In December in southwest Portugal an intensive training for peaceworkers began:
the Political Ashram at Tamera. For three months twenty-seven men and women
from many parts of the world took part in a mental and physical training. They
studied the spiritual, scientific and political foundations of the global Plan
for Peace and planned concrete It was the first run of the Political Ashram.
This is part of the Institute for Global Peacework, which was officially founded
this summer.
"Just the name 'Political Ashram' was a magical attraction for me"
said the young man with the headband and kimono-style jacket. "As someone
who works with refugees, I reached the point where I've lost my strength. I
neededa strong inner certainty, a global strategy to believe in. I suspected
that I can only be as effective in my outer peace work as I am in creating peace
within myself and in my personal surroundings."
His search led him to southwestern Europe, to Alentejo in Portugal. Here, nestling
in a range of oak-tree covered hills far away from the political hotspots, for
what is probably the first time in the world a Political Ashram is being established.
Or, as some people say: the Silicon Valley for peace research.
So what is this 'Theory for Peace on Earth'? What foundations is it based on?
It was developed by Dieter Duhm, who also founded the Political Ashram. "We
can no longer oppose the worldwide violence with violence, the time of revolution
by force is over", says the one-time Marxist. "We need a new concept
for global peacework. The significant point of this new concept is the formation
of a global field through local interventions".
This psychologist and sociologist leftthe scientific sector twenty-five years
ago. With his bestseller "Fear and Capitalism" he had taken part in
the student movement, then he left the Marxist left and visited spiritual schools
and community projects in his homeland and internationally, looking for knowledge
to help bring his intentions together: a not-university, wholistic research
project on the healing of the Earth and humanity. For more than twenty years
he has been researching both the discoveries of modern physics and communications
research and the teachings and knowledge of diverse religions and esoteric schools.
He links these with the political reality of the Earth and the insights into
human nature gained from social experiments. For many years he has been
working together with the theologian Sabine Lichtenfels. She teaches the spiritual
courses in the Political Ashram and in the 'Department of Spiritual Archaeology'
and developed the system of prehistoric utopia. This points to a knowledge of
peace within humanity that can be called upon in every age.
According to her supposition, this was put into effect during the matriarchal
Neolithic culture, at least in part.
"From both this root knowledge of archaic high civilizations and the scientific
thoughts of our time we are developing the concept", says Duhm, "for
a peace-work which is appropriate for our times and for the healing of life
on this Earth."
Back to the keyword: the 'local intervention'. What does he mean by that? What
is the basis for accepting that a local change in one part of the world can
have an effect on the whole Earth? And what should such a change look like?
The 57-year-old compares his concept for peace with acupuncture: "In order
to free a human body from an illness, you don't need to treat individually every
organ and cell. It is enough to provide some new information by putting several
acupuncture needles in the right places. When the energy-lines and -points are
stimulated, the body performs the rest of the work itself."
Today even the most hardened materialist has no doubt that acupuncture functions
for the human body. However, how far can this picture be extended for the whole
of humanity? A human body is one organism, a heart does not exploit a lung and
fight for the oxygen, on the contrary, both can only live when they work together.
And should a toe need help, because it is itchy, then the entire human organism
bends over in order to help the toe by scratching.
Since the development of the Gaia theory we have known that the Earth can be
seen as a unitary organism: the community of living beings mutually created
the optimal conditions for their evolution. Pre-industrial peoples remain conscious,
that they are connect with the other creations. It is only the modern human
who
appears not to have received this message. However, while the majority continue
to live as separated individuals, the scientific avant-garde are already near
to a different picture of the world.
"Today's scientist is on course to leave the material worldview and return
to a spiritual one", as Dieter Duhm sees it, "Everything is one Being.
The old high civilizations knew that. For them the meaning of healing was always
connecting to the Source: to Chi, God or the Goddess."
The indicators from modern natural sciences which show that the human, the Earth
and all of its inhabitants form a unitary organism are becoming more and more
frequent. Some examples: In 1953 two young american molecular biologists, Watson
and Crick, made a discovery that earnt them the 1962 Nobel Prize: they cracked
the genetic code that carries the hereditary information of all living beings.
The unbelievable part of it was that this double-helix has a basic structure
which is identical in all living things. From a single-celled creature in Australia
to the owner of a pharmacy in Munich there are only gradual differences in the
coding of the genes, no fundamental ones. In 1969 a further discovery amazed
the professional world once more: this code has unbelievable parallels to one
of the oldest wisdoms from a completely different culture: the I-Ching. How
else could this agreement between two formulas for the world be explained than
through the unity of all life?
