Richard Lloyd Jones: I'm Richard Lloyd Jones and this is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. A reading of modern scientific and philosophical thought can be unnerving. Human beings, goes this materialistic scientific view, are the product of causes that are accidental and purposeless. All individual achievements are destined to extinction in the vast entropy of a universe relentlessly bound for ruin. We are nothing but gigantic lumbering robots built by our genes as survival machines, asserts Richard Dawkins, a leading proponent of this modernist stance.
And I'm not exaggerating the bleakness. Reading Dawkins or geneticist Steve Jones, no relation. Or philosopher Bertrand Russell. Is a depressing journey that reduces man's greatest imaginings. To the garbage heap of cold, unforgiving material forces. That care not a whit for such romantic notions as hopes and ideals. It's all so very modern. No good and evil, no confusing purpose just relentless survival over incomprehensible time periods.
Maybe there's something missing in it. Losing our religion today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. We are streaming on our very own Stop Radio Network, and if you like what you hear there, why not take a moment to let me know about it? You can let all your friends know about it, too. That would be great, but I'd especially love to hear from you with comments and suggestions.
When I began this podcast back in 2006, I wanted it to be a place for soulful discussions of the things that are most important to a conscious human being living today. Something that would help provide the knowledge and wisdom necessary to navigate our complex society. Our topic today fits the bill perfectly. A couple of years ago, I sat down with Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco, the vice president at Norberto Keppe's extraordinary International Society of Analytical Trilogy in São Paulo, Brazil.
My intention was to try to get down in audio Dr. Pacheco's vast knowledge of spiritual matters, for a public I suspect is much like me, hungry for a deeper and more meaningful understanding of life and our place in the universe, while at the same time leery of dogmatic traditional views from formal religion. There have to be many of us, I thought, raised in a materialistic society, with all of its attendant materialistic science, who can't quite adapt to the literal interpretations of theology about the origins and purposes of life divulged from pulpits and theology study groups.
While at the same time who find something missing in the Oriental and New Age philosophies that don't fully answer our questions about God and the human journey.
When I first read Norberto Keppe's socio-analysis of the pathology of power in his remarkable book, Liberation of the People, I committed to coming down here to São Paulo in Brazil to learn more. His exploration of inversion struck me as very relevant for we North Americans, and I thought I could absorb some of his methodology for applying to workshops back in Canada for those interested in more self-knowledge from this leading-edge psychology.
I also loved the ability to critique what was going on in the structures of society that was possible through applying his principles in order to analyze them. But I stayed going on 13 years as I produced this episode because of the spiritual insights I gained here. Keppe's understanding of true spirituality that meshes with science and philosophy is impressive. Keppe treats theology scientifically, taking out the superstitious elements, but maintaining the awe at the wonder of creation.
It's a compelling blend that fascinates me constantly and stimulates me intellectually, emotionally, and of course, spiritually. After all, it's delusional to believe in what does not exist, but it's likewise delusional not to believe in what does exist. I'm interested in understanding this latter point better. Nice to have you along for the ride. Stay with us. When Thinking with Somebody Else's Head returns, Dr.
Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco joins us to consider real spirituality. Losing Our Religion, Part 1. When Thinking with Somebody Else's Head returns on the stop radio network essential listening for activists leaders of the 99 and change agents worldwide this is the stop radio network a key inversion in science.
Cesar Soós: Always we are trying to extract energy from a material
Richard: element and its negative consequences.
Cesar: We provoke serious imbalances in nature corrected now
Richard: with the Keppe motors disinversion of physics and
Cesar: we developed a way to have mechanical power with very little electricity.
This will
Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco: make a big change not only in energetic efficiency, but also it will bring better energy in homes because it's magnetic energy. The
Richard: Keppe Motor, new technology for a new world. Learn
the truth about energy and matter. Dr.
True
Susan Berkley: illness is the attempt to create what was never meant to exist.
