10th March 2007

 

Dear Dr Janov

 

Several years ago, I emailed you a fairly long letter. In your response, you asked me to phone you in order that we might discuss the issues I’d raised, but I never did, possibly because at the time I was none too sure precisely what it was I wanted to know.

 

I have read many of your books – The Primal Scream, The Primal Revolution and The Feeling Child, the last of which I consider to be perhaps one of the most important books I’ve had the pleasure to read. The messages and insights it contains have I am sure made me a better parent to my now grown up children than I might otherwise have been.

 

Lately, I have begun studying seriously the writings of Dr David Yurth, the Science and Technology director of the Nova Institute of Technology based in Holladay, Utah. His seminal work Y-Bias, Angularity and Self Organising Criticality is a landmark treatise in physics that for the first time introduces consciousness as the fundamental prerequisite to the real matter existence.

 

In one of his recent communiqués to me, Dr Yurth has written: ‘Mind is a product of self organising criticality operating as a manifestation of non-local field effects which couple with local-linear organisational products in ways that are known and quantifiable. Poponin’s Phantum DNA Effect is but one of a growing number of publicly available research reports which provide insights into how this process works.

 

‘The fourth (attached file) is a manuscript that I prepared in the form of a Master’s thesis for the MBA program I completed in 2004. It speaks directly to Janov’s model by looking at what I have chosen to call Original Woundedness. In Janov’s day, little was known about the subject – he was a pioneer and masterful practitioner of the healing arts. He worked out a model which recognised, correctly I believe, that all of us are wounded. He attempted to introduce a revolutionary new kind of treatment for dealing with primal pain, and for some it apparently had a beneficial effect.

 

I have attempted to take his work a step further. In the thirty years between his seminal work and the production of my own writings, we have learned some things about primal pain that he could not have known about. Among them is the discovery that we become conscious about our experiences long before we are equipped to understand them.

 

The personal myths we create, which are our attempts in infancy and early childhood to explain why things happen to us that rob us of our authenticity  and deprive us of our ability to freely express who and what we truly are, quickly become the perceptual filters through which all subsequent life experiences are viewed and interpreted. The fact that our original interpretations are always in error means that the way we experience, understand and interpret our life experiences is also always misinterpreted. We live our lives as if the myths we have made up about ourselves are true. Janov’s primal pain is the manifestation of the anguish we feel as the result of our own original woundedness.

 

Much important work and analysis still remains to be done to bring what we know about such things into clear and present focus, but I believe we have begun well. I hope the way I have explained it will make sense to you – if it does, as with the other things I have been working on over the years, then it certainly will have served its intended purpose.’ <Ends>

 

I cannot tell you what a revelation it has been to discover that someone as outstanding as Dr Yurth is not only familiar with your work; he has actually incorporated it with dramatic effect in his own research and publications.

 

In other scientific papers, Dr Yurth draws attention to the pioneering work of the eminent parapsychologist Professor Dean Radin. In his books The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds, Dr Radin presents in very readable language persuasive empirical evidence for the existence of psychic phenomenon.

 

Alas, I have nagging doubts and questions.

 

How is it that with a global population approaching seven billion people, how is it that only a few individuals exhibit or profess to experience psychic phenomena such as extrasensory perception, psychic kinesis, remote viewing etc?

 

Nearly every single human being on the planet can be said to possess roughly the same attributes, the same kind of adaptability to Nature and their surroundings; we all have the same needs and desires, we all need to eat, we all need to excrete waste material, and we all need to sleep. We are blessed with a level of intelligence and awareness of our surrounding, and we also appear to suffer from neuroses of one sort or another.

 

But psychic awareness seems to be restricted to just a few individuals. Indeed, although Professor Radin is attempting to develop a scientific basis for psychic phenomena that has its root quantum mechanical properties, it still seems to me more chance than empirically validated proof.

