and without boundaries among his allies ... they proved that Nazism was not a historical disaster confined to a single time and a single place, a German disaster ... They proved that Nazism was a germ to be found everywhere, a sickness endemic to the human race. It was enough to cast a few handfuls of fear to windward in order to gather in the next season's harvest of treason and torture. (Lusseyran, 1998, p.193). 

Lusseyran here refers to a notion not uncommon at the time that Ideas were like germs that resided in the brain similar to the ancient formulation of Spirit Invasion.  He further characterizes Evil as Frankl does: transcending all groups or boundaries and resident in the human mind. The present conception is that people are like “mixing faucets” which run both hot and cold water together into a composite stream. So too, people in their everyday lives at times are kind or unkind to each other in varying degrees; one may even simultaneously deliver a compliment and a tort. To say a person is “pure Love” means that  he/she never allows the other competing Dragon to manifest Itself through them; to speak of “pure evil” means that Love or Compassion is never able to make it's way through. What then, was the appeal of the Ideas that made the Nazis choose predatory behavior so fanatically?

Eugenics and Nazism 

As one reads Frankl or views holocaust documentaries, it is difficult to appreciate the power and appeal of the Nazi ideas that ultimately resulted in the atrocities of the Death Camps. They began rather innocently with the ideas of the British psychologist Francis Galton who was a follower of Darwinian ideas. From plant breeding and  animal studies, it seemed clear that behavior was under some sort of genetic control and Galton believed that the human species could be improved by selective breeding, social programs and education and training to increase productivity.

  In 1865 Galton proposed that humans take charge of their own evolution, but it was not until 1883 that he invented a name for this program of selective breeding: eugenics, from the Greek eugenes for "good in birth." Galton defined eugenics broadly, as the "science of improving stock, which is by no means confined to questions of judicious mating, but which ... takes cognisance of all influences that tend in however remote degree to give the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had.” (Paul, 1995, p. 3).

Caste and class were well-established features of a society where European aristocracy had flourished in a climate of genetic superiority for centuries, so the conclusion that good behavior resulted from good breeding was already generally accepted. Hitler's political program centered on the assumption that  undesirable behavior (evil) was organic and endemic to race, but there was also a strong Spiritual component. In Mein Kampf, he wrote:

For me and for all true National Socialists there is but one doctrine: people and fatherland.

What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted  it by the creator of the universe. 

Every thought and every idea, every doctrine and all knowledge, must serve this purpose. And everything must be examined from this point of view and used or rejected according to its utility. Then no theory will stiffen into a dead doctrine, since it is life alone that all things must serve. (Hitler, 1943, pp. 214-215).

The italics are those of Hitler himself. This Idea seems well-meant and when it was written in the early nineteen-twenties, few could predict how it would manifest itself by 1943; it was largely rhetoric until Krystallnacht in November 1938 when the Nazis acted to harm Jews. The dedication of the individual to the good of the whole lent a spiritual tone to his political program and the statement is actually not much different from one made by JFK which said to “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” The perennial dilemma of the State is to set a healthy balance between service to individuals and the duties required of them. While it seems unselfish to go to war and kill or die for one's country, the deceit that lurks in this Idea is that when loyalty to one's country or ethnic group divides our  species, it sets us against each other, substitutes  group  for individual selfishness and sets up a “false god” of the Nation State. If one is certain that evil resides in some other group, then it follows that just as a physician excises a tumor, the Organic Whole can be made healthy again by their removal. Later it would become clearer that when one tries to “kill” evil, one becomes it, but in the nineteen-thirties, that was not at all obvious. If behavior is assumed to arise from genetic control, eugenics makes perfect sense from a Darwinian perspective. Suppose, however, the Lamarkian view of evolution has something to say for it; in that case, the genetic endowment of the progeny is dependent on the experience of the parent. Suppose there are feedback loops or other combinations and permutations far beyond our understanding. We do not understand, for example, how apparently identical cells “know” to become left or right hand, yet somehow Nature manages for the most part to make sure that no one has “two left feet.” With such simple questions unanswered, how dare we take evolution into our own hands? The complication is that we humans always seem to think we know more than we do and even enough to control our own Destiny. Who understands Love or the factors that attract people to each other? Who is to judge? 

Black, in War Against the Weak, says Indiana was the first state to pass a eugenics law in 1907, and continues:

Although some 6,244 state-sanctioned operations were logged from 1907 to July of 1925, three-fourths of these were in just one state: California. ...Under California's sweeping eugenics law, all feebleminded or other mental patients were sterilized before discharge, and any criminal found guilty of any crime three times could be asexualized upon the discretion of a consulting physician. (Black, 2003, p. 122).  

It was not until 1924 that Virginia passed a similar law. In 1927,  (Buck v. Bell) the Supreme Court of the United States voted 8 to 1 to uphold the sterilization of one Carrie Buck, an inmate of the Lynchburg Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and Feeble-minded, stating that it did not violate her civil rights. 

In his famous decision in that case, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote:   "It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. ... Three generations of imbeciles is enough.” (Paul, p. 83).

Twenty-nine other states including Oregon

  passed similar laws and the grounds for sterilization varied widely from State to State:

Most were adjudged feebleminded, insane, or criminal; many were guilty of the crime of being poor. Many were deemed “moral degenerates.” Seven hundred were classed as "other." Some were adjudged medically unacceptable. All told, by the end of 1940, no fewer than 35,878 men and women had been sterilized or castrated-almost 30,000 of them after Buck v. Bell. (Black,  p. 123).

When the forty-four year old Hitler came to power in 1933 after only fourteen years of political activity, his first priority was to enact the Virginia Law  which they called the “Law for the Prevention of Defective Progeny.” Hitler had been gassed during WWI and had spiritual experiences of a near-death nature. Inferred from Mein Kampf, one of these experiences was the perception of the Aryan race as an organic whole; a superior organism which among it's various branches such as the British, had brought Law, Ethics and Civilization to the whole world. (At the time, some 25% or more of the earth's population was in the British Empire) He also perceived other races, especially the Jews as parasites on the Aryan Organism, and added Gypsies, Negroes, Poles, homosexuals, pedophiles, psychotics and others to a long list who were seen as predatory. Slavs, for example, were labeled sub-humans who “carried the microbe of Communism.”

 The SS

 began to perceive themselves as akin to “noble knights” performing unpleasant but necessary social “surgery” in order to protect the purity of the German Ethnic Nation.  As the Nazis became more Draconian, the American interest in eugenics faded until it seemed that the Nazis were initiators of the practice instead of taking an Americanized  British Idea to it's extreme. Nazi fanaticism may have been instrumental in keeping the American eugenics programs from making similar transgressions, but the momentum of the movement continues to the present day.  

Although the ERO [Eugenics Record Office] stopped functioning in 1939, America's eugenic laws did not. Tens of thousands of Americans continued to be forcibly sterilized, institutionalized and legally prevented from marriage on the basis of racial and eugenic laws. During the 1940s some 15,000 Americans were coercively sterilized, almost a third of them in California. In the fifties, about ten thousand were sterilized. In the sixties, thousands more were sterilized. All told, an estimated 70,000 were eugenically sterilized in the first seven decades of the twentieth century; the majority were women. California consistently outdistanced every other state. (Black, p. 398).

Beginning with the assumption that evil resulted from “bad bloodlines,” Hitler first identified Jews as parasitic and Germans as good. To be sure, it was still necessary to “weed out” the feeble-minded, the deviant and the mentally disturbed, but Germans were good and Jews and other “sub-humans” were bad. In the present view, this simple formula, but more importantly Hitler's assumption that he knew better than Nature how the human species should develop led to the horrors of the Nazi death camps. 

With 20:20 hindsight, it is popularly supposed Hitler was a malevolent man who deliberately devised hateful ways to gain power and apply it to the destruction of others. If instead he were at least initially a well-meaning person who was seduced by a predatory Idea, (And If he himself was not, there certainly were millions of Germans who were), then the same thing could happen again: those who wish to “ stamp out” evil instead become it as they try to assert their will over others.  

Pride is the failing that leads to telling others how to live instead of listening to them and seeking to further their interests instead of one's own. Someone certain they already know what you are trying to tell them doesn't listen, and so may as well be deaf and blind to your presentation; contempt prior to investigation guarantees that prideful persons remain ignorant. Physicians, who, because of their extensive education and training are particularly tempted to think they know better than others, are especially susceptible to Pride and so it was not surprising to find many of them enthusiastic about eugenics and also working for the Nazis. Josef Mengele, M.D. Ph. D. who performed eugenic experiments on twins at Auschwitz  was described by Black:

... Mengele considered himself a warrior in the battle for eugenic supremacy. ... Martina Puzyna, saved from death in order to work with Mengele, recalled, "He believed you could create a new super-race as though you were breeding horses. ... He was mad about genetic engineering." A prisoner pathologist forced to work closely with Mengele wrote that the Angel of Death was obsessed with "the secret of the reproduction of the race. To advance one step in the search to unlock the secret of multiplying the race of superior beings destined to rule was a noble goal." …

Shortly after arriving at Auschwitz, ... Mengele had his pick of assistants from the finest doctors and pathologists in Europe, who came to Auschwitz condemned in sealed boxcars. ... Miklos Nyiszli became one of Mengele's favorite assistants. Nyiszli’s task was to dissect the endless torrent of special corpses and create meticulous postmortem reports. For this process, Mengele would not settle for a typical ramshackle, makeshift concentration camp facility. Instead, amid the filth and squalor of Auschwitz, Mengele requisitioned and created a modern well equipped pathology lab. (Black,  p. 356-357).

To say “mad about genetic engineering” is an ironic understatement, yet it seems clear that Mengele was not psychotic or mentally ill, nor did he exhibit disordered mental processes. If it can be applied to anyone, the word “evil” seems most appropriate in his case; if it exists, this is the Red Dragon at work. 

It is noted that the Mad Doctor had little difficulty in getting assistants in a nightmarish world where those who do not experiment upon others are themselves experimented upon. To what extent do these assistants share culpability? Who can blame them for trying to save their own lives? Yet how do they differ from those who were “only following orders?” Is a prisoner-physician performing autopsies morally superior to a teenage guard intimidated by his sergeant? Caught in circumstances beyond their control, people suffered together. 

Nor was Mengele alone. In Mengele: The Complete Story, Posner & Ware note:

One of Mengele's Auschwitz colleagues, Dr. Johann Kremer kept a diary ..."Sept 9: This morning I received most welcome news from my lawyer ... that I was divorced from my wife as of the first of the month. Later was present as the physician at the flogging of eight camp inmates and at one execution by shooting with a small calibre [sic] gun. Got soap flakes and two cakes of soap.” (Posner & Ware, 2000, p. 22)

...Two SS doctors were assigned to duty at the railhead to examine each new transport. ... Most SS doctors considered the selections the most stressful of all their camp duties. Dr. Ella Lingrens said: "some like Werner Rhode who hated his work, and Hans Koenig who was deeply disgusted by the job, had to get drunk before they appeared on the ramp. Only two doctors performed the selections without stimulants of any kind: Dr. Josef Mengele and Dr. Fritz Klein. Dr. Mengele was particularly cold and cynical." (Posner & Ware,  p. 26).

But how had Mengele gotten this way? Thirty-two years-old when assigned to Auschwitz, he had only been twenty-two when Hitler gained power in 1933. The eldest of three sons, according to Posner he had been raised by rather cold parents in a strict religious setting. His parents owned a successful factory and he early enjoyed a position of luxury and power in his community. He studied hard at the Munich University and earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology by 1935. A double-major, he completed his medical studies and began work in the Leipzig University medical Clinic. In 1937 he was:

... appointed a research assistant at the prestigious Third Reich Institute for Heredity, Biology and Racial Purity at the University of Frankfort where he joined the staff of one of Europe's foremost geneticists, Professor Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, who was devoting much of his time to twin research. (Posner, & Ware, p. 11).

He joined the Nazi Party in 1937 at age 26, received his M.D. Degree in 1938 and joined the military service in 1940, when he was posted to the regular army as a medical officer. Posner continues:

In January 1942 Mengele joined the medical corps of the Waffen SS's Viking division. It eventually penetrated farther into Soviet territory that any other German unit deployed after the Russian offensive launched the previous June. Most of Mengele's time was spent back of the front line in a defensive position, perhaps fighting partisans. In July the Viking division moved up to the front to engage in the battle for Rostow and Bataisk, a battle lasting five bloody days. It was during this period that Mengele won his Iron Cross First Class. Irene [his wife]recalls, "He got his Iron Cross because he rescued two wounded soldiers out of a burning tank under enemy fire and gave them medical first aid." A senior officer later wrote that Mengele had "proved himself splendidly in front of the enemy," and the Viking divisional Medical Officer wrote at the time that he was a "specially talented medical officer." He was also awarded the Black Badge for the Wounded and the Medal for the Care of the German People. (Posner & Ware, p. 17).

This decorated war hero of an elite special forces unit was the young doctor appointed in May, 1943 to Auschwitz. When had he, in his short five-year professional career made the choice that would lead him to become known as the Angel of Death? Research grants obtained with his mentor Verschuer enabled continued unspeakable experimentation on twins. In January of 1945 he began thirty-three years of fear, insecurity, anxiety and depression as an international fugitive. He had hoped to become a renowned scientist listed in the encyclopedia, yet now is included as one of the worst criminals of all time. He had a stroke while swimming and died by drowning in Brazil in 1978. His life had been destroyed as surely as all the others. No cheers are in order anywhere; corrupted by malignant Ideas and playing God, drunk doctors decided who lived and who died; there were no “winners” at Auschwitz. 

This author has a good deal of sympathy for the doctors assigned to triage at prison camps. In war especially, Triage by its very nature sorts people into groups to be helped immediately, those to be helped later and and those to be abandoned as beyond help. It is a perfectly rational way to apportion scarce resources, yet also heartless. It is a monstrous job that no-one wants to do, yet not everyone doing it is a monster, at least to begin with. What it does to those stuck in such a job may be another matter especially if you cannot quit; thent is easier to change your mind than your job. Bring the body and the mind follows; you become what you rehearse. This author had also served on the “on ramp” at a mental hospital and his test result sent people to different treatment units. He never was responsible for lobotomies or electroshock, but neither did he understand the destructive results of inappropriate medication. He was guilty of helping to choose patients to discharge when political considerations closed the hospitals. Many died on the streets or wound up in prison as a result. When you are discharged from the hospital and told “there is nothing more we can do for you,” you know which group you are in. And so the author understands both horns of this dilemma. Truly, none of us are capable of judging anyone else. We can only admit our own mistakes and try to correct them. First, we must become aware of the way deceitful Ideas have misled us and put us in positions which it seems are inescapable.

The American Holocaust: Civil War Concentration Camps

Turning now to the American War between the States, it can be theorized that both Red and Blue Dragons manifested themselves through a wide variety of the participants. First, an overview of the development of concentration camps and a synopsis of the prison systems of both North and South is provided; this is followed by the reports of individual soldiers who served in these camps. In an excellent modern review, Capt. Gwynn Tucker of the U.S. Army wrote in Andersonville Prison: Lessons in organizational Failure:

On February 25, 1864, the gates closed; five hundred men were locked within the confines of a sixteen-and-a-half acre log enclosure tucked safely away in southwest Georgia. This contingent was the first of 45,613 prisoners who would eventually be sent to this stockade in southern Georgia to be held in this secluded pine forest. The horrors and depravity which ensued became famous; the prison and small town became infamous throughout the world. The conditions in Camp Sumter, known as Andersonville in the history books, were the culmination of all the problems that had faced the almost non-existent and certainly overburdened administrative and logistical organizations of the Confederacy. 

The history of Andersonville does not begin with the arrival of the first contingent of the prisoners, nor does it end with the departure of the last. Andersonville's roots lie in the nature of the war being fought--its history traceable to the Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon. Its end has not yet been seen. A “war criminal” has been hanged, the “bloody shirt” has been waved, and tears have been wept, but the memories and emotions surrounding Andersonville live on in the hearts and eyes of those who read about it or visit the rolling landscape and cemetery that once were part of the prison camp.

The coming of the American Civil War marked the opening of a new age of warfare for the world. All elements of armed forces-air, land and sea- were used in the struggle. After the war, hundreds of books, articles, diaries, and volumes of letters were published condoning or condemning one side or the other. Possibly the subject most written about was the treatment received by prisoners of war. The war had barely begun when the first allegations of mistreatment began to be circulated. By the end of the war, a scant four years later, six books or major articles had been published on the subject. During the sixty-nine years following the war, at least two hundred thirty-nine more were published. 

The allegations grew out of complaints by former prisoners or their relatives who claimed that the opposing side had conspired to wreak vengeance by destroying the prisoners of war. After analysis, it is apparent, however, that "...the atrocities of the prison camps were only phases of the greater atrocity of war itself." Although much has been written about the prison camps, especially Andersonville, very little has been written about the effects of the failing organization on the people involved-either as prisoners, guards, or the civilian populace. Also, very little effort has been expended analyzing the failure of the organization itself.

There can be no doubt that the civil war prison camps were failures. For the first time in the history of warfare, large numbers of prisoners were held for extensive periods of time. The Adjutant-General of the United States, F.C. Ainsworth, set the figures at 193,743 Northerners (Union) and 214,865 Southerners (Confederate) held in confinement during the war. Of these, over 30,000 Union and 26,000 Confederate prisoners died in captivity; thus, an effective 12 percent of the captives died in Northern prisons and 15.5 percent of the captives died in Southern camps.

