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24th PACIFIC MACROBIOTIC COMMUNITY CONFERENCE
at the Central United Methodist Church,
PHOENIX, AZ.
March 19-22nd, 1992.
Morning Session.
1. Where has my macrobiotic path taken me?
4. Choosing the right home remedy vs going to a doctor.
Afternoon Session.
1. Macrobiotic Education: are we confusing the public?
2. Elements of macrobiotic community. Developing macrobiotic community.
Saturday, March 21st.
Morning Session.
1. Macrobiotic Economy - A Presentation by Roy Steevensz.
Afternoon Session.
1. Changing role of women in macrobiotics.
2. Introducing macrobiotics into the family.
3. Case Histories of personal recovery.
4. Reports on camps, health classics and organic farming conference.
SUMMARY AND HIGHLIGHTS.
FRIDAY.
Morning Session.
Where has my macrobiotic path taken me?
Herb Sandel introduced this topic, stating that when he first began his macrobiotic practice he heard that he should not get hung up about the food and the diet and the cooking because those are really the vehicle for learning about macrobiotics. For a while it was an academic statement but after a year or so he began to realise the value of it; and that characterises his experience of where his macrobiotic experience has taken him. He saw the name of the co-op in Phoenix, "Gentle Strength" and he is now not as intense as he used to be, more focused and he knows more about himself and what he is about and where his direction in life needs to go. He is more giving and less demanding of himself and others.
Gwen Staats asked whether their practice has saved anyone's life; she said we have stories in various publications about people who had been given two months to live and after starting a macrobiotic practice their condition had healed and they had gone on to live productive lives. Herb said he had had that experience too but that their is more too it than healing one's condition. He recounted how he had been an been a succesful business man, very driven and intense and he had sold his business and done what he wanted to do for the past fifteen years, living on the beach at Santa Monica, without any worries about finances for the first time in his life. One would think that he would be very relaxed, he had an image of being laid-back and after fifteen years of that lifestyle he gets a diagnosis of lymphoma, found at a routine check-up.
He remembers at his first cooking class where the teacher had twenty students in the class and all these things to pay attention to doing the cooking class while answering the questions of the students and under this pressure she had an equanimity about her that was very clear in contrast to the intensity he had even when he was apparently laid-back and relaxed, and he knew that calmness of spirit is what he needed.
Kaare Bursell recounted how he had been a veterinary surgeon practicing modern medicine on large animals as he began his macrobiotic practice and when he compares where he is now with where he was then, the most apt image he has of himself then was he was living in an abyss of falsity and inauthenticity and the process of healing, which included reading George Ohsawa, who he considers to still be the only true-to-the-spirit-of- macrobiotics teacher today, made it very clear that he had to wipe the slate clean, own up, and begin over. It has taken him out of his inauthentic life, which he thinks modern life is: an inauthentic, false culture based on abstract and delusory ideas of what a human being is and what life is and his macrobiotic practice has lead him to where he could see more clearly what reality is and what is demanded of the human being. He now thinks we are here to serve the cosmos- to serve the higher beings, to serve each other and to serve the planetary being called earth. The path macrobiotic practice has taken him is to where he now realises that he has an obligation, he owes a debt of gratitude so enormous that it is simply not possible to pay it back, which is what George Ohsawa also said; therefore we make our lives a life of service to whatever degree we can.
He says his life now compared to what it was like then is like day compared to night and in terms of his experience of existence it is one of gratitude, joy and appreciation for everything, and life is exhilarating especially now that the delusory falseness on which modern culture is based is beginning to unravel. And for him, the fact that it appears the unravelling is under way, it is exciting even though it will entail alot of pain and suffering for many people, because he has noticed in his counselling people and in his own experience of healing, that true, deep healing necessarily entails pain and suffering.
Alexia Plass recounted how she had been diagnosed with lumphoma four years ago and had read Dr. Sattilaro's book, "Recalled by Life" and she incorporated a macrobiotic practice with chemotherapy as well as prayers in church. About a year ago some bumps appeared on her neck and the oncologist wanted to cut them out and she knew at that point that she didn't want to pursue any chemistry or surgery, because chemotherapy is so damaging and toxic and she decided to really get serious about her macrobiotic practice. Where her macrobiotic path has taken her is to be really true to her own integrity about everything; there has been a lot of pain involved in the healing and it has occurred on many levels- she has done some inner child work and she has tremendously simplified her life. Another big change is her attitude to career and money; she no longer wants to work nine to five and make big money.
Pat Murray said that when she started her macrobiotic practice back in the mid-sixties she thought of life as a battle, trying to change the political system and after she heard Michio speak she realised that the only thing to do was to throw her old life away, including her education and start over and she decided to go and live in a macrobiotic study house in Boston. She said her experience has been that her macrobiotic experience is one of never ending change and it has been such a miraculous thing to let all that past misery fall away, to have discovered some kind of meaningful service in life. And to realise that we can really let go of everything to which we are attached. Right now she is experiencing more joy and freedom in different situations where even a year or two ago she would have wanted to control them. She really cannot find the words to express her gratitude to macrobiotics. She said that there are hundreds of thousands of people in the world who have changed their symptoms of disease but she doesn't think this what macrobiotic practice is all about; that's not the problem- the question is, can we find freedom, can we find "God", in whatever name you choose.
Roy Steevensz said that he started his macrobiotic practice some twenty years ago on reading George Ohsawa and he wasn't suffering from any physical sickness. He founded a macrobiotic center in Los Angeles which closed in 1984 and this year he is really beginning his serious macrobiotic practice. He found running his center and in subsequent years that many people in macrobiotics find so much to complain about that he has found a new name for this condition -"kifoma". Everyone laughed and Roy went on to say that this spiritual cancer is a most serious disease. The spirit is eternal and the material is temporary, so if our main concern is limited to the temporary, then our spirit gets stuck. That which is temporary must serve that which is eternal and since disease symptoms are of the material, they also are temporary. He thinks that the temporary, the material, serves as a platform to serve the spirit so if we are so concerned about getting well easily and quickly, we are missing the point because we need to learn from our mistakes and when we talk of fighting cancer or any other disease and the methods we use are destructive, then this is a very serious offense against creation. Disease needs to be appreciated because we created the disease and we benefit from it when we learn from the errors we have made that leads to the manifestation of disease symptoms. In his macrobiotic path it was only when he began to understand the laws of change which spring from the eternal that he began to experience well-being. He thinks that in addition to understanding and applying the macrobiotic principles we should discover our life's purpose and live it fully.
David Jackson said when he began his macrobiotic path he was sick with a philosophical disease because he saw the people around him playing this game of status, making money, wanting to be materially wealthy etc., and he didn't want to be that way, yet everybody he knew was into that game and he thought there must be something wrong with him. Then he discovered macrobiotics through reading George Ohsawa also. His macrobiotic path has allowed him to be truthful to himself and to be able to speak the truth as well as understand, through the macrobiotic tools available, how life works and how to take care of himself and understand more, and the path has become very exciting and interesting. And now he can experiment more with different kinds of food and eat more widely and he doesn't feel any worse for doing it.
Then Betty Holm said that you can't do that as you get older and everyone responded by saying that in fact you can with Roy saying that in actual fact as you grow older you should get bigger but the growth is mental and spiritual. The reason why older people feel less involved in the modern world as they get physically less capable is because they have not grown mentally and spiritually, and they feel handicapped. As we get older we should become less attached to the material, including our wealth and whatever material status we have attained, so that we can grow spiritually. Right now the world needs spiritually developed elders for leadership but as you know we elect leaders based on what they can do for the economy, we choose materialistic leaders. We can all in fact be leaders, especially with the macrobiotic knowledge and principles we learn in our practice.
In ancient, traditional cultures the principles we call macrobiotic were only taught to individuals after their character had been tested so that they would not be tempted to misuse the knowledge. So learning macrobiotic principles and knowledge is a great responsibility and we need to develop strong moral integrity to use it properly, and we need to put it into action.
Alexia Plass introduced this topic saying she wanted to discuss the relationship of balance to discharges; she said that when she feels in balance she has an incredible sense of well-being, she feels loving, she feels she has enough vitality to do what she wants to do, she doesn't have any aches and pains, there is an absence of cravings. She feels this way often especially early in her macrobiotic practice and then she has periods where she experiences the discharges and she can sometimes identify what she is doing that may stimulate the discharges, but often she can't. And he discharges usually manifest as beginning with a subtle headache, pain in the jaws, and then there are different ones like eye inflammation and mucus coming out of the eyes, ringing in the ears etc. She thinks the discharges may be because of something she does in how she eats or it's going to happen anyway, as a part of the healing.
