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Listening is clearly central to the practice of both counselling
and psychotherapy. Given this, it is quite extraordinary how little
thought has been given to the nature of therapeutic listening and
to the cultivation and evaluation of the therapist as listener.
Instead, listening is a subject marginalised in both the
theoretical literature on psychotherapy and in the practical
training of counsellors and psychotherapists .In this collection of
essays and articles by Peter Wilberg, the thinking of Martin
Heidegger provides the platform for an exploration of the deeper
nature of listening - not simply as a passive prelude to
therapeutic or diagnostic responses, but as a mode of active inner
communication with others. What Wilberg calls Maieutic Listening is
not a new form of psychotherapy, but the innately therapeutic
essence of listening as such - understood not as a mere therapeutic
'skill' but as a our most basic way of being and bearing with
others in pregnant silence.
INNER UNIVERSE - the groundbreaking precursor to Peter Wilberg's
book 'The QUALIA Revolution'. Today both science and religion still
fail to provide us with a philosophically consistent understanding
of the fundamental nature of reality. Religion replaces such an
understanding with symbols of this reality. Meanwhile, physics has
retreated into its own form of quasi-religious fundamentalism -
treating its own purely quantitative symbols as more fundamentally
'real' than any of the tangibly experienced, 'empirical' phenomena
that they are supposed to 'explain'. What alone can be called
'fundamental' science has nothing in common with either religious
or scientific fundamentalisms. Its foundation lies instead in a
dimension of reality that is ignored in both science and religion.
This is the realm that Peter Wilberg calls the 'Inner Universe'.
The Inner Universe however, is not fundamentally made up either of
'matter' or fields of 'energy' but rather of fields and
field-patterns of awareness. Since we can only know of any
phenomenon on the basis of an awareness of it, it follows that
awareness as such can alone be considered the most 'fundamental'
reality of all - being irreducible in principle to a mere
'property' or 'product' of any phenomena which we only know of
through it (whether matter or energy, a God or gods, our bodies or
our brains). By introducing a ground-breaking philosophical
understanding of fundamental science as a 'field-phenomenological'
science of awareness, Peter Wilberg challenges today's
'fundamentalist' scientific and religious taboo on understanding
the fundamental nature of reality in a way that is itself
fundamentally new.
This book, the oldest and first of several publications by Peter
Wilberg on the ontological dimension of listening in both
psychotherapy and somatic medicine, is dedicated to the fulfilment
of Martin Heidegger's hope that his thinking would ..".escape the
confines of the philosopher's study and become of benefit to wider
circles, in particular to a large number of suffering human
beings." The German word for listening (zuhoren) belongs to a
family of words including 'to hear' (horen), to belong (gehoren)
and 'belonging together' (Zugehorigkeit). The essential unity or
'belonging together' of 'Being and Listening' was nowhere more
strikingly affirmed than in a saying of the German thinker Martin
Heidegger: "We hear, not the ear." This saying indicates that it is
not bodies or ears but beings that hear. It also hints at a
dimension of 'belonging together' or 'we-ness' in the activity of
hearing and of listening. For how a human being addresses us, what
they say to us - and the manner in which they say it - is itself
and already a response to the way in which we are or are not
listening to and 'hearing' them - the wavelength of our listening
attunement to them. Conversely, as Heidegger goes on to say: ..".if
we hear, something is not merely added to what the ear picks up;
rather, what the ear perceives and how it perceives will already be
attuned (gestimmt) and determined (bestimmt) by what we hear..."
Such a Heideggerian 'language of listening', which speaks in a
German vocabulary, may be unfamiliar to those whose approach to
counselling is shaped by terminologies derived from Freud, Rogers
or new 'cognitive' therapies. Yet it has a power to radically
deepen our experience of what we call 'listening'; allowing us to
understand it merely as a prelude to some form of therapeutic
response - nor as a one among other counselling 'skills' or
'techniques' - but rather as our most primordial way of 'being
with' and 'bearing with' another human being in pregnant silence.
It through this capacity to patiently 'be' and 'bear with' another
person's suffering that they in turn can come to be with and 'bear'
it in a more patient way - thus granting it time to bear forth or
give birth, not just to newly felt questions and insights, but to a
whole 'inner bearing' towards their life world and relationships,
i.e. to a new way of being - one itself rooted in a new way of
listening.