Yet this is not enough: Pythagoras, known to today's mathematics students more
as the pest of right-angled triangles, discovered the harmonic world-order:
everything in the universe - planets, plants, humans - is built according to
the model of an inner harmony. The distances and size-ratios of living things
can be translated into tones and these then sound harmonic to our ears.
Inter-species communication, the Chaos-Theory and holography offer further indications
that everything that lives belongs to one unitary organism. Nevertheless, humans
behave as if they were contenders in a contest where the prize-winner is the
one who is the best at getting rich at the expense of everyone else. Quite an
absurd, and unhealthy, behavior for the different organs of one body. Duhm says
that the human is the only one that can turn itself away from this connection
to the whole. This he has done since the time several thousand years ago when
the age of partriarchy and the war against everything female began. Along with
the sensual knowledge humanity forgot the relationship with other living things.
The living became something suspicious for him. The fatal consequence of this
was a societal structure which punished and oppressed curiosity, sensuality
and the desire to expand. Fear and violence as consequences of blocked life
energy are the illnesses that have afflicted humanity and through that the organism
Earth. Healing can only happen when the female knowledge is once again fully
in the center of interest.
Every living thing is therefore a part of a common organism. If this organism
is suffering under the illness of fear and violence then there is a conclusion
nearby: we ought to be able to heal it if we can use the appropriate remedies
to provide it with the information of peace. The founder of the Political Ashram
puts it like this: "If we put a new information into the information holder
of the organism - the biosphere, then this information affects the whole system
that is the Earth just as a medicine affects the whole system of our body. Through
this information a new morphogenetic field arises."
What a morphogenetic field is has been described by Rupert Sheldrake in his
well-known thesis. Life develops itself according to fields; there are countless
examples of this from evolution, from the history of humankind, its civilization
forms and scientific discoveries. For this we don't need to go into the molecular
world or deep into history, even in sport there are examples: under the eyes
of the whole world in 1956 at Friedrichshafen am Bodensee Armin Harry made the
discovery that 100 meters can be run in under 10 seconds. As he did this a limit
was extended. Very soon many other sprinters could do the same. It doesn't matter
which topic we look in: when an individual makes a new discovery a limit is
extended. As soon as it is meaningful for others and taken on by them then the
information exists in a latent form in all other parts of the population and
can be called upon when needed - whether it be for sprinters, dormice or amoebae.
The Chaos theory has now justified mathematically the results of Sheldrake's
investigations in the field of biology: a tiny local change can have a large
global effect. This has become famous as the Butterfly Effect: theoretically
the flapping of a butterfly's wings in Hong Kong can be so amplified that it
lets loose a hurricane in New York.
Neither Sheldrake nor the Chaos theoreticians have investigated the application
of their teachings to peace work. What is the flapping of a butterfly's wings
which would work for a peaceful world? What would a morphogenetic field for
a fear-free non-violent co-habitation be? This is exactly where the work of
the Political Ashram begins. Under what conditions can an information be targeted
to bring into effect a peace-field? What is 'an information', anyway?
According to the cyberneticians informations, not atoms, are the building blocks
of the universe. Information creates reality. From this viewpoint a prayer is
an information which humanity gives to God or the Universe. This information
or prayer does not come only from what one says, but also from what one doesn't
say, what one lives, feels, perceives - and suppresses. This insight already
suggested to Duhm a conclusion as to what the first criterium should be for
an information to create a field: it must be free of contradiction. In psychology
it is called a 'double-bind': the mother strives to keep smiling, even though
the brawling infant is already getting on her nerves. The infant is aware of
both and is confused. The confusion that arises in the Universe or God in view
of the differing information that it or he receives is at least as large as
the infant's. The chasm between the official statements and the deeper, sometimes
subconscious, layer of consciousness thwarts the success of many prayers for
peace. Admittedly, in our modern industrial culture a person can barely move
without becoming an unwitting accomplice in the global violence, whether it
be in diet, in bringing up children, in the products which he buys or in the
course of his job. The involuntary contradictions of life make it impossible
to formulate a contradiction-free prayer for peace. In the sense of a morphogenetic
field theory, prayers for peace can only function when there exists at least
one unequivocal non-violent way of living.
This sociologist has formulated more criteria as conditions for an information
for non-violence: it must be compatible with the universal matrix which underlies
the creation of every development like a blueprint. Then, it must be used. And
fourth: it must be complex, that means as multi-faceted as needed to be used
in as many spheres of life as possible. How can this required variety in the
most diverse areas of life emerge? Not on a desk, that much is clear. For this
you need a life that is lived, an experimental life or a type of microcosm,
in which every sphere of human life is included. With this we come to the core
of the global peace plan: the " 'Healing Biotope' - a community of life
- humans, animals and plants - whose life-powers mutually complement each other
and are no longer hindered by violence or fear."
