CREATIVE-C LEARNING

CREATIVE-C
LEARNING
The Innovative Kindergarten
by Peter Fritz Walter
 Published by Sirius-C Media Galaxy LLC

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Set in Palatino

Designed by Peter Fritz Walter

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About Dr. Peter Fritz Walter

http://peterfritzwalter.com
About the Author

Parallel to an international law career in Germany, Swit-

zerland and the United States, Dr. Peter Fritz Walter (Pi-
erre) focused upon fine art, cookery, astrology, musical
performance, social sciences and humanities.

He started writing essays as an adolescent and received a

high school award for creative writing and editorial work
for the school magazine.

Upon finalizing his international law doctorate, he pri-

vately studied psychology and psychoanalysis and started
writing both fiction and nonfiction works.

After a second career as a corporate trainer and personal

coach, Pierre retired as a full-time writer, philosopher and
consultant.

His nonfiction books emphasize a systemic, holistic, cross-

cultural and interdisciplinary perspective, while his fiction
works and short stories focus upon education, philosophy,
perennial wisdom, and the poetic formulation of an inte-
grative worldview.

Pierre is a German-French bilingual native speaker and

writes English as his 4th language after German, Latin and
French. He also reads source literature for his research
works in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Dutch.

All of Pierres books are hand-crafted and self-published,

designed by the author. Pierre publishes via his Delaware
company, Sirius-C Media Galaxy LLC, and under the im-
prints of IPUBLICA and SCM (Sirius-C Media).
To the late Dr. Georgi Lozanov

The authors profits from this book are being donated to charity.
 Contents
Introduction! 11
The Systemliterate Child

Chapter One! 19
The Sane Child

Chapter Two! 33
Love, Needs, and Trust

Chapter Three! 49
Body, Mind, Emotions, and Music

Chapter Four! 73
Individual Child vs. Group

Chapter Five! 81
Get the Focus Right

Chapter Six! 113

The Value of Silence

Chapter Seven! 129

Love, Self-Love, and the Heart

Chapter Eight! 147

Spontaneity and Freedom

Chapter Nine! 153

An Integral Approach to Education

The Childs Individual Integrity

The Childs Emotional Integrity

The Childs Social Integrity

The Childs Creative Integrity

 COACHING YOUR INNER CHILD

Team Philosophy

A Value-Based Curriculum

Educational Goals

Chapter Ten! 165

5 Arguments for a New Education
Argument One
Education Needs to Be Individualized

Critique

Suggestion
Argument Two
Education Needs to be Quality-Focused

Critique

Suggestion
Argument Three
Education Needs to Foster Intelligence, not Knowledge

Critique

Suggestion
Argument Four
Education Needs to be Holistic

Critique

Suggestion
Argument Five
Education Needs to be Private and Competitive

Critique

Suggestion

Chapter Eleven! 177

A Brainsmart Learning Approach

Chapter Twelve! 191

Are the Teachers Adequate?

Glossary! 201
Contextual Terminology

Antipsychiatry

8
 CONTENTS

Brain Research

Cartesian Science and Worldview

Code or Social Code

Complexity

Direct Perception

Emotional Flow

Inner Selves

Krishnamurti, J. (K)

Life Force

Lozanov, Georgi

Maharishi University

Montessori Education

Mythology

Pleasure Function

Psychodrama

Relaxation/Meditation

Perversion
Definition
What Emerson Said
Perversion is Fear
Religious Perversion

Television

Waldorf Education

BIBLIOGRAPHY! 227
Contextual Bibliography

Personal Notes! 247

9
 Introduction
The Systemliterate Child

I believe that children are systems thinkers by nature.

They are keen observers. They want to know how nature
operates and how things work.
Their play reflects their mental flexibility and openness
to understanding more and more complex interrelations as
their intelligence and their emotional awareness matures.

I coined the expression systemliteracy for the frame-

work of an education that is geared toward the under-
standing of living systems and the functional logic of net-
works. We know in the meantime what ecoliteracy is but I
believe that without having prepared children to be literate
in systems thinking, they cannot become literate in eco-
logical thinking. The first is the basis of the latter.
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

Ecology is not a branch of science but a way to redefine

science. All branches of the tree of science should be eco-
logical for this simply means that they are bound to respect
nature and to understand the patterned setup in nature.

Note that the term ecology comes from the Greek oikos which
means household. Ecology thus deals with our household, the house-
hold of planet earth

To see life composed not of separate parts or elements

but of organic patterns in a wholeor as systems within
systemsis the point of departure of a truly ecological sci-
ence. There cannot be any ecoliteracy without systemlit-
eracy and logically, I must adopt the systems view of life
before I can in any way become to care about our house-
hold, our ecology. In other words, ecology is a term coined
for the development of holistic science, while systemliter-
acy is a term coined for the development of holistic educa-
tion.
To repeat it, I believe that children think systemically
by nature; it is by emphasizing an intellect-based educa-
tional concept that school systems teach children a largely
distorted view of nature in which everything is split apart,
fragmented and un-whole (unholy). And this really begins
in Kindergarten. Let me only mention the way reading and
writing even today is taught to children in public schools,
and even most private schools. Letters are put on squared
cardboards and hung at a wall.
This and related procedures give children the impres-
sion that letters, words, phrases, spelling, and grammar are

12
 INTRODUCTION

all separate elements of language, while in truth language

is one whole, and these organic elements have been sepa-
rated from the systemic logic of language. This is really not
smart because the same children who are in for learning to
read and write have after all learnt already to speak with-
out all those tools, simply by picking up the language spo-
ken around themtheir mother tongue.
Research about how children learn their first language
clearly shows that children do not learn abstract elements
of a language, but the whole of it, including syntax and
grammar, and without knowing what a syntax is and what
grammar means. Hence, the learning of a child is by nature
holistic and systemic.

I shall list and review here a number of other important

distortions of the natural systemic view of life that our cul-
tural heritage has brought about. It is important to see that
this process of fragmentation in science and education has
developed not only in the West, but also in the East, while
in both cultures the ancient civilizations fostered a holistic
and systemic worldview. While the East favored this view
longer than the West, today it is easy to observe that the
East, in modern times, took over the distorted and frag-
mented Western approach to life, science and our planet.

About 2500 years ago, man turned away from the

until then valid all-encompassing mystical view of life, and
began to intellectualize perception, fragmenting the holis-
tic understanding of the world. This is how the conceptual-
ized and compartmentalized view of the world was born.

13
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

The split of this unity of perception was marked in

the Hellenic world with the Eleatic school which assumed
a Divine Principle standing above all gods and men. This
concept later developed into what perhaps most marked
monotheistic religions: the assumption of an all-knowing,
overarching, monolithic, male God.
At the same time, thinking and deductive logic as-
sumed a more important role than intuition and associa-
tive logic, thereby giving more value to yang, the male
principle, to the detriment of yin, the female principle.
This inner fragmentation more and more mirrored
the view of the world outside, seen as a multitude of sepa-
rate objects and events. This is how it became at all possi-
ble that obvious organic elements in the setup of nature
were seen as separate parts to be researched by separate
branches of science; at the same time, the world was split
into different nations, races, religions and political groups.
The conceptualization of life developed into a limita-
tive view in all scientific observation of nature. This is how
the mental and intellectual representation of reality be-
came more important than reality itself. This is very well
expressed by the Zen saying that the finger that points to
the Moon is not the Moon. In other words, the distorted
perception of reality led to a confusion between the terrain
and the map that describes it.
The next step in this processing of reality was to
develop a mechanistic view of nature, next to a rigorous de-
terminism. The universe was represented as a giant ma-

14
 INTRODUCTION

chine or clockwork that was imagined to be completely

causal and determinate. This view in turn led to a funda-
mental division between the Ego or the I, and the reality
out there. This further distortion of perception led to the
assumption that nature and the world could be described
objectively, without the mental bias of the observer playing
any significant role.
Instead of understanding that male and female at-
tributes are elements of the human personality, the division
between the Ego and Nature led to a static order where
men were supposed to be masculine and women feminine.
By the same vein of thought, men were given the leading
role and women were supposed to follow as submissive
servants. This attitude has resulted in an overemphasis of
the yang aspects in the human setup, such as activity, ra-
tional thinking, deductive logic, competition, aggressive-
ness, and so on, while the yin, or female, modes of con-
sciousness, which can be described by words like intuitive,
religious, mystical, intuitive, occult, psychic or associative
logic, have constantly been suppressed.
Over the last decades, this distorted scientific and relig-
ious view of the world, of nature and the human setup,
which is reflected in our highly fragmented curricula, be-
gan to change. With the advent of first relativity theory
and then quantum physics, we learnt that all in the uni-
verse is connected, and that we can change our fragmented
worldview and adopt an integrative view of life and na-
ture. The rigorous split between reality and the ego was

15
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

seen as incompatible with the truth, delivered by quantum

physics, that nothing can be observed without taking into
consideration the observer.

In other words, when I observe a living system, my ob-

servation of that system can be as elegant as my technol-
ogy is, but even when my observation is sophisticated,
there is a definite and finite frontier: my observation will
disturb the system, whatever I do.

When you teach children that we are separated from

nature, however you justify such a view, you will act
against the natural and intuitive understanding a child has
of life and the world. For a child, nothing is separate be-
cause children have (hopefully) not yet been conditioned
to the mainstream view of a processed reality. They look
at the world afresh, with eyes full of wonder. For small
children, the divisive, fragmented and distorted view that
observes living systems like one would dismantle a clock,
is not intelligible.

Therefore, it is actually not so much by doing anything

specific, but rather by not doing many things conventional
education does that we develop in children the systems
view of life, or the systemliterate perspective. This teach-
ing is first of all based on an innocent observation of nature
and our planet seen as one whole living system. The sec-
ond step is to explain to children that the living world con-
sists of nested networks, living systems that are embedded
within greater systems and still greater systems, and that
there is a flow of total information between all those sys-

16
 INTRODUCTION

tems. Computer graphics can powerfully bridge the gap

between what can be seen with the naked eye and what
cannot be seen. For example, the information flow within
living systems cannot be seen, but it can be measured and
those graphical details can be shown to even small chil-
dren when the activity is functional and connected to the
actual observation of a system. Even small children do un-
derstand that there are things so microscopic that they
cannot be seen with the naked eye. With the aid of a loupe
and a basic student microscope, it is easy to show to chil-
dren that there is an abundance of living matter to be seen
on a level that is not accessible to the naked eye.

17
 Chapter One
The Sane Child

The present book is written for parents and educators

with the purpose to show alternatives for behavior, for in-
dividual and cultural choices, and for a better education of
our children.
I shall be asking what was first, the hen or the egg, the
sane child or the insane adult? And its not difficult to in-
tuit the answer. The sane child is the natural child; and as
nature is infinitely rejuvenating herself over the genera-
tions, the sane child is as it were a recurring feature in the
biological setup of human society.
And it is equally true that an ever new generation of
sane children is perverted into an ever new generation of
insane adults through institutionalized and standardized edu-
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

cation that educates not along the lines of nature, but along
the fault lines of culture, and of tradition. When nature is
not bent in its bioenergetic essence, matter remains infi-
nitely supple, and flexible.
Children who grow without a moralistic roof structure
as a consciousness overlay move swiftly, and are agile, witty
and competent. Their breath is fresh and perfumed, the
breath of life.

The sane child is the child that has not been twisted
into dualism, the cultural split between emotions, on one
hand, and intellect, on the other. Life is a whole, a unity,
and the natural child lives in that original undivided state
of being, and not in the state of consume-trained innocence
that is a signal for a mutilated emotional setup. Emotional
balance is a state of inner peace, which is the natural result
of emotional wholeness.
The sane educational approach is functional, not moral-
istic. The sane educator is able to maintain a healthy bal-
ance between emotions and intellect.
He or she will be an observer rather than a manager, a
witness rather than a judge, a friend rather than a parent
replacement. He accompanies the child, as a guide, as a
tutor.

The vibrant natural child assumes characteristics that

are rather contrary to what is generally considered to be
normal in our days. This must be so because the standards
set for the education of our children are not child-oriented,
but industry-oriented. They serve consumer culture first of
20
 CHAPTER ONE

all, and the child, if ever, only in second instance; they are
intended to serve technological progress and therefore are
forged for bringing up the consumer child. As a result, the
natural child sadly is blacklisted because by nature a bad
consumer. Natural children dont need medication against
hyperactivity, the cultural disease of the consumer child;
they sleep in a trance-like state that is so deep that you can
throw them in the air or carry them around on your shoul-
der, yet they wont wake up. In addition, they heal them-
selves from most of their illnesses, and this without doc-
tors and pharmaceuticals. Their body possesses a naturally
strong immunitary response with the result that they do
not catch all those diseases consumer children today are
suffering from.
They are alert and witty, and agile. Their bodies are
gracious and well-proportioned; they move swiftly instead
of being clumsy and fat like consumer children. They are
naturally respectful instead of constantly molesting others.

And they can be silent and non-obtrusive when they

have to, instead of behaving like drunken princes or per-
verted freaks, the way, namely, most consumer children
today behave.
Natural children live out the whole range of their emo-
tions, including their sensuality, in a way that is naturally
balanced. Our distorted and sexualized concept of love is
unknown to natural children because it is schizoid and
erects an unnatural residual view of life; such a notion of
perceiving life is alien to the unfragmented mind of natu-

21
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

ral children. That is why we have to preserve the natural

child, and thus, as a paradigmatic quest arising from that
insight, safeguard our sane children from repression, cor-
ruption and indoctrination.
For natural children, the body plays a most important
role in their self-expression, and primarily in sharing and
expressing affection, love, and tenderness. To the natural
child, it feels normal to be sensual as a code inherent in
spontaneous self-expression.
But sensuality is not a conditioned response; it comes
with birth, a natural outflow of sensation. More we sense,
more we are alive, more we are sensual! That is why chil-
dren are highly sensual by nature, and only by repression
and denial coming on down in the black mask of education
are they gradually rendered non-sensual, dull and alienated
from their bodies.
Even as adults, we can experience the blessed condi-
tion called a child-like mood or innocence, which is actually a
sacred state of being.
In moments when we feel truly excited and trust an-
other human, we are in a state of sacred unity. Its a relig-
ious state of mind, and the natural condition of the sane,
non-conditioned child.

This state of mind must imperatively be preserved by

education and not, as in traditional upbringing, be sacri-
ficed to values such as discipline, rationality, toughness, or
any other of the split concepts so typical for our deeply
fragmented culture.
22
 CHAPTER ONE

It is for this reason that I call integrated education a

love education and shall further down explicit the details
of such a sane educational concept. Its sane because its safe-
guarding and protecting the natural child by loving care,
for preserving that blessed state of non-conditioned spon-
taneity and natural emotional intelligence that is the fruit
of natureand not of culture. Hence, love education ab-
stains from conditioning the child according to social ide-
als that mutilate the natural integrity and wholeness of the
newborn.
Institutional education does not serve the child, but the
system; it does not recognize the existence of individual, and
individually gifted children. For mass education, there is a
quantity of humans to be educated, not a variety of unique
individuals. This is why mass education is destructive and
leads to devolution, not to evolution. It serves not cultural,
but if ever, military needs. It destroys the full human in us. It
suffocates sensitivity and sensuality, and wipes out indi-
vidual differences by imposing certain behavior patterns,
with the ultimate purpose of molding children into a stan-
dard pattern of thinking and acting that is socially ap-
proved and politically correct. It conditions good humans
to become bad citizens and dull bureaucrats. It paralyzes
the inborn self-thinker and replaces individual intelligence
and brilliance by mass mediocrity.
The traditional patriarchal educational paradigm cre-
ates havoc in the childs psyche by stressing performance
and ruthless competition, thereby creating violence in rela-

23
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

tionships. It transforms the naturally self-thinking child

into a conforming robot that fits like a wheel in a machin-
ery of inhuman values that make up our mainstream cul-
tural paradigm. Even in schools for children from well-to-
do families, the child is often not respected as an inte-
grated human, but reduced to a split-self that is condi-
tioned to become a cunning career-hawk; by doing so, the
unique soul qualities of the child are neglected or down-
played, if not shunned, and through the outright focus on
left-brain, separative yang values, the more integrative and
socially functional yin values are wiped under the carpet.
This is how, virtually in the cradle and the crche, hubris
and violence are structurally programmed by modern so-
ciety into our young generations.
A further result of this educational bias is that sys-
temic, associative, creative and ecological thinking is muti-
lated and so-called rational, logical, strategic thinking is
hypertrophied.

To focus on every individual child is only possible

when, from the start, we have a qualitative and not a quan-
titative approach to education. The quality approach does
not ask for efficiency, but for integrated solutions that serve
every child in the community.

We cannot compartmentalize education or we bring

about humans who suffer from a fragmented perception.
Direct or unfragmented perception typically leads to peaceful
interaction with others and the environment, and as such it
fosters nonviolent behaviors.

24
 CHAPTER ONE

Life education opposes moralistic education because

morality-based education serves dominator culture, and
not the child. Dogma-based education molds the child after
the adult role model as a social ideal, and thus after the val-
ues valid for a majority. Such forms of education regularly
disregard the true needs of the child or sacrifice them on the
altar of mighty, idealized, parenthood. Carl Jung used to say
that our psychiatric cabinets are filled with people who
had ideal parents. Bruno Bettelheim coined this truth into
the dictum that parents should be good enough instead of
being perfect.
Moralistic education is contrary to intelligence for it
breeds psychological fear and guilt which are barriers to
self-knowledge. True intelligence is nourished by observing
our psycho-emotional actions and reactions on a regular basis.
The adherence to morality or ideological positions hin-
ders the birth of true intelligence because it blocks the dia-
logue with our desires and inner energies.

Education based upon ideologies leads to negative

growth, absolute rigid positions, conformity, imitation and,
in last resort, violence. For getting an idea of the emotional
life of the child, we need to grasp what is intelligence. Many
people confuse intelligence with knowledge; they dont see
that accumulation of knowledge is purely mechanical and
as such no indicator of intelligence. Intelligence is some-
thing entirely different from knowledge. It is not mechani-
cal, but a natural byproduct of emotional vivacity and
wholeness: to grow sanely means to be rather intuitive.

25
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

Children and geniuses have that in common that they are

emotionally integrated.
Our rational mind only functions at full capacity when
it is connected to our irrational mind so that intellectual/
analytic and intuitive/synthetic thought synergistically
interact with each other. In that case, the rational and the
emotional part of us are well balanced and we experience a
state of lasting inner peace.

Mainstream education makes a complex and difficult

natural process easy by destroying it. It kills the child emo-
tionally by invalidating the childs right-brain capacities
and resulting actions and, as a matter of fact, castrating the
child emotionally at an early age. The world is populated
with people who are emotionally dead.
Mainstream education reminds of a gardener who, be-
cause of lacking knowledge how to grow a certain plant,
just roots it out. Junk child! Life education does not produce
and does not need junk children as mainstream education
does. Junk children are the reminder of civilization. Thats
exactly what they do, then: they remind us of our incapac-
ity to educate them properly.
By contrast, an integrative educational concept devel-
ops wholeness for all children by empathetically and holis-
tically understanding children. The natural counterpart of
wholeness is holistic thinking. Intelligence, sensitivity and
understanding for the complex functions of life can only be
developed if cognition is imbedded in the emotional life of

26
 CHAPTER ONE

the person and thus a result of wholeness, and not of frag-

mentation.
Cognitive capacities that are imbedded in emotional
sanity can only grow on a basis of readiness, of emotional
maturity. A child voluntarily accepts instruction in reading
and writing once emotionally ready for it and not under
any other circumstance. And here I speak about the indi-
vidual maturity of a child, and not a standard concept, since
there simply are no standards.
Education must logically proceed in a one-to-one rela-
tion and interaction between educator and child, for only
then the uniqueness of the child can be validated. The emo-
tional bond in this relation is of overwhelming importance.