This collection of tantric poetry stands in the tradition of
mystical poetesses and seers such as Lalla and Akka. Its source is
not the sort of New Age 'neo-tantrism' that uses the language of
tantra only to offer pseudo-spiritual 'mood music' for the sensual
intensification of bodily sex and intimacy. Instead the language of
these poems expresses direct, lived experiences of tantra
understood in the traditional sense - as a deeply sensual intimacy
and intercourse with the Divine. The primary medium of this
intercourse is not the sexuality of the physical body but that of
the soul and its body. This is our body of sensual, feeling
awareness - born from the Great Mother's womb of rich and fertile
Darkness into the spacious Living Light of the Lord.
The New Spanda Karikas are not a work of academic scholarship but a
result of meditation in the form of an original metaphysical
treatise on Spanda. They 'approach anew' (abhi-nava) the whole
notion of Spanda - showing its relation to the nature of
consciousness, space and time, using it to challenge the
foundations of quantum physics and the much distorted concept of
'energy' - whose roots lie not in Indian but in Greek thought. As a
result, these new karikas are also able to offers a radically new
understanding of the nature of 'matter', the modern scientific
'mystery' of so-called 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' and - last
but not least - to the true essence of music. Spanda is understood
for the first time as primordial creative tension between a dark
and inexhaustible womb of unmanifest potentialities of awareness or
'non-being' - symbolised by the blackness of the great goddess Kali
- and the realm of actuality or 'being' illuminated by the
invisible light of awareness identical with the great god Shiva.
Through a primordial awareness of the realm of potentiality, the
autonomous powers of actualisation or Shaktis latent within it are
released - giving rise to a constant process of creative
manifestation of all possible actualities and all possible
consciousnesses or 'beings'.
What does it mean to 'meditate'? How can we actively affirm and
find meaning in all that we experience - even states of mental,
emotional or somatic 'dis-ease' - whilst at the same time freeing
ourselves from bondage to them? This selection of essays offers a
new understanding of 'meditation' as a set of basic principles and
practices of AWARENESS which allow us to do just that - to both
affirm our conscious experience in all its dimensions, 'positive'
or 'negative', whilst at the same time freeing ourselves from
identification with them. These practices have a powerful
therapeutic value - not just in relation to 'mental' health but
also somatic illness. They include: 1. taking 'time outs' between
all daily activities to just BE AWARE of our body, self and
life-world as a whole. 2. reminding ourselves that the pure
AWARENESS of any experienced thought or emotion is NOT ITSELF a
thought or emotion - but innately free of thoughts and emotions. 3.
'coming to our senses' - attending to our immediate SENSORY
awareness of where and how we feel any states of mental or
emotional dis-ease in our bodies. 4. awaiting the 'out of the blue'
insights that invariably arise from awareness if we patiently give
ourselves all the time we need to 'meditate' - be aware of - our
felt bodily sense of 'dis-ease'. Such practices are not simply an
eclectic toolkit of psychological theories, techniques and
meditational aids. Instead they are all integrated by a SINGLE
UNIFYING PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLE - 'The Awareness Principle'. This
is a refinement of Indian 'Advaita' philosophy completely
transcending conventional Western concepts of 'cognition',
'consciousness' and 'mind'. The Practices of Awareness that follow
from The Awareness Principle constitute the 'ABC' of 'Awareness
Based Cognitive Therapy'. As well as transforming our everyday
lives and relationships they can be incorporated in the work of
counsellors, therapists, health, educational and social-work
professionals.
No explanation of HOW things came to be, whether through a God or
Big Bang, diminishes in any way the mystery THAT anything exists at
all - even that there 'is' a God or 'was' a Big Bang. Yet as soon
as we allow ourselves to wonder at this ultimate mystery, we open
ourselves also to an ultimate terror - the terror of conceiving,
even for a moment, the possibility of nothing existing or ever
having come to be at all. Once we approach the 'black hole' of this
ultimate terror and mystery we have already slipped beyond the
ultimate horizon of the space-time universe of physics. Recognising
this, philosopher Peter Wilberg draws on dark tantric and occult
symbolism, the science of 'black holes' and the terrors portrayed
in the sci-fi horror movie surrounding them ('Event Horizon') to
introduce an ultimate metaphysics beyond 'being' and 'non-being' -
one that reveals instead a multidimensional universe of awareness
and its hidden powers.