Norberto Cappi
Disinverting the human being and society.
Richard: Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, Richard Lloyd Jones with Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco, in a series of discussions we want to have about spirituality, specifically theology. And I think for me, a challenging subject, although I consider myself spiritual, and more profoundly so after moving to Brazil in 2001 and deepening in the science of psychosociopathology developed at Norberto Keppe's International Society of Analytical Trilogy in São Paulo.
Keppe has not been afraid to embrace all aspects of the human being in his therapeutic treatment, but has addressed the compartmentalizing of the human being that has occurred in science and discussed the serious consequences of this, a very important part of his work. So, Cláudia, let's begin at looking at what Keppe has proved is an urgent need to reunite theology with science and philosophy.
Has this ever occurred, actually? Has this ever been true for us?
Cláudia: Well, they should be, because we as human beings are a trinity in resemblance to God. And in our psychological structure, we have two elements producing a third one, which is feeling of love, reason, and intelligence. And the union or the resonance of these two will give a result of harmony, beauty, aesthetics, which is the good, beautiful, and truthful actions.
By the way, the three of them are actions and pure act. So, the essence is the same in love, reason, and harmony or beauty. So, as in God, the three persons have the same essence, but they manifest in different manners or in different existences. Like God being the Father, being love and goodness, and the Son being the word or philosophy or reason, and the Holy Spirit being harmony, peace, beauty in the planet.
And the three of them have the same essence, which is pure action, pure act. Now, society in the beginning was totally unified. So why to separate things if everything is one? We say it in Portuguese, uno. I don't know, how do you say this in English?
Richard: One, I think, yeah.
Cláudia: Yeah, because one...
Richard: A unified one, maybe.
Cláudia: Yeah, it's like,
Richard: sort of. So
Cláudia: this comes from Latin.
And so everything is one, is unified. You can analyze this one in its smaller parts, but if you divide it in smaller parts, it is not anymore that first being.
Richard: Right. It's a reduction
Cláudia: of that first being. It's a reduction. So as universals, as we are, we should have an universal interdisciplinary thing because everything is in resonance. Everything affects everything. So there is nothing which does not affect another component.
The universe is in vibration, and all vibrations affect each other. It's a whole. It's integral. You cannot split. You cannot separate. You cannot analyze a phenomena without considering the other elements which are in resonance with this one. It's resonating with the other parts and belonging and absolutely integral view, unified view. That's what we have. And to understand a phenomena, you have to understand everything that is around and the universal laws of the universe.
Richard: So you talked right at the beginning and we were studying Genesis recently in the beginning. And maybe we should just go to that for a minute because that's very different from what we learn in our traditional science. In the beginning, everything was complete and beautiful. That's not what we're learning, right, in terms of we come from the mud and then we become amoeba that join together.
And then
Cláudia: we become I'm a monkey and then a human being.
Richard: This is very different.
Cláudia: And then a demon.
Richard: And the evolution. We're
Cláudia: going the other way, right? So, in the beginning is perfection. There was a time. And this is metaphysically completely different from our scientific view today. So, all the beings in themselves are totally pure, beautiful, truthful, complete, integral. All the beings.
And evil or sickness is the absence or the distortion, the aggression, the destruction of what is integral and what is complete.
Richard: This is what we get then when we rejoin true theology with science. We get, instead of this reductionist view that we come from little particles, we have the other idea that we come from everything.
Cláudia: How can you analyze a human being splitting, like, if he has a stomach ache, he goes to the doctor.
And then the doctor says, okay, you have an ulcer, but this ulcer is created by stress. Some doctors presently, they understand, they are more developed, so they understand that this is connected to psychology. So sometimes they are open enough to send that person to a psychologist. But going to the psychologist, they say, okay, so we will treat your thoughts, your behavior, your family, your sexual life, etc.