Only love can be the bridge for the transmission of val-

ues. Group education therefore is an impossible quest. It
seems to be more effective while truly it is much less since
the child, in a group, is treated at a bottomline level and
not according to their emotional and intellectual complex-
ity. In addition, tactile stimulation is of high importance,
especially for smaller children because it enhances the emo-
tional flow and by doing so strengthens the childs immuni-
tary system.
In a time of manifold immunity-related diseases, we
should begin to appreciate the preventive benefits of tactile
stimulation and consider to incorporate child massage in
our educational curricula.

See, for example, Frederick Leboyer, Loving Hands (1977)

27
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

The integrative approach to education also stresses that

education should be down-to-earth if it is to avoid an
ivory tower intellectualism as a result. In olden times this
was called education of the heart. You find it for example
in the Islamic Sufi tradition or in the Japanese Zen tradi-
tion. It is also part of esoteric Christian teachings such as
the mystical teaching of Master Eckhart in Germany.
This is being done through giving spirit to daily activi-
ties, and to fulfill them not as ordinary duties but enchanted
duties which serve to bring order and sobriety not just to
the environment, but to the beholder, the soul.
This does not mean that education should be a relig-
ious one in the sense that it judges materialistic values in
any way. Material values, in my view, should be embraced
as all of life, material comfort, material safety, material
possessions are not in the way when the spirit is pure, and
an enslavement to material possessions will then not re-
sult. The art of life is not to reject anything but to integrate
all of living, also technology, comfort, and possessions of
all sorts.
Massage helps greatly here because it overcomes lan-
guage barriers. What also helps in sometimes miraculous
ways is truthful dialogue, the simple practice of putting
words on feelings, emotions, and circumstances.
Until children have built a considerable amount of trust
toward adults, it is very difficult to communicate loving
feelings and acceptance to them verbally. It has to be done
physically. When the body talks, no lies are possible. When

28
 CHAPTER ONE

you touch a child, how you touch will be decisive for your
communication with the child. Touch can be degrading,
and it can be uplifting; tact and sensitivity are needed here,
and also some knowledge about the etiology of the childs
particular hangup or emotional distortionif there is any.
With many hyperactive children, the basic problem is a
mix of lacking touch and false and religiously tinted lan-
guage. Hypocrisy as it is practiced still today in fundamen-
talist churches and sects, and social circles that are politi-
cally on the right wing really distorts childrens perception
and deeply confuses their natural emotional balance.
But children from the opposite side of the political
spectrum, the left-wing intelligentsia, are often not better
off. Children who come from an atheist background and
have overly intellectual parents who reason everything out
without the slightest hint of an emotion, always emphasiz-
ing the logic and practicability of things, are starving emo-
tionally and sensually. After all, human beings, when in
growth, are first of all longing for sensation, and only there-
after, and when their sensual needs are fulfilled, do they agree
for being initiated into logic and reason.
Language is not verbal. Verbal communication is a result
of culture. Natural language, as Gregory Bateson and other
systems thinkers have shown, is touch, telepathy, and emo-
tion. Bateson writes in Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972/
2000) that when a kitten wants to communicate that it
wants to drink milk, it says: Dependency, dependency!

29
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

Further, he writes that the cat talks in terms of patterns

and contingencies of relationship, and from this talk it is
up to us to take a deductive step, guessing that it is milk
that the cat wants. You can a thousand times affirm you
love a child, but the child will not really understand what
you are talking about. The notion of love has no meaning
if the child has no context to put it into, and no experiences
that by their contextual pattern convey to the child what
love is all about. In addition, when you are negative in
your thoughts and feelings about the child, while telling
the child that you love him or her, the child will focus not
on your words, but on your thoughts and your feelings.
You cannot lie to a child, while you may be able to lie
to adults. When I say child, here, I mean a human until the
age of six.
Modern society is child-centered in that it has developed
a certain protectiveness which is, well understood, a con-
cern for our own future. The modern concept of child pro-
tection is a direct result of this concern. But we must also
see that such protectiveness may well serve as a pretext for
control and terror, and less democracy for the generations
to come.
Historically and psychologically, it can be seen that the
hidden face of protectiveness is slavery. The rose-and-blue
world of modern civilization babies represents the plastic
shell in which they are incarcerated for their own good and
the clean faade of a culture that has lost the sense of birth
and death and, as such, of living. The truth of childhood

30
 CHAPTER ONE

that child protectors tend to invoke authoritatively to jus-

tify their paranoid assumptions is in fact a very relative con-
cept; among one hundred fifty cultures in a survey, ours
showed to be one of the three most restrictive. Thus, seen
from a global perspective, such kind of statements are not
only relative: they are simply invalid as to their pretended
universality.
Emotional abuse has been assessed by child psycholo-
gists as damaging for the childs healthy emotional devel-
opment because it entangles the child in a net of obliga-
tions, and brings about a submission of the child under the
power of the tutelary adult for the exclusive gratification of
the adults desire.

Emotional abuse is much more subtle and underlying

as a pattern than other forms of child abuse that have been
known for much longer. It is therefore not surprising that
research on emotional abuse is relatively recent. And its so
devastating because the child cannot see any valid argu-
ment to deny the symbiotoholic demands from the side of
parents and educators because these demands are backed
up by society that came to use children as sentimental pets
in a wide range of areas, and as amuse-jesters and wel-
come pain-killers, sorrow sponges and night pillows.

A factor for trauma is the childs guilt feelings that re-

sult from their (correct) intuition that the symbiotically
demanding tutelary adult or educator suffer from some
kind of emotional hangup or long-standing inner wound,
and that, therefore, to reject persecutory attitudes would

31
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

mean to put the finger on that wound. Giving the child

emotional autonomy clearly means to empower the child,
but for many parents it means to have a huge slice of their
own abusive parental power removed! And thats why so-
ciety does not move in that direction. Protectiveness serves
consumer culture in that it ensures the child to be available
as the cheapest and most willing cutie slave and dummy
partner you can think of. While sane children are early in-
dependent, outgoing, responsible and self-reliant!
They dont cling to their parents, and thus grow natu-
rally out from the maternal shell.
As parents, tutelary adults and educators, we have to
practice non-interference in the childs emotional and inti-
mate life instead of perpetuating persecution and control.
Strangely, while people agree that persecution and con-
trol are undemocratic measures, many nonetheless practice
them with their own children, unaware that in doing so
they help perpetuate archaic and destructive forms of con-
trol that impede humanity from progressing into a new
age of peace and enlightenment.

32
 Chapter Two
Love, Needs, and Trust

I believe times have come to an end when we still gave

our children a truly loving education. Most passionate edu-
cators today would probably regret the fact that through-
out human history, children were disciplined violently and
subjected to religious and ideological manipulation.
The greatest danger in our highly sophisticated techno-
logical societies is in my view that children are fed with a
standard soup of knowledge, a standard mix that is con-
sidered good for all,and that accordingly the need for an
individualized education is still overlooked or brushed from
the political agenda as an unnecessary expense. In addi-
tion, educators who are working in a highly mechanized
educational system cannot develop their true passion and
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

their highest potential of intelligent play that makes them

to be good educators, capable to transmit knowledge in a
way that is ideally prepared for the child to absorb it, be-
cause it is adapted to the childs level of comprehension,
and imbedded in a playful setting. The uniqueness of this
educational approach is that the information, while its be-
ing given to the child in a special way, is not distorted, and
thus the child is not manipulated.

The wisdom of the great educator is to somehow mold

the information for the level of comprehension of the child,
and only genius can do this, educational genius; it needs
strong intuition to know what the individual child can
manage to receive, and what is not yet in reach. Accord-
ingly, the talented educator is constantly managing infor-
mation, and adapting education for the needs of the chil-
dren he or she cares for; this is a very tiring business that
only one is ready to do who has the real passion for educa-
tion.

But this passion is quickly cooled down in a sterile sys-

tem of education that is mechanical and repetitive, and
where the teachers creative space is curtailed down to a
tiny residual spot. This is why standard education, in the
long run, destroys both the child and the educator.

We learnt from the hippie experiments of the 1960s

and 70s that its not very intelligent either to fall in the
other extreme and to transform a child into an egocentric
savage who has no respect for others and no inner culture.
We had to understand that education also means showing

34
 CHAPTER TWO

the limits, for there is no society on earth without limits,

and there cannot be in any society individuals who totally
disrespect limits. So we have to educate children carefully,
and without being violent, to respect limits, wherever this is
reasonable and necessary. Doing this is an art, and no ide-
ology or religion can ever help to learn this art; it needs
strong intuition, and inner culture; it needs a passionate
educator who is dedicated to his or her task and who truly
walks his talk.
Besides, it requires high communication ability, for with-
out communication there is no education. Which means
that communication between educator and child must be
unobstructed and open, and trust has to be built, first of
all. Trust is often built by educator and child bonding in a
way to form a sort of playful complicity which works
very well in practice, while the time for building this inner
space of restful confidence differs from one child to the
other, and actually depends on many factors.

This complicity is affectional first of all, a form of pri-

vacy, a space that is inviolable by the outside world, and
that is the basis of a friendship. Friendship may be built,
and is ideally built in the educator-child relation, but its
not a must nor a necessity. But for education to be possible
on any level, a basic trust relation must be built, and while
the child gives signals how and in which ways to be ac-
cessible, its the educator who is responsible for trust-
building to succeed. It needs human skills and also sim-

35
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

plicity; the more dispassionate you approach children, the

better for the trustbuilding process.
The more you try to trap children in bonding that you
direct by willfulness and all your knowledge about child
psychology, the less you will be able to build even a basic
level of trust with the children you want to care for. I have
observed this often in child care centers and schools where
I have worked; educators who have this pushy approach
are often rejected by children, while this reject is not outspo-
ken of course; but these relations are regularly not deep
and rather hypocrite and when there is a crisis, the child
quickly retreats in their inner world and becomes inacces-
sible.

This is the fate, then, these educators cash in by their

pushy unreasonable attitude, and they are often the ones
who have studied a lot and think they know all the rules of
the game. The pushy authoritarian approach doesnt work
even halfway with intelligent children, and it works even
less with problem children, or retarded children, because
the latter are very sensitive to the inner motivations of the
educator.
Why are the physical needs of the small child more im-
portant to be cared for than the childs intellectual and
spiritual needs? In present postmodern society, as it devel-
ops toward an era of mechanism, robotism and automa-
tion, its as if the childs body had been sacrificed on the
cross of technology, which is strangely equated, by igno-
rant minds, with social progress.

36
 CHAPTER TWO

Most religions are body-hostile ideologies that are as-

sisted by the police state; this is how they jointly gave birth
to the social machine that only functions on a mere tech-
nological level and that is unable to integrate in its residual
life concept the most fundamental needs of humans big or
small. Yet the human being, contrary to what the positivis-
tic social philosopher La Mettrie believed, is not a clock-
work.

Mechanistic thinking, as its inherent in a technological

culture, was for the first time eroded in the 1960s and 70s;
many of the social experiments conducted during that time
of alternative living and the rise of the counterculture
were set to be holistic; a different social paradigm was
formulated, one that is integrated, and connected to mother
earth, and that was inspired by the wisdom of native peo-
ples around the world.
The child was no more considered a dwarf adult but a
unique individual who, though small and inexperienced,
possesses an innate and often surprising wisdom which mani-
fests spontaneously in an ambience where the child re-
ceives loving care and attention.
However, the new trend did not last, and there were
perhaps too many extreme approaches that were not dura-
ble; generally speaking, the passion for a new education,
while it was a media runner for a decade or so, was not
taking roots and today is to be found, in print, on the
bookshelves of university libraries, with few exceptions
such as Summerhill that has survived its creator.

37
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

And yet, we cannot say that these efforts were wasted;

they were precious, to be true, and the reason they are for
the most part forgotten today isnt because they did it all
wrong, but is due to the political climate. I would even go
as far as saying that these experiments contained the seed
for a new world, a more peaceful and permissive society;
these ideas were not illusions but for the most part in-
spired by a great vision.

Their fate to be met with resistance was logical after all

when we consider that human evolution spirals upwards
and doesnt proceed in a linear fashion. So these expansive
movements, as a matter of cosmic law, had to meet with
political resistance, and thus the rudder turned in the oppo-
site direction, heading toward more conservatism, more res-
toration of the old and traditional, and more restrictions.
It is undoubtedly difficult to give a sane education to
children in this climate of fear, persecution and public hys-
teria, where you are spied out virtually at every corner of
the street, where potentially your emails are read by gov-
ernment agencies and where at work places that deal with
children, you are screened more carefully than a secret in-
telligence agent.
Despite the extreme solutions that were promoted dur-
ing the time of the Hippie movement in the 1960s and 70s,
these experiments with family, open life style, and multiple
parenting as in the old extended family. In addition, in the
communes of the 1970s, the physical punishment of chil-
dren was banned, and children were talked to, instead of

38
 CHAPTER TWO

talked about, and child-rearing was for one time a matter

of intelligent choice. What psychologists and sociologists
found with these children was that they were not per-
vaded by the hatred they found in homo normalis, but lov-
ing and caring, with a high level of self-assurance and
competence. They were found to have high self-esteem, at
a higher percentage than average in our culture.
If we want to understand the modern consumer child,
we must first of all understand their body. A child who
lives in a body that is locked on the muscular level will in-
evitably suffer from neurosis, insomnia, anxiety and bed-
wetting, as well as dietary disorders such as bulimia or
anorexia. If in such a case traditional educational measures
are taken, which typically focus on the mind of the child,
and not their body, the symptoms will aggravate and the
situation will worsen. The traditional approach actually
mechanizes the childs spirit and splits it off from the soul.
The result is the obedient and polite puppet that we know
as the model type of traditional education.
The only way to protect the childs creative life is to
educate children in full knowledge of their creative drive,
which means in full awareness of the childs emotional
identity, and by helping the child to develop and cultivate
their emotional intelligence.
Spiritual maturity cannot be attained on the basis of
thwarted emotions. It needs emotional vivacity. An educa-
tion that is set out to avoid extremes must combine the
sensual dimension with a systematic mental and spiritual

39
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

awakening of the child, and in addition teach the many de-

tails of daily life through a focus on attentiveness.
This should be done without attachment to any specific
culture, but in a pragmatic spirit, without cutting the
bonds the child maintains with their culture or their relig-
ious belonging.
Education can be seen as a prolongation of conception
and pregnancy; its an organic process that is reflected both
inside educator and child. There are changes effected and a
growth process triggered both in the child and the educa-
tor, when the educational relation really is a love story.
The desire to educate motivates the passionate educa-
tor to take care of the child with all the deprivations that
this entails, because it is generally badly paid and requires
countless unpaid hours, and a sustained effort that often is
barely validated, and often not even noticed by the parents
of the child.
We all know those men and women who really have no
interest for children; they are all very busy with their com-
puters, their racing cars, their airplanes and boats, their
expensive travels, and their taste for luxury. They regularly
experience little interest for working in educational profes-
sions, and even less, for working in early childcare.

An educator who wants to understand the child must

first of all understand himself or herself. Accordingly, an
educator who wishes to understand the childs desire to be
educated should meditate about his or her own desire to
educate. The secret is that these desires correspond to each
40
 CHAPTER TWO

other in that they depend on one another. This means that

educators have to render conscious their motivations for
educating children, for if they dont, their motivations will
remain unreflected upon and can as a result lead their own
life; repressed desires easily get out of hand, and they can
turn violent because the energy polarity contained in the
desire will change from positive to negative.
Hiding the motivations of our actions only creates guilt
and fear, and is not conducive to educating a child respon-
sibly. In addition, educators who do not want to develop
emotional awareness will have more difficulty in adopting
and respect the rules of the sane educational setting.
We all need professional training, whatever we are do-
ing, and somehow, our society doesnt think of educators
needing an awareness building for handling their emotions.
Such an awareness building is essential for the educator to
become a true companion of the child, in the sense of a
mentor and friend, who is not emotionally manipulatory.

I have seen in many schools that educators, without

really being conscious of it, act out their primal scene with
the children they care for, in the sense that they project all
possible and impossible childhood hangups upon them; with
the result of course that the relationship becomes pervaded
with toxic shame, and ambiguous feelings and messages.
Then, when the dead end is reached, the educator usu-
ally collapses and either drops out into another job, or
starts a psychotherapy.

41
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

However, educators who understand their body sensa-

tions, and are familiar with them will be able to effectively
accompany the child in what is the most essential in the
childs life: their feelings, their desires and their most fun-
damental wish to love and be loved. Only educators who
truly know themselves will be able to get on this track with-
out either being bewildered by the complexity of the task,
or tempted to act out their own sensual longings for the
detriment of the child.
Getting to know oneself through developing innate crea-
tivity is only one of several realms of genuine experience
the child grows up into, and becomes familiar with over
time, without bothering for the least if, or not, the parents
want it, know it, or support it. What the child learns first of
all through artistic creation is the dimension and the impor-
tance of ecstasy in life, and ecstasy in turn is leading to the
awakening of enthusiasm, which, as we know from art re-
search, is a primary trigger of long-term creativity.

See, for example, Michelle Cassou, Life, Paint and Passion (1996),
Andrew Flack, Art & Soul (1991), Pam Grout, Art & Soul (2000), Shaun
McNiff, Trust The Process (1998), Tony Pearce Myers (Ed.), The Soul of
Creativity (1999)

Enthusiasm develops in the life of the child as a func-

tion of ecstasy on a daily level, and ecstasy is nourished by
the very gradual and expansive process of self-knowledge.
The acquisition of self-knowledge should be gradual,
not sudden, for if the educator tries to hurry this process in
the child, this could lead to a rupture in the childs natural

42
 CHAPTER TWO

continuum, and then things may get messed up and en-

tangled on the level of the unconscious. The ideal is the
gradual, smooth unfolding of experiencing the world, and
generally pleasurable feelings, in the life of the child. These
sensations of pleasure contribute to the awakening of ec-
stasy when there is enough latitude in the educational at-
mosphere for the child to learn that enthusiasm and abun-
dance are natural expansions of the self and should not
create guilt and shame. When that happens, a sexual edu-
cation, as its done today in schools, really is not needed,
and may even have counterproductive effects. Intellectual-
izing body sensations does not lead to consciousness but to
self-consciousness.

With the process of gradual awakening and the daily

experience of ecstasy through the encounter with art, chil-
dren grow their cognitive apparatus because the sensing
and feeling, and thereby direct cognition, is greatly en-
hanced through the natural streaming of their emotions,
for emotions are but the life force itself. There is a sense of
connectivity that goes along with becoming an early crea-
tor; its a feeling of expansion and embrace, a warm loving
feeling toward the world. It is really the most positive ex-
perience a child can make when growing up, but it needs
to be imbedded in a space of personal and artistic freedom
that is respected by parents and educators. This means also
that educators give warmth, empathy and understanding,
and that they painstakingly avoid manipulation, educa-
tional violence and abuse.

43
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

Enthusiasm then develops naturally, and is shared with

the educator who, in turn, gets a pro-life boost from being
around enthusiastic children; its simply a mutually enrich-
ing process, and ideally its shared also with the parents.
This is then, what we call joy of life, and joy of life always
is more abundant when its shared with others. This feel-
ing of abundance, of plentifulness, is very important for the
child, for it contributes to material wealth later on in life;
there is about no other sensation as important for material
success than experiencing abundance early in life. For this
to happen, no expensive toys are needed nor do the par-
ents need to be rich themselves; its enough to grant the
child their personal space and their time for developing an
authentic sense of self; then the joyful experience of abun-
dance will develop naturally in the life of the child.
Let me comment on the notion of sharing here more in
detail. I am convinced that parents and educators should
communicate for harmonizing their educational approach.
I have seen in several schools that educators were defend-
ing a paradigm of parental non-involvement in their educa-
tional strategies. I have observed how this works in prac-
tice and saw its not for the best of the child. Such an ap-
proach leads sooner or later to an unspoken or open hostil-
ity between parents and educators, and results in the child
being exposed to contradictory educational approaches,
which only creates confusion in the childs mind. This ap-
proach is thus counterproductive to securing the childs
emotional security because it cuts the natural sharing be-

44
 CHAPTER TWO

tween parents and educators, and deprives them of an

essentially positive and rewarding exchange. Besides, the ex-
ample shows that dogmatic approaches, or black-or-white
approaches really do not work in matters of education, and
that the middle way is always best. There is no way around
communication; whosoever thinks that in matters of edu-
cation, they could do away with communication is mis-
taken and will not be a good parent or educator. Children
are naturally communicative; if they arent, something has
happened to them emotionally, or they grew up in an un-
communicative, mute familywhich sadly usually is a
violent family. Natural children are communicative, and
they ask for communicative parents and educators, not
only in their own relations with them, but also with regard
to the relation parent-educator.
I have observed over the years that when the parent-
teacher communication is good and constant, children tend
to feel at ease in their school or kindergarten, and easily
build trust. Furthermore, in any kind of crisis situation,
this communication flow really pays a dividend!
Another element in the educational continuum is grati-
tude; an educator who is rewarded by an intact emotional
flow with both the children and their parents develops a
natural feeling of gratitude.
This is something miraculous to observe, as gratitude
is really an expansive feeling, which develops, when con-
stant, into an attitude that embraces the world and others.