She says that the discharging is happening less frequently but when it happens it really knocks her and she wanted to have other people's experience and ideas. Joyce Berto said she feels thankful when the discharges occur because she sees it as more garbage coming out from her years of poor eating before she started macrobiotics.
A general discussion followed, saying essentially that all of us on starting a macrobiotic practice will have to through the discharges and each of us experiences them differently and they are significant in helping us learn about our macrobiotic practice. Betty Holm said she had been suffering migraine headaches for many years, even after she started macrobiotics and everybody she had talked to had been trying to help her find a solution to that, and just recently she has discovered what the solution is and it is have more orgasms. And this has been proved that it helps by releasing the tension and if you are single you can masturbate, which is a perfectly healthy thing to do!
Pat Murray said her experiences of discharge have mainly to do with her memories of Boston in the mid-sixties where the macrobiotic way of cooking and eating was extremely yang, heavy on the grains and salt. She remembers the cooking classes ending with every body making a bee line for the local neighbourhood ice cream parlor called "Friendlies" and people were so salted out that a lengthy conversation consisted of "HI" and people could barely smile, being so stiff. So if you had a headache, because yang is good and yin is bad, then drink salty bancha tea or gomashio and your headache got much worse and she tried yin preparations and they worked. Pat recommended studying "Your Face Never Lies", and "How to see your health", by Michio Kushi. She also said that the longer you practice the more your discharges tend to manifest spiritually in terms of emotional and mental manifestations. She also said that people should throw out the idea of finding a permanent balance because there is no such reality.
This discussion focused on a phenomenon we have all experienced at one time or another when we eat a particular food, a little of it, and then we find ourselves eating more and more and more of it without being able to stop. Herb said he thought this process was a symptom of a deeper problem and what the particular food was is not the main point. Maybe it is a symptom of an emotional need, of emotional discharge. Roy recommended using the whole process as a means of studying yin and yang because there you can see what your condition is. Another tip is that when we are discharging, as the substance is coming out of our body is when we crave it, so eat. Kaare said he thought that cravings should be analysed on the basis of a person's condition because cravings at the early stages of macrobiotic practice are generally to do with physiological changes, discharges and finding balance. However, there is also the important aspect that cravings, especially if they become chronic and turn into addiction, is a symptom of lack of spiritual development. Kaare quoted from Rudolf Steiner, who said that a person can become what they eat, but only to the extent that they do not work on their spiritual development; to the extent and degree that people work on their spiritual development and make progress with it, then do they become less and less a slave of their nutritional habits. Now, the bottom line of what macrobiotic practice is all about is that you are trying to destroy your ego, to erase it utterly, because as long as that small-I, as it is referred to in macrobiotic writing, is there, then it is not possible for the large I, that is, the Higher Self, to enter. Thus, at some point in our macrobiotic practice we become less and less concerned with what we are eating because it is all macrobiotic food, and as we work on self-reflection, spiritual development, which is nothing but working on dissolving the small ego, then our body is operating with greater vitality and harmony because we are becoming utterly disinterested in the trivialities of our day such as money, status, material wealth, security. Gwen pointed out that what Kaare was talking about was a long term process and it was asked whether it could be accelerated. Kaare said that it took him seven years of macrobiotic practice before he even got to the point where he began to get an inkling of what macrobiotic practice is about. Sally St. John said that she was thinking about those things before she got into macrobiotics and Kaare said that he didn't think it was something that could be willed. He referred to the Gospels where Christ, who Kaare said he thought is the Teacher of humanity, said that He only did what the Father told him to do, and that people only came to Christ if the Father sent them. And that is a mystery, because He said the Spirit blows like the wind, in that no-one knows where it comes from, and no-one knows where it goes. We can't choose that because we think we are worthy of it , and in fact are probably totally worthless. Kaare said that Michio used to teach one of the most telling meditations, 12 years ago, before he lost his head, which was a meditation that went "I am nothing, I am ignorant, I am worthless, I am incapable, and I am foolish". When we begin our macrobiotic practice we have all the accumulated garbage of our culture within us, not only physically, but also emotionally, mentally and spiritually and as we continue our practice and our physical organism begins to heal itself, then the ramifications of that physical process begins to permeate our emotional, mental and spiritual "organisms". And we will, if we work at it, begin to discharge and erase the emotional, mental and spiritual toxins. However, this is not an automatic process, because one of the major teachings of macrobiotic thinking has recently been forgotten, which is self-reflection. Self-reflection means essentially that we look at our emotional, mental and spiritual life to see what flaws and errors are present there so that we can erase or correct them. These days in macrobiotic teaching and writing this critical aspect of a macrobiotic practice is no longer talked about because everybody has become microscopically interested in this 'cure for cancer'.
Sally St John then said that if it is not talked about then why are we talking about it because that has really been the gist of what we have been talking about all morning. Kaare said that he was speaking in general terms about macrobiotic teaching around the country, and that what is discussed, and the mood and tone of the discussions, in the Pacific Macrobiotic Conference is unique in the macrobiotic scene world-wide. Kaare went on to say that in terms of self-reflecting spiritually in a macrobiotic sense about why am I here, where have I come from, how did I get here, who am I and what am I doing here, then hopefully we come to the knowledge that I am nothing, I am ignoramus. The above meditation then is a tool to strip away the arrogance, the stupidity and is a process that you do and see what happens. The fundamental goal of macrobiotic practice, Kaare thinks, is to strip ourselves of our incredible arrogance, of every sense of "I am doing this, and I am in control, and I am the one who has the power, the knowledge etc"; no, in macrobiotic practice we are seeking to do what the "order of the universe" wants us to do.
Then, when Kaare eats a chocolate cake, that is all he is doing, eating a chocolate cake and getting on with it. However, in the first five years of macrobiotic practice if he saw a cream puff or a cheese cake, then all kinds of head trips, all that mental-emotional garbage, guilt trips, worry etc. It is the emotional, mental garbage that makes us sick in those situations.
A telling account of this is Kaare saw a senior macrobiotic teacher, been practicing for fifteen years or more come into 'Open Sesame' restaurant in Brookline, where Kaare was the chef, to have a meal. A friend of Kaare's was sitting opposite the senior teacher, and after he had eaten his meal he ordered a chocolate cake, and the chocolate cake made at the restaurant was the real thing, not some macro pseudo-chocolate cake. This senior teacher spent fifteen minutes toying with this cake prodding it and poking it before he finally had a bite, and he consumed half of it before pushing it across the table, telling my friend that he coudn't eat it and would he please finish it for him. Then the next day this senior teacher was laid up in bed sick; now, what do we think made this senior teacher sick, the chocolate cake, or his fear, anxiety and guilt trip over eating the chocolate cake.
Pat Murray related the story of Ram Dass being in India and finding a guru to whom he offered three times the normal dose of a psychedelic substance and after the guru had ingested it they meditated for three hours and then went for a walk after which Ram Dass asked the guru what he experienced and he said, "nothing".
The discussion went on to amplify that an integral and significant aspect of spiritual training is learning how to take care of our physical bodies as well as dong all the necessary emotional and mental work on ourselves.
Choosing the right remedy versus going to a doctor.
Alexia Plass brought this up and gave the example of recently having an eye inflammation and was concerned with what the effects of the eye inflammation might be so she went to an osteopathic doctor as well as talking to her macrobiotic counsellor. The question is really how to discern when it is necessary to go to a doctor and when to avoid going to a doctor. Kaare said that he has four signs, four warning signs, which are level of vitality, appetite, nausea and sleep patterns; if all are negative, there is no vitality, meaning the person can hardly move, they have no appetite whatsoever, they feel terrible and they have been sleeping poorly, then he recommends they go to a doctor, because if all those are present it means the person is in a critical condition.
Alexia related how the previous week she had an accident where a large table top had fallen on her thigh, which had immediately turned a deep shade of black and she had called her counsellor who recommended five minutes of ginger compress and four hours of albi plaster. After she took off the plaster she was amazed to see that the bruise was no longer black but brown. The point that Sally St. John brought up was that you have to know what you are doing so it is recommended people get the books available on home remedies, "Macrobiotic Home Remedies" by Michio Kushi, "Healing Ourselves" by Naboru Muramoto, "Healing Naturally" by Jerome Canty and Richard France and Cornellia Aihara has a new one out called "Healing yourself from Head to Toe", and if you can find it, "Practical Guide to Far Eastern Macrobiotic Medicine" by George Ohsawa.