In a Healing Biotope all spheres of life are understood on a planetary level:
ecology, technology, children growing up, architecture, social forms for love,
religion and communication. To begin with these can be studied in the hills
of Tamera. Healing Biotope 1 is being built there now on a 140 hectare site.
Next to the Political Ashram will be an ecological self-sufficiency for foodstuff,
a children's house, a youth school, a center for art and new technology, and
spiritual-energetic power-places. The preparation for this huge experiment has
been running for many years. Healing Biotopes should become real nuclei of the
future and work through the effect of building a morphogenetic field.
Suppose we accept that there is a pool of information from all living things
out of which humans pull their decisions and with this generate either war or
peace. Suppose we also accept that a Healing Biotope is a suitable instrument
for putting peace-information into this information pool. There remains the
question: What should this information consist of? What discovery could be so
deep and persistent that it is stronger than the superiority of war and destruction?
That it can help people in threatening situations to react not with fear and
violence but, for example, with knowledge, trust and making contact? In other
words: where is the butterfly whose wing-flap can grow ever stronger until it
generates a global peace?
There are three areas, says the peace plan of the Political Ashram, in which
humans must seek a fundamentally new information: community, sexuality and anchorage
in the spiritual world. The first area has already been named. And by a biologist
- Lynn Margulis, who developed the Gaia-theory jointly with James Lovelock.
She is constantly defending herself from being seen as part of the New Age movement,
yet proclaimed, "that, if we want to survive the ecological and social
crises that we have brought about we will be forced to engage ourselves in a
fully new and dramatic community-undertaking. Perhaps we are being forced to
such a type of unity that was previously only conceivable in religious thinkings."
In their own art the early bacteria who resisted the oxygen crisis came to the
same conclusion: "Work together or go under!" A dramatic community-undertaking:
this could also be a description for the intention of the Healing Biotope. To
build truth and trust, even in the lower and thus unconscious and suppressed
levels of the human consciousness, would be the greatest adventure of our time.
That's the report from the participants of the Tamera experiment. A community
setting is the first place where we might see a concrete vision of a peace that
is more than the absence of war. Within the protection of a community it can
be possible to dare to look at deeper spheres of the human soul.
Such depths were explored in past-life trances with the participants of the
Political Ashram. One of the students reports: "We received an insight
into the subjectively experienced human histories and the spiritual basements
of civilization. Probably everyone was a perpetrator as often as a victim in
their karmic biography."
In deeply moving eye-witness reports from the diverse cultures and epochs, it
becomes clear that above all sexuality is humanity's most suppressed power.
"Sexuality finds its way, if not through sensuality then through violence.
As peace workers we ought to be interested in that", she says. "War
was and is a valve that releases sexuality's unlived violent energies. A morphogenetic
field for non-violence needs the information about how this heavy current in
life feels and how humanity can live in accordance with it - but without violence.
Otherwise their vitality always remain inferior to that of a perpetrator of
violence."
The historical struggle against the feminine world was the cruellest chapter
to date in humanity's history. Duhm's conclusion from this insight: " Significantly
a new, non-violent loving culture has its roots in a new, loving, non-violent
relationship between the sexes. This is a point, that can not be allowed to
be overlooked any more in the concepts for ecology, spirituality and healing.
There is no healthy ecology without a healthy, fulfilled sexuality." But
what that is, a healthy, fulfilled sexuality, in order to find that out, we
would need a community of trust, in which we can dare to recognise and express
the truth about our own sexuality, without hitting condemnation or fear.
The third part of the information triplex for peace concerns the anchorage in
the spiritual world. "To know that we are a part of the Whole, that we
are, so to speak, an organ of God, to learn how to deal as such, is already
the fundamental spiritual experience" is how the student of the Political
Ashram describes it. Knowing this is an undogmatic religion of the sensual and
spiritual connection with every living thing, all the way to a connection with
the cosmic world which arises in this way.
The information packet will be ready when a first Healing Biotope is established
with these depths and multi-facetedness and has, according to estimates, at
least 300 participants. "With the advent of the first model the likelihood
of the second will increase, and then the next one, and so on. The more Healing
Biotopes there are, the denser will be the the formation of the global field."