45
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

Gratitude therefore is stronger than compassion, for it

gives freedom to others, while embracing them in a non-
judgmental way that does not create dependency. This is
very important in the relationship educator-child; the good
educator is able to avoid the bond of complicity slipping
into codependence because that is about the worst to hap-
pen in tutelary relations, and generally is the soil for abuse.
Besides, the child will of course sense this feeling of
gratitude from the side of the educator, while they regu-
larly do not talk about their perception. In this context, it is
important to realize that it is dysfunctional to admonish
children to be grateful; what this leads to is that the later
adolescent will be an ungrateful nerd.

Gratitude cannot be rammed into children; it cannot be

forced, it cannot be pushed to unfold. The only thing to do
is to be grateful oneself, parent or educator, for children to
learn being grateful, because they sense how good it feels,
and how expansive and wonderful that feeling is. In gen-
eral, children hardly ever speak about these things, and the
wise educator will not push them into verbalizing psycho-
logical realities.
It has to be seen that children, because of their natural
lack of academic knowledge, easily feel guilty or even infe-
rior when they realize that their knowledge about human
psychology is not up to the one the educator has at their
disposition. That is why pushing children to learn psy-
chological realities is really the wrong approach and only
will result in children becoming more and more mute.

46
 CHAPTER TWO

Also, children may resent the educator having a police

mentality that tries to get into their secret corner, to spy out
their inner mind, and to know their secret thoughts. Such
an attitude must be avoided cost what it will, or trustbuild-
ing between educator and children will be greatly im-
paired. In my observation, educators have this problem
who have studied several majors, not just early child care,
but also child psychology or child psychotherapy, and
who, then, in their daily work with children try to unpack
a part of their knowledge for getting a bonus from the side
of the direction of the school or kindergarten.
They may get that bonus, but they get it on the back of
the children, who will not be served by such an attitude!

Enthusiasm develops through sharing; it can be sharing

in a game, or educational activity, or it can be the activity
of sharing as such, without more. Sharing is a wonderful
thing to unfold between people, and for children, its one
of the most important things to learn early in life.

I have observed with children from high-class families

most often that their natural ability for sharing was inter-
fered with by their parents. These children are often blocked
in their emotions, because their sharing abilities are unde-
veloped. They are awkward and clumsy in sharing activi-
ties, and this because of the hyper-egoistic attitudes they
have internalized at home. To be true, the ability to share is
one of the greatest gifts we have received as human beings.
Sharing brings a direct feedback from the universe, a hot

47
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

streaming that fills the heart, and that expands the thorax,
and the mind.
People stuck in egotism can be pitied because they live
only half; they are unhappy and often they have simply
not learnt the gift of sharing in childhood; this may not
have been their fault. It is not excluded that even the hard-
est egoist may change one day, after a spontaneous act of
sharing, and the unknown feelings they learn through the
experience.
I think sharing is a visceral need for humans and when
its thwarted, psychic pathologies are not far to occur. This
may sound idealistic, but I am not talking here about a so-
cial ideal but something as natural as breathing and sleep-
ing. We are all egoists through ignorance, and only through
ignorance, the ignorance of real joy, which always is con-
nected with sharing!
A wise educator will never talk about virtue, and will not
push the child to share, for he knows that this will render
the child hypocrite.
The only way to teach sharing is to share, and to do it as
a natural movement, spontaneously; then the child will
adopt that faculty, through observation.

48
 Chapter Three
Body, Mind, Emotions, and Music

When the childs body is naturally supple and relaxed,

their learning ability runs at maximum speed.
Muscular spasms are somatizations of mental or emo-
tional blockages; they betray psychic tension, or a psychic
complex.
This is why children always profit from massage and
soft sports such as swimming or table tennis, while hard
sports such as football, boxing or tennis actually are coun-
terproductive in that they raise and stock up bodily ten-
sion and can in the extreme case lead to mental retardation
or psychosomatic ailments. In my honest view, hard sports
have to be completely avoided in consciousness-based educa-
tion.
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

In the natural condition, body, mind and emotions are

swinging together creatively, and they feedback each other;
they also are in a state of natural harmony, which means
they are balancing each other. When the body is supple,
the mind is flexible and open, and emotions are flowing
and peaceful; when the body is hard, when there are mus-
cular spasms, the mind is not open for learning, and the
child displays symptoms of learning handicap; emotions,
then, tend to be sudden, and unpredictable, often out of
context, and difficult to handle.
When nature is not interfered with, children have a
supple body, an open mind, learn easily and joyfully, and
are very balanced emotionally. The hateful child is closed-
minded and lives in a hard inflexible body that was tight-
ened up by shock and fear, and often also early trauma and
abuse. It is therefore indispensable to help children main-
tain the natural suppleness of their bodies and give them
often the opportunity for relaxation, first of all through
sufficient and deep sleep, and second through a spaced
learning method that builds in psychosomatic activities such
as massage, sauna, jacuzzi, or swimming in open air.
Nudity also plays an important role in keeping the
body supple because nudity prevents psychic defenses, or
emotional shields, from building up and nesting them-
selves in body and mind. It needs trust to present oneself
nude to others, for we are more vulnerable when being
nude, and naturally defenseless; and this is a very good
trigger for learning because all psychic defenses are counter-

50
 CHAPTER THREE

ing easy learning. That is why nudity forms part of all non-
authoritarian educational approaches, not because its a
fancy or a fashion of the day. It has manifest psychoso-
matic reasons.
The collective fear in conservative circles that defends
children from being nude, especially when in a group, and
even more so when girls and boys are mixed, starts from
the idea that nudity will quite automatically lead to sexual
play. But this assumption, while its very widespread, is wrong.
It is the result of a split conditioning that assumes that all
natural nudity and touch is somehow sexual, but it isnt.
For natural children, nudity has no connotation at all
with sexual expression, with masturbation or any kind of
sexual or even sensual activity. It is what it is, the absence
of clothes, the state in which we were born.
If educators have such connotations, its their problem,
not the childrens. That is why I believe educators should
receive special professional training for practicing a con-
sciousness based educational approach.
Let me also comment on the notion of sport, as its of-
ten misunderstood. Sport, when rightly practiced, enhances
mind-body coordination and intuition, and it also teaches re-
spect for the body. This means also that sport should never
be something that even remotely damages the body, as its
for example the case with body building, which slowly but
surely degrades and erodes the muscular joints in the an-
kles and knees. What is valid for adults here is even more
important to observe in the education of children.

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 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

A sport like football, that brings about massive damage

through regular accidents, and that often results in knee
tendons to be strained or even knocked out of place, has to
be totally avoided. Basketball, while it looks more gentle, is
equally dangerous because when you look up to the basket
for throwing the ball, you are often likely to hit another in
plain face, or push against their body, which equally can
result in bodily hurt.

Needless to add that violent sports such as rugby or

baseball have no place in consciousness-based education be-
cause they are already paradigmatically wrong: they give
the wrong signals! These sports educate children to be vio-
lent, and that is after all why they are so much appreciated
in mainstream education; its because they help training
the child to accept the message pleasure is bad, violence is
good, which is the mainstream perversion that is ideologi-
cally built in our mainstream culture.
Mainstream education builds a body full of strife and
tension, a body that is in conflict with itself; this is done in-
tentionally as emotions are dead in a stiff and tense body.
The childs emotions being considered as unruly and
dangerous, must be tamed, and thus a rigid hard regi-
men is inflicted upon the child, especially boys, to get them
to control their emotions. What this leads to is that emo-
tions are repressed, awareness about them is suppressed,
and they are thus lesser accessible.
This is of course not smart because the very inability to
access our emotions makes them dangerous and unpre-

52
 CHAPTER THREE

dictable. Not control is the key to sanity, but emotional

awareness! Seen from this vantage point, mainstream edu-
cation really is insane.

In addition, what standard education overlooks is that

emotions are all interconnected within a kaleidoscopic con-
tinuum, which means that when you repress one emotion,
you repress them all! This explains why children caught in
the claws of mainstream education cannot experience ec-
stasy or joy; this is so because they are told to repress their
hot emotions, anger, rage, and jealousy.
And there is one emotion never mentioned in psychol-
ogy but that is nonetheless real in free children: it is tem-
porary madness, which is a joy so overwhelming that it
looks like madness.
My extended research on emotions showed me clearly
that the repression of emotions creates a fundamental im-
balance in the mindbody, and the whole of the organism of
the child; the result are children who are excited all the
time, knowing no limits and disturbing the rest of the
group, and children who are hyperactive, display learning
disabilities and who suffer from insomnia and bedwetting.
Often, these children are labeled as depressive or even
schizophrenic, while the etiology may be much more basic;
when emotions are out of balance, all kinds of psychoso-
matic ailments can manifest, and the solution isnt as diffi-
cult as curing schizophrenia. That is why for all of these
symptoms, before resorting to hard psychiatry, childrens

53
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

emotional life and especially their emotional flow should be

assessed.
When the emotional flow is blocked, a soft approach
that focuses on unlocking the childs body through loving
touch combined with psychotherapeutic treatment in the form
of truthful communication can bring immediate results.
This is so because when the lockup of the emotional flow
was not for long, it is relatively easy to get things back to
normal, especially with smaller children.
Psychotherapy should focus, then, on putting words
on things, and first of all, listening to the child. However,
loving touch and communication alone can effect miracles,
not only with children, but also with adults.

This was shown by alternative psychiatrists such as

Ronald David Laing in England and Thomas Szasz in the
United States, who dedicated time and space to psychotic
children, engaging in co-living with those children, and
doing the therapy in tidbits and little chunks, while having
the child around in loving care all the time.
They reached amazing healing results. Their approach,
which was propagated as Antipsychiatry, made history as a
daring and valid alternative to psychiatry; today it is as
revolutionary as it was when they created it; in fact it is
still today not an established practice in the mental health
profession.
When the emotional distortion was ingrained in the or-
ganism over a longer period of time, you can regularly no-
tice a lock of both the emotional flow and the muscular
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 CHAPTER THREE

tissues of the body. It appears that mental health is first of

all characterized by the faculty to express ones emotions
more or less freely, and in accordance with set and setting;
this faculty of adaptation, which is a mental faculty, helps
us forge and change the environment in which we are liv-
ing in case our health situation requires it.
With so-called difficult children, this process of adap-
tation doesnt work smoothly; they are either overadapted or
they are rebellious and thus defy any adaptation. In such a
case, it is not necessary to discard the child out into psy-
chiatric care; instead, the educator can help the child learn
to express their feelings in a way that is not doing harm,
and, what is even more important, help the child under-
stand the positive dynamics of emotions, and the benefits
of expressing and communicating emotional needs.
The intellect of the child, the rational mind, can only
sanely unfold when their emotional life is balanced and
free from energetic blockages and anxieties. Our mental
faculties cannot be separated from our emotional life.
Modern education is fundamentally flawed when it over-
charges children with knowledge and trains the child only
intellectually. The robots that come out of such an educa-
tion will one day be our war marshals and global terrorists
in not too far a future! This is so because the education of
the heart, and the understanding of our emotional life and
our affects are by far superior, and more difficult to bring
about than the training of our mental faculties. And it is a
much greater challenge for the educator! Our feelings often

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 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

trigger projections that veil the educators objective view

of the childwith the result of prejudice coming in. Only
personal integrity and constant work on the inner mind, as
well as raising emotional awareness can help educators mas-
ter this challenge.
Children whose body, mind and emotions are in a
healthy state of balance will be intellectually brilliant, and
this naturally, without an intellectual training in the sense
of Montessori education being needed.
On the other hand, a child who was rendered a perfect
mental robot by intellect boosting will always remain an
emotional torso, and in the extreme case he or she will be
truly handicapped in their intimate life, or end up as sex-
ual psychopaths. This is ultimately what I have to reproach
against Montessori education; it bears a great danger.
To summarize, there is no alternative. Education must
begin with the childs body, pass through awareness build-
ing of their emotional life, to finally reach the mental level
and not vice versa.
Music plays an important role in our psychic composure.
Good music balances our mind and strengthens a sensitive
and open mind. Bad music drives the psyche into a state of
overexcitement; this state of mind is like a closed loop in
that it prevents us from accessing our center, the infinite in
us. A mind that is regularly bombarded with modern mu-
sic cannot be reached by educational wisdom because it
knows no silence, and there is no inner space of rest and
quiet contemplation. This in turn leads to shallow thought

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and lacking understanding of life and the world; such a

mind stays at the periphery of things and events.
The effect of music on the childs mind can be assessed
under two angles, actively and passively. We all suffer music
passively at certain places, in the caf, in the cinema, in the
supermarket, in department stores and nowadays also in
airports, post offices, public halls, and subway stations,
without even talking about nightclubs and discos where
loud aggressive music is considered to be a stimulant.
And yet, it seems that most people never bother about
how such music affects their psyche! I have been sensitive
since childhood to the impact of music on the mind and
have observed how music acts upon my body, and as some
of my bodily reactions were clearly alarming, my aware-
ness became acute as to the good and bad effects music has
on us. I namely registered as early as in adolescence that
disco music and generally modern 4-beat music results in
the following symptoms displayed by my organism:

restlessness;

incapacity to form clear thoughts;

strong sweating of hands and feet;

anxiety;

anger or even rage;

sudden claustrophobia.

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 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

Research on sound healing has shown that music di-

rectly affects our emotions, our mind, and our thoughts.

See, for example, Jonathan Goldman, Healing Sounds (2002),

Tantra of Sound (2005), and Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All
Ages (2003)

Actively, music plays a role in education in teaching

musical structure, and the notion of time, and how time
transforms emotional space; this was even a topic dear to
traditional education, at a time when score reading and
playing a musical instrument was still considered good
and useful for the education of children from well-to-do
families. But unfortunately in most countries today, this
positive and important tradition has been almost entirely
lost, except in costly private institutions for the education
of upper-class children.
The reason for this change to the worse is probably the
fact that children today only in rare cases have a piano,
cello or violin at their disposition, and most parents find
acoustic musical instruments bulky, noisy or too expen-
sive. As the house music tradition of the 19th century has
found its end, most parents do not see a value in sending
their child to musical classes. In addition, as television be-
came a replacement of parental care and instruction, what
we have here is clearly a major cultural deterioration that
shall have consequences on the general education level,
and the level of sensitiveness of our whole population.
To express it colloquially, the house and chamber music
tradition contributes to depth, sensitiveness and authentic-

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ity, while television contributes to shallowness, insensitiv-

ity and falseness.
Before I further comment on the importance of active
musical education, I would like to briefly discuss the pas-
sive influence of music upon our psychic composure. It has
been established by musicology and psychology that mu-
sic has a far greater impact upon our psyche and our emo-
tions than the general public is aware of; the effects of mu-
sic we passively endure in public places, are considerable,
serious and astounding, to say the least. From there to
mind manipulation really is only a tiny step, for subtle mes-
sages can easily be embedded in the musical carpet, even
without using subliminals; a sound clip can trigger emo-
tions, or keep certain emotions from unfolding.
Much research has been done on the effects of music in
strategic places such as major department stores, and it
was found that even without the use of subliminals, which
is legally forbidden in most modern jurisdictions, music
can have an effect on purchasing volume. It would lead too
far to explain the details here, but the fact as such is cor-
roborated by scientific research.
Music is actively used today in the media, in most pub-
lic places, in department stores and fashion boutiques for
influencing, and positively stimulating, the purchasing mo-
tivation of consumers. As most of this knowledge is hidden
to the public, and to be found only in specialized publica-
tions, available to a scientific audience and to marketing
bureaus and advertising agencies, the average consumer is

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hardly if ever aware of this sort of subtle manipulation

through sound carpets and fashionable music that serves
other than musical purposes.

Of course, professional media experts and advertising

agents know very well what I am talking about here; they
are fine psychologists, knowing that consumption is not a
natural drive in the human, but needs to be turned on, and
turned on again, to get the consumer buy products, and
buy them at still higher prices, and repeatedlyespecially
those products they dont really need. In the sound pro-
duction business, experts know what kind of music trig-
gers what kind of emotions, and which emotions are fa-
vorable for getting into money spending.

Also in films, the background music serves the purpose

to musically underline the emotions unfolding in the spec-
tator as the plot goes on, and this knowledge dates from
the first days of the mute cinema; it is instructive to listen
to old Charlie Chaplin movies and hear how the pianist
reflects the emotions on stage in his play. Music, in this
case, remains in a certain distance, and this distance is de-
liberate.
Scientific research on sound and memory has shown
that when two different sound stimuli impact upon our
psyche, our subconscious mind will register the underlying
stimulus or music, not the dominant one.
Dr. Georgi Lozanov, a psychiatrist from Bulgaria, has
positively used this specific characteristic of our brain to
design a revolutionary method for learning foreign lan-

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guages, originally called Suggestopedia, and today sold un-

der the brand name Superlearning.
Students are put in a relaxed state of mind, seated in
comfortable arm chairs, and listen to Baroque string music.
Over this musical carpet which is the dominant sound, the
teacher recites texts in the foreign language, as an underly-
ing sound, while the students are told not to listen to the
speech, but concentrate on the music, and breathe in the
rhythm of the music.
With this revolutionary method, people learn difficult
languages such as Arabic, Russian or Chinese without any
accent in two or three months. Lozanov used the technique
originally for teaching reading and writing to school chil-
dren and found that, in the regular case, a child would
learn to perfectly read and write in about six months only.
What happens is that the brain passively registers not
just the words of the foreign language, but whole patterns,
which include grammar, pronunciation, syntax and all that
is needed to speak and understand that language, and all
this without studying anything. The learning content is
first passive, and at the end of the course will be activated
through conversation in the foreign language.
There are no translations, there is no grammar to learn,
and there are no mistakes to make; the whole process is
smooth and no effort is needed for learning complex lan-
guages.
The key to fast learning is our subconscious mind, and
also our access, during self-hypnosis, to the universal li-
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brary of the collective unconscious where all grammars are

stored, and a lot more knowledge.
Now, what most people ignore is that we are involun-
tarily often times in a state of reverie which is similar to the
alpha state, the predominant wave length characteristic for
deep relaxation, hypnosis and self-hypnosis.
When we are poised and relaxed, we can slide quite
smoothly in the alpha state, often without being aware of
the change in our brain wave structure; it is in these mo-
ments that we are especially sensitive to input, and our
subconscious will easily absorb it and memorize it. Thus,
when you stroll in a quiet moment through a luxury de-
partment store, enjoying the sounds, perfumes and colors,
and when you are not in a hurry, and get into a relaxed state
of mind, the background music does have a marked impact
upon your mind, and you register, once you are aware of
these hidden connections, that you once of a sudden go to
buy something, while you came to the place just for looking
around.
What is interesting is that we rationalize such an expe-
rience instead of wondering why we suddenly discover we
need something that just a minute before did not even in
a dream hit our mind; we say, Oh yes, I forgot I need to
buy this, good I see it now, it reminds me that I need this.
While the truth is that if you really needed that thing, you
would have remembered it upon entering the place, and would
have directed yourself to find it, and buy it. But you didnt,
and were strolling around just for looking and that thing

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was hitting your mind. And when that happens, its not a
coincidence, for sure! Our whole consumer society runs on
creating needs, not just meeting existing needs, which it
also intends, but the peak of surplus profit it creates, it cre-
ates it not by fulfilling our latent needs for shelter, clothing,
food and transport, but by creating new, industrial and ar-
tificial needs.
Now, why did I tell you all of this? I told you because
responsible educators know these things and protect children
in certain ways from being brainwashed with publicity. For
you need to know that with children, the input received
through advertising in television and at public places is
even more indelibly carved in their subconscious minds as
this is the case with adults. It is for this reason that psy-
chologists advice parents to not let children sleep in front
of television.
And there is another reason. Research also found that
children naturally are more often in the alpha state, and
even the theta state, than this is the case with adults; thus
in these moments their minds are easily accessed by, and
imprinted with, outside stimuli. Hence, in those moments,
children are easily influenced and manipulated with pub-
licity. This fact is one of the main reasons why medical doc-
tors, psychologists and parent organizations increasingly
resort to activism and public awareness building against the
dangers of violence in our television programs. This is not
an exaggerated concern, because patterns of violence have
been assessed in children, in controlled research, after hav-

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ing watched a variety of programs, and it was found that the

most negative for the psyche of a child are violent anima-
tions, comics and cartoons in Disney style.