But religious is another thing. Religion, we don't touch. So they go there and they analyze family, traumas, sexual life, etc., etc. But if the problem is spiritual, and in a lot of the circumstances the problem is also spiritual, because this is like if you have a problem of feelings of guilt, you have to treat the spiritual side of it. So you have to go to the priest and then you go to the priest and the priest doesn't understand anything about stomach or nor about complexes.
So the priest will send you back to the psychologist or to the doctor, to the physician. And the guy, poor guy, never gets fully treated. So if we don't have an interdisciplinary point of view, focus, we will never understand a human being because anything or everything is connected, interconnected in relation to each other.
Richard: Especially this view of theology, this view of the biblical story that you're giving us that we come from something, we don't come from nothing.
And this changes everything about how we see the world, how we see ourselves.
Cláudia: And you know, all the religions understand that. All the religions, not only Judaism, not only the Bible, but also other perspectives see the human being as a spiritual being, not only physical, but mostly spiritual. So all religions, all philosophies. But you have to consider that something is religion. We might consider something is religion and churches and institutions.
And another thing is spirituality. We could say that. Because spirituality is something innate in humans. Every human being is spiritual. No matter where he's born, no matter if he's born in a forest, and this has already been verified by many anthropologists, psychologists, theologists, philosophers, that there is this tendency or this inner ethical aspect in human being, which is the search for a higher purpose, the purpose of life. And that there is some higher being controlling or feeding or giving life to other creatures.
They may even be a sort of pantheistic, seeing a huge force in the universe and not a being. But they know, and all of us know, that we are not the creators of ourselves. And this is what is the difficult part of our situation. We are not the creators of ourselves. Here we are, we have been born someday, and our grandparents and grand-grand-grandparents, one day they were born, and they were not born out of their own option or choice or will.
So there is a higher force controlling everything. And this notion is so strong that if we deny this, we go to a mental hospital. We end up by being in a mental hospital.
Richard: You're seeing this as one of the sources of mental disease.
Cláudia: Yes, absolutely right. Dr. Keppe saw theomania or the mania of being godlike, being our own creation or the creator of our own life and our own truth and being like above God sometimes.
You may even be a believer and be a religious person and be very, very theomaniac. Like above anyone, above everything, above the truth and being the owner of the truth and the arrogance is the biggest characteristic of Lucifer. So he knows, he knows there is God, but he doesn't accept it. So this is arrogance.
Richard: And this was the temptation he gave to Adam and Eve too, wasn't it?
Yes. You could
Cláudia: be greater than God. Yeah, creators of your own life. So do whatever you please. You are the creator of your life. So you are the God of your life. So the spiritual need of humanity is present in all peoples, in all colors, all races, all times. But we can distort that, and we do distort that, so that's why we probably need a kind of revelation which is given to us by more developed beings.
And the people believe that revelation didn't have anything to do with science. And that revelation has to do with theology and belief. Well, it's not necessary. It's a kind of free choice if you want to take this as something to your life as truthful or not. So you can consider that as truth or not. But after Keppe started his science and he started researching into the human psyche and human mind and human inner life and as a social scientist, as he also is, applying this to socioeconomic situations and values.
And as he has an integral, unified view of everything, and this is Keppe's characteristic, he had a unified view of society and mankind and the universe. He was researching and researching, and the conclusions he arrived through science, psychological and sociological, science and philosophy, metaphysics, coincided with the Bible, with some dogma of the Bible, too.
Richard: In other words, he wasn't studying the Bible to arrive at his conclusions, but he came to the same conclusions through his science.
Cláudia: Through science, all science and experimentation. So his clients came to him and said, oh, Dr. Keppe, but what you are saying and what you are discovering in science coincided with my religion, my theological information. And that's where Jews and Christians and Islamic and Buddhists and people following other philosophies, too, and theologies. So they were like, but this is what the wisdom of the ancient Indians said, Or this was the same as the genesis of the Old Testament.
