by Dieter Duhm
WORKS CITED
1. Sabine Lichtenfels, Sources of Love and Peace. (Belzig: Verlag Meiga, 2004). Back to reading
2. Peace Pilgrim, Steps toward Inner Peace: Harmonious Principles for Human Living (Santa Fe, NM: Ocean Tree Books, 1992). Back to reading
3. Ibid. Back to reading
PART IV
THE GLOBAL HEALING BIOTOPES PLAN
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To enable a future without war we need convincing models. The models need to provide solutions for both the outer global crises and the crises of the inner human world. It is the inner human processes that determine the success or failure of our peace work. Human society needs to be newly anchored in the universal powers of life and creation (the Sacred Matrix) if it is to find the resolution that is needed. We need new models of living wherein truth, love, and solidarity become possible again. We need community in which the latent war between the genders has ended, in which free sexuality is based on truth and trust, and in which our fellow beings are respected as cooperation partners within a sacred alliance. We need intimate cooperation with nature and the universe because healing is the reconnection with the original power field of the divine world. This applies to the individual organism, to the organism of a community, and to the organism of all humankind.
The first step of this global work consists of creating Healing Biotopes. The second step entails connecting the Healing Biotopes in a global network. The third step is global field-building, which is no longer carried out by humanity, but by the laws inherent to the universal holon. This “morphogenetic world process” is described in the last part of this section.
Chapter 23: What is a Healing Biotope?
The Tamera peace research center in Portugal has been working on the global Healing Biotopes plan for two decades. It is a cultural idea for an era free of war and violence. A Healing Biotope is a community in which all beings involved – human beings, animals, plants, and waters – live together in a way that serves their mutual healing and development. It is crucial that there is trust among all those involved, for trust is the basis of healing. A new objective thus comes into play, one that has not yet been featured in ecological or economic questions – the strategic building of trust. This will require the overcoming of an historic barrier; most beings carry a deep conditioning of mistrust as a result of the historic trauma. In order to generate trust, the barriers of fear, disguise, and deceit must be overcome. The students and participants in a healing biotope know that they step into an innovative experiment, particularly in the Love School where they are confronted with new opportunities for their psychological and sexual development. The research is about new forms of communication and cooperation among human beings, as well as between human beings and nature. Gradually invisible beings are also integrated into the cooperation, for the world we are able to see is only the surface of the totality of all living beings. In every moment of our healing work multitudes of invisible helpers stand by our side. Esoteric terms such as “deva (see Glossary),” “guardian spirit,” or “angel” connote a spiritual realm that could, little by little, be included in the conceptual planning of the new projects.
Healing Biotopes orient their work according to the truths of life. They are organized in such a way that life is able to carry out healing. We do this through new social, ecological and technical structures and through new forms of coexistence that align with the precepts of universal ethics. The greater the stability of these structures, the more intensively the healing process will act in all those involved.
The global Healing Biotopes project contains and manifests the principles and paradigms that, insofar as we know, will foster the humane habitation of all continents. Of course Healing Biotopes will take shape according to the cultural, geographic and climatic conditions of the countries they are in, but the core principles of creating a new culture will be the same everywhere. The project is not focused on one specific problem, such as famine, but on all problems for they all are inseparably related. The Hunger Project, which aimed to free the world from famine in the 1990s, could not succeed because the global practices of economic and political exploitation continued and continue to perpetuate hunger. The ending of worldwide hunger evidently necessitates the removal of the economic structures that generate it. This applies to any real humane renewal – it can only succeed on the basis of a new social, economic, and political order. There can be no humane world without revolution. However it is not a revolution through violence that is needed, but a revolution through insight and the application of the power inherent to our Christ nature: Revolution through taking a determined, non-negotiable stand for life.
The Healing Biotopes project aims for the healing of humankind and the Earth. In other words, it is about a finding a new direction for human evolution and about a new matrix for inhabiting our planet. Within this vast frame we have identified some focal points, the healing of erotic love for example, raising children, developing decentralized energy technologies, and the healing of water because these are key to our existence. The way in which humankind deals with water, which energy sources we use, and how we solve “issue number one” will essentially determine whether there will be peace or war on Earth.
The Primordial Cell for a New Planetary Culture
The concept of the Healing Biotope originated with the idea that there must be a structure – we called it the “cultural crystal” – that initiates a process of self-replication, much like a biological cell, once the structure is sufficiently developed and complex. This cultural crystal would be a universal structure applicable to all peoples and continents. In other words, the image of a Healing Biotope came from an intention to create a morphogenetic field for a new humane world. Evolution moves forward through creating morphogenetic fields (see Chapter 30).