Pat Murray related a story which illustrated it is sometimes necessary for someone who is on a macrobiotic practice to have no other recourse but to go to modern medicine in order to get them through a crisis so that they can continue their macrobiotic practice after modern medicine's technology has pulled them through. The practice of modern medicine is essentially crisis intervention therapy, whereas macrobiotic practice is to allow our bodies to heal themselves and live so that we do not put our bodies in a crisis mode.
Roy said disease is the body's way of restoring its physiological integrity and it is very important for the body to undergo the disease because that is what helps us retain our humanity. Modern medicine on the other hand uses the technology it as developed to adjust the human body to the disease, thereby creating deeper imbalance which has the result of setting the bodiy up for a bigger, more devastating disease and reducing our humanity by the use of technology on the body. The more we resort to technological methods for dealing with disease the more we are weakening our spirit. If scientific technology manages to develop a vaccine for AIDS, for example, this will set back humanity's spiritual development for many centuries.
Kaare said that a development more grim for the future of humanity is already well under way, called 'nanotechnology'. This is the development of atom-sized computers which will be able to enter into the human bloodstream coupled with a 'cell-assembler' and a 'cell-disassembler'; the computer will be programmed to recognise diseased tissue cells in the organism and disassemble them, and replace them with cells assembled by the cell-assembler. This amounts to replacing the human tissue with synthetic tissue and transforms the human to a cyborg.
The question came up as to what should be done if a person is clearly in a crisis situation and death is imminent, yet modern technological medicine may yet keep the person alive. The answer Roy gave is that to die with dignity is a somewhat superficial notion; it is more critical for a person to die with full consciousness and by choice, in that they do not expire in a drugged-out catatonic manner. For how a person dies determines the life of the soul after death and the life of the soul after death influences greatly the life on earth at the next incarnation. For Roy, the real question is whether a person dies knowing that they have either consciously or unconsciously made the choice to die at the particular time that they do, because to know that one has made a choice is an act of will, and will is the impulse of creation. Roy said that he thought if a person dies in a manner not of their choosing, ie., being kept alive by i/v etc., dying in the sterile, soulless hospital environment, then they expose their spirit to demonic forces.
The discussion went on to the spirit of macrobiotic practice and Roy said he thought that when a peson accepts the gift of macrobiotic practice and begins to work with it, after having a counsultation or starting on their own from a book, however they may begin, then they have received a priceless gift which one is spiritually obliged to repay, and this goes beyond paying the consultation fee. Roy feels that one of the reasons for the tremendous drop out rate in macrobiotic practice is that people do not realise they have an obligation and the means by which we redeem our debt is by informing people and doing whatever social distribution of macrobiotic practice that we can. Kaare said he thinks that the social transmission of macrobiotic practice, dissemination of the information is part of our healing process and that if we don't do that once we have received it, then we become stagnated but more spiritually, the "kifoma" that Roy called it so eloquently, is still there. Herb asked does that mean we are all healers, and Roy said we are all healers and teachers.
FRIDAY AFTERNOON
Macrobiotic Education: Are we confusing the public?
Pat Murray opened this discussion by saying that it is no accident George Ohsawa appeared when he did teaching this marvellous "Order of The Universe" and in her early days of macrobiotic practice in Boston it was taught that the spiritual world manifested the material which in turn returns to the spirit and the principles elucidated from studying and observing this eternal process could be applied to anything so that it could be understood. Moreover, based on the consumption of what naturally materialises where we live, geographically, climatically, seasonally we could experience a change in consciousness in ourselves as we applied those principles to our daily eating habits. And that is what we needed in this time on earth, because it was clear to her as a child that the world was going into chaos. And crisis time on the planet calls for a radical change.
In recent years, what are being called "Health Classics" are being put on; she had just been to her third one, in Miami. And her question is this, at these "Health Classics", is confusion being communicated to the public? She thinks so, great confusion is being generated; the confusion she thinks is being generated is this-at these gatherings, which are attracting three to five hundred people, representatives of the scientific research community, medical community, the modern 'new age' way of interpreting food, that it is "live" food, are being invited to present their partial views and this is to justify macrobiotic practice. This is what Pat sees is going on.
For example, some very nice man will give a wonderful lecture, and he's an MD, and he's come up with the idea that we are body and spirit and they somehow dance together and it is all very wonderful and nebulous, and there is a cook there teaching living foods cooking, and she blends together seeds, nuts, sprouts and fruits and fruit juice, in a juicer which is very quick for a quick hit; and then the Diamonds, the "Fit for Life" authors, and apparently they are able to write in a way people are willing and able to hear because it has become a best seller, translated into several different languages, and she heard them speak for 15 minutes, and she apologised, but compared to hearing a sound lecture on the order of the universe it was like watching two monkeys swinging through the trees chattering to each other, which is very charming. Pat said that she doesn't have anything against these people, she is not criticising them personally.
Then the one that concerned her the most where she was in a room with 60 -70 women listening to a researcher and a couple of doctors, both women, and he spoke his researcherly language to the extent that he said absolutely nothing, and then one of the doctors asked the women there if they found they had a breast lump, what would they do, try to heal it themselves or go to a doctor. 100% of the women said they would go to their doctor. And this is at a macrobiotic gathering.
At the Fall Health Classic, Larry Cooper, one of the sponsors of these classics, invited John Robbins to hold his annual general meeting of EarthSave there at Palm Springs and there were three complaining groups about the food there; the EarthSave people saying the food was macrobiotic and they wanted their 'live foods cooking', and then there were those who thought it was too wide and those who thought it was too narrow and Pat thinks this is all very confusing to the public. There are people who come there for their first experience of macrobiotics and they get the impression that it is macrobiotic practice to eat fresh fruit for breakfast everyday. Her question is this - since we have the tools in macrobiotic practice that if put into practice with sincerity and commitment can help humanity solve the problems of sickness, the problems of consciousness, the problems of pollution, why can't we put it out there in a beautiful, attractive and friendly way with our food and not to have to have it justified by the medical profession, who have not come up with this yet, and by researchers who are not willing to sacrifice their continuing flow of research money to say something real and meaningful to a room of sixty or seventy women who could by listening to some real advice and information, dare to take charge of their health.
Gwen said she has the same reflections as Pat and she asked why can't the keynote speaker be a macrobiotic teacher and the response was that they want to make money. Kaare said that he had to reflect on whether or not he would take up the invitation to go to the Fall Health Classic. He said that they are using the 'star system' to attract as many people as possible to the event and he said that if there are going to be three to five hundred people there, then it is an opportunity for those of us teaching, or trying our best to teach, authentic macrobiotics and have our integrity while we do it to teach many more people than we normally do.
Kaare said that he received a call from Saul Miller to invite him to the next one and Saul said that they are only making 'nickels and dimes' on them. Now, Kaare doesn't know what 'nickels and dimes' means to Saul Miller, but for him the real problem is that macrobiotics is reaping what was deliberately sowed by Michio Kushi ten or twelve years ago. Michio deliberately, as a matter of his policy for setting the direction of macrobiotic social dissemination, to try and get the medical, scientific research community to validate the macrobiotic practice scientifically. Kaare said that he thinks this is complete nonsense. This is because trying to validate macrobiotics in scientific terms is like trying to recommend a person try an apple by describing to them an orange.
On the other side of the coin, what this means is that many teachers in macrobiotics do not understand macrobiotic principles, and this includes Michio. Kaare said if we understand macrobiotic principles and we understand scientific principles then we know, without any shadow of a doubt, that modern scientific medicine is a bogus science. Since many macrobiotic teachers have not understood macrobiotic practice because they haven't really practiced it in a forthright and authentic manner, and because they haven't had a scientific training, then they feel uncertain about the validity of macrobiotic principles and they seek to have it justified and validated from the outside authority, so that they can tell the American people, look macrobiotics is okay, look what the doctors say about it. This results from wishy-washy, insincere, superficial understanding of macrobiotic principles and practices.
David said another point of view, and by the way all that is being said here will be transmitted to the various centers around the country, because the Pacific Macrobiotic Community Conference is about trying to establish dialogue and is an open forum where honest and authentic feelings and ideas may be aired so that all present may be better informed and can go home and make up their own minds about the issues and sujects raised. David said he has spoken to Larry Cooper, who along with Sandy Pukel and Saul Miller, sponsors these health classics, and David feels Larry understands what we are saying here. But that David thinks what they are doing is valid because it is bringing people to some degree toward a more natural way of living, which is a first step for a lot of people before they even get to macrobiotics. So Pat said that they should be more clear about what it is they are doing and she felt Larry was somewhat troubled in his conscience about it.