Although few people did anything to lessen the suffering of the prisoners held in their own midst, many complained of the treatment given prisoners by the enemy; all the while, prisoners on both sides starved, froze, and died. Those who saw the lamentable conditions in which the prisoners were forced to live were shocked to the depths which war had pushed the human existence. A Georgia girl wrote in her diary, “...Oh, what a horrible thing war is when stripped of all its ‘pomp and circumstance.'” She then tried to alleviate her own suffering by adding, “And yet, what else could we do? The Yankees themselves are really more to blame than we ...” (Tucker, 1992, pp. `1-3) 

This young woman displays the denial typical of those involved in

 genocide. Tucker continues in a fine synopsis of prisoner of war camps:

The taking and holding of large numbers of prisoners of war is a relatively recent addition to the conduct of warfare. It is a direct result of the use of large citizen armies as developed during the wars of the French Revolution and the ensuing Napoleonic wars. Under long-standing conventions of war, prisoners were taken and held pending an exchange based on rank; those who could not be exchanged were paroled on their honor not to take up arms again. The War of 1812 was the first American experience with holding large numbers of enemy prisoners of war. But it was the Civil War that was to test the system and force the establishment of new rules of warfare concerning prisoners. 

As the Civil war began, both Union and Confederate governments agreed to an informal exchange of prisoners. Commanders in the field set up a simple exchange under a flag of truce, the prisoners were exchanged and the matter was settled. By the middle of 1861 an official cartel had been signed by both governments, following the established military precedents, which provided for an exchange of prisoners at frequent intervals on a man-for-man basis as set up in an intricate table of values based on rank. This system, which relied heavily on trust and cooperation, began to falter in 1863. Several elements contributed to the collapse of the cartel: The South's refusal to exchange Negro soldiers, accusations by both sides that terms of the cartel had been violated, and General Grant's decision that the exchange helped the South more than it helped the North-if only because of the burden the prisoners placed on the Confederacy's economic system and her desperate need for men.

In 1863, the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, declared the cessation of the cartel and announced the Union's new policy of refusing to exchange prisoners. On concurring with Secretary Stanton's policy, General Grant said that “the exchanged rebel soldier behind barricades and fortifications fighting on the defensive was equivalent to three Union soldiers attacking him.”

This decision forced the establishment of prison camps to hold the increased number of prisoners sent to the rear, and resulted in much hardship, suffering, and death among the prisoners. One Union prisoner remarked; "I do not blame him (Lincoln) for refusing to exchange prisoners, nor President Davis for allowing them to starve and freeze. Both were right, if war is right. It was more expedient that thirty, fifty, or a hundred thousand of us should perish..." Out of that decision, two prison systems came into being: one as the result of planning and administration; the other, as a series of accidents.

The Union prison system was established under the control of the Army's Adjutant-General and supplied by the Commissary-General. Because of the low priority of the prison system, only material, time, and transportation left over from fighting the war were given to maintenance of the prison system. The prisons built in the North were in scattered locations and were of several different types. In Rock Island, Illinois, an extensive system of barracks was built to house the prisoners; at Fort Delaware, the barracks were built on such  soggy ground the prisoners kept toppling over in the mud; Camp Douglas, on the outskirts of Chicago, was a horror due to lack of shelter and poor drainage.

But of the Northern prisons, Elmira claimed the distinction of being the worst. A cross between the barracks camp at Rock Island and the tent camp at Point Lookout in Maryland, Elmira, in northern New York, was a breeding ground of sickness-especially diarrhea, scurvy, and other dietary maladies. The hospitals in the Northern prisons were almost always filled to capacity; at most camps many of the sick had to remain in the stockade  because the hospitals were not large enough. The Union tried to plan for the prisoners and set up a system of prison administration for their care, but with the war economy, the lack of experience in dealing with large numbers of prisoners, and a basic naiveté concerning nutrition and hygiene, the prison camps were destined to be almost unbearable. 

The Confederate prison system came into being out of necessity and without the advantage of prior planning. The lack of organization was born out of the limited experience in administrative matters of the Southern government. There was not even a Commissary-General to provide sustenance for prisoners until the last months of the war. Before Confederate policies concerning prisoners of war became established, prisons were set up in makeshift camps near the army to facilitate their care and safeguarding. Libbey Prison, a converted tobacco warehouse, and Belle Isle, a tent-camp, were representative of these. Later in the war, stockades--Millen, Florence, and Andersonville--were built away from the warring armies to ensure security from cavalry raids and prison escapes. This put the prisons on the outer edges of the transportation system and made logistical support difficult, if not impossible, for the Confederacy. Prisoners in the South suffered from the same types of diseases as those held in the North, but more of them died. The marked difference was due not only to a lack of food but, more importantly, to a lack of medicines. For the first time in history, medicines had been made contraband of war and the blockading Union fleet kept medicines from reaching the South. 

Even as the first prisoners died, controversies arose between Northern and Southern partisans over the treatment given to prisoners of war. Most of the early controversies grew out of stories told by exchanged or paroled prisoners on their return to friendly forces. As Hesseltine wrote, one needs to be aware of “…the truism that no prisoner loves his jailer (and that)...few inmates of the prison camps recognized or sympathized with the problems of the custodians.” The more important controversies came about later as prison camps became established fact and policies regarding treatment of prisoners became official. These centered around two related points: establishment of a deadline (a line between the prisoners and the prison walls which, if crossed, implied an escape attempt and therefore constituted grounds for shooting by the guards) and the shooting of prisoners. Northern partisans, overlooking the deadline-ditch at Rock Island, accused the Confederacy of inhumane treatment when news of the deadlines at Andersonville and Florence reached Northern presses. “Nearly ... every prison, North and South, had it's deadline.” The second main controversy, and by far the most meaningful, concerned the senseless shooting of prisoners. Again, both North and South established the same policy: crossing the deadline was sufficient justification for a prisoner to be shot. However, as with any regulation enforced by various individuals, actual treatment under this policy varied. Application of this policy depended on the actual sentries who were guarding the prisoners. Guards at Point Lookout were continually worried they would be punished for senseless shootings, yet many prisoners were, in fact, shot for extremely minor offenses. Neither side could spare trained, effective soldiers from the armies for guard duty, thus the duty fell mostly to untrained recruits, over-age home guards or shirkers from the fighting. These men tended to be cruel and vindictive, lacking understanding of the rigors of a soldier's life and his respect for the enemy. (Tucker, pp. 4-8). 

A review of individual soldier's reports of the atrocities at the Confederate camp at Andersonville Georgia and that of the Union at Elmira NY shows that like the reports of Frankl and Lusseyran about the German Camps, the Americans experienced the same crowding of prisoners so tightly that no one could sit down during transport in cattle cars, ragged clothes while unprotected from the weather, starvation rations, brutality of the guards and disregard of life. Yet just as Frankl found good words to say about the Commandant of his own camp, some survivors of the American Holocaust were also a credit to their consciences. From a letter of James E. Anderson to Confederate President Jefferson Davis about conditions at Andersonville:

Being but a private in the ranks at this place, consequently if I see anything to condemn (as I do)  I have no power to correct it. ... Inside our prison walls  all around there is a space about twelve feet wide, called the “dead-line.” If a prisoner crosses that line the sentinels are ordered to shoot him. Now, we have many thoughtless boys here who think the killing of a Yankee will make them great men. As a consequence, every day or two there are prisoners shot. When the officer of the guard goes to the sentry stand, there is a dead or badly wounded man invariably within their own lines. ...  Last Sabbath there were two shot in their tents at one shot. ... if you send  an agent ...he will of course go among the officers, tell his business, and be told that all is well, but let a good man come here as a private citizen and mix with the privates and stay one week, and if he don't find out things revolting to humanity then I am deceived. I shall put my name to this, believing that you will not let the officers over me see it, otherwise I would suffer, most probably. (Anderson, 1999, p. 155).

Similarly, Confederate Walter Addison of Stewart's Horse Artillery reported:

I was a captive in the summer of 1864 at the time of the Wilderness Campaign, and was sent to Point Lookout and there confined a few weeks, and when there was confined about sixteen thousand Southern prisoners many having been there as long as two years owing to the refusal on the part of the North, to exchange prisoners. During my entire confinement at Point Lookout we were under the guard of Negro soldiers whose conduct and treatment of the prisoners was infamously cruel and in many instances they conducted themselves in a savage manner. I have witnessed them fire their muskets indiscriminately into crowded masses of prisoners, shooting two or three men at a single shot, and such outrages were tolerated by their white officers, and they never were punished nor their cases investigated. This repeatedly happened at Point Lookout, and I never heard that one was even reprimanded. (Addison, 1889 p. 1).

He goes on to say that only twenty percent of the men admitted to hospital came out alive and continues:    

No comfortable buildings were provided for the wretched victims, even when the temperature fell twenty degrees below zero. Very few smallpox patients survived. When discharging smallpox cases they were led to a pump, and there stripped and washed in the coldest weather, and then assigned new quarters for a brief time, when they were returned to the hospital to meet their deaths. Their sufferings were laughed at. Considering their ill usage, premeditated torture, insufficient food, and the prevailing lack of any show of humanity it seems a miracle that one again reached his home. I repeatedly heard it said by Federal officers that the mortality at Elmira far exceeded that at Andersonville. I will say in justice to two officers, Captains Whiton and Munger that they did what they could to alleviate the sufferings of the prisoners, but were almost powerless to render the aid they deserved. (Addison 1889, p. 5).

Addison has been quoted from an inter-net address to facilitate the reader's access, but he is also referenced in a more scholarly work  which also mentions Capt. Whiton: 

…Captain Whiton, a "cute, active ex-bank officer, who supervised the cookhouse," was the recipient of a formal thank you letter endorsed by twenty-two prisoners: "While differing most essentially upon points of political interest you do not forget—though the difference is so great—that there are grounds upon which we can meet and unite without a compromise. Your generosity now, as on many other instances, can only incite us to like deeds of kindness, when fortune so favors us that we may be in a condition to reciprocate." Similarly, prisoners kindly remembered Capt. Benjamin [sic] Munger, who continuously tried to upgrade living conditions through his inspection reports: "Wherever he is, and whatever he does," wrote an old inmate, "Captain Ben Munger has the good-will of every prisoner  who ever drew rations at Barracks no. 3, on the banks of the Chemung.” (Gray, 2001, pp. 127-128).

Note the stated desire of the prisoners to pass the kindness along. Captain Munger also appears in another treatise on Elmira:

Just five days after his arrival at his new post, Tracy [Col. Benjamin F. who relieved the previous commander in Sept, 1864] was confronted with Capt. Bennet F. Munger's ominous inspection report of the prison camp. Munger wrote of clothing being received on a daily basis, "but there is still great destitution." He reported the weather being unseasonably cold, "and those in tents especially suffer." The report told of a lack of stoves in hospital and barracks, and overcrowded hospital conditions that deprived about a hundred sick prisoners of war of a hospital bed. He reported that the sick in quarters "are fed on the ordinary prison ration, notwithstanding an order has been issued to treat them as in hospital." Captain Munger concluded: "During the past week there have been 112 deaths, reaching one day 29. There seems little doubt numbers have died both in quarters and hospital for want of proper food." Munger's concise, final sentence would forever epitomize the haunting charge that is still with us today—that prisoners of war were intentionally starved at Elmira. (Horigan, p. 90).

How could this happen? Horigan reviews a byzantine political arrangement beginning with Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, Commissary-General Col. William Hoffman and Henry J. Raymond, a political heavyweight and one of the founders of the New York Times who together fostered a plan to retaliate for alleged mistreatment of  Union prisoners in Southern camps by deliberately shortening rations especially at Elmira. The historian Hesseltine concurs and writes:

Secretary Stanton ... ordered Hitchcock to ascertain the treatment of prisoners in Richmond and to “take measures for precisely similar treatment toward all the prisoners held by the United States, in respect to food, clothing, medical treatment, and other necessities.” (Hesseltine, 1998, p. 186)

Important in this retaliation is the perception of the conditions in Southern prisons. Moreover, if one has made medicine impossible to get by means of naval blockade, can those who fail to provide it be blamed? In a war of attrition, it must be expected that prisoners cannot be supplied better than the defending army. Hesseltine also advances an argument that the North was, at the time suffering from a “War Psychosis” and in a chapter with this title says:

Apparently an inevitable concomitant of armed warfare is the hatred engendered in the minds of the contestants by the conflict. ... The attachment to an ideal, a cause, or a country, when such attachment calls for the sacrifice of security and life, blinds the person feeling that attachment to whatever of virtue there may be in the opposing ideal, cause, or country. Seemingly, it becomes necessary for the supporters of one cause to identify their entire personality with that cause, to identify their opponents with the opposing cause, and to hate the supporters of the enemy cause with a venom which counterbalances their devotion to their own. 

To a people actuated by such a devotion to a cause, it is inevitable that their opponents appear to be defective in all principles which are held dear by that people. The enemy becomes a thing to be hated; he does not share the common virtues, and his peculiarities of speech, race, or culture become significant as points of difference or, better, sins of the greater magnitude. The critical faculties, present to some degree in times of peace, atrophy on the approach of national catastrophe. (Hesseltine, p. 172).

Hesseltine's assessment is not far different from the present formulation which perceives those who are in the grip of the theoretical Red Dragon as functionally deaf and blind in that they are unable to hear or see anything contrary to their obsession/possession. Not a matter of theory, this astonishing perceptual defense can be directly  observed by discrete and sensitive interviewers. Ministers, psychologists, psychiatrists and others who serve the people are invited to explore this phenomenon for themselves.

Horigan  implies that Camp Commander Col. Benjamin F. Tracy may have been a passive participant in the shorting of rations, but  subsequent brilliant political careers indicate that no blame was ever assigned to him or to anyone else.

Historian James I. Robertson, Jr., has charged that the prisoner rations at Elmira were "restricted to bread and water." Many of the camp's survivors would claim that the record almost invites such a charge. Historians Benjamin P. Thomas and Harold M. Hyman, in not quite as harsh a conclusion, have stated: "When properly distributed the reduced ration was sufficient to maintain health. But when mismanagement or vengefulness on the part of prison keepers entered into the picture, hunger and disease ensued." It is difficult to argue that Stanton, Hoffman, Halleck, Taylor, and Barnes did not realize to a moral certainty that a reduction in rations would be devastating. (Horigan, p. 87).

Scurvy was rampant at the camp and Speer in Portals to Hell, wrote:

The most remarkable aspect about Elmira Prison is that, unlike the other POW facilities around the country up to that time, it didn't start out as a fairly acceptable place of confinement and then slowly degenerate into a concentration camp; Elmira Prison was one from the very day it began. (Speer, 1997, p. 241).

Clearly the daily rations provided by the Elmira authorities were inadequate or, as one prisoner later put it, "seemed to be only enough to feed disease." Another prisoner remembered, "About eight or nine in the morning we were furnished a small piece of loaf bread and a small piece of salt pork or pickled beef each, and in the afternoon a  small  piece of bread and a tin plate of soup, with sometimes a little rice or Irish potato in the soup where the pork or beef had been broiled." [sic]

With no more to eat than that, an atmosphere of starvation constantly existed at Elmira. It wasn't uncommon to see prisoners going through the refuse barrels or garbage heaps behind the cookhouses, or to see them pick up apple peelings and other "edibles" that had been trampled down into the mud of the pathways, wipe them off, and eat them with hardly any hesitation. (Speer, p. 246).

There is no excuse for allowing prisoners to suffer from dietary maladies when the cure is easily at hand. Hesseltine summarized the lack of nutrition as follows:

The lack of vegetables was the greatest defect in the prisoners' diet. An inspector urged the necessity for issuing vegetables at Camp Morton for two months in order to counteract the scurvy. At Elmira seven hundred and ninety-three cases were reported at the end of August, and so strong was the pressure to give the sutlers permission to sell vegetables, especially as the fund was not sufficient to buy them, that Hoffman reluctantly gave his assent to the sale during the prevalence of the disease. ...(Hesseltine, p. 202)

In October reports from Camp Douglas showed an alarming increase in mortality; out of approximately seventy-five hundred prisoners the number of casualties rose from thirty-four deaths and one hundred and sixty-seven sick in June to one hundred and twenty-three deaths and three hundred and seventy-three sick in September. Nine hundred and eighty-four were sick at the end of the first week in October; this was due to the long confinement, inefficient medical attendants, and the refusal to allow the sutler to sell vegetables, declared the commanding officer. From Elmira came the assertion that if the death rate of August and September continued for a year the prison would be depopulated. ...To the commander of Camp Douglas, Hoffman sent orders to reduce the meat ration in order to issue vegetables, but the commander objected on the grounds that meat was as essential in winter as were vegetables. Even when Hitchcock recommended allowing the sutlers at Johnson’s Island to sell vegetables, Hoffman refused his assent.

These conditions in regard to rations lasted throughout the winter of 1864-1865 and until the end of the war. Everywhere the prisoners suffered for the lack of a proper vegetable diet. In January, 1865, despite these conditions, orders were issued for a further reduction of rations. (Hesseltine, pp. 203-204)

Exchanged generals in August ... admitted that the Confederate soldier and his prisoners received the same ration, but they asserted that the inmates of almshouses in the North were never fed so poorly as the as the average Southern family. Hence the food which the prisoners in the North received was enough for the prisoners. (Hesseltine, p. 204)

Apparently generals were exchanged  and ordinary troops who had money could supplement their rations, yet still could not buy vegetables to avoid scurvy. The generals' statements were sharply contradicted  by Harper's Weekly which reported: "It must be remembered that every feature of this barbarous and inhuman treatment was unnecessary. Our prisoners could have easily been supplied with food, for the Southern people are not suffering for the want of subsistence ..." (Our exchanged prisoners, 1864) This disparity between fact and perception is an example of  what is spoken of here as perceptual defense, and the phenomenon that Hesseltine called "War Psychosis" which kept public outrage at a high level. (and no doubt sold a lot of papers as well.) This together with other clinical observations suggests the  testable hypothesis that people who use "spin," exaggeration or outright lying may distort Consciousness so that they cannot assess situations accurately. Unable to perceive their prisoners as fully human, both sides fluctuated in the Extermination phase of genocide.

