Prometheus Rising by Aaron Johnson Read Free Book Online Page A

The female members of this imprint goup
    become Radical Feminists; the male members are less organized
    and can be found in fringe groups of the extreme Left and
    extreme Right.
    Such a pattern is unconscious in three ways. It is unconscious
    because automatic: it happens without thought, as a robot program.
    It is also unconscious because it began before the infant
    had language and hence it is pre-verbal, inarticulate, felt rather
    than considered. And it is unconscious because it is all-over-thebody-
    at-once. Specifically, it is characterized by the Respiratory
    Block first noted by Wilhelm Reich: a chronic muscular armoring
    that prevents proper, relaxed breathing. Popular speech
    recognizes this state as "being up-tight."
    All of the most successful reimprinting techniques (therapies)
    for this kind of chronic anxiety work on the body first, not on the
    "mind." The Reichians, Rolfers, Primal Scream therapists, Orr's
    "rebirthers," Gesaltists, etc. all know, whatever specialized
    jargons they may use, that a bad bio-survival imprint can only be
    corrected by working on the biological being itself, the body that
    feels perpetually vulnerable and under attack. Even Neurolinguistic
    Programming (NLP) begins by inducing the patient to
    relax and breathe easily.
    As Gregory Bateson has pointed out. Konrad Lorenz acquired
    his marvelous insights into the imprinting process—for which he
    won the Nobel prize—by consciously imitating the body movements
    of the animals he was studying. Watching Lorenz lecture,
    Prometheus Rising 57
    one could "see" each animal he discussed, because Lorenz would
    dramatize or "become" that animal, in the manner of a Method
    Actor.
    Even earlier, Wilhelm Reich discovered that he could understand
    his patients with remarkable clarity by imitating their
    characteristic body movements and postures. The bio-survival
    imprints, especially traumatic ones, are all-over-the-body, frozen
    (in Reich's metaphor) in chronic muscle and gland mechanisms.
    If you can't understand somebody's "irrational" behavior,
    start by observing their breathing. You will very quickly get an
    idea of what is bothering them. This is why all schools of yoga—
    Buddhist, Hindu or Sufi—place such emphasis on restoring natural
    breathing before trying to move the student on to higher
    circuits and wider consciousness.
    This is of more than "psychological" import. Every study of
    the psychosomatic aspects of cancer and asthma, for instance,
    finds this pattern of chronic muscular contraction (subjectively
    felt as anxiety) among the predisposing factors. What the
    Thinker thinks, the Prover proves. People are strangling their
    inner organs every day because they are afraid.
    Mary Baker Eddy may have been exaggerating slightly when
    she said, "All illness is manifested fear;" but holistic medicine
    more and more recognizes that if that damned word "all" is
    replaced by a more tentative "most," Mrs. Eddy was close to the
    facts.
    Even old-fangled M.D.s who won't consider holistic ideas for
    a minute, admit that some persons are mysteriously "more susceptible"
    to disease than other persons. What is this metaphysical
    "susceptibility"? Anthropologist Ashley Montagu has collected
    numerous statistics on children who were deprived of maternal
    love at the crucial point of imprint vulnerability in infancy. They
    not only died younger than the national average, but were sicklier
    all their lives and even grew up to be several inches shorter than
    the average adult height for their sex.
    What makes for "susceptibility" (aside from possible genetic
    factors) can only be such an anxiety imprint (muscle tension) on
    the first circuit.
    Christian Science—or any other religion that dogmatically
    insists that "God" wants us to be happy and successful— can
    55 Prometheus Rising
    cure such conditions "miraculously." What the Thinker thinks the
    Prover proves. Absolute faith that "God" is supporting you,
    beamed out from the brain all day