David said he had talked to some people who had been to the Winter Classic in Miami and they had seen Harvey and Marylin Diamond there and the first thing they did was criticise the food that was being served there. And who is sitting in the audience but people who eat macrobiotically or are wanting to learn more about it. Furthermore, Harvey Diamond is saying that what food you eat must have 70% water and you must drink a lot of fluids to flush out the toxins and as he saying this he is sweating profusely the whole time and is mopping himself with a large towel! So, there is no question that confusion is being sowed in the people who are new and are coming to find out about macrobiotics. David hopes the controversy will raise discussion and set things clearer with regard to what these 'classics' are. Herb said that what they reminded him of was trade shows. And Herb said that we shouldn't confuse that with education.
Kaare agreed that it was a carnival, trade show, but, from the point of view of someone who is teaching macrobiotic principles and ideas then how often is it that we get an opportunity to teach eighty, one hundred people? Sally St. John said that the Palm Springs Fall Health Classic was her first exposure to macrobiotic teaching and if she hadn't gone to Palm Springs she wouldn't be here at the PMC. Kaare said that most people that come to those affairs are like butterflies, sampling various tastes, but if out of the one hundred people that heard a macrobiotic lecture there, three, four, or five people go on to their macrobiotic path then the whole exercise is worth our while.
Herb said that usually if something is valid and truthful it continues to grow and develop and flourish, whereas if something is superficial and unrealistic then it dies out and Kaare interjected, unless it is heavily subsidised.
Betty Holm said she thought the most important macrobiotic education experiences for people are the summer camps where people learn surrounded by nature; many people she had talked to said they had received their first significant exposure to macrobiotic practice in a summer camp setting. David said that he and Kaare were going to sponsor one in Arizona, starting probably in the summer of '93.
Developing Macrobiotic Community/Elements of Macrobiotic Community.
Herb Sandel introduced this discussion by saying that this has become his consuming interest since he first came to the PMC a year ago in San Diego, and it became more focused when he attended the French Meadows Summer Camp last July. There appeared to be several elements necessary to foster macrobiotic community and one was how do people get the information, second was how do they get macrobiotic literature, and third was how they implement a macrobiotic practice, where they get the lessons, the food , the utensils, and fourth, tasting the food. In addition to that many community people he had spoken to around the country had said that having a speaker come in had helped their community grow and develop. But that it was a big production to organise and facilitate a speaker coming in to lecture and do consultations etc that many of them found the effort burdensome. He has been in the process of contacting various teachers and leaders with the objective of setting up a series of lectures on an organised basis. The idea being also being that instead of people having to go to Miami, Palm Springs or summer camps, the teachers come to them. Since somebody or a group of people in the community will be doing the organising and promotional work, some funds will be going into the communities instead of someplace else. That has been progressing but has been delayed by about three months because in all this Herb has moved from Santa Monica to Grass Valley.
Herb is also organising it so that the books will be available at the lectures and also have available in the community throughout the year and that has already well under way with a major book distributor in Los Angeles. The other interesting development is several local co-ops have expressed an interest in being the local sponsors of the lecture series in their community.
David came in with remarks which had to do with how macrobiotic policy was set in earlier years, which was, in his view, to direct it toward being viewed scientifically along the lines of a medical model, which is what has happened, or to develop it as a religion, which would be much more detrimental. Kaare said that there is a third alternative, which is to do what we are trying to do here with the PMC. That is, to develop macrobiotic practice and teaching and eventually a social organism out of grass-roots, village style macrobiotic endeavours, where Michio and all the other senior teachers would be just one on many teachers doing grass roots type activities which remained within localities while building dialogue and relationships between localities. Kaare asked if macrobiotics as a social endeavour would not be much further along today if that had been started in 1975? But he thinks that Michio Kushi and associates are not in the least interested in building and developing community and that is Kaare's chief criticism of what has been going on with macrobiotics for the past 15 years or so and he thinks macrobiotics will simply be co-opted without any understanding of macrobiotic principles and practices by the medical profession as these efforts to validate macrobiotics in terms of medical science continue.
Herb said he had a somewhat different perspective because he was impressed when he first saw the book on macrobiotics and cancer and all the specificities of dietary recommendations for different cancers and then he went into a bookstore. And there he saw all these macrobiotic books on different aspects of macrobiotic practice and he was specially impressed by the number of MD's that appeared to be involved with co-authoring and writing macrobiotic books. And seeing that gave him a lot more confidence and he thinks that is being consumer friendly and it makes the transition easier for people. Kaare said that even so, he thinks that Michio made a mistake with regard to the social distribution of macrobiotics so that it truly acts as a tool for social change, and regardless of debating whether Michio made a mistake or not, if macrobiotics is not going to be reduced to another of the millions of diets available to the consumer, then that work of community development still needs to be done, because we haven't even begun yet. And if macrobiotic practice is going to fulfil its potential, and remain here long after Michio, and we are gone, and long after the AMA is gone, then it has to be well rooted in local communities around the country.
Kaare said that Michio made that deliberate policy in the early seventies or so, but he also recognises that if Michio had not done that Kaare wouldn't be here today, because he wouldn't be counselling. But his point is that we have to take the next step, which is developing community. And if it is going to be sustained, because there are going to be ups and downs and it will be hard work
Some more comments from the experience at Palm Springs was that Michio's general address was very negative and one person had the group consultation where 80 people paid 100 dollars each and Michio went around the room giving snap judgments about their condition and it doesn't do justice to macrobiotic practice. Alexia said that she did not understand why they planned it so that so many people would pay that kind of money to spend three hours with a person acting like some god. She thought she was going to get some kind of absolution, or be touched and healed or something. Kaare said $8000.00 for three hours of that superficial macrobiotic practice is a rip-off.
David returned to the community theme where he said that what he was now working on, after having had an east-west center for macrobiotic studies in San Diego for ten years, with a restaurant and store, that he was now planning to do education throughout Arizona with a view to developing local teachers and educators who would also become clear enough in their own practice not to want to have the whole show to themselves in their own local communities. He said he thought that the crucial step in developing this lecture circuit that Herb is doing is we find the right people in the local communities who can pick up the ball and sustain efforts in their own communities.
Some suggestions for helping sustain communities between the visits of the lecturers was to have potlucks where study groups got together to do follow up studies on what the lecture topic had been, to compare the different expressions of understanding of different lecturers on the same topic, to discuss community itself.
Another comment was do we know who we are trying to reach. And it was said everybody, but it was also pointed out that the people we might be tryting to reach may not be like us and we would have more success if we moulded the PR work to the audience, rather than just put it out there and hope for the best.
Herb said he had put some thought into what kinds of people might be interested in this, including: one, those people who have shown an interest in natural food; two is people who are sick who have given up on the medical profession or who the medical profession have given up on - and he sees them coming from every walk of life, wealthy people, blue-collar people, conservatives, hippies, every kind. Since this is an on-going project and we have talked about it pretty much at every recent PMC in one aspect or another we will have more to say on it when we meet again in the Fall.
David Jackson introduced this this topic by saying he had been following what had been going on in regard of the election and what he had seen and heard made him not want to vote at all. David said that there was so much hype, money, attention and wasted energy being devoted to the primaries and all the candidates and it reveals the need for some form of change. He read some quotes that come from a booklet published by an organisation called "Future of Freedom Foundation", PO Box 9752, Denver, CO 80209-0752. One by Betty Hunt says 'power is intoxicating to all, it feeds upon itself; we the people gain nothing by substituting new people for old in Washington; our only hope is to take away the power that is concentrated there so no one can use it benevolently or otherwise; if we allow ourselves to become subjects of benevolent powers, we shall soon find ourselves we shall soon find ourselves slaves of a very unbenevolent power'. And another quote: The struggle between liberty and authority is the most conspicuous feature in the annnals of history with which we are earliest familiar; by liberty was meant protection against the tyrrany of political leaders;the rulers were conceived as being in a necessary antagonistic relationship to the people; the aim therefore of patriots was to set limits to the power the ruler be suffered to exercise over the community, and this limitation is what they meant by liberty'. David said he didn't think our political leaders are allowing that liberty at all. There has been recently an increasing erosion of liberty by the political establishment. Another quote: 'from the day that the first members of counsel placed exterior authority higher than interior; that is to say, recognising that decisions of men united in counsels as more important and more sacred than reason and conscience; on that day began the lies that have cost the lives of millions of human beings and which continue their unhappy work to the present day'. Another one (incidentally all these quotes are not from the same authors): 'citizens of America are now entrapped in a vicious circle; the administrators must necessarily have more and more tax money if they are to enlarge the scope of their activities under new laws to quote "help the people". The increases of tax causes the citizens to try even harder to qualify for the benefits in order to regain some of the money that was taken from them to finance the new laws. This could continue until the taxpayer is extinguished and the government is in complete control'.