Food and clothing sent to the Confederate prisoners by relatives were denied to them, a situation which must have been maddening for the starving men:

In 1908, in recalling the restrictions on food being sent to the camp, prisoner R.B. Ewan would note: "Many hundreds of boxes of provisions were brot [sic] in camp, but unless we were in the hospital, or could furnish a certificate of sickness, the ham, cheese, bread and pie were put back in the wagon and hauled out to fill other stomachs.” (Horigan, p. 87).

Clearly, the Confederate Anderson and the Union officers Munger and Whiton  at Elmira shine as examples of the theorized Blue Dragon while the reader is left to decide for him/herself how to apportion the other participants in this drama. Let it also be remembered that some who were petty and vengeful in these terrible circumstances may also have come to realize a better way; we can all change. Finally, before leaving Elmira, it must be mentioned that Lincoln himself must have been aware of some of these conditions, yet didn't rein in his Secretary of War:

There is little doubt that the president allowed Stanton to wield extraordinary power that often appeared to be autonomous. The sagacious Lincoln had, however, when he deemed it necessary, the final word and his secretary of war knew it. The stark reality is this: Stanton and Hoffman wished to put forward a policy of retaliation; there is no documented objection to this idea from President Abraham Lincoln. Therefore, in the matter of retaliation, the virtually unbridled use of power on the part of the secretary of war would have no trouble quashing any opposition to his order that demanded a reduction in rations. (Horigan, p. 86).

After the war, Confederate Captain Henry Wirz of Andersonville was tried, convicted and hanged as the first  war criminal. Yet posterity has treated him more kindly in the Encyclopedia of the American Civil War:

In many respects, Wirz was an ill-starred individual, a victim of superiors and forces totally beyond his control. No amount of training could have prepared him for the supervision of the largest prison population in the war. Whatever compassion he had was overwhelmed by the conditions that grew more hideous through the spring and summer of 1864. Ultimately the ignominious demise of 13,000 soldiers was too much to ignore, and Wirz became the last victim of Andersonville. (Lucas, 2000, pp. 2138-2139).

It appears that much of testimony of former prisoners against Wirz, who was hated by inmates, lacked credibility. Wirz did not receive a fair trial. Nevertheless, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. (Rodriguez, 2000, p. 51). 

If the South had won, it seems quite likely that Stanton and others would also have been indicted. Instead, under political pressure, Grant  appointed Stanton to the U.S. Supreme Court effective in 1870 and he was confirmed just four days prior to his death from a heart attack. (Pusey, 1981) If it is true that Evil prospers when good men do nothing, Lincoln might have been charged as well. The rift between good and evil that Frankl identified at Auschwitz was alive and well in all the prison camps of both sides that were spread out across North America. The final toll for Elmira was a 24.3 percent death rate, (Horigan, p. 180) and he concludes:

The record of the camp's high death toll is a legacy that Americans today instinctively view as incompatible with their image of the United States. The awareness of this is troubling because it suggests more about the core of our character than we wish to admit. During the Civil War the politics of the War Department, functioning within a Machiavellian mind-set, justified a pattern of behavior that manifested itself in the form of delaying and/or rejecting relatively reasonable requests on the part of prison personnel. Americans needlessly inflicted pain and death upon Americans. Powerful men who claimed in public to have acted justly are now seen to have employed unjust means in private. (Horigan, p. 192).

All prisoners agreed that the crowding contributed much to their suffering. At Andersonville, some 45,000 (more than the population of Kansas city Mo, Columbus OH or Hartford CN at the time) prisoners were kept without adequate shelter or sanitary facilities in a pen covering some 26 acres.

 There is every reason to believe that Andersonville was the worst because it was the depot for all prisoners as the  South  retreated and supplies were short for their  army  which  doubtless  suffered  severely as well. Can the responsibility of Command of such a facility be imagined? On July 18^th 1864, then commander Capt. Richard Bayly Winder pleaded: “For God's sake send me $100,000 for prisoners of war and $75,000 for pay of officers and troops stationed here. ...I have only had $75,000 since 1^st of April.” (Lynn, 1999, p. 255) It would surely be a nightmare to be responsible for the care of a POW Camp in a nation losing a war.

The present paper interests itself in the states of consciousness which affected both sides to commit atrocities, and avoids assigning "blame" to either side. It must be noted that  history is written by the winners; there were, for example, no photos of surviving Confederate prisoners and until Hesseltine reopened the topic with Civil War Prisons in 1930, it was widely believed that  "...the leaders of the Confederacy deliberately plotted to kill Union prisoners through willful neglect of food and sanitary conditions." (Blair, 1998, p. ix) An historian interested in "war psychology," Hesseltine sought to understand the true reasons for the historical phenomenon of the prison camps.  It is clear that simplistic notions of which group was good and which was evil must be set aside in order to make a realistic assessment of consciousness, so the following summary presented by Horigan must be understood as a comparison not of guilt or innocence, but of the psychological factors in prison camps as a whole:

Elmira with its 24.3 percent death rate, was irrefutably the worst camp in the North. One can argue that record is, in a sense, even worse than Andersonville's. ...

...With some 45,000 Union prisoners of war being incarcerated at Andersonville, the camp’s death rate is generally agreed upon at 29 percent. It was the largest of the Confederate prisons, and to this day the very mention of the prison's name conjures up thoughts of death, horror, wretched treatment, and man's inhumanity to man. The Georgia prison camp was a horrible place because  inadequate transportation and an effective Union naval  blockade were coupled with acute shortages of food, medicine, clothing, and building materials. Defective shelter, a lack of sanitation, and disease were pervasive. And yet all this was due to the inability of the Confederacy to produce enough food and to procure other essential necessities to sustain life. In short, Andersonville became the symbol of death through circumstances beyond the control of the South's decision makers. 

The grim statistics of Andersonville are similar to those in Elmira. Yet the striking contrast between Andersonville and Elmira should be apparent even to the most casual observer. Elmira, a city with excellent railroad connections, was located in a region where food, medicine, clothing, building materials, and fuel were in abundant supply. None of this could be said of Andersonville. Hence, Elmira became a symbol of death for different reasons. (Horigan, p. 193).

The situation most everyone failed to see at the time was that everyone was right. Whichever side you were on, it was true that the "enemy

"  was mistreating prisoners. In the present view, whether it took place on an individual, personal level as "thoughtless boys shooting Yankees" or from the top command, the Idea that abuse was an appropriate way to treat others was propagated by provocation, fear and vengeful anger either intended and conscious or below conventional awareness. Everyone perceived himself as the "Good guy" trying to stamp out the "Bad guy," when they really were all animated by or under control of the same Idea.

Allied Concentration Camps of WWII

If the reports of American abuses of Americans are stressful on the American self-image, then the data recently presented by Bacque may seem more believable as well as even more destructive of the American self-image, for in his book Other Losses, he alleges that vast numbers  of Germans needlessly died in the Allied prison camps at the end of World War II. As he and his companion discovered the evidence of these alleged atrocities, he wrote:

...More and more pieces emerged until we were in a strange state—convinced by great evidence that leaders of our society had committed an appalling crime against humanity which we did not want to believe. Every day, we had to choose between the horrible truth and the pretty myths we had been taught about our history. 

...It is beyond doubt that enormous numbers of men of all ages, plus some women and children, died of exposure, unsanitary conditions, disease and starvation in the American and French camps in Germany and France starting in April 1945, just before the end of the war in Europe. The victims undoubtedly number  over 800,000, almost certainly over 900,000 and quite likely over a million. Their deaths were knowingly caused by army officers who had sufficient resources to keep the prisoners alive. (Bacque, 1989, pp. 1-2).

These charges resulted in a meeting of historians including Germans led by Stephen Ambrose who wrote in a New York Times book review:

Our first conclusion was that Mr. Bacque had made a major historical discovery. There was widespread mistreatment of German prisoners in the spring and summer of 1945. Men were beaten, denied water, forced to live in open camps without shelter, given inadequate food rations and inadequate medical care. Their mail was withheld. In some cases prisoners made a “soup” of water and grass in order to deal with their hunger. Men did die needlessly and inexcusably. This must be confronted, and it is to Mr. Bacque's credit that he forces us to do so.

Our second conclusion was that when scholars do the necessary research, they will find Mr. Bacque's work to be worse than worthless. It is seriously- nay, spectacularly-flawed in it's most fundamental aspects. (Ambrose, 1991) . 

The sense of Ambrose' complaints are that Bacque's methods were inadequate,  the number of dead  is wrong, “Ike” was not to blame, there were food shortages and so on. Still, he concludes:

Nevertheless, Mr. Bacque makes a point that is irrefutable: some American G.I.'s and their officers were capable of acting in almost as brutal a manner as the Nazis. We did not have a monopoly on virtue. He has challenged us to reopen the question, to do the research required, to get at the full truth. (Ambrose).

This puzzling bivalent assessment is further complicated by allegations that Ambrose' scholastic housekeeping is also in question. (History News Network, 2005) Certainly everyone would like to be measured by the thrust of their lives and their works rather than their mastery of footnotes. Stripped of all nonessential animadversion, what is the Truth in Other Losses?

The primary data in the present discussion has been first-hand reports and material of this type is also included in Other Losses where two Army doctors named Mason & Beasley are quoted:

"April 20 was a blustery day with alternate rain, sleet and snow and with bone-chilling winds sweeping down the Rhine Valley from the North over the flats where the enclosure was located. Huddled close together for warmth, behind the barbed wire was a most awesome sight—nearly 100,000 haggard, apathetic, dirty, gaunt, blank-staring men clad in dirty field-grey uniforms, and standing ankle-deep in mud. Here and there were dirty white blurs which, upon a closer look, were seen to be men with bandaged heads or arms or standing in shirt sleeves!  The German Division Commander reported that the men had not eaten for at least two days, and the provision of water was a major problem—yet only 200 yards away was the River Rhine running bank full."  (Mason & Beasley, 1950, p. 437).

Further perusal of the original article by Mason & Beasley reveals an aerial photograph of 160,00 prisoners in the camp at Remagen. Dated 4/25/45, the only tents in the photo are those of the hospital.  The text says there were 250 people per acre or an area of about 13'x13' per person and notes:

It is pertinent to pause at this point  to comment upon the short-sighted decision of Armies in sending back POWs without personal equipment! By separating the POW from his mess gear, overcoat, blanket and other personal equipment, a few more POWs could be crowded into the 10-ton semi-trailer truck! Aside from the inhumanity and contribution to increased morbidity, it created problems of a nasty nature for the command charged with receiving and housing the POWs. For example, how does the receiving commander cook for and feed over 100,00 men in an open field with no unit kitchens or mess kits? (Mason & Beasley, p. 433).

These military physicians filed a report which limited itself to the medical situation and made no comment on the accommodations for the prisoners beyond what has been stated. In the section on services provided to prisoners, they say: “Patients in hospitals were returned to the [enclosure] as soon as able to withstand the rigors of living in the open.” (Mason & Beasley, 1950, p. 439).

These doctors apparently knew well the conditions of the camps yet made only oblique complaints about them. Are we to believe that an army commander separates men from their clothing, loads them on trucks and sends them off  by “oversight?”  One or two truckloads, perhaps. But to do so with an army division implies a deliberate policy. Moreover, when is a sick person able to “live in the open?” Where are the humane provisions for POW's? Is this article a protest by the physicians without an outright accusation? Perhaps the two doctors felt they had no other alternative than to file such a report and did the best they could to  tell the truth without doing so in a rebellious fashion; Eisenhower became president of the USA two years after their article was published. It is hoped the reader noted the euphemism “increased contribution to morbidity” as meaning people dead on arrival. Finally, the article which was published five years after the data was recorded contains no information about how the situation was remedied, if at all. 

The present author is not an historian and cannot adequately assess the accuracy and subtleties of Bacque's detailed and extensive reports; a novelist, some of his references were difficult to check. Apparently, although the degree,  extent and duration is uncertain, it was generally agreed by the Ambrose conference that these things happened. The number of dead ranges from 56,000 upward by a factor of fifteen or twenty.  The conditions and duration can be estimated from a first-hand account by a German  prisoner interned at Andernach and later at Sinzig:

The weather in April/May/June/July 1945 was pretty bad: hot days, plenty of rain, and even snow and frosty nights....

Nobody can imagine how human beings can live in open air, on a field with little space, bad water and hunger rations for days, weeks and months. ...

In one corner of each cage the inmates had to shovel a ditch as a toilet for all the men in the cage; of course, in standing or crouching position in open air. A layer of disinfectants had to be added every day. Facilities for washing were non-existent. Passing the nights was a great problem for each of us. None could sleep the whole night through—the longest one could do so uninterrupted was three or four hours. Every night 30 or 40 per cent of the inmates were walking around at any given time. The ground had been frozen and wet; we three comrades had only a tent-cloth and an overcoat for lying on and for cover. Sometimes in our hole there would be a few inches of rain water, in which we had to lie throughout the night.  All three of us had to lie on one side; turning over onto the other side had to be done in unison. The position in the middle was the best, so every three days each of us got it once.

On the second day in Andernach, we received our first food-ration. After hours of desperate waiting, each of us at last received a spoonful of raw beans, a spoonful of sugar, a spoonful of raw wheat, a spoonful of milk-powder and sometimes-not every day- a spoonful of corned-beef. ... Of course, all the raw beans and wheat-corns [kernels] were counted on distribution, as was everything else, too. In such situations a human being   can easily become animal-like. Everybody was waiting the whole day long for the moment of the ration distribution. Then the battle for each tiny corn began; it must have been the organism's survival instinct. One's only interest was in food and water; how low can human nature sink? (Laska, 1994, p. 170-171)

The “open air" situation [in Sinzig] was exactly the same as in Andernach. ...Inside, all inmates had to keep 3 meters from the fences. Several prisoners who had come too close to the fences were shot; ...

Every morning a truck passed by the cages to pick up the dead from the previous night, those who were either shot within or on the fences, or dead from hunger or typhoid, dysentery and other sicknesses. Of every ten attempting to escape eight were shot and two got through. The youngest inmates were 13 or 14 years old, the oldest around 80. ...(Laska, p. 172)

In the middle of June 1945 the Americans began to release some prisoners. People who lived in the Rhineland could get discharged. At the end of June 1945, our cage 17 and the opposite one, 16, became the last in the entire camp, as cage 19 was emptied. (Laska, p. 174).

Laska has been quoted extensively because his description of the Camps is nearly identical to that of inmates at Andersonville, from sleeping unsheltered in the rain, (McElroy, 1913, p. 126), (Goss, 1866, p.76), the cuddling  to sleep that Union soldiers called “spooning,” (McElroy 1913, p. 87) the dead-lines and the counting of beans.  (McElroy, 1913, p.125) Photos of Andersonville (Futch, 1968) following page 35 shows tents and open latrines with seat-rails;  luxuries not seen at Sinzig.  (Bacque, 1989) Comparisons of prisoner transport are found in Appendix B. 

After 84 days, Laska risked escape rather than wait for release and was successful in early July, 1945. Another first-hand report is given by an American guard at Andernach who wrote:

In Andernach  about 50,000 prisoners of all ages were held in an open field surrounded by barbed-wire. The women were kept in a separate enclosure I did not see until later. The men I guarded had no shelter and no blankets; many had no coats. They slept in the mud, wet and cold, with inadequate slit trenches for excrement. It was a cold, wet spring and their misery from exposure alone was evident. (Brech, 1990, p. 160)

Articles in the G.I. newspaper Stars and Stripes, played up the German concentration camps, complete with photos of emaciated bodies; this amplified our self-righteous cruelty and made it easier to imitate behavior we were supposed to oppose. Also, I think, soldiers not exposed to combat were trying to prove how tough they were by taking it out on the prisoners and civilians. ... (Brech, p. 162)

On guard duty one night, Brech discovered prisoners sneaking under the wire to get food from a woman hiding in an adjacent graveyard and returning to the enclosure. Able to speak German, he assured her he approved and left to allow the activity to continue while he watched from a distance. He said:

I imagined then, and still do now, what it would be like to meet a beautiful woman with a picnic basket, under those conditions as a prisoner. I have never forgotten her face.

Eventually, more prisoners crawled back to the enclosure. I saw they were dragging food to their comrades and could only admire their courage and devotion.  (Brech, p. 163)

..."So what?" some would say. "The enemy's atrocities were worse than ours." It is true that I experienced only the end of the war, when we were already the victors. The German opportunity for atrocities had faded; ours was at hand. But two wrongs don't make a right. Rather than copying our enemy's crimes, we should aim once and for all to break the cycle of hatred and vengeance that has plagued and distorted human history. This is why I am speaking out now, forty-five years after the crime. We can never prevent individual war crimes, but we can, if enough of us speak out, influence government policy. We can reject government propaganda that depicts our enemies as subhuman and encourages the kind of outrages I witnessed. We can protest the bombing of civilian targets which still goes on today. [written in 1990] And we can refuse ever to condone our government's murder of unarmed and defeated prisoners or war. (Brech, p. 165-166) 

I realize it is difficult for the average citizen to admit witnessing a crime of this magnitude, especially if implicated himself. Even G.I.s sympathetic to the victims were afraid to complain and get into trouble, they told me. And the danger has not ceased. Since I spoke out a few weeks ago, I have received threatening calls and had my mailbox smashed. But its been worth it. Writing about these atrocities has been a catharsis of feeling suppressed too long, a liberation, and perhaps will remind other witnesses that “the truth will make us free, have no fear.” We may even learn a supreme lesson from all this: only love can conquer all. (Brech, 1990, p.166).

