“Now, in relation to my splitting off from the Institute: It has happened historically many times, as with Freud and Reich, etc., I believe that the reason for these patterns is unavoidable when those who innovated stay rigidly anchored in what they have found and feel threatened to go further. Whenever there is a standstill, there must be stagnation. Whenever change is denied (due to personal pride, egotism, or whatever the reason) those who want to go beyond, must part. This I believe to be good for would this courage be absent no further movement is possible.
I have no intention to abandon bioenergetics. I found through my twenty or so years of experience that it’s not enough. I believe that there are other aspects of man that need to be included and activated in order to help man go beyond his character resistances into which he’s trapped. Not by an outside factors which are historically included in his development but by his own inner processes.
I accept your wish not to want to enter my own experiences and discoveries and stay with the central reality of man in his humanness. However, what you don’t perceive is that the humanness depends upon the expansion of the consciousness of man together with the energetic experiences of life. The humanness is the perception of the consciousness of being, and it is indeed a spiritual experience since it incorporates the energetic and the consciousness dimension of life.
Anyway, I just want to add that it’s far from my mind and intention to preach a new (or old) philosophy, or religion. I intend to expand my field of operation and to show that anyone can find out what can be argued about, accepted, believed in or not accepted or believed in. There was a time when Freud came up and showed us that an unconscious mind existed. A lot of people were up in arms and protested that such a thing could not possibly exist. Yet Freud also had a way that led those who were willing and open minded to undertake the journey, to find out for themselves, as an incontrovertible fact that they indeed possessed an unconscious. It is peculiar that people rather argue in order to deny than follow, the road that might show them that what was claimed, indeed exists. By arguing, the discomfort can be avoided without having to admit that one simply feels scared to go that way. And I have to tell you David, that I object to your implications that I have now become “slightly fuzzy in my head”, with an escapist brand of evangelism looking for salvation or worse yet a mystic up in the clouds.
One more thing: you refute the “trinitarian” concept (again, you’re the one who puts a religious concept on it) view of man. You deny the fact that man has a body, a soul and a spirit. On the one hand, you’re right. These are all aspects of the same oneness of consciousness. Yet, as it manifests with the average human being, this oneness, is split off and needs to be mended. In many instances man is deliberate in his intent and aware of the fact that he’s either a body, a soul, or a spirit. Similarly, energy and consciousness are the same expressions of the same oneness of life. Energy is consciousness and consciousness is energy. Again, this oneness is often split and needs to be integrated. Man can be of one piece and in the rare, most ideal case, he is. He can achieve this state after a great deal of hard work, honest self-confrontation and willingness to work and change. BUT HE’S NOT APRIORI OF ONE PIECE. Not only is he dualistic or Trinitarian but often he consists of many more diverse “selves” that need to be brought into awareness. I think you really know this by somehow I see an inclination on your part to interpret my basic position in a preconceived way.
In relation to how are the people who are searching to decide to go for the “bioenergetic health of the body or to accept my offer of the water of life”—my answer is, that you are making this division, not me! As I have said in my letter the dimensions of energy and consciousness are one, and that some people would like to stay in the experience of the energy level and some people would like to transverse the forest and take a longer trip into the beauty of life. There is no contradiction whatsoever.
Man has to synthesize, integrate the past, the present and the future. We are living the last few years of the century. There is a new consciousness about life in many human beings. New ways, new methods are being found to heal the wounds of our age. We cannot develop these new tools unless we have an open mind that will allow the core of man to express itself fully.”
letter written by John Pierrakos, MD to a colleague
DR. KARYNE WILNER ~ Energy Psychologist 