The Upanishad. Yeah. So what he discovered in science coincides with all the principles and the basis of all religion. So this is beautiful because Capi arrived to a point where religions could be unified under a same understanding of God. God is one. So God should be the one of everybody. Yeah. And not split into this or that religion. And what Keppe arrived is really a universal viewing God and understanding God.
Richard: And the difference that Dr. Keppe would make and you might make between spirituality and religion is what? Because when we start to talk about this science with theology, people start thinking that we're religious fanatics. And so we need
Sofie Bergqvist: to take that out of the equation.
Cláudia: Now, spirituality is
Richard: not religion, but religion has spirituality. Yeah,
Cláudia: spirituality is this natural tendency and one of the strongest essential components of human being.
Even the atheistic Illuminists in those times in France and England. So like the French, they say l'esprit. When they want to say our psychological mind, they say c'est l'esprit, l'esprit d'une nation, l'esprit d'un... The spirit. The spirit. So they use the spirit as something very present in their lives and in their psychological life and as part of our essence. And I know that they call spirits when you drink or the spirits in English,
Richard: don't they?
Yes, sure, yeah. What
Cláudia: is this in English?
Richard: Alcohol. Alcohol,
Cláudia: so they understand that when you drink, there is something. Spiritual going on, which could be good and bad. Mostly
Richard: bad, probably. But touches
Cláudia: our spirit. So everybody understand that we have a spirit. Sure, we say that
Richard: when we see somebody with a lot of enthusiasm for life, we say
Cláudia: he has a lot of spirit.
Yes. He has a spirit for life. Yes. It's very common, yeah. Yes, Mr. Jones. And religion, religion seems to include some specific beliefs and dogma that people follow, linked to their culture, to their social historical evolution and experience. So you can, like many people form a church, and they go to that church to perform religious rituals, those
Richard: specific
Cláudia: rituals that belong to an institution.
So it contains much more particulars in that. So when we speak about spirit, we understand more universal ideas and feelings. And when we talk about religion, we speak about more particulars. So at that time, in that time in history, that person, that prophet or that person specific wrote that book. So you go for that book. So there are more particulars and fighting.
And theomania comes here to make things more difficult. Because then each religion says or claims, I'm the owner of the truth. So the truth is in my religion, not in your religion. So this creates enormous friction. It's even worse than fighting about politics.
Richard: Okay, let me take a break there, Cláudia. We're back in just a moment. I'm Thinking with Somebody Else's Head for our fascinating continuation of our discussion with Cláudia Bernhofer-Sheiko on spirituality and religion.
Interesting combination. Back in just a moment, I'm Thinking with Somebody Else's Head on the Stop Radio Network. Don't go away.
Cláudia: Since the beginning of all civilizations, they had always manifested an enormous interest and knowledge about the spiritual life and spiritual beings.
Richard: It's a world of ancient wisdom that modern science has eliminated.
Cesar: The arising philosophy of positivism preferred to base science on material happenings.
Cláudia: So, only what you can see and touch and feel is real.
Richard: Now, spirituality is being put back into science.
Cláudia: Imagine what would happen if people start considering this as a real thing. Not only as a religious thing, but also a real scientific thing.
Imagine what would happen.
Back in 1986, Norberto Keppe wrote a book that predicted the worldwide economic crisis we're facing today. Liberation of the People critiques the pathology of power that lies at the base of our inverted social system and points the way out.
This is essential reading for anyone wanting to find out how we got in such a mess and how we can get out.
It
is dishonest to think that all harmful acts are committed unconsciously. Norberto Keppe.
Susan: Disinverting the human being and society.
We're on the Stop Radio Network. I'm with Cláudia Baron-Herpesheko with Richard Lloyd Jones, and we're talking about, you know, I don't know how to sort of characterize this, the spirituality of human beings beyond just religiosity and Dr. Keppe's vision of what it means to be spiritual. You know, I was thinking about it, Cláudia. There's an old joke, you know, that shows the lunacy of the particulars in religion.