What would it be like to know that you are indeed immortal - that
your physical body is but an outward form taken by your own eternal
inner form or 'soul body'? What would it be like to experience this
soul body as an awareness that is not bounded by your skin but
pervades the entire universe - and that can merge with the
awareness or 'soul' of others? In this way you can come to
experience the bliss of true 'tantra' and 'tantric sex'. This is no
mere sensual or spiritual intensification of biological sex but
something much deeper - a deeply sensual and sexual intercourse of
soul of a sort that requires no skin contact whatsoever - for its
sole medium is our divine soul body. Tantra Reborn' introduces this
wholly new understanding - and experience - of the tantric
tradition and its sexual symbolism, as well as its basis 'The New
Yoga'. For this is not a yoga of the physical body or of some
'energy body' but of the soul body itself - our body of sensual
feeling awareness or 'soul'.
In this book, Acharya Peter Wilberg offers an introduction to
Hinduism from a number of radically new perspectives - historical
and philosophical, economic and political, socialist and Marxist.
Its aim is to overcome the whole idea of Hinduism as just one major
world 'faith' among others - and instead to reveal anew the radical
essence of Hinduism as the 'Eternal Truth' or 'Sanatana Dharma'. At
its heart is an understanding that the question of God's reality is
not a question of the existence or non-existence of a single divine
being - one that merely happens to have or 'possess' some form of
consciousness. Instead the 'Eternal Truth' of Hinduism is the
recognition that God IS Consciousness. This is not a consciousness
that is 'yours' or 'mine'. Nor is it the Private Property of ANY
body or being - human or divine. Instead God is consciousness AS
SUCH - that 'pure awareness' recognised in Hindu religious
philosophy as the Divine source and Divine essence of ALL things
and ALL beings.
"Being is no longer the essential matter to be thought." Martin
Heidegger Western thought clings to the notion that consciousness
is essentially both 'intentional' (awareness of something) and the
private property of an egoic 'subject'. It has no concept of a
Universal Awareness or 'Absolute Subjectivity' of the sort that
Indian thought has long understood as the source of all
individualised consciousness. Yet in the language of Martin
Heidegger we find words such as 'The Open' or 'The Illuminating
Clearing', which suggest a primordial 'space' or 'light' of
awareness - one that is the condition for any consciousness of
things, and is not the private property of any being, body, brain
or 'ego'. Heidegger, Phenomenology and Indian Thought explores in
an original way the proximity of this language to those schools of
Indian thought which recognise a pure, universal and
'non-intentional' dimension of consciousness - an Awareness (Chit)
prior to and transcending 'Being' itself (Sat).
The Hindu Tantric Tradition known as Kashmir Shaivism bore within
it the understanding that neither God nor Self are beings 'with'
awareness. Instead, God like the Self, IS Awareness. This is not an
awareness that is 'yours' or 'mine' - the private property of a
self or selves, being or beings - or the product of a body or
brain. Instead every body and being is a 'Shakti' - an
individualised portion and expression of that singular, universal
and Divine Awareness known as Shiva. The New Yoga of Awareness is
not a scholarly commentary 'on' the Kashmiri Shaivist tradition,
but the most comprehensive and original contribution TO that
tradition since its synthesis by the great 10th century teacher -
Sri Abhinavagupta. Through its innovative principles and practices,
Acharya Peter Wilberg unites philosophy and theology, psychology
and metaphysics in a way that makes this yoga not just 'a' new yoga
but THE New Yoga - a new exposition of Tantric Wisdom evolved from
and for Today's World.