Educators who love the children they care for will do

all they can to protect them from such kind of negative and
dangerous conditioning to violence, and they have to find
a modus vivendi with their students to control their televi-
sion diet.

I know this is a rather hairy topic that triggers lots of

controversy, and media control surely is not a nice thing
to do, but there is no way to avoid these problems in a so-
ciety where children are bombarded by media input. Con-
trolling media input certainly strikes hard when children
are already addicted to daily media consumption, while
when this is not (yet) the case, its much less of a problem.
With media addicted children, simply curtailing down the
hours of media consumption is regularly felt as a brutal
measure and they react with withdrawal or outright rebel-
lion, some even with autistic symptoms.
So this doesnt really work. What works instead is to
offer alternatives, without negative judgments, because
judging only invokes resistance, and the child will attempt
to justify what they want to see. Its ineffective to tell
youngsters about the dangers of media consumption; most
of them intuitively know that anyway, but that doesnt
change a bit, and when you think about it, it cant change
anything, simply because a child doesnt have the control
mechanisms built in that an adult disposes of. They feel

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their addiction as a pleasure boost, of course, and that is

their primary sensory experience. Hence, this is not really
something you can discuss about with a child. They will
simply say I like that and what can you say against that
affirmation?
The best method for avoiding a child being endangered
by a certain kind of music or a certain kind of television or
movie program is to subtly divert the childs attention
from it, by offering alternatives, and not just fake alterna-
tives, but things you know the child will be enthusiastic to
do.
Why most parents and educators dont use this strat-
egy is that it involves time and effort. Its easier to let chil-
dren enjoy what they like and trust that because every-
body is doing it, it cant be that bad, after all. For example
when you know that the children in your class enjoy run-
ning outside in the rain, and you divert them from a vio-
lent television program with the suggestion to go out in
the rain and play, you are part of the game, and your get-
ting wet can hardly be avoided. That is the simple reason
why most educators and most parents dont do what they
know is right to do. They dont want to get wet, to ride the
bike in the hot sun, to go swimming in the cold water, to
take the car out of the garage for driving to the ice-skating
arena and so on and so forth. The power of television
would be none if we could offer children natural and sane
alternatives on a consistent basis.

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 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

I have had parents and educators in front of me who

did not find anything objectionable with the television con-
sumption of their children, but were fault-finding music
producers for the allegedly violent and obscene music
they are composing, prohibiting children and even adoles-
cents to join their friends in a rock concert, or in a disco. I
find that concern relatively artificial and nonsensical, to be
true, because for one, shared activities are always better for
the child than isolated home movie consumption, and for
two, the time children pass in such locations is relatively
limited. We are talking about two or three hours per week
here, or even less. But strangely enough, many child-
protecting thoughts are focused upon rather unimportant
matters, while the big issues remain untouched.
I have had parents and educators in front of me who
persisted that despite accidents already occurring, a certain
staircase or playground was still good enough, just for
avoiding a minor expenditure, until the big accident hap-
pened, and then it was argued that one should have
known before.
What I want to say is that a loving and caring educator
is always alert to protect children from things or activities
that are really harmful, while being permissive regarding
all others. It is the wisdom and experience of a good edu-
cator to know where the limits are, and how to distinguish
harmful from harmless activities, and to assess potential
danger. Any extreme taken when doing such an assess-
ment leads to either accidents that could have been

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avoided, or it renders the child anxious and withdrawn be-

cause of overprotection.
When I weigh the pro and con, and see it from my ex-
perience as an educator, I must say that overprotection is
worse than negligence, really! Nature has a certain protec-
tive attention built in, and with children, even when they
fall, and fall hard, the damage is always much less than
when it happens to an adult. And healing is much more
rapid. By contrast, the psychic damage done to a child that
is overprotected for many years is not to repair, a fact that
many adults know who have lived through such child-
hoods and later end up in psychotherapy. Once in therapy,
then, they cripple along for years without significant im-
provement, because they suffer from constant fear of life,
recurring panic attacks and an overall high anxiety level.
Now, regarding active musical education, what I ob-
served is that today its rather difficult to accompany a
child who is musically gifted, when the family is not musi-
cal and doesnt bother to build something like a musical
culture in their daily family life. Then, what happens, and
it happened to me, the child will quickly feel to be an out-
sider and a marginal freak within their family context.
That is why I think it is better, in such cases, to not push
children into active musical practice, without being assured of
the full collaboration of their parents, but instead showing
children the beauty of music by listening to good music,
and by doing that on a regular basis.

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 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

I am conscious of the fact that in this context, to talk

about sensibilizing children for musical input, as its often
put in educational forums, is a ridiculous concern because
natural children are anyway sensitive, and they are especially
sensitive to music. What educators have to do is to protect
this natural sensitivity of the child against a very insensi-
tive culture that systematically desensibilizes children and
adolescents, because, to put it colloquially, real feelings to-
day are no more in. What is in is toughness, and rude
manners, showing-off with big brand names in front of
the peer group, and faking a cool composure in all and
every situation.
What is that, being cool? Is it simply to be brutal and
insensitive, to be a nerd, to be bare of any compassion? Its
really not a positive value, but one our modern popular
culture is pervaded with; its insane, but most children do
not look through the veil of cultural lies and distortions,
and they just follow the trends. That means when you as
an educator stress sensitivity, you are actually swimming
against the stream, and you are doing something that is
ultimately not politically correct.
To repeat what I said in the Introduction, doing a sane
education in an insane society is truly a challenge. It re-
quires all our energy, all our commitment, all our dedica-
tion to truth and human progress, and it also requires con-
stant learning. We can do it only if we have a real passion for
education and the wellbeing of children, for if we do not
derive an intrinsic pleasure from it, we will not be ready to

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cash in all the frustrations that inevitably go along with

such a professional choice.
Without more, the profession of the educator is not a
place in the sun, and how much less in a society that works
counter to sane education, and to sane educators. Its a
struggle, but that struggle has a deep meaning for it con-
nects us with children. For a child, growing up is in most
cases not a nice experience, as many people wrongly be-
lieve.
This is even more true in the case of gifted children, and
its about those children I am talking in this chapter, for
ordinary children have very little interest to invest time
and energy over years and years for learning and master-
ing a musical instrument.
I learnt from experience that if children are not really
musically gifted, its a torture for them to learn playing an
instrument for, as we all know, musical performance re-
quires much sacrifice, consistency and a basic mastering of
stage fright and negative emotions in the form of recurring
frustration. Its only when the child experiences a genuine
enjoyment with music that they will build the endurance to
master a musical instrument with all that this entails over
long periods of time.

When the talent is there, the child doesnt need to be

much encouraged, as genius has a built-in ability for real-
izing itself. Another essential benefit that comes with
studying music is that children learn musical logic which
is pure cosmic logic comparable to mathematical logic, and

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the childs mind will gain in clarity and clear communica-

tion ability.
In my long years of experience with musical perform-
ance and composition, and having met many musicians in
my life, I can affirm that among all possible people from all
possible cultures I met in my life, musicians are by far the
clearest, most intelligent and most wistful people I met,
and also the most harmonious people. Their emotional life
is balanced.
And my experience here certainly is not singular, it is
not a subjective impression; for example, among writers,
you do not have the same psychic setup. Writers tend to be
much more conflictual in their daily life, in their communi-
cations, and often much less clear, less simple and more
convoluted, and much less harmonious!
With painters, there is harmony, but also egocentrism,
while I have seldom met musicians who really were ego-
centric; if so, they were bad musicians. I found great musi-
cians always really open-minded and harmonious in social
exchange, while focused and often serious in their overall
attitude, but always open for sharing and for social ex-
change. This is generally less the case with writers who
tend to be much more introvert, as a general rule.

There is another benefit for children who learn a musi-

cal instrument; they become more humble because they
learn that all great mastery is to be paid with sweat and
tears. While genius certainly is inborn, it needs to be de-
veloped through mastery, and self-expression, and a lot of

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persistence! This explains why children who perform early

in life, and so much the more when they are prodigies, are
more disciplined, more mature and more sensitive than the
average child. They also tend to be more responsible in
their daily dealings with others, and they understand oth-
ers better than ordinary children.
By contrast, a child who only plays all day long and
was never exposed to the harsh sides of life, who has not
learnt self-discipline for mastering an instrument, a sport,
a computer, or anything else of value, will never attain the
brilliance and elegance of children who are on their way to
genius. In most cases, those masses of children remain me-
diocre consumers who regard life as a residual concept, or
a set of standard behaviors, without penetrating into the
depth of life and soul, and without participating in the
cosmic drama of living. That is why learning a musical in-
strument and getting involved in musical performance as a
long-term endeavor is one of the greatest and most intelli-
gent ways of achieving to become a complete human.
I have actually found that many ordinary children, and
many neurotic and hyperactive children have artistic tal-
ent, but the problem is that they are too restless, and too
shallow for doing anything in a consistent manner. It is not
enough that a child be gifted for music or arts if parents
are indifferent to their uniqueness, and if the children them-
selves came to value icecream and television more than
learning. In such a case the precious essence of innocence
is lost forever.

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 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

I came to believe, over the years, that the signal for

genius is more of revolt, than of adaptation. Children who
easily adapt to the status quo and who go along with all
kind of adverse conditioning, without voicing their needs
for one time, will later in life often become depressive. For
depression really is nothing else than the inability to ex-
press oneself, ones deepest will and ones emotions!
Albert Einstein is a vivid example that comes to mind,
as it shows that somebody who loves music and was a bril-
liant violinist doesnt need to make a musical career. But
the genius Einstein is unthinkable without the genial mu-
sician in the physicist, and the genial freak in the musician.
That is the secret of genius, its not one-sidedness, but a
cosmic inner setup that somehow embraces the whole of
creation in one flash of insight that lasts a lifetime!
Einstein, as it is notorious, revolted against everything,
before he ever started to learn anything. He did never fi-
nalize school nor university, and simply escaped those in-
stitutions, to a point to break with his parents and go on
his own when he was barely sixteen years old.

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 Chapter Four
Individual Child vs. Group

In the hippie communes back in the 1960s and 70s,

group life played a major part in the social reorientation of
society. The same was the case, and still is today, in Israel
with the kibbutzim. By those who are living in that kind of
communes, the commune lifestyle is judged superior to the
modern family. However, I suggest to think these solutions
through for our present time before blindly adopting them.
While the modern nuclear family clearly has pitfalls, those
concepts, too, are not ideal, basically because they lack out
on essential space for privacy and tend to be open style
all the time, and that, I find it unbearable for adults and
children who are the introvert types, such as myself, and
who need a well-defined private space.
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

It is obvious that the nuclear family structure in most

high-tech countries can easily turn out to be a trap for sen-
sitive children because of the danger of parent-child co-
dependence that I commented upon earlier in this book. In
addition, childrens lack of exposure to adults other than their
parents can lead to anxiety and a claustrophobic attitude
that later may manifest as agoraphobia and asocial behav-
ior.

It is known that children from extended family struc-

tures in Africa or South America bond and socialize with
much more ease than the typical Western child, and this is
not because of ethnic or racial differences, but a direct out-
come of the structure of the family. I would personally say
that till today, an alternative to the extended family has not
been found, and communes are not really a viable alterna-
tive to it because they tend to be too public in their over-
all attitude, which is fine for extravert children, but not for
those who are by their nature shy, withdrawn, dreamy, si-
lent, and introvert.
The good thing about communes is that children are
parented not only by their physical parents but, similar to
the extended family model, receive care and affection also
from other adults within the community, and thus their
relations with their parents are less exclusive and fusional
and the danger of covert incest is minimized.
Children growing in communes are also found to be
more open to new experiences, very little shy or timid, but

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having a healthy portion of self-confidence and outgoing-

ness, and an equal portion of tolerance.
But as briefly mentioned already, communes also have
their disadvantages. In a totally open space, where all is
transparent and known to all, how to have your little cor-
ner, and keep your little secrets? It seems to me that this is
something essential for children to have, and if they dont
have it, they cannot build identity, and their soul becomes
what is colloquially called a group soul.
I have known children, most of the time in Asia, who
grow up that way, who never had anything of their own in
their homes: they have virtually no identity, and there is
nothing original about them. They imitate all they see and
find cool what most others find cool; they are always
anxious to comply with what is expected, which results in
their being generally fearful and murky, and often dishon-
est. They tend to hide what they think, always suspicious
to lose an advantage; to make it short, they are lacking the
basic virtues of free children, which are spontaneity, open-
mindedness and freshness.
They are old in their overall appearance, and they are
very little creative when doing art activities. They seem to
have no fantasy realm, and that is not surprising, as they
never had an outer space of their own.
It seems that inner space and outer space are mirrored
in life; when a child is not granted an outer space of his or
her own, they cannot build the essential inner space we
need for individuation and for creativity. I also found these

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children sad, while they tend to smile all the time, but that
smile only hides their inner despair and hopeless vision of
the future.

Now, regarding communes, what I have seen of it was

rather disappointing me when looking for a standard that
could viably replace the nuclear family in the future. This
is especially true for the kibbutzim in Israel, that I studied a
little as I was first enthusiastic about them. But my enthu-
siasm quickly vanished when I got to hear the details of
daily life in a kibbutz, and the philosophy behind this in-
stitution. There is virtually no corner for anybody, child or
adult, as all space is shared, without exception. And this is
deliberately set that way, as a matter of conceptual setup.

From the interviews I got to hear of people who either

are parents in various kibbutzim, or run those institutions,
I had the impression that they are obsessed by the idea of
parent-child incest; in fact it was argued that the main rea-
son for group life is to prevent incest by diverting parents
and children from virtually any kind of intimacy other then
sitting on the lap and getting a tap on their shoulder and a
good word. You have to see that! Parents sleep in special
dorms and children sleep in special dorms, never together.
And the dorms where the kids sleep are supervised
and monitored around the clock by specially trained psy-
chologists who hold actually police functions!
Frankly, I was shocked when I got to know the details.
And the journalist who did the reportage was asking the
most pertinent question, that I myself would have asked.

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He said: And, what about childrens little corner, where

do they store the little stones they find, and the little snails
and bugs, and where do they put their handkerchief and
their crayons when they come to the dorm? The answer was
clear and hard. They have to give all and everything to the
dorm supervisor who would put the items in numbered
lockers.
Not unlike the military, I thought. Can you imagine to
inflict that onto your child? Then, the next question was
what would happen when a child is sick, if the parents
could come and see the child in the dorm? The answer was
yes, but never alone, that all their dealings with their child
had to be transparent and that they could sit next to the
childs bed, but could not take the child to their flat.
The last question was from what age separation be-
tween parents and children for the nightly hours was be-
ing implemented, and the answer was equally clear and
hard. When the child turned three, the regimen had to be
adopted that way, was the answer, while before that time,
the child was considered a baby and would have to stay
with the mother.
I was scandalized by the whole idea, to be true. I think
the interviewer, just like myself, skipped the rest of the
questions, for there was not one word in the whole report-
age about possible intimate relations of the children with
each other. I am sure its about the greatest sin they can think
of. For, if not, why would they tightly supervise the chil-
dren at night? So is that, then, the progress we are eagerly

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waiting for, when we think the nuclear family is a trap?

My answer is the kibbutz is a bigger trap, then, and I sug-
gest we stay where we are, if we cant find better alterna-
tives!
Apart from these general observations, all depends on
those who run educational institutions, as the late psychia-
trist Alexander Lowen wrote me once in a letter. Educa-
tional concepts are nice things, and they are sounding al-
ways very nice and progressiveand then you look at re-
ality!
Let me report my impression of Montessori schools I
visited in three different countries. What they did, frankly,
was absurd, a completely distorted wash-down of the revo-
lutionary ideas of the founder of that concept, Maria Mon-
tessori. They were rather putting the concept upside-down in
their daily running of the school, and how they dealt with
the children. What I witnessed was a brutal authoritarian
approach of training children intellectually by the use of
sophisticated puzzles and other devices, while, in one school,
a portable stereo on maximum volume yelled a Beethoven
symphony in the hall.
In all three schools, there was as good as no social ac-
tivity or anything of that kind where children would share
in something they did together; it was the total ego-trip,
every child focusing on their monstrous games for intellect
boosting, until the pause was belled. Then every child si-
lently took out the lunchbox and eat their little bread,
without talking with the child sitting next to him or her,

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while the educator was shouting at them they shouldnt

forget to go to the toilet, but only one by one, and never to-
gether, for doing their little business before the pause ends.

It was a horrible experience and for each of these

schools I had to get a special permission for visit that took
about one week to file out, and that was stamped like an
immigration document, and where in capital letters was
marked that it was strictly prohibited to talk with the
children, take any notes, or do any audio or video record-
ing as that would violate the trademark of the Montessori
educational system. I thought I got an admission to visit a
secret bunker of the US Air Force, and was sitting in fright
through the about 15 minutes of each visit, anxious I could
do something wrong and was admonished and thrown out
as an intruder.
None of the educators of all three schools addressed
speech to me or told me anything about the school or the
children, except one apologized for doing so, saying it
would be against the privacy rules of the Montessori
educational system. Frankly, I think these people are sim-
ply paranoid and I would never give my child there.
Visits I did in so-called Waldorf Schools, created by the
Austrian anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner were different
from Montessori in that I realized that there was admit-
tedly no intellectual training inflicted upon the children,
but they were as authoritarian and emotion-hostile as the
Montessori schools I had previously visited.

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 Chapter Five
Get the Focus Right

Learning languages is important in life, we all know

that. Languages are useful. Speaking different languages
helps to communicate with people from different cultures,
and greatly enhances our understanding of peoples and
the world as a whole.
When I see that the human is basically the same every-
where, despite all our cultural and national differences, I
become myself more human.
Languages are indispensable when you want to look
over the fence of your own culture, when you want to get
out of the usual nation-based conditioning that is inflicted
upon children everywhere in the world. Suffices to watch
the daily news in three different countries, just by switch-
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

ing the channels of your cable television, and you will see,
perhaps with some surprise, that every country focuses
upon news of their own nation and regarding their own
people, and there is not even ten percent to be seen that
could be called international news; and when interna-
tional news are reported, they are reported only because they
have any kind of link with the nation; if not, they are simply
left out.

If young people are to be educated internationally, they

have to learn several languages, and they have to earn
enough money to have the funds for moving freely and
working in foreign countries, for that is the only way to
really learn a foreign culture. Having lived for more than
ten years in South-East Asia, I know that speaking English
is a very real factor for social progress of any kind. When you
speak English fluently, in Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia
or Malaysia, you can easily get a job in import-export or in
the flourishing tourism business. Without speaking Eng-
lish, what you can do in these countries professionally is
low class work that is paid less than about hundred dollars
per month, such as cleaning work, taxi driving, begging or
prostitution, or hard work in the rice fields, which earns
about ten dollar cent per hour, less than thirty dollars a
month.
And yet, for example, in an international metropole
such as Bangkok, most taxi drivers speak only a rudimen-
tary English, despite the fact that they could earn substan-
tially more, once being fluent in English, and working for a

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limousine service. Why are they not eager to change, ex-

cept a few, simply by upgrading their English? The reason
is that its not that simple.