Brech, a Unitarian minister who  was also professor of Religion and Philosophy at Mercy College has been quoted because his account seems credible even though it appears in a journal widely known for denial that the Jewish Holocaust ever happened. The reader was warned that some sources might be unpopular, but if one seeks the Truth, it is necessary to accept it where it is found. One might well ask who else would publish an account so challenging to cherished beliefs.

Bacque claims that there were plenty of tents available and cites an order issued by Eisenhower:

On April 21, 1945, another SHAEF

 message signed "Eisenhower" told Marshall that the new prisoner enclosures "will provide no shelter or other comforts ...." It added that the enclosures would be improved by the prisoners themselves, "utilizing local materials." These "enclosures" were open fields surrounded by barbed wire, called "prisoner of war temporary enclosures" (PWTE).   They were not temporary, but they were certainly enclosed, by barbed wire, searchlights, guard towers and machine guns. Far from permitting the prisoners to provide shelter "utilizing local materials," an army engineer's order issued on May 1 specifically forbade the provision of housing in the cages. (Bacque, p. 32).

The familiar Catch-22: You may build all the shelters you want with local materials, but there are no local materials. It seems the German POWs had the same opportunity as Union prisoners at Andersonville. Perhaps there is some Military Tradition as Hessletine had noted that only soldiers understand; that if you surrender, you must be prepared to suffer as a natural and usual result.

 Are exposure and starvation less malevolent than execution by machine-gun fire? In any event, it is noted that Gen. George S. Patton set his prisoners free shortly after they were taken. Bacque says about him: 

For all his prejudices, Patton represented to a high degree the honor of the army and the basic generosity of the American people.  [... in his talk to the troops, he said:]  "I emphasized the necessity for the proper treatment of prisoners of war, both as to  their lives and property. My usual statement was ...'Kill all the Germans you can, but do not put them up against the wall and kill them. Do your killing while they are still fighting. After a man has surrendered, he should be treated exactly in accordance with the Rules of Land Warfare, and just as you would hope to be treated if you were foolish enough to surrender. Americans do not kick people in the teeth after they are down.'" He openly deplored Eisenhower's anti-German policies: "What we are doing is to utterly destroy the only semi-modern state in Europe so that Russia can swallow the whole.” (Bacque, p. 149).

Elsewhere Patton had cautioned against letting front-line troops care for prisoners because they were too heated by battle. A first-hand report by the French Captain Julien also appears in Other Losses. Apparently translated from the French, this reads:

CAPTAIN  JULIEN THOUGHT AS HE WALKED [sic] gingerly over the scarred terrain among the living dead in the former American camp, "This is just like Buchenwald and Dachau." He had fought with his regiment ... against the Germans because they had ruined France, but he had never imagined any revenge like this, muddy ground "peopled with living skeletons," some of whom died as he watched, others huddled under bits of cardboard which they clutched although the July day was hot. Women lying in holes in the ground stared up at him with hunger edema bulging their bellies in gross parody of pregnancy, old men with long gray hair watched him feebly, children of six or seven with the raccoon rings of starvation looked at him from lifeless eyes. Julien hardly knew where to begin. He could find no food at all in this camp of 32,000 people at Dietersheim. (Bacque, p. 87).

In all, the French found 166,000 men, women and children in the camps they took over from the Americans in Germany that summer, all in “the most lamentable condition." (Bacque, p. 88).

Similarly, the Red Cross found frightful conditions in the French camps:

In the late summer of 1945, a man named Jean-Pierre Pradervand, head of the delegations of the ICRC

 in France, went to inspect the French camp at Thoree les Pins, already known in the village nearby as “Buchenwald" after the notorious German death camp.

A crowd of prisoners milled around the windowless sheds as he drove in to Thoree les Pins. Some were lying on the ground, others leaned apathetically against the cement walls. Two thousand men were already so far gone that nothing could save them, according to the French camp commandant Zalay. Twenty of them died that day, while Pradervand was there. No coffins were available for them; they were taken to a farmer's field nearby and buried. Another six thousand or so were in such bad shape that unless they were immediately given food, shelter, clothing and medical care, they would be dead in a couple of months. All the rest were undernourished. Many had just been taken over in this condition from American custody a few days before. (Bacque, pp. 93-94).

All the while, according to Bacque, there was a surplus of food in the U.S. Army. Quoting  General Littlejohn, he writes:

“There is in this Theater a substantial excess of subsistence in certain items due to the rapid discharge of prisoners of war after VE day, the accelerated deployment of U. S Military, the sharp decrease in employment by U. S. Forces of allied liberated nationals and the ending of the supply responsibilities of the French army. Over 3,000,000 rations a day less than those requisitioned, were issued. .... I received .... concurrence to stop the flow of subsistence...[from the U.S.]  (Bacque, p. 104).

Nevertheless, the prisoners went on starving. Le Monde printed a story by Jacques Fauvet that began passionately: "As one speaks today of Dachau, in ten years people throughout the world will speak about camps like Saint Paul d'Egiaux," where 17,000 people taken over from the Americans in late July were dying so fast that within a few weeks two cemeteries of 200 graves each had been filled. By the end of September, the death rate was 10 per day, or over 21 percent per year. Fauvet attacked head-on the question of revenge: "People will object that the Germans weren't very particular on the matter of feeding our men, but even if they did violate the Geneva Convention, that hardly seems to justify our following their example .... People have often said that the best service we could do the Germans would be to imitate them, so they would one day find us before the judgment of history, but it is to an ideal higher than mere dignity that France should remain faithful; ...We didn't suffer and fight to perpetuate the crimes of other times and places." (Bacque,  pp. 104-105).

These dreadful conditions might possibly be explained by the flux of policy and political conditions at the time. FDR had just died in April 1945 and Truman was just beginning to take the reins of power. The Morgenthau Plan to reduce Germany to an agricultural nation was being replaced by the more benign Marshall plan; dramatic shifts in policy were under way and may perhaps explain why there is such a diversity of opinion about conditions at the time because they were changing so fast that a few months made a profound difference in the experience of the participants.  There doubtless were logistical problems, confusion of responsibility and so on. Moreover, there was doubtless a division of opinion about how the prisoners should be treated and a wide variance from place to place depending on individuals. As was previously seen, some might have held Lincoln  responsible for conditions at Elmira; similarly, Bacque implies that Eisenhower used a policy of “winks and nods” to further mistreatment of the Germans. Any position of Power attracts a number of people with their own agendas, Red Dragons and Blue ones as well, and  commanders might try to please some of their subordinates by maintaining a balance in who gets the “nod” and who doesn't. Yet the ultimate power resides not in the commander, but in the people who either do as the commander wishes or fail to do so by any of a variety of methods including intentional errors, “dragging their feet," secretly purchasing medicines as Frankl's camp commander had done at Auschwitz and so on.  As further example, Stanton's desire to retaliate on Confederate soldiers may have affected the Elmira Camp Commander but had less effect on the Union officers Munger and Whiton; similarly, the pleading of Richard Winder for supplies at Andersonville couldn't be met by a failing Confederacy. Every individual has the choice of and responsibility for his own actions. Ultimately, in order to avoid trial as a war-criminal, one must refuse to obey orders to mistreat prisoners. Yet by simply under-providing rations and shelter, there was no order to disobey; one could possibly refuse to shoot prisoners, but who does an enlisted man tell to get tents and food for them? Two colonels in the Medical Corps wrote an article for the Military Surgeon. Who could expect more from them? The purpose of this paper is not to assign blame, but to identify the states of consciousness associated with these extreme conditions. Bacque quotes a  British publisher Victor Gollancz who wrote: 

“Starving the Germans is morally damaging to us, ... I want to feed starving Germans and I want to feed them not as a matter of policy but because I am sorry for them." ... Gollancz, who had suffered grievously from the anti-Semitism of the Germans, wrote, "If you were to believe our public men, you would think that pity and mercy were positively disgraceful, and that self-interest was a basic ethical duty .... I hate the epidemics in Germany … because they are a horror to the people who suffer them.” (Bacque, pp. 84-85).

People do not live long in Concentration Camps; to survive twelve months is miraculous. The High Command needed to release adequate rations, Camp Commanders who could not control their troops or their own feelings of revenge needed to be immediately replaced with those of a more humane bent and the Red Cross and other aid agencies allowed free and open access. That they had been denied opportunity to relieve the suffering in the camps Bacque states was a matter of record: 

The cynicism with which the Red Cross and Pradervand were treated by the U.S. Army was evident in army warehouses in Europe which still contained the  13,500,000 high-protein Red Cross food parcels taken over from the ICRC in May, but never distributed. On Nov. 17, the army was still wondering what to do with them. Each parcel contained on average 12,000 calories, so there was enough food in them to have given the 700,000 or so Germans who had by now died a supplementary 1,000 calories per day for about eight months. The ICRC parcels alone would probably have kept alive most of those men until spring 1946. (Bacque, p.109).

Bacque describes a complex way the Germans were shorted on rations by under-reporting their numbers by as much as a million, by reducing them from POW  to DEF

 status and other bureaucratic sleight of hand. Blame is not of importance for the present paper; Bacque alleges that the responsibility started with Eisenhower and De Gaulle who was dependent on the U.S. for help in Viet Nam. In conclusion, he laments:

The Rules of Land Warfare, the Geneva Convention, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the common decency of the enormous majority of Americans and French people, the honesty of the British and Canadians, the free press, all failed. They failed because men who were heroes to us secretly seized the power of death over people who were helpless in our hands. Their superior officers failed to stop them, or to tell the public. Their peers  or subordinates said nothing. The French press said little, or lied. The American press said nothing, or lied. The British and Canadians stood by and watched. The only people who spoke up when it counted were Jean-Pierre Pradervand, Jacques Fauvet and Victor Gollancz.

These people and a few others, ... continued to believe in the ideals so cynically exploited by the others. Believing, they felt the good of them, like the anonymous British soldier who had dreaded doing relief work for the Germans but said when it was over, "It was the only really worthwhile thing I've ever done in my life." For the U.S. and French commanders, committing their vengeful atrocities, keeping even the gratifications of wickedness to themselves, there was a sinking toward the evil which we had all supposed we were fighting. 

Among all these people thought to be of good will and decent principles, there was almost no one to protect the men in whose dying flesh was our deadly hypocrisy. As we celebrated the victory of our virtue in public, we began to lose it in secret. (Bacque, pp. 171-172).

From what we know of people, there most certainly were atrocities committed by both sides, the only question is the extent and severity of those atrocities. The point of the present paper is to fearlessly examine our own selves to determine not what we wish or hope is so, but the unadorned Truth in order to learn from it. The fact that no atrocities were reported is not at all reassuring, instead suggests a policy of secrecy.

Japanese-American Internment Camps

One shudders to think what the Japanese-American internment camps might have looked like if the USA had come close to losing the war. These people had been deprived of property and position without compensation, were surrounded by barbed-wire, guard towers and at the Heart Mountain facility, even tanks.   

In a propaganda film of 1943, Milton S. Eisenhower, director of the War Relocation Authority announced:

When the Japanese attacked Peal Harbor, our West Coast became a potential combat zone. Living in that zone were more than a hundred thousand persons of Japanese ancestry; two thirds of them American citizens, one third of them aliens. We knew that some among them were potentially dangerous, but no-one knew what would happen among this concentrated population if Japanese forces should try to invade our shores. Military authorities therefore determined that all of them, citizens and aliens alike would have to move. This picture tells how the mass migration was accomplished.

Neither the Army nor the War Relocation Authority relished the idea of taking men, women and children from their homes, their shops and their farms, so the military and civilian agencies alike determined to do the job as a democracy should: with real consideration for the people involved. (Eisenhower, 1943)

Only eleven minutes long, review of this film accurately reveals the Zeitgeist which prompted these actions, with views of the vulnerability of shipping, aircraft plants and military installations. The film progresses with upbeat background music, showing initial internment at assembly centers located at fair grounds and race tracks (as example, 17,000 were imprisoned at Santa Anita racetrack.)  where the narrative continued: "...the Army provided housing and plenty of healthful, nourishing food for all," as a mess hall was shown in what appeared to be a warehouse. The Santa Anita Pacemaker, an Assembly Center newsletter informed the prisoners that they were required to sign up for the military draft; (More than 1000 expected in draft registration, 1997) another article informed them that they need not apply for jobs at the Center as those were assigned by the head of the Personnel Section. The Evacuees, as  the prisoners were called, stayed at these temporary facilities while internment camps which would give them "the opportunity to work and more space in which to live," were prepared on Government land in the desert areas. "When word came that these new homes were ready..." Footage showed smiling people even though there was some some "financial sacrifice for the Evacuees" who "cheerfully," "cooperated wholeheartedly" as they waved goodbye from buses and trains where each were allowed two suitcases of personal belongings. In fact, many of these people were ashamed at being under arrest. Moved to their new location: "...land that was raw and untamed but full of opportunity. Here they would build schools, educate their children; reclaim the desert."  Footage then shows a poignant scene of four(?) year-olds at CHILDREN'S CENTER BLK 7 BLDG 15 where among other things an impish boy is seen pouring milk through a knot-hole in an unfinished table-top. Here the narrator says: "Special emphasis was placed on the health and care of these American children of Japanese descent." A copy of the Santa Anita Pacemaker, photos of the "migration" and their new "homes" are seen following page 38. Examples of printed U.S. WWII propaganda are also presented. As expected from others motivated by the same Idea, Axis propaganda was almost identical.

Part of the film's conclusion includes the statements that "...when circumstances permit the loyal American citizens to once again enjoy the freedom we in this country cherish..." and later: "...We're setting a standard for the rest of the world in the treatment of people who may have loyalties to an enemy nation. We're protecting ourselves without violating the principles of Christian decency." All quotes from the narrator Milton  Eisenhower, 1943. Italics are intended to show emphasis in the movie's dialog. 

Important in this regard was the fact that at the time it was technically illegal for Japanese to become citizens and that those who were had been born in the USA while their parents were still aliens. All men, women and children were sent to the internment camps. Mostly kept out of the news for decades, this injustice has led to mistrust of the Federal Government as the following letter of a High-school junior to the local Eugene Oregon newspaper shows:

Much attention was given to the fact that many Japanese immigrants living in the United States were not citizens. What seems to have been overlooked was that American laws banned Japanese immigrants from becoming U.S. Citizens. ...

Some defended the internments by saying they were put into camps for protection. "But the guards did not point the guns out; they pointed them to us," Kobayashi [a survivor] recalled.

Some people were shot for standing too close to the fences. “The guards who shot them were charged with nothing but the value of the bullets used to kill the people-ten cents, I think, ten cents for a bullet." [Kobayashi is again quoted]...

The most ironic thing about the internment is that there were never proven [sic] reports of espionage or sabotage among mainland Japanese-Americans.

What put them into internment was the same force that put Jews into Germany's camps: prejudice.

That was a different time: A time when, in a nation with a constitution declaring equality, people were denied citizenship because of their race. A time when thousands of innocent people could be imprisoned based on circumstances beyond their control. A time when what was felt for people of another language, religion or  color was not tolerance, but fear. That  was a different time. Or was it? (Hansen, 2005). 

The present interest in how Ideas propagate has prompted the inclusion of this teenager's article. Clearly she has mistrust for the government. Mistrust translates into a belief that others lie and cheat which implies that unless she does the same, she will be left behind in competition for social position. This mistrust, then, is the seed of the corrupt Idea. If it flowers, in the end she will be prompted to become that which she despises. Although deceit is never condoned, the greatest danger is not  in the government, it is in the belief that deceit dominates without rival. As teenagers often say: ”Everyone else is doing it!” Taught the highest ideals, she must meet the conflict  that John Cully called a mockery of justice which was:

... fundamental and lay close to the heart of American society; it was the failure that Gunnar Myrdal in 1944 called the American Dilemma—the gap between our highest national ideals and our behavior. Like black Americans, people of Japanese ancestry had been denied full acceptance as Americans and as individuals. The Issei, [first generation immigrants], like characters in Joseph Heller's war novel Catch-22, were trapped in an illogical bureaucratic web. They were interned because they were enemy aliens, but they were aliens because discriminatory laws denied them naturalized citizenship. However, even if the Issei had been citizens, as the Nisei were, they would have been incarcerated on the basis of ancestry. This denial of naturalization rights and the racist assumptions upon which it rested were the fundamental injustices which the Justice department incorporated  uncritically into its enemy alien control program. The nature of the hearings the Issei received before the  Alien Enemy Hearing Boards and the deprivations endured in the camps merely piled injustice on injustice. (Cully, 1986, p. 67).

As late as the 1940's, black Americans were not welcome to live within the Eugene Oregon city limits and “congregated in tents and makeshift houses on county land at the north end of the Ferry street bridge.” (Maben, 2005) To speak of Rights without respecting them is  indefensible in the eyes of the young. Perhaps it is they who could provide our best critics. Can we look our children in the eye and tell them the Truth? Finally, can we find the internal strength to be and do right regardless of what others are doing?