What Peter Wilberg calls Cosmic Qualia Science is a revolution in
our most basic understanding of what constitutes 'science' and
scientific knowledge - not merely a 'quantum leap' but a Qualia
Revolution. It begins by recognising that the most fundamental
scientific 'fact' is not the existence of an objective physical
universe, but our subjective experience of it. However, even the
most advanced 'quantum' science cannot explain even elementary
qualities of our sensory experiencing - the experience of 'redness'
for example. Qualia are usually defined as experiences of sensory
qualities. But what if awareness is not a blank receptacle for
sensory experiences but has its own innately sensual or soul
qualities, qualities such as the inwardly sensed colour, tone and
texture of our moods - or the sensed inner 'warmth' or 'coolness'
of another human being. Peter Wilberg argues that Qualia in this
sense are the basic stuff of which not only dreams but the physical
universe itself is composed.
Awareness of the different elements of our conscious action and
experience frees us from restricting attachments to them - from
confining identification with anything we think, feel or do. This
'Awareness Principle' is both a liberatory life principle and a
life practice of a sort long recognised in yogic philosophy. As
well as being healing and freeing The Awareness Principle is also a
new foundational principle for the sciences and religion - offering
the sole possible philosophical basis for both a new Theology and a
truly scientific 'Theory of Everything'. For the most fundamental
scientific fact is not the objective existence of a manifest
universe but awareness of that universe. Peter Wilberg's writings
on 'The Awareness Principle' reaffirm and rearticulate in a new and
clear way a centuries-old understanding of Hindu tantric philosophy
- namely that the '1st Principle' of the universe is not matter or
energy but the innate potentials and power (Shakti) of pure
awareness (Shiva).
The Science Delusion offers a counterpart to the wave of aggressive
anti-religionism exemplified by Richard Dawkins' 'scientific'
critique of The God Delusion. Its aim is not to defend any specific
religious faiths, but to show how what we call 'science' is as much
based on irrational and dogmatically unquestioned beliefs as the
most 'fundamentalist' religion. By cutting through the common myths
and delusions that make up our idea of 'science', as well as those
that science itself is founded upon, philosopher Peter Wilberg lays
down a 'heretical' challenge to the quasi-religious authority that
the modern scientific world-view wields in today's globalised
Western media and culture. In contrast to the unthinking debate
between secular atheists and religious theists, he argues that the
question of God's reality does not depend on the existence or
non-existence of a supreme being 'with' consciousness - but can be
answered through a new understanding of God as consciousness.
Peter Wilberg presents a political history of the subversive
'gnostic' theologies of the first century, and with it, a
theo-political critique of the ruling god-concepts of the 21st
century. 'From New Age to New Gnosis' is spiritual Marxism and a
powerful spearhead aimed at the 'New World Order' of economic
'liberalism', neo-conservatism and military imperialism. It
challenges all four faces of its famous dollar pyramid - the
'i-dollartry' of new technologies, the reduction of the human being
to a genetic machine, the politically illiterate platitudes of New
Age 'spirituality' - and the spiritual illiterate 'literalism' of
Christian biblical fundamentalism and racist Zionazism - which now
see their own zealotry mirrored and confronted by militant Islam.
What Peter Wilberg's recognises is that what our divided world now
calls for is not a revival of fundamentalisms of any sort but a New
Gnostic spirituality that understands the "wordless knowledge
within the word" (Seth).
The aim of Heidegger, Medicine and 'Scientific Method' is to ensure
that the profound implications of the Zollikon Seminars Heidegger
held for doctors and psychiatrists do not remain unheeded. In one
short volume Peter Wilberg concisely summarises Heidegger's
fundamental critique of 'scientific method', redefines the basic
principles of the 'phenomenological method' and lays out the
foundations of a new 'phenomenological' approach to medicine - one
which understands that illnesses have meanings not 'causes'.
Grounded in Heidegger's fundamental distinction between the
physical body (Korper) and the 'lived' or 'felt' body (Leib),
phenomenological medicine offers a highly practical and therapeutic
understanding of the relation between a patient's clinical disease
'pathology' and the felt 'dis-ease' or pathos that it embodies.
Where do we feel our awareness centred in our bodies - in our
heads, and hearts or lower down - in the abdominal region that the
Japanese call hara? This question forms the starting point for a
new understanding of our inwardly sensed body as a distinct inner
body. The innermost centre of this awareness body - the hara - is a
centre of inner connectedness, linking us to the aware withinness
of everything and everyone around us.
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