David was prompted to bring this up because he was recently driving through Phoenix and was listening to the radio where two men were speaking and discussing today's politics. They put out a newsletter called "Freedom Daily" which David sent off for from the "Future of Freedom Foundation". As he listened to them he realised that they were as frustrated as he is about what is going on politically. And he decided to get involved with this group to some extent because he feels that something needs to change, and the citizens need to initiate it but he isn't clear what it is. And he brought the topic up to get some ideas as to what can be done, what needs to be done, because the political system is insane today.
Jackie Cole said she felt very frustrated at what is going on and it's scary but that by not voting we are really sabotaging ourselves. For example, Ronald Reagan got elected by a landslide when less than half of the eligible voters actually voted.
Herb said he had thought about this a great deal also and he comes back to what do we do in a sick society, because you can't blame it on the politicians. We saw what happened in Eastern Europe where 10,000 people got out on the streets and the most powerfully dictatorial government in the world was brought to its knees and collapsed in weeks. We are giving over our responsibilities to other people and when you do that, saying, 'here, spend my money for me' what do we expect to happen. So, unless you want to do the work, it's not going to change.
Pat Murray said the Green Party is concerned about doing something constructive about the things we are concerned about except that they don't talk about diet as a means to effect positive ecological, economical and social changes. She said she had been to a meeting a couple of years ago and wondered if any one here had anything to say about the 'Greens'. She knew that in the Irish election last year a record number of Green Party candidates had been elected. She didn't have enough time to look into why that had occurred although the thought had crossed her mind that a reason may be that the Republic of Ireland is a country where there is far less of a corporate vested interest in maintaining the status quo and privilege. Are the 'greens' a possibility for us to get involved with as a means of getting macrobiotic practice into the political sphere?
Herb said that he had been having some contact with them in Grass Valley because the population up there is very environmentally conscious and the Green Party has recently qualified to be on the ballot in California. And they are saying in the papers that the Green Party candidates will be acting as 'spoilers' in the election because the liberal democratic candidates will lose votes to the greens.
Talk turned to the whole idea of taking responsibility for our health and the proposal fro a national health care system is utterly absurd and insane, because it will give people an incentive not to take responsibility for your health. David said that he thinks the whole 'raison d'etre' of the political system that has been set up gradually is the assumption that people cannot be responsible for their own decisions and that idea takes power from the people and makes them weaker. Herb said it wasn't that the government took the power, it is that we gave it to them.
Kaare said that he disagreed with Herb's assessment of what happened in Europe, in middle Europe. He thinks that whole thing was set up, that it was allowed to happen; in other words, if the powers that be that are behind the scenes had not engineered that to happen those twenty thousand people would not have gotten what they wanted. Kaare thinks people are naive about what the hell is going on for one thing; they are talking about this 'new world order' and this hasn't been thought up in the last ten months or two years. Kaare thinks that it has been talked about behind closed doors and in various backrooms for at least the last five to ten years. Kaare's sense of it is that the political system itself is diseased and when we talk about government of the people, by the people, for the people, what that means literally is what macrobiotic practice is.
Because you are taking personal responsibility for not only your health, but also for your actions and the consequences of your actions. But where the corruption of the political process has arisen is that the political process has not separated itself out from the cultural sphere, which means education, which means religion, art, entertainment, and it hasn't separated itself out from the business sphere. In other words, true politics means that politicians have no business being involved in business and the economy, and it means they have no business being involved in education and religious pursuits. You see, the basis for organising the social body is the human body, and the human body has three spheres to it: it has a head, it has a thorax, and it has a digestive, metabolic system. And in the social realm the expression of the 'head' is all that has to do with spirit- education, art, cultural activities, religious activities; what has to do with the middle region is justice and law, the balancing part of the organism; and what has to do with the digestive-metabolic is the economy, marketplace, business. Now, in the human organism those three are separate in that they do not interfere with each other's proper activities and functions and they are co-ordinated.
And what has happened with politics in the last two or three hundred years is that it has become ruled by the economic sphere and the cultural, spiritual sphere is also ruled by economics. And that is why the whole political system has to be radically changed. With the way it is set up now it utterly impossible to have an orderly, healthy, vibrant social organism. And until that system is changed according to sound judgment, not based on economic considerations, there can be no progress in the politic arena.
Herb said that the system is crumbling here and he is not pessimistic about that, it is going to happen. And it is not only the political system that is crumbling, any large organisation is crumbling because it is based on a false foundations. Kaare said that is true, but if the crumbling is not going to degenerate into total chaos or, even worse, a total dictatorship, then what needs to replace it has to be well argued out and thought through and agreed upon.
Kaare said that many of us here grew up in the Sixties where there was this tremendous new energy expressed by left-wing socialist radical students that swept America and Europe say between '64 -'68. And in 1968 we had the Democratic Party Convention where Daly's thugs beat the brains out of these demonstrating students and right there we saw the dark, demonic aspect of American politics revealed in all its ugliness and terror. Then in September of 1968 the students in Paris revolted and they nearly overthrew the French Government and it was only because some weak-spirited communists pulled back and withdrew their support that the government was saved. At that time Kaare was in London, 20 years old, while the students were barricading the streets of Paris and demonstrating, having dinner with his uncle. His uncle was a professor of entomology at Salisbury University in Rhodesia, which has since become Zimbabwe, and they were discussing these events in Paris and his uncle turned to him, at this dinner party, and said, 'those of us who have thought about these things, the state of the world etc., and have been here longer than you, we know we are making a bad job of running the world, but until somebody comes along who has something to offer that is constructive and sound to replace it, not just waving flags, demonstrating and shouting slogans, complaining how bad things are - we know how bad things are - then we will keep bungling along the best we can'. Kaare said he has never forgotten that conversation.
Herb said did he mean a person. No, Kaare replied, not until there is in place or thought out a healthy, sound and realistic vision and program to put in it's place - not realistic in the light of political corruption, because nothing realistic can come about if political corruption is taken into account. So, the political corruption has been going on for a long time and it is crumbling, we are all witness to it crumbling. But, if, out of the general population a sound, healthy, realistic political agenda is not forthcoming then as things crumble all the opportunists will have a field day.
Herb said that when he is confronted with a dilemma such as this he asks himself what would happen in nature? And the response was 'survival of the fittest'. Kaare said he thinks that the phrase, survival of the fittest, means, in a macrobiotic context, those who choose to fit in with the scheme of things as is ordered by the cosmos are those that thrive. In other words those that follow the natural order and wisdom. So, from that perspective, it could be argued that what is going on now in humanity is the eradication of a species that does not fit in with the scheme of things or, as is the case with modern humanity, has chosen to discount and ignore it.
For what is the event now going on that has everybody in complete, abject fear? It is AIDS. It is believed that this syndrome is caused by a virus, the HIV virus. Kaare said he does not think the virus cause the syndrome but that it does have a significant role to play in the syndrome. Now, when we ask ourselves the question of what, in general terms, is the role of viruses, bacteria, parasites in nature? Several people respond by saying, 'clean up the garbage'. Kaare said it is to recycle decaying organic matter so that it becomes suitable nutrients for plant material to grow. So, what AIDS means is that the human race is decaying.
So, Herb said, to get back to David's original question, that we are doing the correct thing in response to the crumbling political order by teaching, counselling etc. However, Kaare said that he agrees with what Herb had said earlier about if we want change then we go into the present political arena at what ever level and change it, then we may be able to make piecemeal, cosmetic changes. But if we are talking about completely dismantling the current US political system and replacing it, there is no way that that can be done from within the system for many reasons, not the least of which is the vast amount of vested interest in keeping it the way it is. Sally said that the new world order is all organised and Kaare said all the political leaders in the world are in cahoots on it. He recounted a wonderful vignette which comes from a book called "Mumbo Jumbo" by Ishmael Reed, and this is a novel, but novels are based on research and in the story, when Dr Stanley goes off to Africa to search for Livingstone, and he found himself with his party walking through the African bush and they came to this village. When they talked to the villagers, Stanley asked them 'where is your chief?' and when the chief came out they shook hands with the Mason's handshake. And he found Livingstone, of course.