The formation of the field will work itself out slowly at first, but then stretch
out to ever-increasing circles, according to the mathematical principles of
positive feedback. An ever-growing number of decisions will be taken not in
the sense of seperateness, fear and violence, but in the sense of trust and
knowledge, communication and making contact. However, people without fear are
a revolutionary factor. That was seen by Mahatma Gandhi in his principle of
civil disobediance. Police states, exploitation, and war function only though
fear and the obedience of the victim. They can no longer be enforced when the
field of fear is broken. Dictators would lose the ground on which they stand.
Freedom from fear could spread like an infectious virus of increasing health.
The currently prevailing economical and political systems are no longer capable
of survival, according to the opinion of most future-researchers and ecologists.
If they collapse, a survival for humanity will depend on whether stable alternatives
have been built in time. One such alternative is the Healing Biotope. A Utopia
is more powerful when it is more concrete, according to the participants in
the Political Ashram. Therefore they want to make sure that it doesn't stay
a dream. During their training they made plans for the integration of their
new experiences in their occupations as doctor, youth leader, technician or
in a refugee project.
"Peace work with this background means to carry a peace-information within
you - not as a vebal power of persuasion but as an experience which is lived
out" reports the young man with the headband. "A community has developed
between us as students and this will continue, even when we aren't living together,
as the core of a ring of peace. We will remain in contact with the intention
to build up an expanding network of peace. In summer we will meet up again,
at the official opening of the Institute for Global Peacework."
A Healing Biotope is a community of humans, animals and plants whose relationships
are based upon trust, co-operation and mutual support. The global plan is to
establish several Healing Biotopes on the different continents. As the initiators
of the project, we are basing our actions upon the hypothesis that a small number
of these centres will be sufficient to establish a global healing field. The
first centre, Healing Biotope 1 Tamera in Portugal, is currently being set up.
Is there a realistic concept for saving the Earth? This question is meant seriously.
A group of three scientists - a physicist, a psychoanalyst and a theologian
- left their jobs twenty years ago in order to find a real answer to these questions.
During on-going research work this group grew to the present number of c.70
co-workers. The theoretical concept of a global opportunity for peace arose
from logically connecting the results of different research areas together:
chaos research, holography, deep ecology, consciousness research and history,
including pre-history. In addition to the theoretical work the necessity arose
for a stable and healthy communal life. The work which was required for this
couldn't ignore taboo issues - sexuality, private affairs, money, hidden or
open competitiveness etc. - since these areas are just those where a number
of the unsolved problems lie which our contemporary civilisation fails to negotiate.
Hence the research work had to be expanded to include fundamental questions
of human socialisation and community building: love and sexuality, religion
and art. The devastation of the outer environment and the devastation of the
inner environment are two sides of the same overall illness that can only be
overcome by looking at both sides together. Healing as understood within the
Healing Biotope means the following: the full creation of trust between all
participating partners; co-operation and mutual support between humans, animals,
plants and spiritual beings; the re-union of the sexes based on love and solidarity;
a sexuality without fear and humiliation; and the re-alignment of human life
with the laws of Creation. The organic and spiritual inter-connectedness of
all beings stands at the centre of the project, since every being is an aspect
of the One Being and the One Consciousness. This is why all beings are designed
to co-operate and co-evolve with each other - just like the various organs of
one organism.
"Greenhouses for Trust"
The longstanding research work gave rise to the idea of a global movement for
peace which would initially radiate out from a few points on the planet - the
Healing Biotopes - and which could, thanks to the power of its inherent logic,
be capable of transforming the existing system. The Healing Biotopes Plan was
born.
Healing Biotopes act as "greenhouses for trust" and follow the original
image of a universal solidarity amongst all beings. In order to attain this,
all the old behaviour patterns need to be abandoned and new one learnt. This
learning process, which all the members of the project are participating in,
takes place in three principal areas: in relation to nature - ecology; in relation
to creation - religion and art; and in the relations between the sexes - sexuality
and love. Re-connection with the sources of creation also imports the re-unification
of Eros and religion, in the sense of liberation from all of the suppressions
experienced during the age of patriarchal history. There cannot be peace on
Earth whilst there is still war in love.
The realisation of Healing Biotopes will not succeed arbitrarily, but according
to the principles of the universal life order which is inherent to creation
and all its beings: their "sacred matrix". The key to the success
of our work is to connect ourselves to this sacred matrix's latent patterns
and powers and to re-discover ourselves within them. Healing Biotopes are research
centres and experiential spaces for this type of spiritual discovery and connection.
The more this inter-connectedness grows, the more universal strength there will
be behind the project.
The inner logic of holistic systems and their global power to heal
The manifestation and dissemination of this global healing power follow the
inner logic of holistic systems. Gaia, the Earth, is an organism - a whole.