Today we live in a morphogenetic field of war. From economic and political decisions to the processes in love relationships, a morphogenetic field of war characterizes this society, despite all moral efforts of individuals. We need to transform it into a morphogenetic field of peace. The civilization of the future is evolving from a morphogenetic field of peace. Resonance instead of violence, cooperation instead of competition, forgiveness instead of revenge – these are some of the characteristics of the new morphogenetic field.
For building the morphogenetic field an image crystalized and slowly solidified: the image of a “Healing Biotope.” The Healing Biotope serves as the “primordial cell” of a new culture in the organism of humankind. In this primordial cell, the focus and parameters need to be set relatively accurately to enable the cell to properly spread through the growing organism of the new planetary community. The global Healing Biotopes plan relies on the establishment of a first of these primordial cells that, with the help of a global network, will give rise to other such cells. A “morphogenetic condensation” is to be achieved in the noosphere, (the informational body of humankind), in which, bit by bit, variations on the original cell will crystallize. That which happened four billion years ago with the evolution of the first biological cell could happen in contemporary social evolution with the multiplication of the primordial planetary cell through morphogenetic field-building. (This process, which is described so linearly here, is in reality an historic process involving many projects and groups.)
The primordial cell contains the fundamental information matrix, the “DNA” of the new civilization. It gathers the most diverse forms of life and thereby brings forth new connection points, new synergies, new energy lines, and new directions of meaning, leading to new directions of growth. From the work of ants and spiders, bees and swallows, to the activities of children, of domestic animals, from water lilies in ponds and fruit trees in the Permaculture gardens, from the actions of craftsmen, technicians, excavator drivers, scientists, and priestesses, all the way to the workings of natural spirits, there develops a growing system of ever increasing coherence. The greater the coherence, the more powerful the
system and its capacity for growth – it seems increasingly to develop “by itself.” The most astonishing phenomenon we perceived in the difficult times of our project was when no solution was obvious to us and new faculties of creativity and self-organization arose within the community that helped us to find a way out.
An essential condition for the development of the primordial cell is the coherence between its composite working areas. In Tamera we coined the term “coherent information system” (CIS) as a reminder to attend to this coherence. CIS was and is a central thought in the implementation of the new centers. In a Healing Biotope all subprojects need to be intellectually and spiritually compatible, this means that they need share basic principles and goal-orientation. The informational matrix for raising children for example should match the core information of the Love School, the political education, the nutrition, technology, ecology et cetera. Where this is found, we have a highly robust coherent information system. The stability of a system depends on its coherence with the Sacred Matrix and on the coherence within and between its subsystems (working areas or subprojects). The principle of the coherent information system brings with it a high moral responsibility. How much secret cheating can we tolerate if we seriously want to create a world of peace? How many industrially-produced consumer goods can one still use knowing the barbaric ways in which they were made and distributed? Can one still drink canned milk or eat chocolate produced by Nestle? These are serious questions in a coherent community. They concern the issue of complicity. When thinking about complicity we should not restrict our attention to questions of consumption for we are also complicit when we participate in the destructive ways of thinking and the subliminal emotions of conventional society. Questions of complicity must not be suppressed and nor should they be allowed to escalate to moral fanaticism or be used as excuses to tyrannize each other, for they are meant to serve peace and love. The cultivation of the primordial cell is a community undertaking. It develops out of the complex relationships within a community and the relationships which that group has established with the global network. The Tamera community engages in continuous communication with individuals and groups all over the world in order to fine-tune the project so that it can reach “morphogenetic maturity.” To this end the aspects of Eros, religion, and economy need to be developed further.
Chapter 24: Creating Functioning Communities
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It is not the private interests that create lasting fellowship among men, but rather the goals of humanity.1
~ I Ching
The natural human being is, as is probably every living being, a communitarian being. Everything that people need can be found in a healthy community, particularly the ethical and spiritual qualities of life. Historically the human soul lost its anchor through the collapse of community. The attempt to reestablish human community is therefore an experiment of historic relevance, which also brings us into contact with the global trauma that we have internalized. This is why most attempts thus far have failed. It may be that nothing is more difficult than creating functioning communities yet it is precisely this that is the task of our time. The biologist Lynn Margulis says, “If we are to survive the ecological and social crisis we have caused, we may be forced into dramatically new kinds of cooperative ventures.”2 That which seemed to be a romantic adventure around the times of Monte Verita in the early twentieth century, to the hippy times in the sixties, that which we dreamt of around evening campfires, has become pivotal to the future of human civilization: how do we establish real community?