And Kaare thinks that when the political leaders get together, US, Israel, South Africa, France etc., etc. they say to each other, or they are instructed to say to each other, how are we going to make arrangements so that we keep our political power and keep existing arrangements the way they are. The whole political world order is kept intact by the various behind the scenes dialogue and negotiations and parlaying back and forth; therefore, when Gorbachev has his 'glasnost' and 'perestroika', it is part of this whole scenario.
For when the Iron Curtain fell and these prohibitions and shackles began to fall off people, Kaare said to himself at that time; well, alright, here is a window of opportunity for everyone involved to really look at how we arrange everything and have debates and conferences out in the open to come up with constructive, realistic ways of reconstituting the social organism as outlined above. But, did that happen? No, what actually occurred was that people began viciously stirring up and going to war over blood feuds and racial slurs and that had their origin 2000 years ago. Bloody internecine race strife going on between the Serbs and Croats, and this that and the other ethnic group. So, instead of this 'opening up' being progressive, everbody is regressing to what they were like 2000 years ago.
Herb said that maybe this is a discharge. Well, it maybe, because when the Communist Party took over they instituted the most rigorous denial of the spirit which meant, among other things, that people couldn't work on their self development. So it was like a band-aid that covered over the simmering racial and ethnic blood feuds like so many abscesses and tumours and cysts and when the band-aid was removed everything burst and dead blood and rancid pus has splattered all over middle Europe.
Then Betty Holm said that she is a Republican and she thinks the government has been very good to her, it paid for her education, and she believes in the government. And may be it has just gone bad now. Herb said that as a result of her education being paid for by the government she owes the government. He said he was recently talking to his sister who is a professor at Columbia University and they were discussing government funding; that universities have so much money coming from the government but she said that they have complete intellectual independence, that they can research whatever they want, they can write whatever they want. And Herb said that if you are taking so much money from them, then you are beholden to them. And it's now beginning to show up.
Herb went on to say that now in many countries in Europe and here many young people want to have careers in the government, and the government is the largest employer of people in the country. If the government is helping people and so many millions of them, those people working in government aren't productive, they're not producing refrigerators, pants, shoes etc; that there are so many is an indication of a sick economic structure. And he was shocked to hear a representative from Seattle on the radio telling that if they cut the bomber program how many thousands of jobs would be lost in Seattle at Boeing and in Southern California as a result - Herb said it is unconscionable if that is the basis for why we are building bombers. Kaare said it is a disguised "welfare" program. And those bombers aren't productive- basically useless hunks of metal which if actually used means the destruction of hundreds of thousands of people and acres of buildings etc. Which is why the government has no business being involved in any aspect of the economy - all it should be concerned with is regulation and justice to make sure that no one is being suckered by bullying of the market place by one special interest group or another and no monopolies and it doesn't give grants, tax breaks, subsidies, price controls and tarrifs in any manner to anyone for any reason. Therefore, if government is not getting involved in the marketplace other than to regulate it in terms of law and justice, it means, among many additional ramifications, there would be no nuclear power stations because if it had been up to a truly free marketplace to decide whether or not nuclear power stations were a good investment then they would have not invested in them. Why? Because it costs billions of dollars to build them and they only last for 15-20 years and then you have to dismantle them and take care of the nuclear waste which the company would have to pay for. It's the same with medical care. If it wasn't legislated that you have insurance like Medicare and Medical so that people had to make a choice that they would have to pay for, and there was a free marketplace in medical approaches, would we have the decrepit, asinine medical system we have today? Same thing goes for education.
Herb said that Betty has an education because of the government. Kaare said that doesn't make it a good idea or that she gets the grant. In fact, it is detrimental to people's spirit to be aided by the government. The fact is that if we want a dynamic, vital, creative and innovative, fertile citizenry then each and every individual has to be made aware that the reality of their existence is that they are personally responsible for every thought, word and deed including their health, and the consequences thereof. And we don't have a dynamic, vital, thriving citizenry and of course that is the last thing this, or any modern government wants. They want a bunch of sheep that can be fed the pap that comes through the tv and the newspapers because both those are part of the establishment. And the people in this country are a bunch of sheep for the most part.
Betty said then that we see all the advertisements for the grants and loans given by the government which they want us to use, we should refuse. Herb said, where do you think that money came from, it came from you! Kaare said that accepting grants is like taking vitamins; you taking something in that appears great and wonderful, but in actuality, as far as the social fabric goes, it weakens it, as do vitamin pills weaken the human organism.
David finished up the discussion with a quote: 'when the government takes over the people's economic life, it becomes absolute. When it becomes absolute it destroys the hearts, the minds, the liberties and the being of the people it governs.'. These quotes come from the "Freedom Daily" which David said could be obtained from "The Future of Freedom Foundation" at the above address for he thinks about $10.00 a year. You may get a sample copy if you write to them and say you had heard about them from a friend.
Saturday March 21st.
MORNING SESSION.
This was a presentation by Roy Steevenzs who began by first acknowledging that the information he is presenting is not his, it comes from the Great Spirit and he is just a channel and will give his understanding of that knowledge.
The whole idea of economy is captured by the phrase of George Ohsawa, 'one grain, ten thousand grains'. Roy also said that another phrase that is the essence of economy is 'the tree is in the seed, the seed is in the tree' and also 'the minimum produce the maximum; the maximum produce the minimum'. Every one of us, every cell and fibre of our body is part of that economy. In order for the economy to have integrity and synchronicity we have to honor the common denominator, the absolute, the constant of the infinite universe, which we call Universal Law. With that constant, change becomes possible, cycles maintaining the oneness. So the true economy maintains oneness.
This is contrary to present day concepts of economy which is based on the opposite, competition, separation and when we have separation we cannot have oneness so present day economy profits by antagonism, war, conflict and anything that is conducive to destruction. When we study the economic system of most nations today what is most profitable is anti-life, anti-biotics, chemicals, war machines, smart weapons, disease, drugs including pharmaceuticals from aspirins to chemotherapies.
For us to understand how to get out of it we have to understand how we allowed ourselves to be tricked into it. We have to understand the origin of the deception and it appears that present day civilization is coming to the end of its cycle, which is part of a larger cycle.
The economy is becoming more and more an important issue and today we think that we can revive the economy by adopting another method but applying the same habitual principles. In this way all that we are doing is what we do with disease in modern medicine by treating the symptoms, which leaves the possibility for even a bigger disease developing later. And since the economy is getting worse and worse then the final result is bankruptcy, not only monetarily speaking, but everything that supports the economy. Which means that it will eventually destroy the planet and all life.
So it requires courage to acknowledge the failure of our present economy. Now the economic goods, ie wealth, money are temporal and finite, whereas the true economy is eternal and this economy is the economy of the wealth of the spirit. Spirit is not well understood in this day, and spirituality is usually confused with sentiment and desires, good feeling, which is simply a coarse vibration of feeling. Spirit is the expression of the creation and this is very difficult to understand and I will do my best to explain what I think creation is, the origin of spirit.
The only true reality is the present moment, and the present moment can only be real if we are both healthy and keenly alert for in that moment the spirit lives. When our lives are based on palliatives and speculations then there is a delay of the perception of the moment. So here we have our wealth and money and we speculate and maybe at some later date we get some good results, or we hope we do. There is a big gap of time here. The moment is eternal.
Let me explain the oneness between the minimum and the maximum where yang is the minimum and yin is the maximum. The moment represents infinite speed and the moment perpetuates so we experience moment flowing into moment, and the moment is finite but because it is also infinite speed, is also the infinite. Within that moment is contained the force of creation which is called is will. Every cell of our body is the result of that truth. Nothing becomes something only because of the delay of our perceptions. And it is the alternation of contraction and expansion that maintains the reality in cycles as the connection between the infinite and the finite.
We breathe, inhale and exhale to maintain our oneness with the world of air, we eat and excrete to maintain our oneness with the world of solids, we drink and we urinate to maintain our oneness with the rain, the rivers and streams, the world of water, and in order to maintain our oneness with the world of spirit, we remember and we aspire.
When that relationship is harmonious maintaining each cell of our body then health is self-evident, including peace, justice and freedom. We breathe like the universe breathes and life becomes effortless. But in order to maintain this harmonious relationship we have to follow and obey the constant, the absolute, the law of all laws and if we don't then our life becomes effort.