Upgrading your English implies many things in these

cultures, nothing less than building a vision, stopping nega-
tive and destructive self-talk, setting out to lead a different
life, changing your attitude, and saving some money to pay
the language school.

I know many stories and heard that in many a case, it

was a foreigner who befriended a local taxi driver, waiter
or maid, and who became the support agent the person
needed to do the major change. This support, I saw, didnt
just consist in giving the funds for the language school
fees, but is of a more general nature; it provides some sort
of encouragement, and some backup in case the prospering
local is attacked by his or her local friends because of out-
right jealousy.
And there is another factor that is often overlooked. We
are living in the information age which is a communication
age; better communicators are rewarded in our times much
more than at any time before in human history.
However, our schools have not yet caught up with this
new trend; in most schools, what you learn is to duck
down and keep silent, to become non-communicative. This
is especially disadvantageous for introvert males who are
shy and passive, as they are often taken as suspicious or
hostile, while with females, shyness or introversion is often
interpreted as decency.

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Hence, what these males have to learn is not just Eng-

lish, but open and fearless communication. This, then, re-
quires an almost total change of attitude, and that is really
something not easy to bring about without a personal tutor
at your side.
Even if the school system is modern and child-focused,
when the subject matters to be taught are all fragmented,
disregarding our right-brain capacities and our creativity,
do what you will, people coming out from such institu-
tions are barely communicative; they may have learnt to
study hard and to concentrate, and to memorize facts; they
may have learnt good behavior and manners, they may
be polite and tactful, but that doesnt help much if they
dont know to start a conversation, to cold-call customers
without fright, to hold a speech in front of an audience, to
give a charming presentation in a meeting or to bond with
potential associates.
Such basic human skills are simply not taught in our
traditional schools, and to a minor extent in top-notch in-
ternational schools! Mastering open and fearless commu-
nication goes a long way later in your life, especially in
case you did not have the chance to learn it in early child-
hood. I know this so well because I myself did not learn it
early in life and was suffering from extreme timidity all
my younger years through, to a point of having been a so-
cial inept. I could learn it to a certain extent later on, but
when I compare myself with our great natural communica-

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tors, I am still too much in my shell, while I have trained

myself to speak freely in front of an audience.
And as to the usefulness of knowledge learnt in school,
I know many cases, including myself, that show that only
a tiny percentage of what was learnt can later be used in
life. I have a friend in Germany who is a mathematician
and when he began to study mathematics at university, his
professors told him to forget, as completely as possible, all
he had learnt about mathematics in high school.
This and many other examples show that our tradi-
tional school systems have very little value to educate our
children for global culture because they have not followed
up to our moving into a real network society where com-
munication and language abilities are primed, and where
any kind of science knowledge is rendered obsolete within
five years or less, as a result our swindling technological
progress.
Yet our school systems, a bit around the world, are still
stuck in the setup of the 19th century bourgeoisie, while
they may today be equipped with computers and educa-
tional games. But the basic philosophy has not changed, and
that is why most of the curricula are simply superseded
and ineffective.

And here I do not even talk about subjects like systems

theory, quantum physics or complexity research that ur-
gently need to be embraced by our school curricula be-
cause they have to do with how we deal with perceiving
the world or reality in our times of change!

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The hidden reason why our educational authorities are

so reluctant to embrace these topics may be that by doing
so, they would have to change their whole educational philoso-
phy, and this is a task that needs political backup or even a
change of administrative laws. This is probably the reason
why all is stuck and very little is moving forward in mat-
ters of education; the other main reason for this stagnation
is that educational budgets are curtailed down almost
every year, while military budgets are raised.
Language and communication training should be put
first on the list in any reform of school curricula on every
level of the educational ladder, and creative activities such
as painting, design, dance, theater and creative writing
should equally score high on the list because they foster
self-expression and the deployment of our talents and help
us to communicate socially.
Science knowledge is much less important because its
so quickly superseded by new technologies and insights,
and can be learnt on the spot later on, for a specific job or
mission. Our old idea of general knowledge cannot be
reasonably maintained because the amount of knowledge
today is so immense that no human being can ever even
remotely attempt to embrace it. This was certainly different
two hundred fifty years ago, at the time of the Enlighten-
ment when a man like Denis Diderot could write an ency-
clopedia that embraced about the integrality of the knowl-
edge of that time.

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An extremist educational approach that tries to exclude

technology is as wrong as one that puts all its hope in
modern information technology. We certainly need com-
puters as a creative tool and we need to use them wisely;
this is what we have to tell children. I think especially to-
day, where technology is part of the network technology
we are using to interconnect the world, any kind of escap-
ist approach that tries to put on stage Rousseaus back to
nature is an illusion and doesnt work in practice. And
more importantly, its not useful to the children we educate;
they need to grow into the world, not out of the world, and
this by dealing wistfully with all they got, including hyper-
technology.

I know that many high-class parents love the idea of

the new age school around the corner where children are
invited to eat vegetarian dishes and play with wooden
toys, where there is no television and no computers, and
where they are informed about the dangers of modern
life. Parent meetings are of course held in a room lit with
candlelight because its depriving children in poor coun-
tries of resources to use too much of electricity. I honor
simplicity, but driving education toward extremism really
is not useful. We do not need extremism to give our chil-
dren a sane education; extremism, any kind of it, sorry, is
as insane as patriarchal hubriseven if its all very decent,
smart and natural. Our offices do not run on candlelight,
and childrens naturalness is not really a factor for em-
ployment when they dont know how to handle a com-

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puter. What extremism does is to distort childrens innate

common sense. Have you ever seen an extremist child?
Yes, of course, when they imitate their parents who are
members of the communist party and therefore eat only
red food, breathe only red air, wear only red clothes and
think only red thoughts! But not a natural child. Never.
Children are amazingly balanced, they do not reject
anything, they use technology when its useful and when
its fun to use it. And that, after all, is a good and produc-
tive attitude. Every artist, every intellectual has the same
attitude, except they have sworn revenge against society
because they project all their personal hangups upon the
meta group.

Good education is not one that excludes things, is not

one that renders things, thoughts, feelings or behavior ta-
boo, but one that embraces all, while teaching, on a daily
basis and a little step at a time, the wisdom to use all weve
got.

Television contains many good and useful programs,

information about technology, about cultural events, about
great people, about cultures you will perhaps never visit in
your life because of the harsh climate that reigns over
there, or because of places too remote for visiting without
incurring great discomfort. And there is footage useful for
children because not it is not targeting children. I believe that
children instinctively are preferring serious information
over information baked, cooked and spiced for children;

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they do not like to be addressed as children but simply as

spectators, alongside adult spectators.
And honestly, I cant see how stupid, senseless, violent
and frivolous cartoons should be in any way educational
or good for children? They are money-making devices,
thats all, they are a global business in the hands of a few
powerful corporations. Thats all there is to know about
that.

With television, all is choice; when there is choice, tele-

vision is a good thing, when there is no choice, television is
a bad thing; its as simple as that. The more consciousness-
based your education is and the less authoritarian, the bet-
ter for your childrens choice ability. For to make choice
has to be learnt as well, its not put in our cradle. To make
good choices in life is according to the I Ching the real crux
in life and where ordinary people and sages most differ in
their attitudes and capabilities. The Book of Changes defines
a sage to be a person who knows to make good, sane and
beneficial choices for themselves and those they care for,
while ordinary people tend to make bad or wrong choices,
which bring decay, and destruction, loss and failure.
Often we do not know for sure if a certain choice is
good and not, as we do not know all implications of our deci-
sions; however, somebody with a truly spiritual vision of
life and lots of experience knows these mostly invisible
factors and therefore can make good and viable choices.
Now, when you see how difficult it is already for us
other adults to make good choices, how difficult must it be

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for young and inexperienced children! To say, its one of

the most important topics actually in education to assist
children in gradually developing a sane choice ability.

This requires two things from educators that both must

be present simultaneously; the first is that the educator
leads himself or herself a life where the basic choices are
right and sane, and remembered with a certain gratitude,
and second, that the educator has enough patience with
childrens making lots of wrong choices at first; for if you
dont let them make wrong choices, choices that hurt, how
do you think they are going to make right choices later on?
Or are one of those who choose for children, while pre-
tending it was the childs choice? That, excuse me, simply
is dishonest. Once you discover that, you will understand
that being an educator is challenging because children
tend to mirror your bad qualities; then may begin to ques-
tion yourself.
Mediocre educators often get angry in these moments,
and that is how they differ from those passionate educa-
tors who are really gifted for their work. Good educators
react by momentarily cheering up but subsequently ques-
tioning if there is in their behavior any residue of self-pity,
of pride or of arrogance?

When you practice this approach, that I have practiced

all along my working with children over about ten years, it
can serve you to make a personal evolution that will not be
a minor one.

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And it will rejuvenate you and lift you up from any

depression you may be stuck in; in addition, you will make
real discoveries about yourself.

Children are real mirrors for us; they very easily tear
our clothes down, to contemplate us naked, some of them
even do it physically, but all of them do it metaphorically. I
would say that in your quality of an educator, this is about
the best you can experience in your daily life with the chil-
dren in your care, for it will purify your relation with your-
self, and your relation with the child, of all hypocrisy and
of all fear.
When you can develop a sense of humor in your daily
dealings with children, your task as an educator will feel
so much lighter, so much more joyful and smooth, and
once you are at this point, you wont want to go back to
your all-serious attitude that you may have carried from
the time of your professional training.
Children to a certain extent mirror your nature, thereby
building their character by integrating what they admire in
your into their own nature.
Nature, and natural life, has undoubtedly a special at-
traction for children; while its also healthy and good for
adults to be outdoors and enjoy nature, the importance
natural life has for children cannot be overestimated.
I have found that disturbed and difficult children
calm down and improve spontaneously after having spent
a few hours in open air, enjoying the wind and the sun,
and moving their bodies as much as they can.
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It is strange to see how little this simple fact is known

among educators, and especially among specialized educa-
tors. They often believe in their technologies, their healing
methods, their machinery for lifting handicapped children
in huge water basins, their health food and their profes-
sional expertise.
But most of the time, these children are kept in a prison-
like existence, indoors most of the day, and afar from the
adventures that a rough climate can offer; a simple rain, a
thunderstorm, snow and ice, a walk at the river side, walk-
ing through mud, running over beach sand, picking some
flowers at the roadsideall these activities, which most
adults take for granted without seeing their dimension for
the child, have healing qualities. Nature heals.
Its as simple as that. Nature widens inner space, and it
unwinds inner knots, it heals emotional stress, and it lets
us breathe deeply, which by itself already is a powerful
trigger for healing.

In addition, it has to be seen that contrary to many

adults, children are indiscriminating regarding the weather
conditions; they take nature as it is and derive joy from
any kind of weather, and the educator should learn doing
the same. I remember I always complained about rain, but
once I was working with children and had to go for walks
with them, my aversion against rain quickly vanished
when I saw them hipping and hopping through the water
pouring down, more noisy and more joyful than ever, as if
rain had a magic quality to lift children up. Its really won-

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drous to me why children enjoy rain so much. In South-

East Asia where I am living since several years, there are
very heavy rains during the rain season and that means
tons of water pouring down in about half an hour. As there
is as good as no drainage in the streets, children simply
run around naked, wading through the water that quickly
comes up and floods houses, shops and public buildings in
less than an hour. When you see the locals, they seem to
enjoy natures abundance in just the same way, men,
clothed with just an underwear, carrying stuff out of the
house and taking it to a dry place, women taking down the
laundry that is soaked in water, and elders standing in
front of their houses, patiently waiting, with smiling faces,
contemplating the naked kids playing with empty coke
bottles, cigarette boxes and all the rest of a layer of garbage
that happily floats on the water.
Needless to add that I was never setting a foot out of
my house and could not understand that these people
could enjoy water so much. However, I remember that as a
child I enjoyed rain very much and from my mother and
grandmother I heard they enjoyed rain more than anything
when they were little girls. It must have to do with the
magic quality of water, for children experience the same
joy when they come to the beach and look over the ocean,
or take a ride on a boat. They are just crazy for it, and I
have never met a child who was not enjoying an excursion
to the seaside, or to a lake. Besides, the high ionization,
and the salt-contained air near the ocean is of course very

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beneficial for childrens health, as it purifies our bronchial

system, and recharges our vital batteries.
Generally, the ocean has a strong metaphorical quality;
it is associated in the subconscious with the matrix, and the
eternal feminine, with the cosmic flow, and with sexuality.
Children love to search for shells and snails that symbolize
their intimate parts, and they are obviously reassured of
their sexual identity by so doing. I have always observed
that children gain incredibly in expressiveness when close
to the sea, that they are exuberant and full of joy, ener-
gized, and that even when they come from dim or abusive
home conditions, at the seaside they can really forget their
sad milieu for a few hours, and relax.

The intrinsic value of the ocean and generally of wild

untouched nature for children is that they can exhibit their
full desire for discovery, for the expansion of the known.
Children are much less scared of the new, the unknown,
than most adults; that is why they are generally more cou-
rageous than adults. When they explore something, be it
the nature around them, be it the nature within them, they
want to go as far as their courage reaches. They may not go
through, but when they dont, that should be within their
own discretion, not the discretion of the educator.

Of course, when there is danger involved, for example

children playing in the shallow waters when the tide is
coming up, there is no question they have to be gently
called for return, but generally when children explore they
should be left alone. Sometimes its good to say something

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funny, as humor generally expresses permissiveness re-

garding sensible matters such as sexual curiosity, but in
general, the principle is non-interference. When an educator
is invited to join in childrens intimate games, which hap-
pens more often than not, the situation can get out of hand if
the educator is not mentally and emotionally prepared for
it. The appropriate response in such cases is gentle refusal,
that may be uttered as a half-joke, but not a joke that sounds
like ridiculing the child.
And it goes without saying that punishment in such
situations is the ultimate insanity, and has to be discarded
out from the start when the school is setup. To punish a
child for pleasure, pleasure seeking or exchanging pleasure
is pure sadism, and its pretty much a criminal behavior in
my opinion. It should be legally prohibited. When children
are excited and seek to exchange caresses and erotic favors,
nobody, not even the state, has a right to interfere let alone
punish them for it! If governments do that nonetheless,
they have to be dismissed by the vote of responsible citi-
zens, parents and educators. We cannot raise children
without sexual pathologies if we distort their psychosexual
growth through denial and violent interference.
Permissiveness is not a fashion, not a trend, and not a
new age invention, but a necessity when dealing with
children. Or we can as well throw out our constitutions
and return to political anarchy and chaos, for what gov-
ernments do with such behavior is to raise perverts, not
sane citizens, and when that happens, in my view, educa-

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tors should openly and explicitly boycott such laws, meas-

ures and regulations, and lobby for a change.
Now, let me say a word about violence. There is no
doubt that children, just like adults, are violent at times.
Children are afraid of violence but that doesnt exclude
their being violent themselves once in a while. We have to
be careful to not put up an idealistic scheme that posits a
should-be reality, saying that well, children may be violent,
but they should not be violent. This leads straight to the
result that children are punished every time they are vio-
lent, thus meeting violence with violence.
I think I can spare a comment. You wont fight disease
by making the body sicker; you do it by making it more
healthy. Violence cannot be fought by violence. The trigger
of this insanity is the premise that splits life in what is
and what should be; putting up ideals is insane. Ideals are
projections, at best, wishful thinking. Let me sort out the
mess.

When children are violent, there are reasons why they are
violent; they may have learnt violence from their parents,
or their educators, or they may be stuck in an emotional im-
passe that came about through repressing certain emotions.
Or they may have pent-up negative feelings toward specific
other children in school, and these children, in turn may
harbor similarly negative feelings against them. When you
see this variety of possible factors in the etiology of vio-
lence, in one single case, you are becoming perhaps aware
that to find a way out of the violence trap is not a simplis-

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tic matter. Its not done by punishing violent behavior; ac-

tually punishment often just is laziness; its so easy to hit
when you are too lazy to find out whats really going on.
Thats why punishing children not only has negative ef-
fects in the childrens psyche, but also in the punishers
psyche. It will gradually get him or her at the border of
insanity because by regularly hitting children, you are rein-
forcing your inner shadow.

This is so because every time when you hit a child, you

actually hit your own inner child. You simply accumulate
guilt and shame! You are making yourself down in front of
yourself. Of course, in most cases educators are not con-
scious of these implications when they hit a child; they
may get nightmares once in a while, they may be shielded
even against their dream self. They may have repercus-
sions in their private life, in own partner relation, with
their own children.
Violence against children is not something the creator
especially likes, nor is it something practiced by any ani-
mal race. Its a perversity, if you ask me. And its a signal
for me that a particular educator is not up to his or her
task, and has unresolved issues; its also a signal that an
educator isnt really self-aware and thus cant be tolerated in
the consciousness-based educational setting. In most cases that
I myself observed, I found that educators who hit are de-
pressed, for one, and entangled, for two. I found invariably
a strong codependence issue in their lives, typically with a
parent, that was carried through to adulthood and is pro-

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jected upon children. The depression then is the reaction of

the biosystem to the repression of the violent impulses that
are invariably triggered by the fusional rage.

When educators project unresolved issues on children

they care for, they will unconsciously free the violent im-
pulse that got turned into the depression response (which
is a psychic cover-up triggered by the thought I ought not
be violent), and release it on the body of the child. This is
how violent behavior can be explained in most cases, while
there are other cases that are more complex, of course. I
elucidated the typical case, and for the purposes of this
guide, that may suffice.
As this book cannot cover all the practical aspects of
teacher training, I cant really treat all the details of the
problem here. But when educators accept basic awareness
building, when they agree with the idea they have to build
emotional awareness, they are able, in most cases, to solve
the hangup by themselves and change their behavior ac-
cordingly.
Now let me get back to our focus on the child, for this
is the primary focus I would like to uphold in this guide.
Let us look at the child, when they are violent. What are
they saying when they hit another child? Do they not say I am
confused, I need help? Do they not say I need to handle
my emotions? Do they not say Sorry, I havent learnt to
cope with my hot energies, I just let them explode? I think
this is what their body language and their face mimicking
conveys in these moments, when they hit and sweat, and

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shout. And have you observed those who get hit, or hit
back, when they fall down, how quickly, how energetically
they jump up again? I think its important to realize that
violence, when its exchanged between children, doesnt
lead to depression but to energizing the other organism. And
now look at the Gestalt of a scene where you see an educa-
tor hit a child and the child falls down from the force of the
blow.

Have you ever seen that? If you have seen it, you know
the child will not jump up energetically, but remain a mo-
ment in that position; in most cases the child will take a
fetal position, and cry. The Gestalt shows depression, and
humiliation.

So, this may suffice to render you aware of the essential

difference of children being violent with peers, on one
hand, and adults being violent against children, on the
other.
You do not need to agree with me, I may be too black-
and-white in this matter, its well possible. But I think the
principle is correct that children tend to react differently
when receiving a violent response from an adult they have
been bonding with, and whom they may love, compared
to receiving a blow from a peer boy or girl.