It was sad to learn that two Japanese internees at Manzanar, two at Lordsburg and one at Fort Sill camps were shot to death. Kashima relates:

On July 27, 1942, around 2:30 a.m., two Issei  internees, Toshio Kobata, a farmer from Brawley, California, and Hirota Isomura, a fisherman from San Pedro, California, were shot to death by the Lordsburg, New Mexico, camp guards. These two men were among the 147 or 148 internees transferred from the Fort Lincoln Internment Camp in Bismark, North Dakota, to Lordsburg. All except these two men, who were too ill to walk, were forced to march the mile from the train station to the front gate of the camp. One account reports that these two men were driven by car to the front gate. While they waited for the other Japanese to arrive, the guards suddenly opened fire and killed the two men.

...The other death by gunfire occurred at the Fort Sill (Oklahoma) Temporary Enemy Alien Internment Camp. Mr. Ichiro Shimoda, age forty-five, a gardener living with his family in Los Angeles, was arrested by the FBI on Dec 7, 1941. He was apparently apprehended and detained because the FBI had information about his status as a veteran of the Japanese armed forces. Once incarcerated and placed on a train to the Missoula, Montana Detention Station, he suddenly became irrational, as one internee reported; he was concerned about his wife and family who were left behind. He tried to commit suicide by biting off his tongue, but the other internees restrained him and placed a piece of wood between his jaws; he was kept under constant internee watch until they arrived in Missoula. Initially he appeared to get better there, but then he later tried to asphyxiate himself. When he was transferred to  Fort Sill in mid-March 1942, he again became irrational, tried to climb the inner fence surrounding the camp and was shot to death by the guards. (Kashima, 1986, p. 53).

Kashima continues with details of further mistreatment:

The records include many other incidents of mistreatment of the Japanese enemy aliens. Internees reported cases of individual beatings while under restraint or in their detention cells, of guards threatening internees with unsheathed bayonets, of being ordered to cooperate with questionable rules and regulations made by camp commanders, of camp physicians giving questionable and unrequested injections to internee patients, of the continual use of handcuffs to restrain internees, and of the use of solitary confinement, ... (Kashima, p. 54).

To the credit of the camp authorities, when they were confronted with the 1929 Geneva Convention, it was agreed that the prisoners, many of whom were innocent merchant seamen, civilians and others of the same ilk should be treated better and camp conditions improved. Lists had been prepared as early as 1939 by the Justice Department, the FBI, the Office of Naval Intelligence, Military Intelligence and the Immigration and Naturalization Service were concerned with: 

...identification, categorization, apprehension, detention, interrogation and confinement. ...Most Japanese aliens apprehended on or after Dec. 7, as a result of their names being included on such lists,were held in nearby county and city jails or Immigration and Naturalization Service stations. Some were questioned and then released, others were questioned and kept for days and weeks until they were either let go or, as in most cases , shipped to an alien detention station and later to a permanent internment camp in the hinterlands of the continental United States. (Kashima, p. 52).

It must be noted that these people were “guilty” of being citizens of nations with whom the USA  was at war, but mere citizenship is not a warrant to mistreat someone. Statistics indicate that Germans and Italians were also interned. To repeat: the present paper does not seek to affix blame; all in all, the record is nowhere nearly as bad as it might have been, yet five and possibly more people (The Internet total is eleven and counting) were shot to death under circumstances much like those at Elmira or Andersonville; the same Red Dragons which lurked in those camps can be found everywhere and everywhen. As this passage is written, a TV minister proudly admits to strafing a column of mixed refugees during the Korean war because they were the “enemy,” and “that's what you have to do to win.” Our formulation suggests the Enemy may be an Idea which isn't  “out there,” but within our own hearts and we must always be alert that we do not become It. This is not an easy task: Internal conflict can become intense; hatred and bigotry clashing with compassion and acceptance. Here are some abbreviated examples of WWII letters to Yank the Army Weekly:

Dear Yank: As God is my witness I am sorry to read of the way two American soldiers treated the enemy on Makin Island; they shot some Japanese when they might have been able to take them alive. ... I am a servant of God, so when I get into battle I hope by His help to take as many Japs alive as I can. -Pvt. Ralph Luckey (Camp Davis, NC.)

Dear Yank: … Do you mind if we ask [Pvt. Luckey] a question? ...you're now living in an Army camp, just as we did. Making friends, just as we did. Friends who, in time, will be much closer, dearer, to you than you would believe possible. We bunked together, ate together, laughed and played together, worked and dated together. Recently we fought together. During the battle, Blackie was wounded and  taken prisoner. When we advanced several hours later, we found Blackie. [description of atrocity]. ... We continued to move on. Do you think that we also continued to remember the niceties of civilized warfare? -S/Sgt B. W. Milewski (Central Pacific).  (Mercy for Japs, 1991).

Another ten letters are quoted that oppose Luckey's opinion. The formation of a tight, “us against them” social unit, propagation of an Idea by fear and provocation, and an air of the veteran's superiority all contribute to resolution of the internal conflict between Good and Evil by adopting the tactic one despises. Precisely the same process is under way in the opposing army.  An example of the successful resolution of such conflict is provided by an individual named Guy Gabaldon.  This cocky, gutsy little Hispanic-American was orphaned at an early age. Raised by the family of  Japanese friends, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, his family was sent to prison camp. He enlisted in the  U.S. Marine Corps and was sent to the Pacific. While his adoptive Japanese brothers were in combat in Europe, he became the “Pied Piper of Saipan,” taking over 1,500 prisoners. James Burbek writing for the War Times Journal said:

...by the time of his July 8 "bagging" of 800 prisoners, he had already become famous on Saipan for his capture of hundreds of die-hard enemy troops using a brisk combination of fluent “street” Japanese and point-blank carbine fire. Indeed, his performance was so impressive that he was awarded almost total discretion for the remainder of the campaign, and his solo raids into Japanese lines soon became a hot topic throughout the island.

Previous to July 8, his routine had  been simple but effective; carefully approach a cave, shoot any guards outside (if any), move off to one side of the cave and yell "You're surrounded and have no choice but to surrender. Come out, and you will not be killed! I assure you will be well treated. We do not want to kill you!" At this point, anyone running out with a weapon would be immediately shot, but anyone coming out slowly would be talked into returning to the cave and bringing out others.

On his first sortie, Guy captured seven prisoners using this method, only to be told by his commander that if he deserted his post again he would be court-marshaled. The next morning, Guy returned from another unauthorized trip, this time with 50 Japanese prisoners. From that moment, Guy was granted the envious privilege of "lone wolf'' operator. He could do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. The perfect task for a tough Chicano kid from the East Los Angeles barrios!

On July 6, Guy left on another of his evening patrols, and entered an area near Saipan's northern cliffs. It seemed fairly deserted at the time, but before daybreak, he realized that hundreds of enemy infantry were moving onto the flats and gathering for an assault. By this time, he was cut off from any path of retreat, and any attempt to show himself would have resulted in a quick and noisy death. He remained under cover and listened as thousands of Japanese troops and some civilians drank sake and noisily prepared for the largest banzai charge of the campaign. This tragic and unsuccessful charge ended late that evening, with most of the remaining Japanese returning to their cliff-side positions. 

The next morning, Guy crept to the edge of the cliffs, where he quickly captured two guards. It was then that he embarked on the most dangerous of his many ventures. After talking to the two men, he convinced one of them to return to the caves below. This was a personal moment of truth for both of them. If the soldiers below were too "worked up," then everyone involved would face immediate death, and a disgraceful one at that for the two guards. A short while later, a Japanese officer and some of his men walked slowly up from the caves and sat down in front of Gabaldon. Within an hour, hundreds of Japanese infantry accompanied by some civilians began surrendering en masse; the gamble had paid off. (Burbeck, 1998, pp. 1-2).

An example of what has been spoken of here as a “natural” or emergent leader, the 18 year-old Guy perceived the propaganda of fear, hatred and stereotypes of the enemy as so much “bullshit,” and because he had both courage and enough trust for his enemy, he evoked their trust as well. A few months earlier, only 146 prisoners had been taken on Tarawa which had been defended by a garrison of 5,000. (Burbeck, p. 1) The theorized Red Dragon of Fear and Hatred had claimed many victims as both sides savaged each other. Who could blame the Americans if they didn't take prisoners who were known to be “sneaky,” to “fanatically fight to the death,” couldn't understand the directions they were given and who had just killed their buddies? Who could blame Japanese civilians for throwing their babies off the cliff rather than have them roasted by the Americans? When Guy Gabaldon led his 800 prisoners to safety, (later shown walking single-file in a film about his exploits) they formed a great Blue Dragon emerging from a Land of Lies. A symbol of fairness and an inspiration to his buddies,  he was also a danger to his own forces: Suppose they got the idea that combat was unnecessary? Nominated for the Medal of Honor by his CO, Guy instead received the Silver Star, an award two grades lower. Is it a wonder he received no more attention than he did? It would be bad for morale to make a hero of someone who saved rather than took lives. Even the Marines thought these true exploits were “sea stories.”

Gabaldon had killed some thirty-three Japanese, was himself shot in an ambush but survived WWII and was officially recognized by the County of Los Angeles in 1998. A movie starring Jeffrey Hunter was made of his exploits, (Levin & Karlson, 1960) and another film is in the planning stages. Review of the Japanese situation in WWII shows that just as Frankl found at Auschwitz, there were decent and indecent people on both sides. In one sense, Gabaldon was on both sides.

Most of the reports in this paper are just that: First hand reports of people who were there and the experiences that they relate. Note that Hansen identifies prejudice as the main reason the Japanese were arrested, while our present understanding emphasizes the Dragon of Fear which moved through the American authorities to accomplish this injustice.  How could the authorities explain a saboteur to the public? Rather than risk such a circumstance, rounding up the Japanese was an easy answer, and there realistically was some need to protect them besides. If vigilante groups formed to attack the unpopular Japanese, how could the authorities remain popular while defending them?   Fear, anger, taking the easy way out and also the same directive that Hitler had enunciated in setting the safety of the Homeland

 above all other considerations. Without realizing it, the American authorities had become the very thing they wished to oppose; more simply, the end justifies the means, and this is of prime importance in the present involvement with the War on Terror.  

The War on Terror

Certainly it is desirable to have information about a possible attack in order to avert it, and when one's comrades, fellow citizens or family is at risk, it is tempting to resort to the most expedient methods to find out what one can. Some might even deem it necessary commit suicide or to kill a friend in order to keep information from falling into enemy hands; there are many scenarios where protection of the Whole seems a greater good than one life or one action. Yet to consider other people as less worthy than one’s own group is to act on Hitler’s Principle; it is necessary to guard our own behavior.  The present paper has so far focused on the past, and now interest is on how well present behavior aligns with Principle and the places where it where it fails to meet the highest standards. Again, interest is concerned less with affixing blame than understanding the way in which Consciousness acts to animate the people involved. As information about the War on Terror is still unfolding, the reports  more or less follow chronologically without the order which hindsight can provide.

The columnist Bob Herbert has become an outspoken representative of prisoner’s rights; in a recent article he wrote:

... The horror stories from the scandalous interrogation camp that the United States is operating at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are coming to light with increased frequency. At some point, the whole shameful tale of this exercise will be told. For now we have to piece together what we can from accounts that have escaped the government's obsessive secrecy.

We know that people were kept in cells that in some cases were the equivalent of animal cages, and that some detainees, disoriented and despairing, have been shackled like slaves and left to soil themselves with their own urine and feces. Detainees are frequently kicked, punched, beaten and sexually humiliated. Extremely long periods of psychologically damaging isolation are routine.

This is all being done in the name of fighting terror. But the best evidence seems to show that  many of the people rounded up and dumped without formal charges into Guantanamo had nothing to do with terror. They just happened to be unfortunate enough to get caught in one of Uncle Sam's depressingly indiscriminate sweeps. Which is what happened to Shafiq Rasul, who was released from Guantanamo about a year ago.  His story is instructive, and has not been told widely enough. 

Rasul was one of three young men, all friends, from the British town of Tipton who were among thousands of people seized in Afghanistan in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. They had been there, he said, to distribute food and medical supplies to poor Afghans.

Soon after their release from Guantanamo, the three were interviewed by Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has been trying to secure legal representation for Guantanamo detainees.

Under extreme duress at Guantanamo, including hundreds of hours of interrogation and long periods of isolation, the three men confessed to having been in a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. They also said they were among a number of men who could be seen in a videotape of Osama bin Laden. The tape had been made in August 2000.

` For the better part of two years, Rasul and his friends ... had denied involvement in any terror activity whatsoever. But Rasul said they eventually succumbed. He had been held in isolation for several weeks when an interrogator showed him the video of  bin Laden. He said she told him: "I've put detainees here in isolation for 12 months, and eventually they've broken. You might as well admit it now."

"I could not bear another day of isolation, let alone the prospect of another year," Rasul said. He confessed.

The three men, all British citizens, were saved by British intelligence officials, who proved that they had been in England when the video was shot, and during the time they were supposed to have been in al-Qaeda training camps. All three were returned to England and released. 

Rasul said he continues to worry about the many other detainees who may be innocent, but who have no way to prove it. 

The Bush administration has turned Guantanamo into a place that is devoid of due process and the rule of law. It's a place where human beings can be imprisoned for life without being charged or tried, without ever seeing a lawyer, and without having their cases reviewed by a court. Congress and the courts should be uprooting this evil practice, but freedom and justice in the United States are on a post-Sept. 11 downhill slide. 

So we are stuck for the time being with the disgrace of Guantanamo, which will be a stain on the history of the United States just like the internment of the Japanese in World War II. (Herbert, 2005, Feb. 8,  p. A13).

Solitary confinement is a common practice in jails and prisons everywhere. Commonly called the “Hole” by prisoners, it is not at all unusual for people to be kept in windowless cells under 24 hour fluorescent lights for days or weeks at a time, even if they have not been charged with a crime. Although such treatment is prohibited  by the Geneva Convention, most people do not get such rights, including those accused of minor crimes. Herbert in another column tells the story of a person abducted and sent to a foreign prison for interrogation:

Arar, a Canadian citizen with a wife and two young children, had his life flipped upside down in the fall of 2002 when John Ashcroft’s Justice Department, acting at least in part on bad information supplied by the Canadian Government, decided it would be a good idea to abduct Arar and ship him off to Syria, an outlaw nation that the Justice Department honchos well knew was addicted to torture. 

Arar was not charged with anything, and yet he was deprived not only of his liberty, but of all legal and human rights. He was handed over in shackles to the Syrian government and, to no-one’s surprise, promptly brutalized.

He emerged a year later, and still no charges were lodged against him. His torturers said they were unable to elicit any link between Arar and terrorism. He was sent back to Canada to face the torment of a life in ruins. 

Arar’s is the case we know about. How many other individuals have disappeared at the hands of the Bush administration? How many have been sent, like the victims of a lynch mob, to overseas torture centers? How many people are being held in  the CIA’s highly secret offshore prisons? Who are they and how are they being treated? Have any been wrongly accused? If so, what recourse do they have? (Herbert, 2005, Mar 1, p. A15).

Syria, suspected of supporting terrorism is a strange place to outsource torture. A similar practice to outsourcing torture is to put a person into a cell with another prisoner who is known to be dangerous and unpredictable. Jails aren’t intended to be comfortable, and with people constantly hungry, there are those who will please staff for a sandwich, a wink and a nod.  Accidents happen. Prisoners and guards alike may tend to copy each other's destructive behavior in endless loops, forming societies in perpetual conflict. In another article about Arar, Herbert writes:

Barbara Olshansky is the assistant legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing Arar in a lawsuit against the U.S. I asked  her to describe Arar’s condition following his release from custody. She sounded shaken by the memory.

"He’s not a big guy," she said. "He had lost more than forty pounds. His pallor was terrible, and his eyes were sunken. He looked like someone who was kind of dead inside."

Any government that commits, condones or fosters torture is a malignant force in the world. And those who refuse to rise up against it are enablers, if not collaborators. (Herbert, 2005, Feb. 14,  p. A9).

It is ironic that the USA sent Arar  to a country it has implied might be held responsible for helping insurgents in Iraq. Or is it? It must be noted that while the people Herbert speaks of are innocent, and there is concern that other innocent people are at risk, perhaps lost in the prison bureaucracy, there is no excuse to treat people this way whether they are guilty or not. It may at times be necessary to restrain people from hurting themselves or others, but to choose petty vengeance is to become that which one wishes to oppose. In that case, the endeavor for Good has been lost.  

In late winter 2005, the first admission of culpability was reported: 

At least 26 prisoners have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 in what Army and Navy investigators have concluded or suspect were acts of criminal homicide, according to military officials.

... Only one of the deaths occurred at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, officials said, showing how broadly the most violent abuses extended beyond those prison walls and contradicting early impressions that the wrongdoing was confined to a handful of military police on the prison's night shift. (Jehl & Schmitt, 2005, Mar. 16, p. A2).

Strangely, this may be good news, for it indicates that perhaps the consciences of ordinary people are stirred enough to expose what has been going on in secret.

After the Supreme Court ruled in June 2004 that "...the prisoners ... were entitled to challenge their detentions in federal courts," (Lewis, 2005) numerous lawyers disrupted the isolation of prisoners, giving them access to the media as well as the courts, effectively impairing the interrogations.