When we begin with the realisation that everything comes from will, the creative force, which creates change, which means we have will within us and since the human being is the last manifestation of creation, then we become the turning point, like a mirror reflecting the flow of the moments of the whole creation. And so when we mirror back we can continue the creation. That will is interpreted as choice and if we have great will we can live by choice. If we give up our will then there is no choice. However the ability to have choice is meaningless unless we can choose to aginst creation; if all we can do is follow creation then we have no choice, we are not human. We have the option to deviate from creation. There are beings who made the decision to deviate from creation - " I want to create my own creation, my own empire, my own economy, my own system of oneness". So from there originate the so-called demonic world of false gods.
Let us say we want to conspire here in this room that we want to create our own empire, and this is occurring before this civilisation has developed, and we want to con this world into supporting our plan of making this world our empire. Let us try. How can we trick the masses of humanity into supporting our plan. We have to make them dependent upon your own system. As long as people are self-reliant, then the present system cannot work. So we have to separate the individual from creation and it became possible through spiritual persecution and oppressed by changing the people's body, mind and spirit.
To change their spirit they need to be severed from their connection with the highest level of spirit and the means used to accomplish this was religion and people became converted. All kinds of religion. To change their mind, education was the principle tool. The textbooks used in schools are designed by the government and busines to make you a part of the system. To earn a living at the expense of life.
To change the body the principle tool was to control the food cycle. And the food cycle begins with the land. In the US. 97% of the land is owned by 3% of the population.
Once we change according to these three means our perception of law and order changes. If we are truly healthy then we cannot but help to see the law in the context of oneness and it is self evident. In the context of a man- made empire, since its origin is not in the context of oneness which maintains the laws of creation such as inhalation and exhalation, the minimum produce the maximum and the maximum produces the minimum etc., then the man-made empire needs to have its laws enforced in an attempt to maintain order. And that is why we have law enforcement.
The law in a man-made empire can only be enforced when people fear the law. The ultimate trick of the man-made empire is to keep people within the artificial order is when people do not require any more police or army is when people fear each other. Not only do they fear each other, they fear everything - bacteria, viruses, disease, losing their comforts. That means unless the masses become completely subject to total addiction, and it is coming to that point. And when this addiction can be controlled by an illusory concept of value, then control is complete. The illusory concept of value is money.
Money is the link we need to maintain oneness in this artificial empire because we can us it for evaluation. In life, for example, the atom, the electron is the money of the atom because it maintains the oneness of the atom, in our body, the blood is money, because blood maintains the oneness of the physical organism. In social terms being each individual is a cell of the social being and money connects them so that anything that maintains the social oneness of people can be money, like air, food and water. As you know there are many societies where water is priceless, etc. In the natural societies in the natural spiritual order of creation people didn't buy food or water or air, or spirit through education, the people received inspiration.
When we have come to the point where body, mind and spirit have to depend on the value of money that is maintained at the expense of life, which is priceless, then eventually we become money and here is the final stage of the man-made empire. The ultimate plan is that people will be given a tattoo electronically to show how much you are worth which shows how addicted we are to commodities.
When we lose our will, which is the source of our addiction, then we have no choice but to accept the tattoo. All this is ridiculous. The bartering method that is used in traditional societies was based on the respect each person has for the spiritual effort put into the making of a particular item. Bartering is based on using our judgment. Thus through the social interactions based on providing services to the society we grow spiritually because in using our judgment we have to be discerning in many aspects of life in order to be able to barter as a method of maintaining balance in the social organism.
If we are healthy in our life, then we perceive opposites as being complementary. (At this point Roy drew a diagram on the board which is included here- see illustration in Roy's handwriting). Within the large circle each cell of the body is maintained by the constant movement of expansion and contraction in a sum of moments. When we receive the incoming forces, that is the past, basically we receive this from the front so that when the universe contracts it finds its final point in the human being.
To illustrate this by the following example: so as vibrations become dense they become lightning, then they become sound, then we perceive wind, then we perceive rain, and the rain falls to the ground and all together those become our food. Then food enters our mouth, the borderline between the macro and the micro, and enters our digestive system. Here, what we cannot assimilate and becomes our blood and become higher, we excrete. Our mouth relates to solids. In our small intestines, food becomes our blood, that is liquid. Liquids rise to gas in mixing with oxygen, and this goes to our brain, and we can make sounds. Then after we make sound we can see, light makes it possible to see, and then we can think and here we re-enter the world of spirit. When we chew we can begin to think, and thinking finishes our chewing. All this is behaviour. As the individual expands through social interaction then we call this behaviour. When our food cycle is a reflection of the order of creation then our behaviour reflects it, the order of creation.
However, when food deviates from that order and is 'captured' within the syndicated world, the food has to be transferred to the small cycle which is why agriculture is controlled by chemicals, and we have refinement etc, the commercial food cycle. Consequently, our behaviour relates to that small world of the inorganic food cycle which is becoming smaller and smaller and smaller and will eventually be a pill which is totally removed from the order of creation.
The body is composed of twelve organs/functions and these are correlated with the twelve constellations and beyond and when we are in true health our organs are in synchronicity with the heavens, with the cosmos. When any one of our body organs are removed, or we have sick, toxic organs then we can become completely dependent on artificial means for our sustenance, and we become addicted to those artificial means. Roy calls this 'eating head', where the person seeks instant gratification without having to do the work of digestion, assimilation etc., somewhat like the most primitive life forms, bacteria and viruses.
'Eating head' started when foods began to be eaten that do not require the full use of the digestion processes. Like sugar which goes straight into the blood and then to the brain. That means it is less organic, less transmuted. When we eat chemicals as food then they do not require the use of the body and now there is genetic manipulation.
Roy asked Kaare to explain what is going on and he said that now, in the early stages of development, is what is called nanotechnology. This is to be distinguished from bulk technology with which we are all familiar-making cars, computers, refrigerators, TVs etc. Nanotechnology is technology of the order of one billionth of a unit of measurement, like one billionth of a centimetre. So, for instance they will be able to build computers of the size of an atom which will have the computing power of today's mainframes or even supercomputers. Along with these inorganically synthesised 'bio-computers' they will have what are called cell assemblers and cell disassemblers and the computer will be programmed according to the genetic and chemical knowledge being developed today about the cell. It will then be instructed in the computer program that where it recognises unhealthy body cells to dissassemble them and to replace the diseased, disassembled cells with 'healthy' cells assembled according to the computer program. The whole package can then be injected into the bloodstream and probably several thousand of them can be in a person's blood at any time circulating there and when they meet with diseased tissue they will replace it with cells derived from synthetic chemicals and this will create the 'inorganic human being'. In other words, the future of medicine will be to inject this medical nanotechnology and as a person's body is actually decaying it will be 'made anew' synthetically. Of course, we can all readily see how this will affect the human spirit and soul. The human being will no longer truly exist and will be transformed into a bio-robot.
And this is only one application of nanotechnology. For instance, it will be used to clean up pollution. If you want food, you will have a little box at home, press the appropriate buttons for brown rice and it will make the brown rice, and it will look just like brown rice. This is what is being prepared for the future.
Roy went on to say that we have to eat whole grains to maintain our nucleus in the cells, and our 'true human nature', and the nucleus of the body is the intestines which is the finite point within us and the polar opposite of our intestines is the brain and when that is maintained within the natural order of the food cycle, then we experience oneness with the whole of creation, from the nucleus in the cell to the primal will of creation.
When we become sick and diseased as a result of being severed from the natural order then we become dependent and that is why we need hospitals, supermarkets etc and this addiction to artificial means of support and sustenance is the ultimate goal of the empire. And then the goal of the conspirators is to get people to do this voluntarily and with their full support, even though they are not aware they are giving support to it. And we call this advanced civilisation created by us. The fallen gods who have instigated this need the voluntary co-operation of the people to perpetuate their empire. This is the whole point of the creation of the demonic empire - where people give up their sovereignty of will and become addicted to illusory concepts of wealth and health because they have allowed themselves to become more and more removed from 'the order in all creation'. Once the body becomes useless and we are left with the 'eating head' and this 'eating head' of all the people on the earth like this sets up a polarity within the greater circle and this is called 'The Illuminati'.
If you look at the One Dollar Bill it has an illuminated eye separated from and on top of a pyramid and it has a latin inscription which says 'novus ordus seclorum' -new world order. This is the seal of the United States of America. The significance is that it is a powerful symbol which acts subliminally to influence us and we call it the Almighty Dollar which we serve, we die for, we sell our time, our moment for. The eagle with the olive branches in one claw and the sheaf of arrrows in the other menas we trade war for peace, or we maintain social order by force.