In the first alternative, a real inner damage may have

been caused, that in some cases even cannot be repaired, at
least not in that specific educational relationship. It may be
healed later on in another educational relationship, where
again bonding occurs and where again the child falls in

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love with the educator, but where the violent response did
not take place. Or it may happen with a parent who finds
out about the problem and reacts appropriately, or with a
child psychologist.
In the second alternative, there may be anger against the
violent child, but there is hardly depression let alone hu-
miliation. (The latter may well be the case when the vio-
lence was inflicted upon the child by an adolescent the
child looks up to). Anger is always temporary, depression
is longer-lasting than anger, but humiliation is not time-
bound and will endure on the level of the unconscious. It
will be repressed and projected, thus the child who has
been humiliated will later try to humiliate other, often
smaller, children.
As a general rule, to open the way for understanding
children who are violent at times, who are mad at times,
who are out of their mind sometimes, any kind of morality
scheme is to be discarded. This is the starting point. With
any kind of ideology in the back of your head, be it relig-
ious or political, you wont be able to see whats really go-
ing on because your perception will be veiled and dis-
torted by your belief system. To get there entails already
some work you should have done prior to begin working
with children; it should be part of your professional educa-
tion and is in some countries. In France, for example, the
national constitution bans all and every religious tint in the
whole of the school system; there must not be crosses on
the walls, and Muslim girls cant wear their traditional hi-

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jab. In other words, a functional approach should be taken

in all matters educational.
When the mind is calm, and there is inner peace, the
educator bears a non-judgmental look upon the child.
Children at times may not only be violent, they may
also know streaks of perverse behavior. They may put their
feces in the bath water, for example, which is considered
by psychoanalysts as a typical case of perverse behavior with
small children. The response should never be violent. The
child simply is told that its against the culture to put ones
feces in the bath water. Thats all, and that suffices in most
cases to change the childs behavior accordingly.
Another behavior I frequently observed with children,
when they are excited and fighting, is that one boy is going
to sit on the face of another, weaker boy, or a girl, to let out
a flatulence. While in most cases the audience laughs in
such a situation, there is nothing to laugh about because
such behavior really is dangerous. It may suffocate the child
underneath, or even break their neck, when the movement
was done harshly.
Now, how to react when you face that as an educator?
It occurred to me in a free school project; the situation in
that school was particularly dramatic because there were
two boys who were stronger than the rest of the group and
who tried to make the law; usually they would fight with
each other and try out all the perversities they would sub-
sequently inflict upon the smaller boys, and the girls. I was
alarmed when they targeted a girl from a different culture,

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and became hyper-violent with her, to a point to massacre

her with their fists and kicking her in the belly. The female
educator who used to work with them since quite a time
was escaping in the kitchen, to wash the dishes, and I re-
proached to her that she was really irresponsible, and got
the boys off that girl, but it was not a minor task, as they
began fighting me instead. I could handle the situation and
after some serious talk, they did not attack that girl again. I
was matter-of-fact with them. When they were were hit-
ting me, I was not hitting back, but tried to catch up their
blows before they hurt me. When they jumped on me from
the beds, I was gently letting them down on the floor. After
some time, they were so hot and sweaty that they gave up.
Then I let them sit down for talk. I simply said:
When you sit on the face of somebody you may ac-
cidentally suffocate them or break their neck.
They didnt seem to understand right away what that
implied. One asked, flabbergasted:

Do you mean that the girl would be dead later ?

And I replied:
It may end up like that, in the worst scenario.
There was no answer. And they never did it again.
Another detail is important in this context. As in this
school the general approach to education was liberal, as
the whole institution was created by well-to-do local fami-
lies who were quite fed up with the repressive school sys-
tem in that country, I was discussing the matter of violence

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with the principle, a nurse. I told her the behavior of the

boys toward the girls may betray sexual tension, and it
was perhaps better to have them engage in sexual games
instead of being violent to each other, which was, after all a
perverse behavior. She agreed and replied that the parents
never had the idea to forbid the children to engage in their
little sex games on the toilet. I replied I had never noticed
anything of that kind, and was pretty sure there was noth-
ing going on in this respect. Upon which she told me theyd
had quite of a problem in that respect once, as the boys
had encircled one of the smaller girls, and unfortunately
one that was already in psychological treatment, and they
had forced her to undress in the bushes.

The girl had told her psychologist and theyd got a

serious problem. Upon which they had reasoned that sex-
ual energy should not be pent up and that they should be
free to do their little games on the toilet.
I wondered why it had to be on the toilet and asked her
if she thought the toilet was the appropriate place for chil-
dren to make their first attempts in self-discovery? She
nervously replied they could not reasonably allow them to
do it in the room, or create a room for that, as it was too
dangerous, as their educational project was more or less
improvised and not blessed by the authorities.
So after some questioning I found out that all was pure
theory, that the children never even had known they had
the right to enjoy themselves when being on the toilet. And
more importantly, the matter never had been discussed

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with the children, only above their heads, among the edu-
cators, and the parents. For me, having witnessed the two
boys boxing that little girl in her underbelly and kicking
her between her legs was clear enough to tell me the whole
story. These children were repressed, and the parents glo-
rified themselves with being open and progressive.
The parents had cherished an idea that they compli-
mented each other for, but this idea was neither put to
practice, nor was it in any way communicated to the chil-
dren.
In my observation perverse behavior never is a direct
outflow of natural behavior patterns; there always was a
moment in the life of the child when something happened
that disturbed his or her normal psychosexual growth; so
we have a discontinuity, a split, a crack, a regression in the
childs growth history when we see perverse behavior dis-
played by a child. In such a case, we know that the natural
emotional flow was disrupted at a particular point in time,
in the past of that child.
With punishing nothing positive can be reached in
such a constellation; in the contrary would I suggest the
child needs help to understand the pattern, to see the dis-
tortion, without a need for doing something about it. Once
the pattern is conscious, the perverse behavior will vanish by
itself. To be against something doesnt help to change it.
You know that when you see people smoking. Many
smokers are against the habit of smoking; they say I do
not like smoking. I do not like when people smoke. But I

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smoke because I do not know how to stop it. They know

the dangers of smoking, they also know that by smoking
they involuntarily make others smoke with them, and get
infected on their turn. They know all this and they smoke
nonetheless.
When a child grows up in a family of smokers, to tell
the child that smoking is not good is ridiculous, really,
because the child hasnt seen anything else than people
smoking. So the child will think Oh, that means that my
parents are not good people. Is that the intention you had
when telling the child that smoking is not good? Did you
want to bring the child up against their parents, or create a
gap in their trust level?

You see how easily such statements that can be called

moralistic, are creating havoc. They are easily uttered and
they feel good; they give you that feeling of moral right-
eousness the Bible so often talks about. Is that what you
want in life, to be a righteous fighter? Well, such an atti-
tude will perhaps look good in your church or prayer
group, but it looks rather ridiculous in front of modern chil-
dren. We are living in 2014, not in 1014.
See a difference? So then, keep your righteousness for
yourself, its fine, and focus on the needs of the child. The
latter is a bit more important, to be true.
Besides, such statements do not have an ontological
value for children. They are should-be statements, they are
wishful thinking. You cannot educate anybody by uttering
such kind of slogans. They even get in the way when

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building trust with children you care for. So try to get be-
yond the paradigm of idealism, as its really not useful in
education.

As a general rule, children respond rather poorly to a

morality-based approach; they wont say anything in the
regular case, but they wont build deep trust and they
wont experience real joy when they know the educators
around them are following a strictly compulsive morality
paradigm. Its not morality but true love that helps chil-
dren to grow sanely, and that can heal distortions if ever
they occurred through educational negligence or violence.
And there is something else that morality-based educa-
tion never understood. Children need a space also for be-
ing irrational, or nonsensical. I have observed that all truly
happy children once in a while have a moment of mad-
ness, when they do things that are nonsensical, dangerous,
daring, irrational, and where you can long try to psycho-
analyze the behavior. You wont get to any conclusions
because there simply is nothing to analyze when a child
just needs a space, a moment of free expression of their ir-
rationality.
We humans are both rational and irrational, while we
other adults have put our irrationality safely under con-
trol, except we are artists. Now, morality-based education
stresses the rational mind so much because of their fear of
the untamed beast that they believe is contained in every
child. So their approach basically can be described with the
slogan taming the beast.

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I wont lose a word about this approach because its

what it is: an attempt to tame animals. But human children
are not animals. This approach is based upon a misunder-
standing of the human nature, or its simply based upon
the ideology of Calvinism which is a form of religious per-
version. Even Catholic education doesnt go as far as want-
ing to root out the devil in every child; a Catholic priest
knows that the Devil, after all, is contained in God, for
there cannot be anything that is outside of God. That is
why, despite all, Catholic education has a space for irra-
tionality, for the mysterious, apart from the fact that its
really a pagan ritual under a new nameand thats a good
thing! It means Catholicism has incorporated nature in its
dogma, which is visible in the idea of a Mother of God,
Maria. Maria stands for the pagan Goddess, and it symbol-
izes the matrix, the Mother Earth, and the eternal feminine
as part of Creation.
In Calvinism, this is not so. There is no Maria in both
Protestantism and Calvinism; it was rooted out, it was set
outside the ritual, it was iconoclasted. That is why the real
Catholic dogma (which is not necessarily the official one)
tolerates childrens emotions, and their sexuality, by sim-
ply turning the face away; the Catholic dogma, contrary to
folk wisdom, is not judgmental, but reduces all human to
the Divine, in a rather simple logic that says If God cre-
ated us sexual, which is obvious, then God must have
meant us to be sexual; so the real, mystic, Catholic dogma
doesnt condemn emotions and sexual behavior. It only

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condemns indecency of such behavior, and this is what even

a well-educated agnostic would agree with. Would you let
your child run around in the street, naked? Would you re-
ceive your guests when your child is standing in the hall,
masturbating? No, I mean we have to distinguish between
religious dogma and decency; the two are not identical,
and they are not synonymous.
If I am wrong in my assessment of Catholicism as an
emotion-friendly religion, then please tell me how come
that the Church has institutionalized the confession as a to-
tal and unconditional washing away of all sins to be con-
fessed in the proper ritual? The promise of the baptism is
that all sin is temporary, as original sin can be washed off;
which simply means a redemption of karma, in our mod-
ern psychological language.
So baptism frees of karma and repeats the promise of
the Creator to accept His Creation despite human interfer-
ence in the form of sinning. In olden times, when a crimi-
nal, for example a murderer, was confessed officially by
the Church, he could not be trialed by a court. So, Catholi-
cism cannot be said to be judgmental, despite the fact that
many Catholics are judgmental. They should take up study-
ing their dogma once again.

But modern consumer society, with all its labeling of

people, and its ruthless judgmentalism, is not based upon
Catholicism but upon Protestantism, and its special vin-
tage of Calvinism. In Protestantism and Calvinism, you
dont have a concept of redemption, but predestination,

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which means that when somebody murders another, he

has done that murder not really by his free will, but he was
destined to become a murderer, to fulfill his original des-
tinywhich was predestined.
So in this religious dogma, there is no space for emotions,
there is no space for free will, there is no space for the good
to prevail because all is predestined; its a very cruel phi-
losophy that basically says that Creation is bad and cor-
rupt if not from the start, but anyway from the moment of
the Fall. I believe this dogma is through and through blas-
phemic in that it denies the Creator to have the Supreme
Power and Wisdom, and puts up an eternal antagonism be-
tween good and bad in which the bad prevails, as long as
the beast is not tamed. The worst educational tortures
have been inflicted upon infants and children during the
reign of Calvinism, in the countries where this dogma was
born, Switzerland, and other Germanic cultures. Until to-
day, as Alice Miller found in her writings, Germanic cul-
tures are by far the most cruel in raising children, and the
most violent against children!
In truth, there is no such thing as an inner beast; there
is well a shadow, there is well one of the inner selves that
contains our negative energy, but that instance in us is not
an antagonist, but an energy that, when properly handled,
can be made a friend, and can be used for creative pur-
poses. Socrates spoke of his daimon, and modern psychol-
ogy calls this instance our shadow. Anyway, in children this
inner self is not yet created, except the child grew up in a

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moralistic educational setting and reached at least twelve

years of age. Before that time, and especially when the child
grows up in a natural and loving setting, there simply is no
inner shadow, there is no inner beast, there is nothing of
that kind. So the Calvinist idea here really is a projection; it
uses children as poison containers, as psychoanalyst Lloyd
DeMause, a great defender of childrens rights and educa-
tional nonviolence, expresses it.

See Lloyd DeMause, The History of Childhood (1974)

Whole libraries have been written about this subject.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his educational novel mile, de-
scribes an ideal world of natural behavior that he puts up
like an ideology created after, suspiciously so, he himself
abandoned his wife and five children. In that novel, he de-
scribes a relationship between an educator and the boy
mile that has many pederastic overtones, and where the
tutor turns into a real persecutor that leaves the child no
secret space, and that today, psychoanalytically, would
have to be qualified as obsessional and projective.
This novel should render us very careful when we as
educators come and boast with a slogan like back to na-
ture; when the Calvinists say the inner beast of the child
has to be tamed, Rousseau said the inner beast of the child
has to be freed. Both namely admit the existence of an in-
ner demon, and thereby are subjected to a perception error,
by projecting behavior upon the human being that is not
there.

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Fact is that this queer Swiss philosopher, who coinci-

dentally was from Geneva, like Calvin, the founder of Cal-
vinism, had five children to educate and left them in utter
misery, to dedicate himself to education.
I call such behavior insane, while our academic institu-
tions tend to call such a person a saint. Second, when you
read mile attentively, you will quickly realize how perse-
cutory that educator was. Over a few hundred pages, you
gain the impression that nothing in the world existed than
the hero of the novel and his student boy, as if the two
were fusioned in eternal codependence, as if the boy never had
creators, a father and a mother, because all that, if not life as
a whole, simply is blinded out from the plot.

What we can learn from this story is what I am saying

throughout this book: in matters of education, those who
recognize and accept their emotions can be good and very
good educators, those who repress them, can be good phi-
losophers. Their psychosexual setup may be sadistic but
that is less of a problem when he stays home and works on
his philosophical treatises; the same is not true when the
philosopher begins to educate children. Looking at these
matters in a functional way helps identifying the complex-
ity of the problem.

Nature cannot be deformed without unpredictable re-

sults occurring; what results is most of the time violence in
one form or the other. When you prohibit sex, you create vio-
lence. Generally speaking, the ersatz pleasure is always
more problematic and more violent than the original

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pleasure. This is how the pleasure function works in the

human being; it gives a priority, a prime, to the original,
natural pleasure, and sanctions every attempt to circumvent
the natural discharge of emotional tension, rendering the er-
satz discharge more disruptive, and more conflictual than
the original, natural discharge of the energy surplus.
In addition, the repressed desire perverts the energy
contained in it, by polarizing it through retrogradation of
its motion, and thus renders the originally harmless desire
sadistic, violent and harmful.
To generalize this insight, we can say that ersatz pleas-
ures are always more harmful than original pleasures.
A common example is the youngster who takes heroin
because he cant get through sexually with girls. While sex
would have been healthy for him to experience, heroin will
transform the blooming youth into a human wrack within
less than one year.

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 Chapter Six
The Value of Silence

Silence is essential for the mind. Without silence, the

mind drowns in the turbulence of daily life, and of all our
conflicting desires, thoughts and feelings. Traditional edu-
cation hasnt understood a bit of this fact. Children are si-
lenced by force, held in shut-up compliance with law and
order by the use of educational violence, only to explode
into outbursts of hatred and stupidity, once the class is
over, and they get out of the school house.

In most of the old Asian cultures, the functioning of the

mind was traditionally better understood, but today, there
is not much left of the glorious culture, as I have seen with
my own eyes. The young people have no idea of it, as they
are enthralled by American lifestyle, gadgets, hamburgers,
and video games; their parents are for the most part en-
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

thralled by their children, and just run behind, trying to

catch up with their unreasonable demands. Its chaotic, and
that balance that was given through the wistful culture has
been totally lost.
You dont see that as a tourist, only when you live there
for several years and bond with the locals, and see how
they live, and what the children do and want, you get an
idea whats going on. It may be to a lesser extent in China,
but I know its the case in all of South-East Asia, and in Ja-
pan, and I have seen it in India as well in the merchant
class, and all circles of society that enjoy a certain standing,
also with young couples who belong to the new middle-
class.

There is not much left of their culture, and what is left,

is fake, and is taken up as an adornment, and for showing
the foreigners that contrary to the West, in India one still
cherishes culture. When you see them in a restaurant, you
see the children order hamburgers, and roll on the floor
when they dont get what they want; and the same sce-
nario you see in department stores, just as in any of our
cities. They run today after the same fake values as in the
West and believe the same lies, and besides, their culture is
even more moralistic than Christian fundamentalism.

Many diseases start in the mind, through turbulence,

through lack of silence, and rest. We know this today both
through studying the old wistful cultures and through our
modern research. So we know it kind of twofold, and that
means its a fact that cant be overlooked, and that must

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not be discarded from the political agenda. We are respon-

sible to raise our level of public sanity also by reducing the
noise level wherever this is possible. Great progress has
been made in recent years in this respect regarding public
transport. In Asia I have seen how it was before, and I have
seen and heard it as a child even in my own country. To-
day, public busses, trains and subways, and even commer-
cial trucks, make a fraction of the noise they used to make
twenty years ago. This alone has considerably sanitized
our public environment, not to talk about lesser air pollu-
tion.
I am not an apostle of protection, and when we sanitize
our public places and our public intercourse, we must be
careful not to apply this approach to the education of our
children, for there its certainly misplaced.
Children need to grow up with their inner contradic-
tions, not without them, for if we sanitize them away, chil-
dren can never learn how to handle emotions, and inner
conflict. So in matters of education, too much sanity is not
wise, as too little sanity is not wise; the proper balance is
all the art! Let me get in a little more detail here. To begin
with, silence cannot be imposed upon the mind. Its a fun-
damental error to discipline children for silence; when chil-
dren lead a balanced life, and when their emotions are re-
spected and rendered conscious, children are not any more
noisy than adults. Its typical for our modern-day igno-
rance to state something like Well, children are children,
and so they are noisy. No. Thats a projection, and a preju-

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dice. There is no reason why children should be substan-

tially louder, and substantially more unruly, than adults.
Its through imposed discipline that children become noisy,
and unruly, not through a sane and understanding educa-
tion.
I often asked parents, when I saw in which many cruel
ways they mistreat their children in moments of crisis:
What about if I inflicted upon you what you are right now
inflicting upon your child? Would you find that okay?
Then they reply either nothing or they righteously ut-
ter But I wouldnt behave like that child, whereupon I say
But look only what you are doing! I have seen the most
cruel of behavior displayed by parents and educators in
moments where they felt observed, ashamed, in public,
and wanted to get that child shut up. And of course, they
reach the opposite of what they want, and the child begins
to scream to a point that people begin to look at each other
and shake their heads. There is not a flight Europe-Asia or
back, where I do not see at least one of these dramas dis-
played in public, for everybody to watch, and take as food
for thought regarding so-called modern education. All
this comes from a basic lack of silence. All modern educa-
tion is noisy and thinks it has to be noisy, because it posits
the dogma a normal child is noisy. I say, its not.
First of all, when children are noisy on a constant basis,
you can be sure that their parents and educators are noisy as
well. Modern life doesnt need to be noisy. To have a televi-
sion doesnt imply it must yell. The same is true for a ste-

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reo, a video game, or whatever. But I have seen time and

again that parents who have noisy children are just as
noisy, inviting you for a drink while having the television
run at full volume, and then shout at you because its so
noisy in the room today so we have to speak a little
louder.
Many of them are so used to their constantly running
televisions that they dont even hear them anymore con-
sciously; so as a matter of automatism, they begin to shout
instead of talking. And then I want to see the child that
doesnt adopt such an example and becomes a noisy rat!
In most schools I was working it was so noisy that after
two hours I wanted to run outside, because constant noise
triggers anxiety with me. The educators yell at the children
every two minutes because the children in this school are
so noisy, so they shout louder, fighting noise with noise.
Its insane, really!
When children are noisy you have to whisper, for that
will get them back on track. What helps in the long run is
meditation, or silent relaxation, or yoga, any activity that
makes sense only when done in silence. And you will see
how much children will begin to like that, how much they
ask for it! I have talked with educators from Krishnamurti
schools in India, and they told me that from their experi-
ence, most problems with discipline come from the mind
being too turbulent, and to remedy that, silence is needed,
only silence! When they start their day, they go outside with
the children and watch the sunrise, for no more than about

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ten minutes, the same in the evening, they go out watching

the sunset, for another ten minutes. So that means twenty
minutes per day silence, real silence. They told me twenty
minutes of silence per day is enough for a child and even
for most adults to keep the mind silent for the whole day!
Research has shown that a silent mind is much better
coordinated, that the brain hemispheres work more in
sync, that the mind is more open to absorb knowledge, and
that emotional balance is easier to maintain. I think every-
body can understand that, it simply makes sense, and its
not something that works only for Asians. Krishnamurti
schools are not imbedded in Asian culture, they are imbedded
in international culture. In ordinary schools in India, chil-
dren are as noisy as in the West, and they are as much, or
even more, admonished not to be noisy.
An educator anywhere in the world who day by day
has noisy children around him or her, is a noisy person, do
what you will, a person with a noisy chatting, turbulent
mind, and unruly emotions! This is simply so, as a matter
of action and reaction. Put a group of children around a
sage, do you think they are noisy or will be noisy after ten
minutes sitting there? They wont. I have seen it at several
occasions in Asia, in Indonesia. The sage will talk so softly
that every child, in order to understand what he says, will
keep a completely silent posture, and you can hear a nee-
dle fall on the floor. Why? Its because the silence of the
sages mind fills all the minds in the room; its his aura, his
intrinsic energy that does that. And his attitude. He speaks

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softly and all of his gestures are soft, yielding, and he

smiles. There is not one word he utters that is said out of
balance, there is not one movement he does that is not
graceful and beautiful to watch.
The children absorb the man, eat him virtually with
their eyes, in awe, watch attentively everything he does,
says, how he cuts a fruit, to eat a small piece, and then of-
fer the rest to the children. And they leave radiant, but si-
lent, and their faces say I have received a gift!
Its an enchanting experience, one that you never forget,
and it teaches without a word that for sane education, no
discipline is needed, but wisdom, and silencewhich is
exactly what K said all throughout his life.