Community is not just a sentimental dream of young people, but the next stage of evolution; the people of the future will live in community. Thousands of communities have been founded since the 1970’s, but hardly any have survived. The longing for community, which brought people together, failed due to inner and interpersonal conflicts. The inability to resolve “issue number one” led frequently to social turbulence which ultimately brought groups to collapse. The building of a functioning community requires an intellectual and spiritual foundation as well as very determined people who know what they are doing. By entering into community we make a complete system change from a private to a communitarian biography – a shift of our inner assemblage point. We step into a new life, a new ethic, and a new basis for processing our eternally unresolved conflicts revolving around sex, love and partnership. Community is an historic issue, which concerns the reconditioning of the inner human world. No one living in a functioning community will breakdown from jealousy or heartache, for they have another anchor in life.
The necessity of habitual dissemblance becomes redundant in functioning community. Disguise, lies, and deceit no longer make any sense in a community dedicated to the well- being of all. When people no longer need to disguise themselves in front of one another they will recognize and support each other. Human will recognize human. Man will recognize woman and woman will recognize man. As stated in the previous section, truth, fidelity, mutual support, and taking responsibility for the whole are basic characteristics of communitarian ethics. We can recognize the new humans by the reliability with which they maintain these disciplines. Disguise, lies, and deceit no longer make any sense in a community dedicated to the well being of all. Trust gives the power to break through old barriers; when we defuse interpersonal minefields, the roots of fear and violence disappear from the psychological underground. The future without war begins with the first functioning community.
“Community” – an easy word and a complex issue. It is not actually more difficult than establishing a functioning company, though. The only difference is that there is already a morphogenetic field for setting up a company, whereas there is as yet none for building a functioning community. This still needs to be created; it is key to the success or failure of the entire peace movement. The answer to the question as to how the wish for a variety of lovers becomes compatible with the longing for partnership with one person comprises part of the morphogenetic field of a functioning community. This answer, which we all need and which the world needs, will not come about on a psychological or therapeutic level, but from a new integration of human life into the universal order of community.
To establish resilient human relationships capable of enduring the inevitable conflicts, we need a profound basis of truth. What is truth? Certainly truth means that one does not lie. As we have seen, this is already quite a demand. But truth goes even further and deeper; truth is the congruence of my words and thoughts with what is really happening within me. Here lies the challenge. When a group debates an issue, the design of a basin for a spring for example, different opinions can collide. Misunderstandings and accusations might arise, with emotions ranging from aggression all the way to open anger. If one looks into what is actually happening one sees the extent to which the undigested inner problems of those involved – the subconscious Oedipus complexes, authority conflicts or power struggles – are at work. Arguments ostensibly about subject matter are actually driven by psychological and interpersonal conflicts. One group member refutes another vociferously only because last night the latter kissed the woman that the former would himself have liked to have kissed. Many talks fail due to the entanglement of subject matter and ego problems. I have witnessed a person asserting that water is hurt when it is captured in a stone basin. In reality the pain was clearly not on the side of the water, but within the person. Subjective processes are suppressed when they are projected into the objective world. Every “normal” colleague would be indignant if we were to tell him that his assertion actually refers to his own problem and not to the water’s problem. However, for the creation of a community of trust conflicts such as these need to be seen through and resolved. It was for this purpose that we introduced the SD Forum (see Chapter 19) in which, with the agreement of the whole group, one is allowed to speak the full truth. Forum is facilitated by people who have recognized, to a considerable extent, the working of these processes in
themselves and are ready and able to speak the truth. Whenever self-disclosure occurs without judgment, the group experiences something new in terms of truth. For many this is a very moving, even overwhelming experience. A community intending to collaborate over a long period relies on this kind of psychological cleansing. It reveals a deeper level of truth, which has to do with self-knowledge. It is only on this level that true communication among human beings can begin.
There will be no humane world without resilient communities. When I was offered a professorship forty years ago I declined in obedience to the inner advice to establish a community that really works. It turned out to be an adventurous and very painful process. I had been quite an individualist and was not particularly disposed to make the issue of community the priority in my life. I needed to retreat to a hermitage in the Bavarian Forest for a half year to make this decision.
The first step was to begin a group and to introduce free sexuality. The participants were not prepared for this so it made for a shocking beginning. After about five years however, it was matter of course. It was like a small miracle. The change from couple relationship to free sexuality occurred as if by itself. No one was forced; hardly anyone fought the idea. It happened “by itself” in the way all things integrated in the higher spiritual power field happen by themselves. Today, looking back, I am astonished by how all the essential steps in the development of the project have, more or less, unfolded by themselves: the development of self-revelation (SD) in the group, the spreading popularity of painting, the transition from private to communitarian thinking, the new management of water, the skills to survive in Spartan conditions, mutual financial support in emergency situations, the creation of a sanctuary for mistreated animals from the neighborhood, cooperation with government agencies, communication with natural spirits and so on. All of this somehow came “by itself” without enforcement, without battles, without the usual power struggles and competition. I recognized that from the idea of community a program unfolded as if by itself. The plan of creation seemed to contain an immanent concept, which we recalled by entering the keyword “community” and which guided our steps from then on.