And a guy is walking across a bridge one day and sees another man standing on the edge about to jump. So this first man runs over and says, Stop! Don't do it! And the other guy says, Well, why shouldn't I? And the man says, Well, there's so much to live for. Yeah, like what? Well, are you religious? And the guy about to jump says, Yes.
And the guy says, Well, me too. Are you a Christian or Buddhist? I'm Christian. Well, me too. Are you Catholic or Protestant? I'm Protestant. Me too. Are you Episcopalian or Baptist? Baptist. Wow. Me too. Now, are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord? The guy says, I'm Baptist Church of God. Me too. Are you original Baptist Church of God or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?
I'm Reformed Baptist Church of God. Me too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915? And the guy about to jump says, I'm Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915. The other man says, Die, heretic scum, and pushes him off. You know, this crazy idea. Particulars.
Cláudia: Particulars. Particulars. And theomania is very much applied to particulars, because we can only fight around particulars, not around universals, because universals are universals.
So what you understand about a universe is the same thing that I understand. Like, for instance, peace is good. Peace is necessary. Peace is a good thing. And people, theomaniac people, start fighting, no, war sometimes is necessary. In order to have peace, you must make war. So this is all about theomania, all about theomania. We know that peace is necessary. Only demons and crazy people live out of the necessity of having a war and destruction and killing people and suffering and all of this impede the development of civilization.
Richard: Let's talk a bit more about theomania than, Cláudia, this way. Keppe says in Glorification that the human being in general seeks to do everything he can to cut the creator's incredible work, trying to replace him with his own morbid imaginings. So this is a psychological condition that is also spiritual. It's a desire somehow to negate this spirit that you're talking about.
Cláudia: Because if you do a deep, deep, deep analysis, you end up by going to these universal questions inside of you.
This is absolutely sure that if you are honest enough and if you are doing a serious analysis, you will dig inside of you and very soon you will arrive to essential questions. Who am I? What am I doing here? Where did I come from? Why I was born? The cause and the purpose identify in metaphysics. So what am I doing here where did I come from why I was born and what do I have to do in order to achieve or to complete the reason of my birth.
So everything is logical is rational in creation everything has a reason to be there is nothing created by nature which is unnecessary. Even rats, even cockroaches, even bacteria are necessary for this universal, ecological, spiritual, eco-spiritual, eco-psychological. Everything is in resonance. There is a need to be. There is nothing that exists by itself or by nature which is unnecessary. Yeah,
Richard: I heard a biologist say it this way, that the further down he goes in investigation, the more he sees the existence of God.
Because, as you said, everything's so connected. Without that little piece, you don't have this thing here.
Cláudia: And then come those crazy theomaniac scientists wanting to correct nature. So by doing so, they end up by creating even more unbalance, like our bees are disappearing. And when they disappear, because of the action of theomaniac human beings, there will be no life left in the planet.
No chances. In 20 years, life will be vanished from this face of the earth. Human life, vegetation. Everything. Everything. Trees, plants, animals. Everything will disappear.
Richard: We were watching some butterflies recently at your country home and marveling at them in the flowers and the part they're playing. Beautiful butterflies and they're there and you know what, when I grew up we used to see butterflies all the time.
When I was a kid you don't see them anymore, they're gone. And that part that they play to pollinate the plants and participate in the web of life this is essential. So this idea that there is no meaning, nothing has meaning, this is a very demonic idea.
Cláudia: Or I will give the meaning to my life so what am I doing here?
So Richard when people come and they start doing analysis and then after a time they resolved their physical illnesses, for instance, they are already okay and they resolved or they are managing their family. Social problems. Good enough. So, according to Maslow, one of these interesting, good psychologists that, one of the few ones, really good.
Richard: Abraham Maslow. Maslow.
Cláudia: The hierarchy of needs. Yeah.