And he also said that silence can in no way be im-

posed, because when its imposed, the result is artificial
conduct, not authentic behavior. This is generally so, and
its even more true when you try to impose silence upon
children. For you will have to cope with total failure, you
will see that its all going to go in the opposite direction
and that you will drive out the last little bit of silence from
the childrens minds. So dont even try, but first practice to
be silent, yourself, even if its only for five minutes a day.
Before you do that, and regularly, dont even think you
could work around poised and halfway silent children.
Forget it. If your mind is a clutter box, do you think you are
going to make order in the mind of the children sitting
around you?

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And keep this in mind, in all matters spiritual, coercion

does not work. Its not important how you find inner peace,
only the result counts. The only thing you can do for the
children is to render them conscious and sensitive to noise,
by at times gently telling them to listen to all the sounds
around them, and identify each sound, and then the whole
symphony. This will by and by render every child con-
scious also of manipulatory input, advertisements, ambi-
ent music, and the like.
Silence, all silence comes about spontaneously, it can-
not be invited. In the Tao Te Ching, Lao-tzu wrote: If you
want to expand something very much, you first have to
contract it very much. When children are very much disci-
plined for being silent, the result is that they become hyper-
noisy, every moment they step out of the constraint, every
time they leave the room, go to the toilet or do whatever,
go home or meet other children. Then they explode. Then
they fight, they hurt each other, they yell, they kick, they
spit, they curse, in one word, they do all that they are not
allowed doing in class. Hence, discipline is useless, or even
counterproductive, or lets say that any kind of discipline
is useless when it is based on coercion.
Self-discipline is not useless, not counterproductive.
What we learn from that is that the goal is not teaching
discipline, but the educator teaching self-discipline, first to
himself, then to the children. Without having learnt self-
discipline, no educator can convey to children what it im-
plies. The educator must walk his talk before he can expect

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the slightest improvement with the children he cares for.

This is so much the more the case as self-discipline is not
really a behavior; its an attitude. And attitude cannot be
transmitted verbally, its always transmitted non-verbally
and most of the time unconsciously.
When we give up coercion in all of education, we put
an end to the insane dualism that has pervaded our culture
since the beginnings of patriarchy. For when we stop coer-
cion, we open the door to self-regulation, which is the func-
tional modus vivendi of all living systems. Dualism mani-
fests in our cultural history as mind-body dualism, male-
female dualism, right-wrong dualism, noble-ordinary du-
alism, rich-poor dualism, win-lose dualism and constraint-
freedom dualism.
The latter is probably the most destructive of all these
forms of either-or dogmas as its against life itself. Life is
freedom, not constraint, not coercion, not imposed will or
domination, and its motor is self-regulation.

There is self-regulation to be observed everywhere in

nature, in our own organism, in the tides and the weather,
in the growth cycles of plants, animals and humans, in the
moving of the planets, and so forth, and even in our global
economy. Self-regulation is considered one of the most im-
portant principles in the functioning of markets, national,
regional or global.
Markets that lack self-regulation, that are planned, that
lack creative freedom and follow the will or fancy of a cen-
tral banks president are not productive. Communism has

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shown that, Marxism has shown that, Maoism has shown

that. All these highly regulated markets were poor and their
growth insignificant, because all self-regulation was weeded
out from them through state-ordained planned economy.
Today we see the same in Myanmar and North Korea
that are poor countries when you look at their economic
performance, while they are very rich countries when you
look at their national resources. To get a rich country per-
form poorly, all you have to do is to curtail down all inher-
ent self-regulation in the market, and plan and regulate eve-
rything, including human behavior. Its a recipe for failure.
And when this is so, when this is so both economically
and politically, why then should rooting out self-regulation
have any positive effects in matters of education? The truth
is that its only self-regulation that has a positive effect in edu-
cation, to a point you can be sure your school will be suc-
cessful, provided you build enough self-regulation in the
daily running of the school, in its curricula, in the forma-
tion of the teachers, and last not least in the relationship
parents-educators.
Children, when you let them free, are naturally self-
regulative in all they think and do. They simply obey na-
ture, and nature is self-regulative. And self-regulated chil-
dren are stronger, and have a better immune system, they
are healthier, and they can endure more. Children who
have been impeded from regulating themselves are emo-
tionally fragile, and physically sickish, cranky, and frail. Its
the babies that were put in dark rooms for sleeping alone,

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instead of sharing the bed of their parents, its those that

were hung at the wall, as infants, in bandages, and those
whose hands were attached to the bed, to keep them from
enjoying themselves. Its also those modern children that
are TV-regulated instead of self-regulated, the TV having
been their babysitter, and their pacifier.
Being self-regulative, children at certain moments do
make noise, but thats not the obsessionally noisy behavior
I was reporting previously in this chapter. Its rather short
moments where the child needs to pull the registers so to
speak, like an organist pulls the registers of the organ be-
fore he sets out to play. For example, when the child comes
home from school, they often shout, or they throw their
jacket in a corner, and they do that in a noisy way, and
that noise says something. It says I am glad to come home.
Thats all.
To resist the noise in that moment and admonish the
child is as good as telling the boy or girl I do not like you
to come home, better you stay in school. And that really
hurts. So its okay when a child pulls the registers for a
moment, which is, to repeat it, not the noise. Its a different
story, not a noise triggered by an unruly mind, but simply
the body talking a moment for balancing the mind.

Have you seen children and toddlers jumping in the

arms of their mothers or fathersand have you heard the
noise they make when doing that? They howl, or they yell,
or they sing, but its almost never silent. These noises are
natural and they must not be complained about or you tell

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the child implicitly I do not want you to live. And that,

then, is what I call death education.
Often, when children pull the registers they do a suite of
rapid movements together with the noise they make; its
kind of coordinated, like a stage clown practicing one of
his sketches, a twist, a turn, a click, a stamp, a shout, and a
yawn, all that in fast playback. In my experience, boys pull
the registers more often than girls. And these moments, I
equally observed, are almost always getting the child into
a yielding, relaxed mood, and what they most like, then, is to
be caressed and sit quietly, for some time, next to their pre-
ferred educator, or, at home, with a parent. So it seems to
me that pulling the registers has for the child a relaxation
effect, and that may be the hidden reason they do it. Its
not unlike the saying of Lao-tzu I quoted above, first they
expand and tense, then they contract and relax.
But here I am talking about basically sane children, not
those raised in authoritarian schools and homes, who are
obsessionally noisy.
In general, it can be said that the sane child expresses
himself or herself in a varied manner, never the same be-
havior pattern, but a smooth sequence of motion patterns.
This is perhaps how children most differ from adults,
as the behavior pattern of adults is much more uniform
when you compare it with the rich patterned structure of
childrens behavior. And this variety in behaving, and the
rapidity of changing behavior patterns, may have a balanc-
ing effect upon the psyche and emotions, and that may be

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one of the reasons why children generally are emotionally

more balanced than most adults.
To finalize this section, let me talk about the often-
mentioned topic of childrens concentration span. First of
all, I believe that the faculty to concentrate is directly re-
lated to the silence or turbulence of the mind; the more si-
lent the mind is, the more and the deeper the person is able
to concentrate.

I observed that with myself at the time when I was go-

ing to leave the boarding, to drive home from school every
day, and started to take piano lessons. I had to realize that
eight years in that noisy awful boarding, and another eight
years spent previously as a child in a Catholic home that
was not less noisy and brutal, got me to a point that I was
unable to concentrate for more than ten minutes when
practicing the piano.
While I was exercising often for hours, I was not really
concentrated when doing so, and that is why I needed so
long for learning even the most basic piano technique. I
was most of the time absent-minded when I played my
etudes or musical pieces. I was not really there, not really
present, and the reason for that incapacity to concentrate
simply was that my mind was one big chatterbox all day
long.
The faculty to concentrate is not something the small
child possesses, and its harming toddlers and small chil-
dren when educators force them to concentrate. Small chil-
dren do not need any concentration ability; the faculty to

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concentrate is intrinsically something belonging to the ma-

ture mind. Only a mind that is trained, that is focused, can
concentrate. The childs mind is contemplative, which is a
mind that is always fresh, and open, its also a mind that
thinks holistically because it is not fragmented. Krishna-
murti often said that concentration impedes the mind from
contemplation and from meditation; this is so because con-
centration is goal-centered, purposeful, teleological, while
meditation spontaneously comes about when the mind is
not purposeful and not focused, and when concentration
was dissolved by relaxation.
Small children are most of the time in that meditative
mode, and to get them out of it by training them to concen-
trate is really insane, as it deprives them of their intrinsic
wisdom; in addition it can render them sick and depressed.
Typically, the faculty to concentrate goes along with the
fact that the mind contains an observer. In the small child,
there is no observer, as much as the other inner selves are
not yet built. As a general rule, the observer is built when
social awareness begins to form, and a sense for societys
morality codex, from about age seven to twelve. Before the
observer is built, the child is in a state of bliss, for all their
perception is direct and immediate, because the intellect is
bypassed.
You can also say that concentration is thought-related,
and where there is no thought, because the mind is con-
templative and perceives reality directly, no concentration
is needed.

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Such a tranquil and poised mind really doesnt need to

concentrate, for concentration is skill-focused, and its for
learning skills that we need to concentrate. Thus it borders
insanity to tell parents their small children were suffering
from poor concentration at a time when the child has no
thought structure in place.
The very fact that I became aware of my lack of concen-
tration ability only at age eighteen, and not before, says it
all. It says that I didnt need that faculty for learning the
usual school knowledge and for passing my bac; however,
I well needed it for learning a musical instrument, and
score reading, thus for learning a specific skill.

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 Chapter Seven
Love, Self-Love, and the Heart

Nobody can teach us to love others or ourselves. To believe

it is naive. Whoever loves himself loves others. Why does
one love himself and another hates herself? Its a question
of self-respect. Self-respect cant be taught. When children
grow in a milieu where they are respected and loved, they
have enough self-respect. Everybody will agree.

What to do when they lack self-respect? This question

is often veiled in traditional education by the command
Love Another As Yourself. Nice command, really, when you
dont love yourself. Read it: LAAY, sounds like lie, right?
You cant quantify self-respect, you cant quantify love. You
cant teach it. If you are honest, you cant even talk about
it. What you can do is live it, live by being full of love, re-
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

specting others by respecting yourself, by having high self-

respect.
When you see that, you become aware that the only
one who can be possibly addressed for being taught these
values, is yourself, the educator. People who talk a lot about
love do not love. Children know to love, and they do it
daily, but never talk about it. They do it spontaneously, they
love as they breathe, as they eat, as their sleep, as they
play.
Loving is something real, and something living for the
natural child, not something to worry about, to think
about, to make a hassle about. If you know children, you
know that what I am saying is correct. Tell your preferred
child I love you and watch the reaction
How will the child react? Will they burst of joy? I guar-
antee you that they will not waver, and look at you with-
out expression, even if you say it one hundred times. Sim-
ply because they dont understand what you are saying. An
adolescent, yes, he or she may blush and feel uneasy, and
perhaps even reply I love you, too! But a small child will
not understand what you are saying, while they do well
understand loving gestures, tenderness, smiles, and the
love you give them by granting them enough freedom and
autonomy for growing into life.
What is the secret that children are so fresh and charm-
ing, and their teachers so odd and boring? It is that the
child is connected to their body and many adults have lost

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that connection. In other words, many adults are not body-

conscious, they are self-conscious.
The small child develops and grows to make the transi-
tion from the world-between-worlds and this present world.
When the child accepts their body and knows it, they in-
carnate fully in this body, and this in turn is the condition
for realizing excellent physical and mental health and emo-
tional balance.

Children who are psychotic or assessed with schizo-

phrenia simply are not incarnated in their bodies; they are
floating in the air, lacking grounding. Their first chakra is
blocked and they are hardly conscious of their body.
Only on the basis of the full acceptance of the body can we
build a sane education, and as a result, a sane society!
How do we build self-esteem in children when their
minds are pervaded with compulsive morality?
It should be obvious that self-esteem cannot be build
on shame, and body-denial, it cant be built on denial, but
on acceptance. To bring about emotional and mental sanity,
all denial of nature has to be rendered conscious; once you
are conscious that you are actually working against nature
in all your are doing, you will change. The very awareness
of your denial attitude will bring the change, and open you
for embracing nature as a result.
Beauty, physical beauty, is not a chance event either but a
result of body acceptance and of body denial. There is no
inborn beauty. We form our body through our thoughts.

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When we think beautiful thoughts, our body will be beau-

tiful, when we think ugly thoughts our body will be ugly.
A child who accepts their body thinks of their body as
something precious, beautiful and unique, something to love,
to cherish, to adorn, something to show to others. At any
moment in your life, when you fix your attention on what
is ugly, you render your life more ugly; at any moment you
contemplate beauty, you will be more beautiful as a result.

This is the law of consciousness, the law of resonance;

what we focus our attention on, we bring about in our life,
we realize, and we strengthen.
In a consciousness-based educational background, and
with teachers who work there not because of the payroll
but because of their motivation to educate, children build
high self-love. All lies and sentimental falseness adults ex-
hibit toward children as a result of societys repression of
childrens sensuality negatively infringes upon childrens
beauty, sense of identity, and outgoingness.

How can somebody who is pervaded by murky feel-

ings about himself or herself build a really embracing atti-
tude toward life, and become positive and outgoing? It is
impossible.
Think about it. Most of us have suffered from having
belonged to society, to our parents, to religious authorities,
but not to ourselves, in our younger years, and this is why
our identity is weak and fragile. That is why so many of us
are constantly suffering from emotional stress, and from
recurring anxiety and depressions, that is why we are only
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randomly positive toward life, if we are not outright nega-

tive for some hours every day.
Sanity cannot be built on the soil of a distorted emo-
tional life early in childhood, it cannot be built on the grave
of freedom, not upon oppression and denial of our most ba-
sic longings.
An educator who really loves children expresses this
love without shame, and without bothering what others
think about it. A loving educator will tell the child that he
or she is beautiful and desirable; there is no need to say it
verbally, as it can be conveyed by body language, by ges-
tures, by smiles and a warm, empathetic and accepting at-
titude. The educator can only do that when being affec-
tional, not when being cold, principle-minded and dog-
matic.
Under the spell of postmodern fundamentalism, this
cannot be done; the inevitable result is that our childrens
basic integrity and psychosomatic health will be gravely
impaired. Our present generation of children wont have
more chances than we had to develop into sane and happy
citizens; they are perhaps in a worse situation because of
the power of the postmodern media culture that hypnotizes
them with uniform monolithic messages that put up the
consumer child up as the cultural model.
The often appalling vulgarity of children in postmod-
ern international consumer culture, their ruthless egotism,
their lack of respect and tact in the face of others, even
older people, their egocentrism and their addiction to ob-

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jects, all that is the direct result of the consumer paradigm;

children who know their bodies and who are conscious of
their behavior will attract praise and encouragement natu-
rally.
Of course, in authoritarian cultures children are build-
ing behavior patterns that are pleasing, smooth, smart and
gentle, yet the question remains if such behaviors are
authentic or if they are just polish?

This is also the reason why children in the past showed

much more mature behavior, and were by far more responsi-
ble in their overall attitude than modern consumer chil-
dren. The reason is that children were given more respon-
sibility in the past, while today they are supposed to just
play. Natural growth cycles have been distorted through
our prolonged educational cycle, while still in the Middle-
Ages society did not distort the natural evolutionary cycles
and boys and girls married around the age of puberty.
But all this is quite relative as an insight for good be-
havior is ultimately not the result of discipline but the re-
sult of love, love given and love received.
There are a number of psychologists and child thera-
pists who speak on the same lines as I am doing it in this
book, and who urge society to give up its judgmental ri-
gidity and open up to embracing the emotional nature of
the child, not as a matter of controversy and academic dis-
cussion but as an open path toward a possibly sane soci-
ety of the future.

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There is no long-term physical health without a sanely

balanced life where the self is not pervaded by guilt and
shame, nor by obsessions and perversions, but imbedded
in sane relationships with others. As a slogan I would coin
it in Humans are sane when they are fully human.
The self-regulated child is obviously smarter, more ma-
ture in dealings with others, more respectful, more outgo-
ing, more social and less egotistic, and very little narcissis-
tic, and way more balanced than the bulk of repressed and
emotionally deprived, unhappy children that are still to-
day our cultural model.
The most important, to begin with, is that educators
are not persecutory in their general attitude, that they dont
insist to know all, that they are not following up the child
everywhere when they want to retire in their little corner
with a little friend, or alone , which means nothing but
having a respectful and yielding attitude toward the childs
intimate life, even where this respect would go against the
outdated rules of the establishment.
The dedicated educator will prefer to change institu-
tions rather than giving up their pro-child and pro-life ap-
proach in matters of education, and their dedication to the
best for the child. Thats why when put under pressure by
educational authorities, excellent educators will not comply
with death education wherever it is practiced, and wherever,
as a result, the sanity of children is sacrificed on the altar of
social convention, but stay true to their convictionsand
look for another employer, or open their own school!

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Mere intellectual knowledge that is not rooted in our

affective life is devoid of meaning as it cannot be integrated
in the whole of the personality. This is so much the more
important when we are talking about children between
ages two and six. For the small child, all knowledge is me-
diated by the body, for reaching the mind, and not the
other way around.
You can compare the acquisition of knowledge with
building a house. When we build a house, we have to be-
gin with the foundation, the root, the base layer. The earth
and base layer of the human is our feet, and not our head.
Thats where we touch Mother Earth. And the first chakra
is the lowest, the closed to the earth, and its through the
first chakra that we absorb and assimilate the earths ener-
gies. And the first chakra is the sexual chakra. Our sexual-
ity links us back to the earth, its the true religio, the link
back to our roots, our physical and spiritual foundations.
So, that means actually that sexuality is sacred because
its directly related to where we are coming from, to the
Divine in us. It is through knowledge about the body and
its pleasure function that the child begins to construe the
foundation of his or her life; this is not a knowledge that
can be given at school, its to be given by the home, the
parents, and siblings, and the childs own body as a wistful
teacher. Sexual knowledge is by no means intellectual knowl-
edge and the moment it is intellectualized, it is distorted.
Research on kindergarten and primary school children
in the San Diego Bay Area in the United States has shown

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that the established system of sex education renders chil-

dren emotionally confused, if not bewildered, because its
not a knowledge they can integrate if they lack direct sen-
sual experience.
Its actually total madness when you think about it; one
must be insane to think of the idea to teach children sex
while at the same time doing all to deprive them from ex-
periencing it. Only a deeply schizoid society can get such
nonsensical ideas!
All sexual knowledge is knowledge about life. As such,
it is too vast to fit in a residual concept called procreation;
it is a holistic and systemic knowledge about the networked
and hologram-like interconnectedness of all living sys-
tems.
This knowledge can only be acquired gradually by di-
rect observation of nature, on one hand, and by living
naturally, and sexually, on the other. Sexual knowledge is
knowledge that must be balanced by the whole of the
body-mind-emotions entity, if it is to be useful.
So far the reader may have gained the impression that
for sane education emotional and sexual freedom of the child
alone are needed, together with emotional maturity on the
side of parents and educators. This would however be a
reduction of what I am saying, as things are not as simple
as that. I include this paragraph here to clarify matters.
Let me give an example. For a ship to float on the wa-
ter it is necessary to check that there are no leaks in the
boat, but that alone is not enough to steer the ship safely
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through the ocean. For this to happen, a captain is needed

who steers the ship, and who knows the waters. Now, for a
ship to journey, both is obviously needed, no leaks, and a
steerer. With education it is the same. So far I was talking
about all the leaks that are in the boat of modern education
and I was giving ideas of how to construe a new boat that
doesnt leak.
But I was of course assuming all the way through the
book that the boat of education will have to be properly
steered!
Who steers the boat of life, is it sexual freedom, is it
autonomy, is it emotional balance? Or are these conditions
only the basis, the foundation as it were of sane education?