 

If, however, it really is true that certain particular individuals do actually experience or exhibit psychic phenomena, then what might it be that is so special about them?

 

I am drawn to the set of comments on your website entitled Rebirthing and why we are opposed to it.

 

I am relieved to read that you indicate that being born does not necessarily have to be traumatic. I have thought much about the mechanics of being born. Assuming that the new born suffers neither oxygen deprivation nor strangulation by the umbilical cord, can I assume that the birth process could in theory be a relatively calm and not unpleasant experience?

 

From the purely physical point of view, while the vaginal canal is not necessarily huge, a baby squeezing through it could surely get out without too much hassle.

 

However, I can imagine that being born could be horrendous if the mother is in great pain. Indeed, if the movies are anything to go by, having a baby is, from the point of view of the mother, one almighty pain driven episode in which she is clinging with bated breath to the bed railings and sweating profusely with face in contorted agony.

 

All this may well get transmitted to the baby.

 

However, if the drama is no more unpleasant than, say, defecating whilst constipated, then I cannot imagine the birth process from this point of view being all that terrible, at least not enough to justify the cautions you warn about.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

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From: Dr Arthur Janov

 

13th March 2007

 

Dear Richard and David, may I suggest that you both read my last two books. The latest and most complete is Primal Healing.  The earlier one is The Biology of Love. Then maybe we can all talk on a conference call. Great letter. Thanks. Art Janov

 

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From    Dr David Yurth

 

13th March 2007

 

Hi Richard and Dr Janov

 

Richard, I have not sent comments on your essays yet because I have not been able to cut loose with enough free time to do justice to the pieces you sent. My apologies. I appreciate your willingness to share them with me and look forward to reading them. And I WILL send comments and so on.

 

To you both: I have for many years been working on a book that describes the primal events dealt with in Dr Janov’s books as ‘original woundedness’.

 

The Island of my life is nearing completion now, so I can share some of the insights I have developed about this issue with you. The Master’s Thesis based on this phenomenon was entitled The Pyramid of Agendas: Original Woundedness and Root Cause Analysis. Pretty catchy title don’t you think? Mercy.

 

Dr Janov is totally correct in his assessment of this original, seminal event. It happens one way or another to everyone, and it happens at such an early age that even though we may be aware of its occurrence, we lack the capacity, by virtue of immature development, to frame it in abstract terms. As an absolute, this event or series of events threatens us at the core, in a truly primal way. And because we are engineered to attribute meaning to all of our experiences, we attribute meanings that are also absolute. They almost always translate into a personal myth which describes us as somehow lacking in some mysterious, essential quality that is vital to our entitlement to love and safety. The result becomes the terribly distorted perceptual filter through which all subsequent life experiences are viewed and according to which, all life experiences are interpreted.

 

No amount of meditation can reach the place where the memory of this event is stored. No amount of thinking or reading or will power or determination on our own can break through the insulation that protects this sacred place from intrusion. That the primal storehouse can be reached is certain – Dr Janov’s techniques validate the experiential processes we have been developing for more than twenty five years to help people get past this place, see the event for what it is, reframe it and step out of the perceptual box they have fabricated for themselves. And he is utterly correct in his declaration that the experience is totally and utterly transformative, both for the individual and for those who facilitate the experience.

 

I have waited a long time to find others who both understand the phenomenon and who have the courage to step into the practice of it. We are in the process of translating Posner/Kouzes Leadership Challenge into a set of experiential processes designed specifically for teenagers. The SOAR Foundation is building a retreat facility near here where we will be able to work with individuals and groups while we shepherd them through the process of self discovery and skill development. I would dearly love to meet with Dr Janov in order to discuss the joint development and testing of primal healing as an integral part of our facilitative regimen because, as a mutually exclusive statistically valid sample of one, I am utterly convinced that he is right on the money.

 

So, let’s see if we can do that. You up for it?  I’d love to hear from you.

 

Dave Yurth