The pyramid on there relates to the Great Pyramid of Egypt. It was meant to serve us as a spiritual channel and the Freemasons carry all these symbols. Please study this.
Roy doesn't want to make us think all this is evil or bad because we that only gets us involved in dualism. However, this is a great opportunity for those who make the choice to change their lives to the natural, sacred order of creation and not this man-made syndicated empire; that is not only to eat macrobiotic food, but to eat it macrobiotically. Then, if we do this we can become ourselves food for the next higher order of beings and this is a very difficult and arduous task. And we can expect that if we choose this and as society becomes more and more synthetic and robotic, we can expect to become outcast. The training for this will be to simplify, simplify, simplify so that we can live with only that we can carry.
Roy finished by saying that he has been told by some of the Hopi elders that any person's spirituality doesn't mean anything if it cannot grow corn. And he brought some Hopi corn for us to take home and see if we can grow it! If we are truly living macrobiotically, it will grow.
There are two stages that are necessary for beginning a spiritual path and the first stage is discernment and this discernment must be based on the widest possible context, that of the universe. And the best possible means of doing this is yin and yang. Then, once we have developed our powers of discernment through several years of study we are then in a position to be able to overcome fear. It is only when we can overcome fear that we can truly exercise freedom of choice. Today freedom of choice is merely a syndicated option made available to us, including equal rights.
(My apologies, but at this point the tape recorder malfunctioned and I was not able to record the final two topics of Saturday morning's session, which were 'Intuitive versus Analyical Eating', and 'Acid and Alkaline', and the first part of the next topic).
The Changing Role of Women in macrobiotics.
Patricia Murray brought up this topic, and when the tape picks up the discussion, Kaare Bursell is saying that all of the attributes that are so-called male characteristics, for example, competition, utilitarianism, the profit motive, and being successful, and being powerful, are disease symptoms, they are not true, healthy, male characteristics. And so there is a two-fold quest here; on the one hand we have to restore and let unfold the sacred feminine in each of us, and we have to learn to understand and develop what are true, healthy, sacred masculine characteristics, in each of us, both men and women.
This rapacious, male in extremis culture we have today is dying, so we have to prepare ourselves to replace it with this balanced masculine and feminine culture. If ever there is description of a macrobiotic culture that has existed, then the nearest to it is in the book, 'The Chalice and The Blade' by Riane Eisler.
Patricia said that her call was for this balance to come into macrobiotics where there has been a long standing male dominance of teachers and writers and women have conventionally been consigned to the kitchen and child rearing.
The question came up was whether we thought that macrobiotics was a philosophy that could lead to this balance because there are many religious, philosophical teachings that discuss and address the question, regardless of the food. Kaare said that in his view the fact that most religious, philosophical teachings have disregarded food as a key aspect of spiritual development have lead them to become merely abstract, theoretical exercises. For one, all traditional religious, sacred teaching talked about the significance of food, but as this significance has been forgotten then the teachings themselves have degenerated. He knows, however, from contacts he has made over the past few years that several spiritual paths today have received instruction from the spirit world that the proper taking care of the physical sustenance of the body is of utmost significance to their particular spiritual path, and, moreover that they should look into macrobiotics.
Introducing macrobiotics into the family.
This discussion was about how to make it easier for one's family and friends to eat macrobiotically and there were various tips given like calling the dishes one makes macrobiotically by familiar names and making them look familiar, like corn chowder etc. And to not be rigid in one's practice by insisting that everyone in your family eat like you do; if you are on a strict program to take out your food and then add more tamari or herbs and spices to the reat of it so it is more sensuous and palate pleasing to palates that are accustomed to heavy sensory stimulation.
Another comment was that as more and more people get involved in macrobiotics there will be a natural transition to 'americanising' macrobiotics. One source that has not been untapped is the native american traditional culture understanding of what is macrobiotic processing of local foods. For instance, a person who is in Montana found out about a local indian recipe called 'chokecherry concentrate' which has all the qualities of umeboshi plums.
There was then a long discussion about making our own miso, umeboshi plums and we all said that this would become more and more important. Another point made was that we should perhaps make more emphasis in our public presentations of the fact of how much more reasonable economically a macrobiotic way of eating is compared to the cost of supermarket food generally.
Case Histories of Personal Recovery.
This subject was brought up because when we are talking to people in our daily lives it is always useful to tell stories of people that you know or know of that have healed themselves with a macrobiotic approach. Perhaps the most dramatic example is Dr. Sattillaro's book written with Tom Monte, called "Recalled by Life".
David Jackson recounted the story of Herb Markell, who had lung cancer when he started his macrobiotic practice. He had been given three months to live after his diagnosis, and because his life was involved with horse racing he had a bit of the gambler in him. When he was told that the odds of him surviving the surgery were 50/50 he decide the odds weren't that great. He remembered reading an article on Dr. Sattillaro sometime previously, found it, and after making some telephone calls, found Roy with whom he consulted. He figured the odds were much better witha macrobiotic approach and decide to do it. After a year he was doing very well and went back to see the doctore who said that they must have misdiagnosed it. He is no longer alive and this happens a lot. In many instances it is not only a matter of changing one's diet that is necessary if one is going to effect a healing. David mentioned he didn't get any support at home and Kaare said that when Herb came to San Francisco, where he lived five or six months of the year, he made the mistake that Kaare thinks that many people make, which is that he never learnt to cook for himself. So he paid people to cook for him and Kaare thinks that if we don't learn how to cook macrobiotically for ourselves as well as our family, then it is really not possible to effect a deep healing. Because what this signifies is that we are still using the same mentality about macrobiotics and the food as we do about pills and potions.
So Herb then began to eat with his buddies at the race track, started eating greasy italian food and greasy chinese food and the cancer flared up again and he never recovered. David said he saw him at the end and he understood why the cancer had come back, and he was sad about the fact that he couldn't get the support from his family, yet at the same time he was very happy and grateful for macrobiotics and said that these were the best five years of his life.
Elaine Nussbaum's book, "Recovery from Cancer through macrobiotics", is also a good book to recommend to people.
Report on Camps, Health Classics, Organic Farming Conference.
We had various comments about the various macrobiotic events and about the Fall Health Classic in Palm Springs was that although there was a lot of showmanship there with the stars etc., there was a lot of high quality macrobiotic education there. Pat Murray was at the Winter Health Classic in Miami and she thinks that if people are coming to the classics to find out about macrobiotics and they listen to the likes of Harvey and Marilyn Diamond then they are likely to become confused. John Robbins was at the Fall Health classic and has been invited to many macrobiotic events as a featured speaker and Kaare said that he has a problem with John Robbins which is that he doesn't reciprocate the support he gets from the macrobiotic community by mentioning macrobiotics at all when he goes around on his tours and that shows a lack of gratitude on his part.
Pat Murray said that she had been to see him talk three or four years ago at one of the Whole Life Expos and had mentioned to him at the end of the lecture she had noticed many people in the audience were concerned about what the effect of not having any animal protein and that there was a large community of people around the world and in America who had not eaten appreciable amounts of animal protein for thirty, forty, fifty years and these are macrobiotics. And he replied that he was well aware of that and Pat thinks that they have a vested interest in what they have set up as their way of medicine on what are called living foods, or raw foods, and sooner or later they are going to run into the fact that some conditions will not heal this way. And so she thinks it is a matter of time. They have a vested interest in their particular interpretation of things and we know from yin and yang that with their approach many diseases of excess yang respond very well to a high amount of raw foods.
Kaare said it was just an observation he had made that one of the feminine characteristics that we need to develop and express more and more is that of co-operation. And there are so many groups who are in one way, shape or form aligned with what macrobiotics is trying to do, and Francis Moore Lappe is another example, and what is happening is all these boundaries are set up, which is a male, macho characteristic.
Herb Sandel attended the organic farming conference in Asilomar and he was amazed at the number of people (1100), the diversity of people and the energy and the number of programs available. His impression is that this another fast growing field and it was sponsored by the Committee for Sustainable Agriculture. It takes place every year at the end of January.
We also mentioned the Summer camps that take place in the country such as French Meadows Summer Camp sponsored by Herman and Cornellia Aihara, the Mendocino Camp sponsored by Donna Wilson and Joel Huckins, the camp in Vermont sponsored by the Kushi Foundation, and the new Summer Health Classic in Colorado which is sponsored by the same people, Sandy Pukel, Saul Miller and Larry Cooper, who put on Winter Health Classic in Miami and the Fall Health Classic in Palm Springs.