Yes. And I would complete the hierarchy of interests in our terms. So, as long as you have your lower needs satisfied, it would be natural. If it would be natural, if you would also complete and satisfy your spiritual needs. This is what happens in analysis. This is the other way around. Now we have to go back. Because previously, the spiritual aspect was the source of all the others, and should be.
So the spiritual need is the first. The fundamental. The fundamental. And then the others would be dependent on this. Even eating, as Jesus Christ said, not only bread feeds. Man
Richard: shall not live by bread alone.
Cláudia: So we live much more out of spiritual aspects, spirituality. But going back to that. So what happens in practice? The person ends up by questioning. I feel useless.
I feel unsatisfied. I'm afraid of dying. I'm afraid of death. What am I going to face after dying? I don't know the day I'm going to die. I don't know what kind of death am I going to have, but I'm sure I'm going to die. And even though some people deny this reality or want to postpone facing this, deep down this question remains.
What is going to be out of myself, my life? Will I continue? Will my consciousness continue in some aspect or not? Will I be happier or unhappier than I am now? What is then? And when people start asking themselves those things, they understand also that they are facing around people suffering and unstabilized society and an unstabilized world. So they start thinking, what am I doing here?
I should be doing something to my fellow man. So all those basic needs, those basic universal needs start coming to the surface. I
Richard: was watching a documentary about near-death experiences, I think that you passed on to me, where people have this experience of dying and coming back to life. And all of them talk about this, like seeing their life in front of their eyes their whole life and realizing that, wow, I'm not doing what I could be doing.
And when they come, many of them come back, and they have a much stronger commitment to this spiritual aspect, to making a contribution, to doing something for others. So they have a direct experience of that. Maybe it would help us all to have that experience, not through dying, but through having the experience of what am I doing here, asking those questions.
Cláudia: And you know what?
Because if we go closer to this inner core, this inner center, this inner balance, if we resonate more naturally with the universe, the universe speaks loud inside of us, which are the same laws in the universe. Everything is serving or resonating with other beings in the universe. So if I am more in resonance, more connected to nature, if I am more in my inner balance, I will start hearing the universe crying loud the laws of the universe, which are goodness, beauty, and truth.
And doing good is the basis of our existence. Doing good as the maximum law, the first law that Jesus Christ brought, love God above anything, anyone, and your neighbor or your fellow man or your brother and sister, as you love yourself. So this loving resonance is the law, the major law of the universe. Serving, helping, doing good, giving, and giving in order to be able to receive.
Because if we don't give, we do not receive. If we don't resonate, if we don't emanate the good energy, we do not get it back. Because all the energy and the energetic exchange between beings is the same. It's giving and receiving good energy. Giving and receiving love. Giving and receiving the energy which is the energy of God.
Richard: So, the operating manual is very well written, isn't it?
Any questions we might have about how we should be are questions we don't want to have the answers to, because it's all pretty clear, not much doubt left. Maybe we have the excuse that we haven't read the manual. Well, that can be. But I would say that the operating manual is, in fact, imprinted in our soul. Why we don't want to follow what's in there, yeah, that's a mystery.
This is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, our program for this time on the stop radio network. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones do keep listening and thanks for tuning in bye bye for now.
any area of
Cláudia: endeavor it's very much stopped by this concept of money the importance of money.
It is the biggest inversion in society.
Richard: In the mid-1980s, Norberto Keppe wrote an extraordinary book that redefined economics and gave us hope.
Sofie: And I understand now that this book, Working Capital, is really the solution. It gives people enormous freedom to grow and to do even things more beautiful and better for the community and better for everybody.
Richard: Working Capital is Norberto Keppe's provocative and prophetic view of how the economy has been usurped by the 1% who've tricked the people into a form of slavery.
Now we have the means to set ourselves free. We
Cláudia: are free in economy to work, to do what is good, beautiful and truthful for humanity and not to feed the envy, the megalomania, the theomania of a few individuals or powerful people.
Richard: Norberto Keppe's work in capital.
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