If just one link of the global chain of fear and violence can be broken and
a comprehensive peace information can be sent into the ether (Noosphere), then
this information will be latently present within all beings. In this way it
becomes more easily realisable. If a few parameters in a complex life-system
can be adjusted, then the opportunity arises for a change within the whole system.
Above all, these parameters lie in the areas already mentioned: ecology, community,
religion and Eros. In "The Political Theory of the Healing Biotopes"
I have formulated the theory of how to achieve this type of global adjustment
towards a new non-violent civilisation. ("Die heilige Matrix", tr.
The Sacred Matrix, Dieter Duhm, publ. May 2001, SYNergie). We need to be clear
that if we do not succeed in giving our overall development a new direction
then we will be witnesses to a global catastrophe. For this reason, the Healing
Biotopes Project is not a private project from a few single-minded people who
'want to change the world', but a humanitarian project which could be a deciding
factor for the success or failure of creating a future which is worth living.
The project has not yet received a mandate from any of our existing society's
institutions - it acts out of the urgency of our global situation.
Partial reform will not help
Reforming parts of the whole is no longer of use. When we consider the apocalyptic
trends of our age we are not looking at accidents: these are the consequences
of systematic errors. Industrialised agriculture gives us a crass example with
the consequences of mechanised livestock breeding. The terrors of this system
would be classified as terrorism if they were directed against a human state
instead of the animal kingdom. A whole civilisation lives from the unspeakable
matter-of-factness with which animals are subjected to unimaginably horrible
procedures in order to produce clothes, cosmetics, medicines or sausages. An
ecological alternative for the entire agricultural system is needed: an alternative
which is no longer based upon the destruction of life but upon co-operation
with life - even with micro-organisms - and which thus realigns itself within
the laws of a co-operative creation. It will only become possible to avoid floods,
weather catastrophes and famines if the Earth is once again covered with a layer
of soft, populated humus. Global healing work needs bases where these new forms
of agriculture can be tried out before they can become the nucleus of an overall
solution. It goes without saying that there is a necessity to support such projects
with all possible material and financial resources and to inform the public
of their existence and the reasons why they are so necessary. The Healing Biotopes'
aims include this new concept for agriculture just as they include a new concept
for human community, a new social basis for love and sexuality, new bearings
for moral behaviour, and a new integration into the metaworld of the universe.
The causes of the catastrophes do not lay only with human malice or human failure
nor do they lay primarily with strategies to increase the power of a worldwide
syndicate of corporations, banks, military powers and secret services: they
lay in the false matrix of our whole way of thinking and being. The correction
needed is a reform of our life here on Planet Earth - a reform based on co-operation
with all our fellow creations and a corresponding change in our own living conditions.
The core areas of our existence - love, religion, community - are those which
above all others have been falsified, suppressed and cut off from the sources
of creation in the course of a many thousand year patriarchal dead-end. As a
result of this historical separation of humanity from the whole living organism,
practically every original form of community has been crushed and no new ones
have arisen.
Community is the basis of every humane transformation
Functioning community is nevertheless the foundation of every humane transformation:
human community and the community amongst humans and their fellow creations.
A universal way of being, which re-connects us with the sources of creation,
can only be sustainably developed upon the foundations of an existence that
is principally communitarian, not private. The paradigm shift which is necessary
for this is thus one of the core tasks of the forthcoming Healing Biotopes.
In order to realise the projects which lie before us we need support in the
form of both finances and publicity. The Healing Biotopes Project also needs
a public lobby which can help publicise it to the world. The field-forming power
of a functioning Healing Biotope leads us to assume that other similar centres
will be set up in other parts of the world. As soon as the first Healing Biotopes
are operating at the required size of some 300-1000 residents, the new information
that will emanate from them will then effect a lasting change in the overall
situation of our planet. The global federation of Healing Biotopes could act
like a crystal lattice for the newly emergent world culture in which humanity
and nature, sociosphere and biosphere, and self-interest and planetary interests
are all linked together by their very essentiality.
Info: For more information on the Institute for Global Peacework (IGF) in Tamera:
IGF, Monte do Cerro, 7634 Colos, Portugal. www.tamera.org,
tamera@mail.telepac.pt
The Tamera Manifesto describes the foundations of the work. The Tamera Brochure
shows many pictures and thoughts of the Healing Biotope.
The IGF has its anual summer university in August. Well-known peace workers
from diverse spheres and parts of the world have been invited as speakers and
participants. The IGF and the Political Ashram still need financial support.
A forecast for the whole site for the Institute is three million Deutschmarks.
Investors are welcome.