Tina foster, a lawyer at the constitutional rights center who is coordinating the lawyer recruitment effort, said that of the 300 lawyers who have signed up, most have not yet been to Guantanamo because of the onerous process of getting a security clearance. 

"Some of the detainees don't even yet know they have attorneys," Foster said. (Lewis, 2005, May 30).

Two months after lawyers began to arrive, plans were announced to cut the Guantanamo prison population by  transferring inmates to  other locations, and it was reported:

Lawyers for detainees expressed concern that foreign governments will be able to determine how to proceed.

"This raises the possibility that detainees at Guantanamo will be moved from what might be termed a legal black hole, a place beyond the law, to a similarly unreachable place in Afghanistan," said Daniel Malone, a New York attorney whose firm represents nine Afghan detainees. "We're concerned about problems that a transfer might create in impeding our efforts to secure our clients' right not to be detained except according to the law." (Wright & White, 2005)

It was also reported that the U.S. might be using prison locations in Uzbekistan where "The human rights record of the former Soviet republic is abysmal, with torture common."  (Van Natta, 2005)

Lewis reports a prisoner's-eye-view of life in the Guantanamo Bay prison camp where as many as a third of the prisoners were engaged in a hunger strike in August, 2005. As many as twenty people were in hospital in handcuffs and leg restraints being fed through nasal tubes. Clive Stafford Smith, a British lawyer for several of the detainees said a prisoner named  Omar Deghayes:

... told him that the strike was largely to protest their long imprisonment without being charged with any crime as well as the conditions of their confinement.

He said that Deghayes, a Libyan who has lived in London, told him: "Look, I'm dying a slow death in this place as it is. I don't have any hope of fair treatment, so what have I got to lose?" (Lewis, 2005, Sept 18)

Propagation of the Idea that domination of others is desirable and best achieved by force and punishment has resulted in a group of desperate men who very likely would retaliate if they could. While they cannot, their friends, relatives and comrades-in-arms will most certainly try to do so. What do they have to lose? Death seems to be preferable to the conditions imposed upon them and is superior to life without respect, opportunity or alternative.

Conflict between Ideas and the people who espouse them is highlighted by a comparison of the views expressed in Time magazine (Zagorin & Duffy, 2005) and those of Michael Posner of Human Rights First. Time listed abuses suffered by one particular detainee at Guantanamo, including the following prison diary: 

Interrogator began by reminding the detainee about the lessons in respect and how the detainee had disrespected the interrogators. Told detainee that a dog is held in higher esteem because dogs know right from wrong and know to protect innocent people from bad people. Began teaching the detainee lessons such as stay, come and bark to elevate his social status to that of a dog. (Zagorin & Duffy, 2005, p. 33))

It was  admitted that the person had not been charged with a crime, and had no lawyer. After listing numerous other indignities visited on the detainee, including insulting and degrading his religion, sexual baiting, forcing him to wet his pants and other humiliations, Time reporters conclude by saying that even though the Geneva Convention prohibits "outrage on personal dignity," that "...in the war on terrorism, the personal dignity of a fanatic trained for mass murder may be an inevitable casualty." (p. 33) While this statement assumes the person is guilty and gives explicit approval of the methods, Michael Posner, executive director of Human Rights First does not make such an assumption and presents a view in stark contrast to that of Time. Quoted in an article by Bob Herbert, Posner said:

"We're a nation founded on laws and rules that say you treat people humanely, and among the safeguards is that people in detention should be formally recognized; they should have some access, at a minimum to the Red Cross; and somebody should be accountable for their treatment. 

"What we've done is essentially to throw away the rule book and say that there are some people who are beyond  the law, beyond scrutiny, and that the people doing the detentions and interrogations are totally unaccountable. It's a secret process that almost inevitably leads to abuse.” (Herbert, 2005, Nov. 4). 

The divergent opinions between approval and disapproval of expedient methods of interrogation are precisely what is spoken of in this paper as competition between Ideas (Dragons) for the minds and hearts of people.  This conflict even exists within the Republican Party as the Bush Administration blocks an effort by Sen. John McCain R-AZ (himself a POW in Viet Nam) to ban "cruel, degrading or inhuman treatment of any prisoner in U. S. custody." (Herbert, 2005, Nov. 4) It will not be surprising if this conflict becomes increasingly widespread, strident and divisive. All this presumes the detainee is guilty. Suppose he is not? Will these interrogators return to their homeland as police or corrections officers? How would they treat a person who had drugs planted in his car? Prisoners are not the only victims of concentration camps.

The final question is whether to tell the Truth or not. Most of the articles quoted are more strident than presented here, and the reader is encouraged to consult the original sources for a deeper, if perhaps   less  balanced understanding. In a recent article, Neumeister related the problems encountered by U. S. District judge Alvin Hellerstein in trying to settle a case between the military and the ACLU which involved release of photos of prison abuse:  

The judge questioned whether he could disregard arguments by Gen. Richard Meyers, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, who has warned that releasing the photos would aid al-Qaeda recruitment, weaken the Afghan and  Iraqi governments and incite riots against U. S. troops. ...

The ACLU has sought the release of 87 photographs and four videotapes taken at the [Abu Ghraib] prison. The request was part of a 2003 lawsuit demanding information on the treatment of detainees in U. S. custody and the transfer of prisoners to countries known to use torture. The ACLU contends prisoner abuse is systemic....

The judge said he recognized the pictures might be useful to the public as it answers questions about the prison scandal, including whether those in command knew about the abuse. 

Yet, he said there was a "high prurient value" in the pictures.

"A judge cannot look at these things without thinking to himself how quickly they'll be put on the 6 o'clock or 11 o'clock news and how easily they could be subverted to create a false picture of this country," he said. (Neumeister, 2005, Aug.31)

If Frankl's rift between Good and Evil permeates the U. S. just as it does other groups  it would indeed create a false picture of the country to paint It with a broad brush as Evil. Yet concealment of U. S. failures also presents a false face.  An individual guilty of drunk driving is expected to "bite the bullet," admit it, make amends and change his behavior. Should similar behavior be expected of a Government? The problem is that what seems like the lesser of two evils may actually be the greater; people can seldom adequately predict the consequences of such decisions. Judge Hellerstein's dilemma was also experienced by army personnel as follows: Admitting complicity and confessing misbehavior can require uncommon honesty and courage. In an article titled, "Army officers allege prisoner abuse in Iraq," Serrano reports what appears to be confessions of a captain and two sergeants who were responsible for supervising prisoners in Iraq:

Capt. Ian Fishback, a West Point graduate, went to the committee with the charges ... because he was frustrated that superior officers in his chain of command failed to respond, according to Armed Services Committee aides. Fishback and the two sergeants whose names have not been disclosed, also described the violations to Human Rights Watch. The captain is the first officer to go public with allegations of detainee abuse in Iraq since the Abu Ghraib  prison scandal erupted in April 2004.

...Fishback said he personally witnessed detainees being stripped,  deprived of sleep, exposed to elements and "forced into uncomfortable positions for prolonged periods of time for the express purpose of coercing them into revealing information other than name, rank and service number."

"We would give them blows to the head, chest, legs and stomach, pull them down, kick dirt on them This happened every day," Human Rights Watch said one of the sergeants told the group in an interview. The sergeant reportedly described the mistreatment at a base near Fallujah as "just like" Abu Ghraib, saying "We did that just for amusement."

In their disclosures, Fishback and two sergeants have said detainees feared for their lives and referred to members of the 82nd [Airborne] as "Murderous Maniacs" because of the level of brutality meted.

According to Human Rights Watch, the sergeants said they watched and participated in the violence which included prisoners' legs being broken. (Serrano, 2005)

These men apparently engaged in brutality, later recognized they were doing the wrong thing, then resolved their internal conflict by renouncing their previous behavior, "biting the bullet," and asserting the Truth. To do  less would gradually result in an inability to change; a state of moral corruption. To err is human; to cover it up and dwell in a culpable state is to enter Hell.  If the reports are accurate, this West Point graduate and these sergeants voluntarily ended their army careers rather than silently continue their complicity, and simply must be believed. Judge Hellerstien finally made a similar decision and ruled to release the Abu Ghraib photos. (Neumeister, 2005, Sept. 30) 

While this paper presents a Spiritual interpretation of the problem, the mainstream media has also taken up the debate about how prisoners should be treated. A FRONTLINE presentation (Kirk, 2005) of the "Torture Question" details the history, growth and establishment of the present U.S. policy and  provides first-hand accounts from interrogators and others in the controversy. Newsweek magazine (Thomas & Hirsh, 2005) also presents a concise summary of the torture debate which presses the issue into the public conscience. Will the American People let the policy stand or insist on its revision?

A physician's view of the prison problem was stated by Stephen Xenakis who was a military physician with the rank of brigadier general when he retired in 1998. In a recent article about the prison abuse scandals at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, he asked:

When faced with the twin pressures of performing their military duty and providing treatment, did the staffs at these facilities turn a blind eye to the physical and mental torture inflicted on the prisoners, or perhaps even collude with interrogators? There are few other explanations for why they didn’t report suspicious findings from the examinations of the detainees. Unless, of course, those reports were suppressed. 

…The NEJM

 reported that the deputy assistant secretary endorsed the view that some of the medics supporting interrogators in Iraq and Guantanamo were operating outside of the bounds of the doctor-patient relationship and were thus not required to abide by accepted ethical guidelines. …

Indeed, the same article noted that the office contended that the objective of fighting terrorism  trumps the ethical responsibility of the healing practitioner. In other words, "the end justifies the means": A few brutalized prisoners is a small price to pay for protecting U. S. citizens.

…documents of testimony taken during investigation into the abuses at Abu Ghraib recently released under the Freedom of Information Act and posted on the Web sites of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Public Integrity suggest that medical personnel were aware of abuses, may have witnessed some and may even have advised interrogators on the individual medical conditions of the prisoners and their vulnerabilities to specific stresses that could induce them to disclose valuable intelligence—actions that may have bordered on torture. 

With disturbing echoes of unsavory regimes in history, medics abdicated their responsibilities toward the detainees, their patients, instead of making interrogations more humane, more in keeping with international standards of decency.

Unlike soldiers, doctors have a duty to patients as well as country. That is what separates U.S. military physicians from the German doctors who aided the Nazis at concentration camps ...

Something doesn’t smell right here, and it just may be an abscess of ethical lapses. While there can be long and learned legal discussions about the role of torture during wartime, the medical aspect of these discussions should be very brief: No doctor—and no military medical leader—should participate in torture in any way. Either by advising interrogators of prisoner’s vulnerabilities or by simply doing nothing, they did participate. And that says more about the problems of military leadership than any memo on legal protections. (Xenakis, 2005, Feb 13, p. B1).

Xenakisis, now a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Psychiatric Instute of Washington brings the presentation of data started by the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl to a conclusion. It has often been said that abuses result from “lack of training,” yet such an explanation has no power to  explain why they occur. When we find a public rest-room vandalized, do any of us think it is due to “lack of training?” Will telling a person “not to do that” have any effect? In the present formulation of Dragons, people choose to do just as they please, especially in secret when they think they can get away with it. If Evil truly exists, then there is no other purpose for Red Dragons than joy in destruction. Laws, “training,” ethical or legal memos, discussion groups; workshops, none of it will stop bathrooms from being vandalized in the dark nor prisoners from being abused in secret. Trying to control the behavior of other people only invites them to turn the tables. In a sense, the entire planet is a Prison Camp and the only thing an individual can do is to choose his own actions and loyalties. 

Eight stages of Genocide. were  outlined in the introduction to this paper. Further investigation by Stanton shows some 70 genocides since 1945, a number of which are currently under way. (See Appendix A)  Concentration and death camps are not a thing of the past but are happening daily; business as usual for the Red Dragons.

Summary

This has not been a catalog of injustices; rather interest in this data has been how it relates to what is perceived as an internal phenomenon: The Spirits which animate people to accomplish their ends in society, culture and conflict. Viktor Frankl's “rift between good and evil” has been examined in a number of extreme situations: the Nazi Death Camps, the American Holocaust of the Civil War; allegations about the Allied Prison Camps and the Japanese-American internment and situation of WWII. The Americanized British idea of eugenics was reviewed as a core cause of Nazi fanaticism and Gregory Stanton's Stages of Genocide were introduced as helpful analytical tools. Spoken of allegorically as Dragons because of the historical use of this metaphor, Ideas which compete for the loyalty and  dedication of individuals were presented as representative of two diametrically opposed points of view: First, the Red Dragons were considered as representing the self, the family, the group and finally the Nation-State of the individual person with ascending levels of unselfishness. Blue Dragons identified those whose primary loyalty was to the Family of Man or altruistic principle. Red Dragons  were defined as those ideas and behaviors which tend to exploit other people and the Blue Dragons as those which further the interests of others. The way in which these Dragons mix within an individual and the internal conflict that ensues was emphasized, and  the process of projecting one's own inner evil onto others was highlighted. Pride, Anger, Greed

 and Fear are the major ways the Red Dragons act to control people, but this is by no means an exhaustive list, and perhaps it is Ignorance which should be at the top. Before reading the discussion, the reader is encouraged to scan  Appendix A which shows the number of genocides since 1945, their locations and severity. The primary reason for this presentation has been to develop a useful way to interpret complex data in a way which allows the development of hypotheses and subsequent experiment by those working in the field, and also to narrow the perceived gap between Religion and Science.

Discussion

Four important areas of discussion will be presented: First, the simple terms and examples which integrate the data and the present interpretation, Second, the question of how evil works and what can be done about it will be touched on, but a full development of this topic will be left for future papers. Third, examples of future concerns are presented and finally, a few speculations of the way in which the present data could be integrated by collaborative experimentation between psychological and physical scientists will be suggested.

The principle that people should compete with and control each other goes back to the first settlements and beginnings of civilization; the rise of kings and empires most of which were based on slavery or forced labor and like practices. Because this happened so long ago, it has seemed natural and most theories have accepted competition between people as only “human nature.” But isn't it suspicious that Nature, which provides freely for all the other creatures, does not do so for mankind? Why not? Suppose there truly is a principle which provides for us, but because people became so convinced they have to “follow the leader” that they toiled for others when they didn't really have to? Did the  primitive government of Mumford’s Pyramid Age lay claim to the bounty of Nature, usurp It's role as provider and lord it over the common folk? Pharaoh  may have been the first to declare himself divine; to place himself and his government before God and Nature, but he would not e the last. 

The accumulation of wealth and power by the strong and the oppression of the weak led to a succession of prophets of many religions  throughout the Near East who warned that such practices were unnatural and would, in the end, bring doom on their perpetrators. Historically, this may be the beginning of the struggle between the Dragons for the minds of the people; those in control keeping the people afraid, dependent and servile. Those closer to Nature speaking out against what they knew as deceit. Later, recognizing the false authority of Power, the Yamabushi in Japan the would fill the same role. There is no god but God; no substitute for the real Thing.

In simple terms, the Dragons introduced in this paper represent two competing Principles of Organization for the Human species: The Blue Dragon being a Natural Principle similar to that of the social animals and insects in which the greatest proportion of behavior is cooperative; the Red Dragon being the Principle that each individual shares according to his cleverness and can do as he pleases for himself or his sub-group without regard for others. There is usually a great deal of over-lap between the two but under duress, individuals are presented with forced-choices for sharing scarce resources. The competition between these two Principles (Dragons) gives us free will and all the headaches that go with it, for we must not only accept the consequences of our own choices, but those arising from the behavior of those around us. If we do not choose to go along with the way the Universe is unfolding, we don't have to, yet it is clear the alternative leaves much to be desired. 

As presently structured, society relies for guidance almost entirely on temporal leaders who preclude the emergence of Natural leaders.  Power derives not from natural or spontaneous support and cooperation, but from appointment by a superior in a hierarchy. Republics seem to compensate for this, but even then one only need control the majority in order to control the Whole, so psychologists hone the art of persuasion and finally, everyone is governed by the principle so loved by adolescents: “Everyone else is doing it.”  Could temporal government be the competing principle that precludes the growth of a Natural Order of organization? Regardless, no majority, however large could justify the eugenics laws.

Because Red Dragons seek ascendancy, they tend to collect at the top of hierarchies where they exert a disproportionate share of influence which preempts individual choice by setting “policy” that everyone else must follow regardless of their own feelings or conscience.  In Government, in Religion, in Business, even in Science and Education as in most other forms of human endeavor, the competitive principles espoused by Red dragons impel them to positions of influence. Clearly, not everyone near the top of a hierarchy is a Red Dragon, yet the pressures toward individual corruption in such a situation are well recognized. That said, while the great majority of the people may belong to the Blue Dragon, they are nevertheless temporally controlled by the Red one. At Andersonville, for example, Private Anderson saw no recourse open to him but to write to President Jefferson Davis; had he refused to participate and walked away, he could have been shot as a deserter. Davis gave the letter to an aide who gave it to an aide and the result is now lost in history; there were doubtless problems much more pressing than a naive private at a backwater prison camp. Private Anderson, the  potential Natural leader was preempted. Clearly he had a fully-functioning conscience; what might have happened if he had been named Inspector-General, or Ombudsman or allowed to speak for the prisoners? But Red Dragons are addicted to secrecy and support each other; if anything goes wrong, they don't want to hear about it, they cover it up, hide it and proclaim all is well while promising a “full investigation” that  often lasts until the matter is forgotten. 

Evil and selfishness need not be equated, for some degree of selfishness seems appropriate. The familiar “bell curve” of a normal distribution suggests that if they exist, Good and Evil must share some common area within people and not be bi-modally distributed; at least not yet. One need not be either a Mengele or a Gabaldon. To say Mengele was obsessed with an Idea is nearly the same as to say he was possessed by it; either way, the sense is the same: He and the Idea had become one. Similarly, Gabaldon took the risk of death or court-martial to save others and can also be said to be one with the Idea of Compassion.  Most of us fall between these two extremes, neither all good, nor all bad, yet as a result of our choices, we belong primarily to one Dragon or the other. At some point, each person must resolve internal conflict and make a final choice between them. Perhaps the limit of human free will is to choose the Dragon with which one wishes to merge, but we need some Principle to coordinate our efforts. Temporal government has historically provided the organization people need to function as a coordinated whole, but is there a more beneficial organization immanent in Nature? If so, it appears to require voluntary and continuous participation.

If Evil does indeed exist, like the smallpox virus, It's only host is a person, and It cannot appear in our four-dimensional realm unless we ourselves choose to manifest it, for while people do not need Evil, by our definition, Red Dragons cannot exist without people. If Evil has no other purpose than exterminating people, it is immune to logic or rational argument; It does not want a “piece of the pie,” a “voice in the government,” or a "share of the wealth," It wants to deceive people into destroying each other. If Evil exists in the timeless Realm of Ideas the notion that we can “stamp it out” is strictly delusional. Red Dragons are theorized to work by first persuading us that we are wise enough to judge each other and then leading us one step at a time to become them when we think we are fighting them.  

It is the position of this paper that Frankl's view  is essentially correct: that there are only two types of people which pervade all groups; that behavior is essentially a matter of choice and not Nurture or Nature even though both may play a role; that membership in one group or another does not determine one's “worth” as a human being, but that one chooses  behavior which either benefits or exploits other people. If people love, care for and further each other's interests, they become one with the Blue Dragon; those who degrade, hurt or destroy others belong to the Red Dragon.  Hitler apparently had genuine Spiritual experiences, yet what he thought was purity and light was a deception. The most serious mistake a person can make is to judge others; one must always be careful to avoid forming an us-vs-them dichotomy. Rather, the Blue Dragon must practice Its principles regardless of the tactics used by others.

How does Evil work and what can be done about it?

When one suggests that Love is the answer to Evil, the most common response is: “Awwww! I suppose you're going to tell me Hitler's mother didn't love him enough!?” The implication of the speaker is that he and Hitler are qualitatively different, that he is good, Hitler is a Demon and the only solution is to rid the world of such beings. Having said this, he may grin as if he had made an unassailable point, never realizing that he  himself has copied precisely what Hitler did: Deny the presence of Evil within himself, project it onto someone else and conclude that Murder, not Love is the answer. This is especially compelling if the scapegoat is in fact culpable, and as most all of us fail to live up to the highest ideals, most everyone can be found guilty of something. But here is the deceit of the Red Dragon: to fool people into becoming that which they wish to oppose. You cannot round up all the intolerant people and shoot them to make the world a better place, nor will killing all the propagandized teenagers in an opposing army help a whit. To fight is to lose. Awareness that we are not qualitatively different from each other and that Evil isn't “out there” is necessary before we can even begin to make progress. Holding Love in one's heart doesn't cure Hitler, but it does prevent the individual from copying him. Love is what enabled many to survive the camps. For Frankl, it was love for his wife, for others it may have been God or Principle; the important point is that by being full of it, they were personally protected from invasion by the hatred around them.

Traditionally, Evil is considered as having the purpose to corrupt and destroy people. This conception sets aside the obsession of Psychology with the question: "Why?" For just as water is wet or rocks are hard, Evil is destructive. Those who are motivated to kill others in schools, restaurants or churches do so because they are evil.  The perpetrators are not different from us; have only made a different choice. In the present formulation, they have been provoked into resolving their internal conflict between good and evil by choosing violence as a response to what they perceive as evil. One sixteen year-old even called himself the “Angel of Death,” a clear spiritual identification. The fact that so many teenagers commit these atrocities shows how desperately unhappy they are as a group! Anyone even slightly different may be subject to merciless and incessant teasing, bullying, criticism, rejection, and disrespect. Has High School become a “Concentration Camp” for them? Important in this regard is that they may very well be correct that someone is evil, but by selecting like behavior, they too become a part of the Red Dragon, which has won, for now it has two people to control instead of only one. Rather than trying to control these young people, they may need only to be loved and accepted for who they are. There is apparently no cure for evil, only an alternative. Perhaps we can look for and encourage emergent leaders; one kindly janitor or cook who provides an alternative may do more good than an army of cops.  Another alternative might be to  treat the school staff with more kindness and respect so that they, like Captain Munger's prisoners want to pass it on to others. What is the “job description” for a human being?

The senior warden in Frankl's camp is another example: Tormented by the guards, he became as bad or worse to his fellow prisoners. Simpler than trying to construct a complex web of rewards and punishments to explain why a person acts this way, the theory of evil goes straight to the heart of the matter. But if evil is simply willful choice, what then can be done about it? Perhaps if the person becomes aware that the “enemy” is inside rather than outside himself, he can make better choices; perhaps methods to make people more aware of evil can be of some use. But these questions are for another paper. At present, evil has been identified as a simpler explanation than some current psychological theories, and further that it has at least in one case greater power of explanation. Pretending evil doesn't exist has a sorry record of success and blaming others is the way to repeat the mistakes of history, that much is clear.

Contrary to the opinion of many, women are as prone to corruption as men. The sad photos of the young American woman

 sexually abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison shows how someone can be corrupted by  predatory Ideas. How can she be freed from this internal possession?  Are we to believe that somehow this young woman in her early twenties was  simply a “bad apple?” What is a “bad apple” anyway?  Apparently something qualitatively different from all of us “good apples.” If “bad-appleness” is the cause of this behavior, what is it's etiology? How do you get to be a “bad apple?” Equating a person and rotten fruit is the dehumanization stage of Stanton's Genocide classifications. The concept of “Bad-Appleness” has no explanatory power, is equivalent to a simple label as “Bad Guy” and adds nothing whatever. It is not the person, but the behavior that is destructive. How can the behavior be extinguished without harming the person? By changing the Idea? How does one go about that? By admitting it is undesirable and pledging to change?  By asking for Spiritual Help from a Higher Power as many religious and even 12-step programs do? Will words alone suffice? How many drug addicts promise themselves they'll  “straighten out” in the morning? Was this woman truly different from all the “good apples” in the American Army? Or was she, like so many others in the past led to believe that she was superior to those who were “bad” and so was entitled to treat them any way she pleased? Is she really so different from other Americans who abused each other in the Civil War concentration camps?   The person in question said she was misled; a victim herself, and blamed  a supervisor who was a professional corrections officer. Blaming others won't work; failure to accept responsibility is clearly not the way to personal growth.     Regardless, the established curative treatment for being a “bad apple” is to be sent to prison this time as a prisoner instead of a guard. After she herself has been mistreated, perhaps she'll learn to be nice. In the present formulation, the only way this makes sense is to propagate the scientifically unsupported Idea that hurting people is a desirable and effective way to deal with them.

Finally, it seems that people who choose malevolent behavior are entitled to exercise their choice to do so without interference even though we may also, perhaps must assert the right to refuse to interact with them. This is  a disappointment for those who thought it wise to be direct, to negotiate honestly and settle differences, but free will must be respected. 

Future concerns

Recent trends indicate that society is on the cusp of a global persecution of the poor. Even in the U.S.A., attacks on the homeless and even murder by young toughs has become common (Anderson, 2006) and there are increasing laws impairing their ability to survive on the streets. (See A Dream Denied: The Criminalization of Homelessness in U.S. Cities, 2006). Historically, religious persecution has often been based on the theme that monasteries and churches failed to produce financial benefits for government, and wasted resources on those who produced little or nothing. In a competitive society, it has generally not been recognized that the five-percent unemployment considered desirable in a "healthy" economy consists largely of the same five percent of people who are handicapped in one way or another. While it is recognized that the retarded need sheltered employment, the stereotype of the homeless is of a drunk who is too lazy to work and pesters good citizens for their hard-earned money. Perhaps eighty-percent of the homeless are simply between the handicapped and the lower-end of the competitive employed: People perhaps too slow in washing dishes or error prone for clerical work, but adequately equipped to function socially so that it seems to the uninitiated that their only problem is that they are lazy. Many may have repeatedly gotten jobs only to be told they "weren't good enough," and given up in their efforts to rejoin the main stream. Others may have personality problems that make them difficult to interact with or suffer from post-traumatic psychological stress due to war, divorce, family disintegration and so on, yet the competitive nature of modern monetary and market social systems leave them literally nowhere to go, and they are thus forced to sleep under bridges, in doorways, or any cubby-hole they can. They may eat at religious facilities or other places which keep a tradition of gift rather than market economy, or endure the daily cat-calls and humiliations while "flying a sign," the modern term for begging.  

Writing about the Eleventh and Twelfth centuries, R. I. Moore (1992),  in The Formation of a Persecuting Society, pointed out that as money came into widespread use, public opinion was first against those who relied on it, then later turned against those who did not. "Its [money] coming into regular, day-to-day use for the first time since antiquity involved replacing a system of exchange which was ruled by the ethics of the gift to one which conformed to the values of the marketplace." (p.105) It seems that at one point, social prestige was measured by one's ability to give, and those who had title to land were expected to provide for all  who lived on it. The decline of the Aristocracy and the rise of the Merchant class formed a new society in which "Money becomes the measure of all things, and the means by which new wealth can be amassed in entirely new ways, often at expense of those who have enjoyed security and pre-eminence in the past." (p. 105-106) Until that time, [mediaeval] land was mostly bequeathed, not bought; and a new market in real estate arose. The fall of the Aristocracy with it's responsibility of Noblesse Oblige yielded to a system in which no-one had responsibility for others.  Persecution then turned to those who did not  meet the values of the majority. "Where money reigned supreme, the growing and increasingly menacing presence of the poor pointed to the necessity of providing for their control and, if necessary, their confinement or expulsion from the community." (p. 106) It is in this climate that Francis of Assisi began his Spiritual quest, it is said, by disrobing at a church inquiry and, were it not for the bishop giving him his own robe, would have walked naked into the streets. (Thomas of Celano, 1230)

In Zimbabwe, police have recently raided churches to arrest people when an "Urban Renewal"  [known colloquially as "drive out the trash"]  project destroyed their homes: "Police have torched and bulldozed shanty towns, informal markets and other structures deemed illegal since launching the campaign on May 19. ... Independent estimates of the number affected range from 300,000 to more than a million." (Hartnack, 2005) Those arrested in the church raids were taken to a transit camp known as Helensvale where at first clergy were allowed access, but later told to leave. Four clergymen were reported detained; there is no information on conditions in Helensvale.

The next great persecution, it seems, will likely be directed at the homeless, the poor, the weak and those who refuse to practice the conditional love of legal contract or who rely on gifts rather than  quid-pro-quo. In short, the modern "heretics" who cannot or will not join the larger society in it's pursuit of monetary wealth. All the same to the Red Dragons who persist in inciting us to attack each other under any excuse.

Aside from the usual and ordinary temptations of evil, it is also expected that new Ideas will emerge which promise control over our own destiny; brilliant and almost miraculous ability to cure most all human ills and usher in a golden  age. Biological Engineering will likely lead the charge and in this regard, we must be careful to watch for the same old snake-oil cures sold at side-shows in Victorian Circuses. Reliance on our own skills and abilities may well lead us down the same path as eugenics to a new nightmare. Recent articles tell of mice with human brain cells, pigs with human blood, sheep with human hearts and even plans to create a cross between people and chimpanzees. The reporter asks:

Would such a creature enjoy human rights and protections under the law? For  example, it's possible that such a creature could cross the species barrier and mate with a human. Would society allow inter-species conjugation? Would a humanzee have to pass some kind of a “humanness test” test to win its freedom? Would it be forced into doing menial labor or be used to perform dangerous activities? If the whole purpose of creating this hybrid is to perform medical experiments, could these experiments possibly be morally permissible?

Please understand that none of this is science fiction. Anticipating a flurry of new experiments, the National Academy of Sciences, the United States' most august scientific body, is expected to issue guidelines for chimeric research this month. What would be the ramifications of creating hundreds, even thousands, of new life forms that are part human and part other creature? Creatures that could mate, reproduce and repopulate the earth? (Rifkin, 2005).

A few weeks later, it was reported that approval had been granted for chimeric research, but not specifically the "humanzee" experiments. (Elias, 2005)

Another example of the pitfalls that await us is a situation that has developed in China. The “miracle” of medicine has allowed us to tell the sex of a fetus. A combination of social policy of one child per family and individual preference for sons has caused many girl babies to be aborted with the result that there are now some forty million young men in China alone and perhaps as many as ninety million across Asia for whom there are no wives. Called guang guan or “bare branches,” their lack of direction has become a significant social problem. (Wiseman, 2002) When the parents of these men unwittingly  made what seemed to them to be an unimportant little adjustment to Nature, they didn't realize that by their selfish action they ensured that they would never have grandchildren.  According to the theory, the Red Dragon produced chaos by prompting selfish concerns that got people to unwittingly harm each other and Nature as well by not gratefully accepting what they were given. This is far beyond the usual notion of “sin,” yet it makes clear that willful disregard of the Rule of Nature has consequences which in this case was death of the family line. It may be inescapable that “sin” embodies it's own “punishment;” that traditional prohibitions aren't arbitrary, but intended to guide people in their interactions with Nature and protect them from harming themselves. Morality may not be in the realm of Science, but the investigation and prediction of consequences most certainly is, and this suggests the possibility of a scientific definition of "sin

" as actions which are ecologically destructive beginning with but not limited to people. This could be taken too far: protecting ourselves from and swatting mosquitoes, keeping our dwellings vermin-free and so on are seen as entirely natural provided errors like DDT aren't repeated. These issues are in the realm of Science. As example of the application of Science to ethical or moral behavior toward the Creation, Lovelock (2000) suggests a role for people midway between the traditional extremes of Slave or Lord:

I would suggest that our role as stewards of the Earth is more like that of that proud trades union functionary, the shop steward. We are not managers or masters of the Earth, we are just shop stewards, workers chosen, because of our intelligence, as representatives for the others, the rest of life on our planet.  Our union represents the bacteria, the fungi, and the slime moulds as well as the nouveau riche fish, birds, and animals and the landed establishment of noble trees and their lesser plants. Indeed, all living things are members of our union and they are angry at the diabolical liberties taken with their planet and their lives by people. People should be living in union with the other members, not exploiting them and their habitats. A planetary physician observing the misery we inflict upon them and upon ourselves would support the shop steward and warn that we must learn to live with the Earth in partnership. Otherwise, the rest of creation will, as part of Gaia, [the Earth as a living organism] unconsciously move the Earth itself to a new state, one where we human may no longer be welcome. (Lovelock, p. 186) 

Lovelock's proposal is one standard by which people could learn to guide their behavior beyond the simple "No-No" of traditional "sin" and grasp understanding of general principles. Those who disobey the Law of Gravity suffer the consequences; Spiritual Laws or what might better be called the Mechanics of Consciousness are just as powerful. No doubt many Down's syndrome children have also been aborted even though we don't have a clue as to what subtle part they may play in the Order of things. Do we need to "cure" them or change our views and accept and love them as they are? Are there other alternatives? The belief that we can “think globally” is an illusion. We need to be systematized and directed by a Higher Principle that we willingly accept even though we don't understand It. 

Besides these enigmas, research on aging has offered the possibility of extending the human life span.  Experimenters suggest the possibility that people soon may expect to live a thousand years. This is not quackery or “second-string” science, but has reached the point where biogerontologists are now debating the ethics of how much to tell the public prior to the dramatic advances that they anticipate within the next two decades. Most researchers feel that nothing should be said until significant  advances have been made, but Aubrey de Grey writes:

...most participants thought it either probable or “not improbable” that comprehensive functional rejuvenation of middle-aged mice would be possible within ten - twenty years, but also felt that biogerontologists should not yet discuss timescales (either for mouse rejuvenation or similar progress in humans) in society at large. This combination of views may be very dangerous, as it assumes that humanity will need little forward planning to transition smoothly from its current almost universal  fatalism concerning the defeat of aging to a widespread appreciation of its foreseeability or even imminence.”  (de Grey, 2004, p. 552).   

Yet biological and other weaponry has reached a high art and Evil, as it is theorized, and which needs only one person to “push the button,” will certainly self-destruct and simultaneously destroy our species if there is no competition from benign Ideas to protect us. However, there is no  passive rescue: people must willingly manifest the Principle which will  deliver them. The choice is between extinction and near immortality.

Together, an Idea and the people who manifest It constitute a Whole which we call a Dragon. The content of destructive ideas may vary; they may be eugenics, medical genetics, newgenics, religiocisms, economicisms, politicisms or so on, but the process is the same: First, a person is seduced into believing he, his ideas and his methods are superior to others, that together with his noble goal, his superior understanding entitles him to interfere with others and make their decisions for them; and that because his group is ascendant and his end is so desirable that any means to attain it are justified. Thus, for example, mistreatment of prisoners to obtain information which might help protect one's own group is justified; one may participate in mistreatment of others to protect one's own life; one may  retaliate with equal abuse; to obtain food necessary for survival;  defend one's self by preemptive attack, assassination and so on. Similarly, some may be persuaded to become  suicide bombers for their “holy” cause, to accept missions as “expendable troops,” become “elite commandos” and so on. The destruction  of people is the nature of destructive Ideas.

The Red Dragons of Pride, Greed, Anger and Fear are present in all groups and it is these vices which are our true enemies instead of other people. To identify other people as the source of evil is the same as the Mediaeval cartographer who projected his own feelings on to maps: “Here be Dragons” must now be understood as identifying them within ourselves. Moreover, these conflicts, both internal and interpersonal, take place every day in ordinary situations from family picnics to company Christmas parties and church socials. For millenia there has been a struggle for people's hearts and minds taking place below our usual level of awareness. Let us now awaken to these internal processes and set about freeing ourselves from them.

Cartoons often show a protagonist with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. While this is far too simple a representation, there may well be more to it than we would wish to admit. Dragons invite us to become one with them; it is seldom clear where the first steps will lead and the sequalia of unintended consequences that result from apparently harmless actions.

Psychology and Physics

According to everyday usage, Spirit is what animates life or action, but life itself is limited to our four-dimensional Realm; especially by time. How can anything be said to be alive unless it metabolizes, grows and reproduces?  Yet the Spirit of Evil is said to be alive in the sense that It has It's own agenda: the destruction of people especially by prompting them to malignant Ideas and behavior, to instigate various social organizations to accomplish malevolent ends.  Hyperspace as described by Michio Kaku, (1994) Quantum theory and the implicate order of David Bohm, (1980) Brian Greene, (1999) string-theory and the New Physics (Capra, 1975; Zukav, 1979) in general are intimately related to the present topic as potential explanations for how this could all fit together, yet will not be discussed here to avoid excessive complexity. A former psychologist, the present writer has some  trivial acquaintance but no expertise with the “new” Physics,  so the purpose of this section is to first present the average reader with a few references for theoretically possible ways Physics and Psychology might interact and secondly to suggest an outline for future collaborative experimentation which might interest physicists. Here are a few speculations:

1. The Big Bang model of Creation begins with a singularity: In the Beginning, there was only One Thing. Bell's theorem (Bell, 2001) indicates that any two particles that were once in contact are forever related; another way of saying that there is only one thing even though people perceive it as separate parts. In some sense according to Bohm & Hiley, the Universe is still an undivided whole. Using a plant as an example, they suggest:

...an overall approach that encompasses all aspects of objective nature and our subjective experience (e.g. as an observer and a thinker). ...Consider a tree, for example, which grows from a seed. Actually the seed makes a negligible contribution to the material substance of the plant and to the energy needed to make it grow. The substance comes from the air, water and soil, while the energy comes from the sun. ...All the streams of matter and energy which had hitherto developed in an unorganised way, now begin to bring substance and energy to the plant, which grows and eventually decays to fall back into inanimate matter.

At no stage is there a break in this process. For example one would not wish to say that an "inanimate" molecule of carbon dioxide enters the tree and suddenly becomes "alive," or that the oxygen molecule suddenly "dies" when it it leaves the tree. Rather, life is eternally enfolded in matter and more deeply in  the underlying ground of a generalised holomovement as is mind and consciousness. Under suitable conditions, all of these unfold and evolve to become manifest in ever higher stages of organisation. 

The notion of a separate organism is clearly an abstraction, as is also its boundary. Underlying all this is unbroken wholeness even though our civilisation has developed in such a way as to strongly emphasise  the separation into parts. (Bohm & Hiley, 1993, pp. 388-389).

Thus, much of the latest thinking centers on the notion that the Universe and It's observer are inseparable. The reader will note the reference to "higher stages of organization." In Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, James Lovelock proposed that our planet itself is essentially alive and serious debate is under way on this topic. (Schneider, 2004) The notion that the Universe Itself is quite literally a Supreme Being must also be seriously considered.  Dragons would also clearly be parts of the Universe as a Whole. It may be necessary to update the present definition of Life rather than cling to the traditional distinction between "animate" and "inanimate" states of matter. Such views threaten the widespread and rather egotistical belief that humans are "Lords of Creation" and are likely to be unpopular for that reason alone.  

2. Astronomers have calculated that the Universe should fly apart due to centrifugal force unless there is some source of gravitational attraction that is undetectable except by inference. (Cline, 2003) According to some estimates, only five percent of what exists is visible to us. Ergo, there is a whole lot of something which we as four-dimensional beings cannot  or at least do not perceive. The implication is that Beings may also exist which people cannot perceive except by inference. The ancient question of skeptics who ask: “If Heaven and Hell exist, where are they?” can now be answered if only by another, more complex puzzle: they are in the same inferred yet invisible “place” where the gravity arises. Here, language fails us, for the word "Being" implies time, and the word "place" implies space, neither of which are applicable to a Dimension which may contain them both combined with others as subsets. From the results of scientific experimentation with prayer and meditation, one may infer the presence of invisible Entities which can be seen to Act through the consciousness and actions of people and animals. After Einstein, it was necessary to combine the Laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy. If the Universe is truly an "unbroken whole," it may  be necessary to include Consciousness as well. 

3. String theory suggests that the Universe is constructed from elemental “strings” that present themselves in different ways due to the way they “vibrate,” appearing as matter, magnetism, gravity and so on. (Bousso, 2004) Ideas of Hyperspace suggest that there are as many as eleven or more dimensions  to the Universe; that is to say that unification of all phenomena theoretically occurs in mathematical equations which have at least eleven factors. The possibility exists that Consciousness may be one of these dimensions, and that previously unaware of it, people perceive not only the four dimensions of space-time, but internally, a fifth dimension of Consciousness which is one of the theorized states of a “string.”

4. Prayer and meditation can be demonstrated to have an effect on the Universe as a whole and these experimental results show an interaction between Matter, Energy and Thought. If one adopts the view that just as in the beginning, there is only One Thing, and according to Bell's Theorem, then an interaction between the Universe as a whole and the thoughts of an individual person is hardly a surprise. The Natural Order is for people to act as an extension of the Universe; the tail does not wag the Dog; anything else is disharmonious. The basic notion is that the role of people in Nature may be to manifest the internal phenomena of Consciousness into the four-dimensional Realm they experience externally. The physicist Wolfgang Pauli and psychoanalyst Carl Jung collaborated effectively in the conceptualization of the phenomena of synchronicity; (Pauli & Jung, 1952) further collaboration between these sciences may lead to better formulation of these ideas. A separate paper is needed to explore the relationship between Ideas and Hyperspace. For now, let it be simply kept in mind that Consciousness, which is  conventionally perceived as a private internal phenomenon may actually be another Dimension which people perceive with the “third eye” of Spiritual Awakening. More precisely, that the Mind itself, when properly tuned, might also function as a sense-organ.

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Conclusion

When a psychologist asks a person to tell a story about a Rorschach card, the story tells about the inner life of the client. History tells about the Inner Life of people as a Whole; Concentration Camps tell the story of the Evil that dwells within us all. No-one has felt a magnetic field, we know them by their consequences. No-one has seen a cosmic ray, we know them by their tracks in a Wilson cloud chamber. The atrocities of the Camps are the consequences, the "tracks" of the Red Dragon of Evil. Frankl's rift between good and evil that permeates all groups exposes itself behind the locked doors of secrecy. The adage that a problem well stated is half-solved has caused this mostly untested theory to be stated in positive terms. Experimentation will show if it has utility or not.

This tour of Concentration Camps has also been a tour of the Human Spirit: Everything reviewed here has been a manifestation of something inside us: One day at a time, people constructed and maintained Hell on earth, taking turns at degrading, freezing, starving, and destroying each other while they blamed their actions on the parties they attacked. Just as gargoyles and tales of trolls are manifestations of Ideas, so the Concentration Camp objectified something inside the people.  Is this only the “War Psychosis” of Hesseltine? Can this behavior be caused by early learning? By a genetic or metabolic anomaly, “chemical imbalance,” pathogen, parasite, toxic, or organic condition? Or is this time to think, quite properly, of a display of Spirit? There appears to be little doubt Evil exists within the human heart, for in  these conditions, it seemed to expose itself quite clearly: The Red Dragon impelled people to meticulously organize for the systematic destruction of their fellows, and in so doing exposed Itself to view. It's outrages have provoked millions to subscribe to It by taking up arms and, by choosing the Cause of Hatred, fight and kill on one side or the other, yet as was seen, there were no “winners” at Andersonville, Elmira, Auschwitz nor, if the allegations are true, at Sinzig. Will there be winners in the War on Terror?

It seems eminently reasonable that the Natural Order of people is to act beneficially toward each other because for the most part, this is what we see in the other creatures around us. In no other species are there repeated, persistent and organized efforts to exterminate each other. Even ants in California, (Tsutsui, 2000) Europe (Giraud & Keller, 2002) and to some extent in Japan (Japanese ant image database, 2003) have formed cooperative super-colonies of millions of nests over thousands of miles. It may be that the ultimate lesson of competition is that cooperation or ecological harmony is evolutionarily superior. This, however, remains arguable because competition continues between super-colonies and there is limited ability to extend  facts learned about creatures who differentiate  each other by superficial & chemical characteristics to people who must be distinguished on the basis of behavior. Finally, if two competing principles of organization for people are a feature of Nature Itself, it is not only pointless but arrogant to critique it; the goal of Science is to discover the Truth, whether we like it or not. Bacque’s allegations, as well as Mason & Beasley’s data and photos must be accounted for. The present theory of Dragons is presented as only a primitive approximation of Truth and it is expected that refinements will be frequent and endless as the Universe unfolds It's complexity.

In the present context it is clearly difficult to detect hidden Red Dragons. Tsutsui raises interesting questions as to how life forms develop self/non-self recognition systems which “...permit the unification of distinct elements into cohesive social groups, from multicellular organisms to colonial super-organisms.” (Tsutsui, 2004, p. 713) At present, the important point is twofold: Like ants, people are an inseparable part of Nature and as such are subject to It's laws; but unlike ants, people who are asked to love one another have a choice as to whether they will do so or not. The competitive organizing principle of  Evil provides them with an alternative to do as they please. It seems there is latitude in ways to act in cooperative harmony, but it is clear that irresponsible selfishness, insensitivity to the needs and wishes of others,  endless childish indulgence, infantile sucking, predatory conduct or similar behaviors simply will not work. The notion that people are superior to Nature and can do anything they like without consequence is delusional. One thing is clear: People do not have the capacity to judge one another; Nature Itself will sort us out.

The theorized competitive super-organisms here called “Dragons” by offering us alternatives, give us free will. Right-brain and Left-brain studies may be helpful in this area, for it seems that much internal conflict centers about thought versus feelings; judging others by reason instead of empathy. Exclusive reliance on Reason at the expense of Intuitive or Spiritual solutions to the problems of mankind has resulted in unnecessary suffering at every turn. There is no excuse whatever for starvation in modern times. Or is Altruism is a character defect? Does the "law" of supply and demand have authority over Compassion?  Finally, if Evil is only that which disrupts the original design, perhaps all we have to do is stop trying too hard and let Nature have it's way to restore us to our original state. People are often persuaded to "fix" something which isn't broken; the Universe doesn't need human direction or correction. 

It is startling to think of Ideas as having their own agendas, for this makes them in some sense alive, yet they have no form and need to use people in order to manifest themselves in our four-dimensional realm. After thoughtful consideration, this makes perfect sense as well, for an Idea then articulates us into a coordinated Whole while our actions simultaneously objectify the Idea. People need Ideas, and Ideas need people.

The discussion section of this paper asked more questions than it answered, and in a sense this is good, for it indicates that the present interpretation offers the possibility of testable hypotheses. The theory that Evil exists seems not only tenable, but reasonable as well. However, investigators must be cautioned: The legendary Dragon not only has teeth, but breathes fire as well. Moreover, the well-established belief that people are separate from and perceive the Universe objectively is in serious question, and Experimenters may find it painfully necessary to repeatedly review and re-adjust this unwarranted assumption. 

A great many serious allegations have been included in this paper, and the present author lacks the resources to verify or reject them. Readers with Law, History, Journalism or other backgrounds that could help in this regard are needed. A great building or construction project requires the cooperative contributions of many trades; these allegations are so serious they deserve the collective  evaluation of the very best minds. 

About the Civil War, Horigan wrote: “Powerful men who claimed in public to have acted justly are now seen to have employed unjust means in private.” (Horigan, 2002, p. 192) There are allegations that the Allies may have also done the same to the Germans after WWII. How else can one explain the reports of U.S. Army doctors with photos of 100,000 people standing in prisons without shelter? Appendix A shows some seventy or more genocides in different parts of the world, and even those who espouse the War on Terror expect it to last decades. Will the Red Dragon now make our Earth a Concentration Camp? If so, the only thing we can do is choose the way we respond to it.

IN MEMORIAM

At the siege of Vicksburg in the American War Between the States, the armies faced each other across a steep, narrow ravine. When the author toured this battlefield early one spring morning, he found two monuments from the same State, one on the Northern side and one on the South where boys of the same State, perhaps even kin had faced and killed each other. A song of those olden times sounds loudly down the years and finds itself on this page:

Just Before the Battle, Mother

(Root, 1862) 

"Just before the battle, Mother, I am thinking most of you; While upon the field we're watching, With the enemy in view.

Comrades brave are 'round me lying, Fill'd with tho'ts of home and God; For well they know, that on the morrow, Some will sleep beneath the sod.  

Chorus: Farewell Mother, you may never Press me to your heart again; But O, you'll not forget me Mother, If I'm number'd with the slain.

Hark! I hear the bugles sounding, Tis the signal for the fight, Now may God protect us, Mother, As He ever does the right. 

Hear the “Battle cry of Freedom,” How it swells upon the air; Oh, yes we'll rally round the standard, Or we'll perish nobly there."

(chorus)

None of us should ever forget the sacrifices brave and dedicated men and women have made doing what they thought was right in the service of others. There is no simple formula for mortals to judge each other; the Author of the Eleven Dimensions understands; everything will be made right. Rather, we need to respect all who did their duty to God and their homelands as they understood it. Respect them even if we do not agree with them, and hope that we as survivors can follow the example of forgiveness and healing that has allowed the USA to become a whole nation again. Let us also internationally respect each other's history, flags and traditions regardless of past mistakes and try, at least to become a whole world; and let us honor courage, dedication and unselfishness wherever they are found.

POSTSCRIPT

i have never done anything that i couldn’t do better the second time around, and this is especially true of Dragons, because it has been necessary to complete the manuscript without consulting other professionals or editors. 

It is much easier to criticize a work than to do it right the first time; there are doubtless numerous errors and oversights that will be easily noticed, as well as corrections and additions to be made. Yet they must wait until after the paper is issued. Dragons, then, should be considered a work-in-progress offered to the reader as if he/she were not just a reviewer, but rather as a member of an editing team. This is, perhaps, closer to the Spirit of the paper, for it is not just the efforts of one person that appears on these pages, but of the Lessons i have received from others over more than twenty-five years on the Spiritual Path. The main thesis of the paper is that people can be, in a sense, all One, and that our individual efforts combine to produce a Whole that is cannot be known by any single one of us. Thus, Dragons cannot be completed by the “author,” but needs collaborative readers who by adding views from their own arts and sciences enable a closer approximation of the Truth.

Dragons after all, is not “my” idea; rather it is an Idea whose time has come as It “bubbles up” in Human Consciousness, expressing Itself in various ways through such people as the biologist James Lovelock (1979) and his Gaia hypothesis, the “Turtle” in the poetry of Mary Oliver (1986), the Psycho-Cybernetics of the physician Maxwell Maltz, (1969) the Ecosophy of the Philosopher Arne Naess (1995) or the Megamachine of  Lewis Mumford (2003) that approaches the topic of Evil and the mental enslavement of Humanity. It is the Red Dragons that want us to ignore our similarities, magnify our differences, argue about precedence and squabble over petty envies and jealousies to attain an egoistic illusion of superiority that excuses efforts to dominate one another.

Moreover, the theories advanced in this paper were derived from experience (sychronisms) obtained through the diligent application of a supra-rational method for the study of Consciousness originated some 2,500 years ago by a dedicated man named Siddartha Gautama. Once free of the Red Dragons, one is “disendarkened;” the Truth lies open; plain for all to see. None of this is new; only a rediscovery and modern exposition.

Finally, after this paper was completed, and even after the postscript was written, i happened to notice on a table in the library a volume written by Cornelis De Wall on the 19^th Century scientist-philosopher Charles Peirce. Feeling it might be important, i opened it to read:

Pierce considered the idea of a personal identity -- that is, of an autonomous mind that we can call ours—“The vulgarest delusion of vanity,” ... We speak proudly of our mind, Peirce noted, but in truth “it is we who float upon its surface and belong to it more than it belongs to us.” As he put it elsewhere: “just as we say that a body is in motion and not that motion is in a body we ought to say that we are in thought and not that thoughts are in us.” It is not we who think, but it is thought that develops through us. (De Waal, 2001, p.84.)

This affirmation of the main theme of the present paper can be interpreted in a number of ways. First, as an example of the “coincidences” (synchronisms) which have been so helpful in its preparation; secondly, it should be clear that we are at best only willing mediators of a Higher Power that seeks to benefit us all.  Thirdly, it makes laughable any notion that “I” have discovered anything; various Religions have warned us of Evil for centuries. The only “discovery” is that they have very likely been right all along.

 Harmony

Eugene, Oregon; 

Spring, 2006

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made for TV movie Andersonville

History channel movie Camp Douglas: 80 acres of hell.

There are some ten pages of photos and copies of Civil-war era news accounts that are helpful i understanding the spirit of the times. These are to be added to the website in the future.

General

In transfering the Manuscript to the website, page numbers and footnotes were lost. In some cases, these were crucial and a way must be found to restore them.