I believe the latter is true, and that the steerer of life, of

love and of sane education is the heart, the human heart. I
believe that its the qualities of the heart that direct our
lives toward meaning, toward purpose, toward joy, toward
fulfillment, and toward goodness.

This is basically what all our religions are saying, only

that they say it with too many words. The divine steerer in
us is the heart, and connected to the heart, a natural striv-
ing for goodness, for positive impact upon self and others,
and for harmony with all-that-is. This is a spiritual desire,
within all of us, and within all children, while an education
based solely on material conditions will not satisfy the
complete human because the values of the heart are not
necessarily fulfilled when I am free, when I have auton-
omy, when I have a fulfilled sex life, when my emotions

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are balanced, and my mind is sharp. Not only my research

on shamanism and on native populations, but in a way my
whole life showed me that the desire for religio with the
whole of creation, call it God, or otherwise, is ultimately
the quest to understanding the meaning and purpose of
ones existence.
All native cultures value art, and natural spirituality,
while they are considered poor according to modern
standards. In truth, spiritually speaking, they are richer
than all consumer cultures taken together!
The human soul expresses its originality always in
paradoxes, and it cannot be reduced to social values only;
this means that caring for a child to meet their needs is not
all there is to draft a sane, consciousness-based education,
an education that helps the child discover the true mean-
ing of life, and that leads to joy of living, to a purposeful
direction and to harmonious social relations. It would be a
misunderstanding if the reader thought I took so much
time for explaining how to meet childrens true needs for
reducing the whole of the educational quest to the mere
satisfaction of needs and natural longings!
No, I believe that having our meets met is not enough to
give us the spiritual direction and fulfillment we long for,
as a natural and authentic quest of the human soul.
Shamanism is an effective guidepost for reentering the
realm of natures wisdom and true connectedness to all-
that-is. People caught in the biological, scientific or social
little critter of life often forget to open the windows of their

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inner house to see the greater picture. This greater view of

life isnt possible when you stay on the biological and social
levels of the human; while these levels, to repeat it, are im-
portant, they are not all there is to make a human life mean-
ingful and ultimately successful.
While I do not think its useful to talk about spiritual-
ity as a special independent quest of the human, because
spiritual values cant be separated from our soul values and
not even from our social values, there is no human being
on this globe, big or small, that is not spiritual. This is sim-
ply so. In all of us, there is an inner quest, which lives in us
alongside our quest for having our needs met, and the two
quests are not contradictory in the ideal case. They can be
contradictory when the mindset is schizoid and emotions
are not balanced, but not in the case when the person has
received a positive, and life-affirming education.
I have always seen that people whose inner setup is
basically sane do not stress spirituality or religion as some-
thing distinct from basic goodness, and they in most cases
not even mention these words in their daily exchanges
with others. While they live these values through their atti-
tude, their way to meet and respect others, their capacity
to really listen to others, they are spontaneously support-
ing those in need.
This is actually what all our religions ask us to do, its
that we irradiate natural goodness, and conduct positive,
meaningful existences that leave a trace, and bring light to
the world, and others. Only that most people as it were

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take the finger that points to the moon, for the moon, and
they worry about the specific precepts of their particular re-
ligion, the little critter, while they overlook that the details
are of minor importance compared to the ultimate goal they
contribute to realize.
Now, how to realize this in education, without losing
the regard on the whole of the question, without arro-
gantly trumpeting one should give children a spiritual
education, and without getting stuck in the little critter of
religious dogma and ritual? Honestly, there is not much we
can do about it, but quite a lot we can stop doing about it.
First of all, educators who are not complete humans be-
cause they have not responded to their spiritual longing,
cannot do the job. Its similar with shamanic healing; our
doctors give us medicaments for healing us, but the sha-
man takes himself the medicine that is going to heal the
patient. When the educator is a complete human, they
dont really need to do anything to bring spiritual values
over to the children they are around day by day. That hap-
pens automatically, as a matter of personal charisma or te-
lepathy or morphic resonance, however you want to ex-
plain it.
But as I said earlier, there is much that educators can
stop doing for not negatively interfering with the spiritual
quest that is dormant in every single child. The most dam-
aging kind of interference, in this context, is to establish a
religion class or even to call the whole of the educational
method a religious education.

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This, in my opinion, will from the start destroy the

seed that naturally loving relations sow for fostering spiri-
tual growth. Where there is love, spiritual growth is pre-
sent on both ends of the relationship, and there is nothing
additional needed to happen, to do, to trigger or to man-
age for the child to become a truly spiritual and wistful
person.
I had not really a problem with integrating my spiritual
values. I didnt need to depart for a forest existence, didnt
need to buy special clothes, didnt sell my car and didnt
need to sign up for a spiritual workshop.
In other words, I did not need to throw the baby out
with the bathwater. I had no problem living a comfortable
life and yet be considerate and caring toward others, and I
was praying the years through when I was oppressed, and
poor, and am equally praying the years through now, rich
and in peace, enjoying a comfortable life.
I was doing charity work that ruined my health in the
years I was poor, and depended on scholarships, and I was
publishing all my writings for free over the course of the
last fourteen years; only now, while living in comfort and
safety, and material wealth, I have published them half-
way professionally. I do not reflect if when I am doing
things for others, without any personal gain, I am spiri-
tual or whatever. I am just myself. I cannot honestly un-
derstand people when they are using those categories, and
engage small talk about those matters. It embarrasses me,
to a point I never attend such kind of social meetings. In

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my life, there was always a continuity. I used to be an ag-

nostic in my student years, and I am no more an agnostic
since many years, but my lifestyle didnt change, nor my
basic convictions, nor my literary and musical interests,
nor even my diet.
I think its absolute nonsense when parents or educa-
tors suddenly are on the spiritual track and from day one
of their new lifestyle tell children theyd better pray every
day, better eat vegetarian food, better be always nice and
loving to others, and always do good, because the world is
so bad its simply ridiculous.
The world doesnt change if you are a materialist nerd
or an enlightened sage; the only thing that changes is your
regard upon the world. You can keep the whole of your life-
style, and you dont need to infringe upon the other, mate-
rial, social and emotional values you cherished once you
feel you are beginning to embrace spiritual values.
When you do that you are actually leading a split exis-
tence. To split life off in a spiritual and a non-spiritual part
is not philosophical, its schizoid, and when you do that
when you educate children, you better change your job, or
remain a simple human, without spiritual pretensions.
I believe religions are a natural attempt for an integra-
tive lifestyle, for completeness, not more and not less; they
are an attempt to catalogue spirituality, to make it like an
alphabet where you can read the letters from A to Z, where
you can write down what actually cant be written, cant
be said and cant be expressed in verbal language. So actu-

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ally, religions are an impossible thing because they attempt

doing something which is impossible, that is, to express
the divine with the words of the world the divine created
for manifesting itself. Naturally, the divine can only be ex-
pressed through itself, the divine; accordingly, it expresses
itself through divine language. That happens when two
sages sit together for an hour; they dont need to talk, be-
cause the inner god of one speaks with the inner god of the
other, so divine is talking to divine. In such a case, there is
spiritual communication.
In writing a book called Holy Bible, those who wrote it
certainly wished to establish spiritual communication with
the reader; but this attempt is accidented, simply because
the communication media is inadequate. As for myself, I
do read once in a while in the Bible, in the Vedas, in Bud-
dhist textbooks, in the Koran, in Sufi literature, in the Kab-
balah and its interpretation by famous Rabbis, and all this
does good to me. I do not think this activity really brings
me immediate spiritual knowledge and insight; it may trigger a
quest for higher spiritual evolution, it may be the begin-
ning of a road to take, or it may subtly influence my ac-
tions and decisions. But its not something I would qualify
as spiritual, simply because, as I pointed out above, lan-
guage is an inadequate tool for communicating spiritual
knowledge. What study of the scriptures can well effect is
to trigger spiritual insight as an indirect consequence, as an
inflow of divine purpose, through other than verbal chan-
nels.

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I would like to apply this idea to education; it means

that educators actually should not talk about spirituality,
but live as much as possible in accordance with the spiri-
tual values they subscribe to and have accepted as guide-
lines for conduct. Then they will, as a matter of resonance,
bring about the light, the joy, and the goodness that shines
within them.
I might have been a bit extreme once in a while, when
talking about the nonsensical values of our postmodern
consumer society. But that does not mean I am against mate-
rial wealth, comfort, safety, computers, or generally, technologi-
cal progress. Its insane, I think, to be against technology
because such an idea actually blows up technology to
something much bigger as it is, it gives too much impor-
tance to technology. What is technology? Its a tool, noth-
ing more, and nothing less.
The MacBook Pro laptop I am writing this book on is a
tool for my creative expression. It serves me through its
perfect typeset and layout possibilities, besides through its
harmonious and clean design; it also enriches my living
space, and brings beauty and order in my life. Through the
technological possibilities that this modern computer of-
fers me, my life is easier, my managing time, deadlines and
events is facilitated, my office work is eased and brings
proper results, the design of my books, letters, brochures
and emails is bordering professional quality, and besides,
its really so silent that I can collect my thoughts for ex-
pressing them in my books. Furthermore, I can record and

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digitally produce my piano music using this computer as a

production studio. So to summarize, this material object,
this laptop, gives me more than just material comfort; it
also positively meets some of my spiritual longings, such
as my need for aesthetic surroundings, for beauty, and for
effective self-expression as a writer, counselor and artist.
Its often in my observation an excuse for honest dia-
logue when people jump to condemning technology or
modern lifestyle in order to put the stress on their par-
ticular religion or ideology. They may not have done their
homework, and may foster an ambiguous, yet inarticulate
attitude toward the material world.
They may live that way but when they begin to edu-
cate children, they begin to be a disturbing influence be-
cause children are naturally accepting the material world.
Children are actually very wistful because they dont need
to reject the material world for being more-than-material;
by not rejecting material values, and wealth, children can
naturally expand within the world, without rejecting the
world.
That is the best attitude we can have, and it is ex-
pressed by Zen in the words The sage lives in the world
but is not entangled with the world. And this is, then, all I
have to say on this subject.

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 Chapter Eight
Spontaneity and Freedom

Spontaneity is not just the art workshop where the kids

can draw whatever they like, and where they can compose
forms and colors.
The meaning of spontaneity in life is a vast space, and
cannot be confined to specific activities, while it is true that
spontaneity can be enhanced through doing things spon-
taneously, and doing every day more things spontaneously.
But the meaning of spontaneity knows another dimension.
Let me give an example taken from the Krishnamurti
school concept, which I have mentioned earlier on. In his
book Education and the Significance of Life (1978), K writes
about spontaneity without mentioning the word spontane-
ity, seeing spontaneity as a direct outflow of creativity: The
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

freedom to create comes with self-knowledge; but self-

knowledge is not a gift. One can be creative without having
any particular talent. Creativeness is a state of being in
which the conflicts and sorrows of the self are absent, a
state in which the mind is not caught up in the demands and
pursuits of desire. (Id. p. 128).
This is a wonderful description of what spontaneity
actually is, and how it can be invited. It is pure creative-
ness and it comes about when the self temporarily put at
rest, and when the mind is at peace.
Now, what I would like to discuss here is how we can
learn spontaneously. It is agreed that spontaneity serves
self-expression and of course especially artistic expression
and that it thus is a part of creativity. But can the learning
process, the activity of learning, be self-regulated and
spontaneous?
I think the question is important for finding an alterna-
tive to the endless directed activities that pervade the
mainstream educational curriculum and that I myself in
my work in pre-schools found to be not only a terrible bore
but also a blunt violation of the childs self-direction, and
thus a form of manipulation. The argument I always got to
hear when I criticized directed activities was that children
do not learn spontaneously, but have to be led toward
study. I question this assumption. Perhaps not all children
learn spontaneously, so let us inquire why certain dont,
and why others do? What are the conditions for a child to
get on a track of spontaneous learning? Is there anything

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that can be setup for it, or is it impossible to influence the

creative flow?
Now, before I am going to answer these questions be-
low, let me report another particularity of Krishnamurti
schools. K writes: Most children are curious, they want to
know; but their eager inquiry is dulled by our pontifical
assertions, our superior impatience and our casual brush-
ing aside of their curiosity. We do not encourage their in-
quiry, for we are rather apprehensive of what may be
asked of us; we do not foster their discontent, for we our-
selves have ceased to question. (Id., p. 41).
The danger when transmitting knowledge through
the activity of teaching is that the teaching distorts the
knowledge; the activity of teaching, thus, must have some
quality of humility to be nonobtrusive enough so that the
original content, the knowledge itself, is transmitted as is,
and not through the personal lens of the teacher.
That sounds quite theoretical and in practice such a
clear-cut distinction cannot be done. Yet, there is a way to
circumvent the teacher, and it is practiced in Krishnamurti
schools. All subjects that are requiring a technique, that are
either artistic or belong to the realm of crafting are taught
in Ks schools not through teachers but through the artists
and craftsmen, or musicians, themselves.
That means a painter will come to paint, a musician to
play, and a puppet maker to make puppets in front of the
children. The children simply watch, if they like to. They
are not tight up on their chairs to watch these people do

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their art or their music, or their craft. These people bring

their world to the school, not by teaching eloquently, not
by doing anything specific for the children; they are sim-
ply around, got their workshop or piano, their canvasses
or atelier, and they do what they always do. And the chil-
dren know they are there, and that they can watch them
for a moment or longer, if they like to.
This is really a smart way to bring spontaneous learn-
ing in without actually bringing it in; through the presence
of professionals other than the teachers, children get into a
resonance field with each of those more or less charismatic
or famous personalities, with each of these exceptionally
creative people, with each of these living examples of crea-
tivity, and spontaneity. Thus what happens is that not only
do the children learn what they can learn, spontaneously,
while being around these artists, but they can also learn
how spontaneity manifests in life, how it is used by an art-
ist, by a creator, and how it is built in the creative process
and workflow.
This, then, gives another, vaster dimension to sponta-
neity; it shows that spontaneity is something that we can
hardly define, that is invisible, that is not something very
common in the daily life of ordinary people, and as a sec-
ond step, then, spontaneity can be shown to be a quality
related to spiritual awakening.
Krishnamurtis teaching posits that spiritual awaken-
ing, and spiritual insight are not gained through thought
but through the space in between thoughts or the realm that is

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beyond thought; and accessing this realm, K always said,

can only happen spontaneously, and it cannot be invited,
or prepared to happen. From this insight into the sponta-
neous nature of the divine, to open children toward the
greater dimension of spontaneity really makes sense, be-
cause it prepares them for spiritual awakening.

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 Chapter Nine
An Integral Approach to Education

The Childs Individual Integrity

Any school that wishes to serve both children and their
parents needs to see and recognize the existence of indi-
vidual, and individually gifted, children. While for mass
education, there is a quantity of humans to be educated,
Creative-C is a pre-school for unique individuals.
To serve the individual child we need to safeguard the
childs natural sensitivity and focus upon the individual
talents that this child manifests and desires to develop.
Education should go beyond the teaching of skills as
any kind of skill is embedded in something larger that we
may call a personal gift or talent. Hence, teaching skills is
of minor importance compared to the awakening of the in-
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

trinsic individual talents of the child. With this perspective,

the goal of education is not to merely find a good job and
making a living, while this is well the case for most educa-
tional institutions.
The short-sightedness of educating humans for fitting
in a scheme of existing jobs is that tomorrow this scheme
is different, and after-tomorrow it once again changes!
This is today more true than ever before in human his-
tory and a reasonable curriculum therefore can only be
built upon the talents inherent in each and every child.
In fact, even in highly expensive private schools, the
individual child is often degraded into becoming a career-
hawk because the curriculum makes no attempt at devel-
oping the soul qualities of the child, while being outright
focused on left-brain or yang qualities and the almost total
neglect of right-brain or yin qualities.
When we bring yin and yang out of balance, associated
systemic and ecological thinking is mutilated and so-called
rational, logical, strategic thinking is hypertrophied and
wins the overhand.
To look at every individual child is only possible when,
from the start, we have a qualitative and not a quantitative
approach to education. The quality approach does not ask
for efficiency, but for integrated solutions that serve every
child in the community. A natural part of wholeness is ho-
listic and systemic thinking. It can only be brought about
on the basis of the integrity of the child.

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Intelligence, sensitivity and understanding of the com-

plex functions of life can only be developed if cognition is
imbedded in the emotional life of the person and thus the
result of wholeness, and not of fragmentation. Intellectual
capacities and skills that have no connection with the emo-
tional life of the person and that are disconnected from the
right brain hemisphere as well as the heart are truly dan-
gerous. Only sensitivity can act counter to cruelty, not the
cultivation of thought systems, ideals or religions. Cogni-
tive capacities that are imbedded in emotional sanity can
only grow on a basis of readiness, of maturity. A child will
voluntarily accept instruction in reading and writing once
s/he is emotionally ready for it and not under any other
circumstance. And here we speak about the individual ma-
turity of a child, not a standard concept, since there simply
are no standards.
Education must logically proceed in a one-to-one rela-
tion and interaction between educator and child, for only
within such an affectional relationships the uniqueness of
the child can be validated. The emotional and affectional
bond in this relation is of overwhelming importance. Only
love can be the bridge for the transmission of values.

The Childs Emotional Integrity

Modern education should restrain from training the
child only intellectually. A human being, whatever age, is
always composed of both intellect and emotion, and what
education should do is assisting the child in maintaining a

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healthy balance between them. It makes little sense to train

children to be able to achieve doing every kind of puzzle
or to have them educated in brilliant small-talk while the
price we pay for such dressage is that children become hy-
peractive, emotionally unbalanced, and sickly.
In addition, education does not mean to clone children
into molds of their parents but to allow them to become
autonomous persons with their own talents and their own
unique intelligence. In addition, to make tin soldiers our of
children regularly disregards the true needs of the child
and triggers guilt and fear early in life which in turn builds
up a barrier to self-knowledge. Intelligence is nourished by
observing ones emotional processes as well as ones ac-
tions on a regular basis.
To mold children into the ideological positions of their
parents hinders the birth of their true intelligence. Educa-
tion based upon ideologies fosters absolute rigid positions,
stubbornness, conformity, imitation and, in last resort, vio-
lence.
In order to grasp an idea of the emotional life of the
child, we need to understand what is intelligence. Most peo-
ple confuse intelligence with knowledge and intellectual-
ism without seeing that the accumulation of knowledge is
mechanical and not a sign of intelligence. Intelligence is
something entirely different from knowledge. It is not me-
chanical, but a dynamic process of understanding our sur-
rounding world and ourselves in this world. Our task in
the education of small children thus is to safeguard this

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natural intelligence and this wholeness of the child, and to

prevent fragmentation as much as this is possible today in a
highly fragmented society.

Our rational mind (left brain hemisphere) only func-

tions at full capacity when it is connected to our irrational
mind (right brain hemisphere) so that intellectual/analytic
and intuitive/synthetic thought processes become com-
plementary. Then, regularly, the rational and the emotional
part of us are in a state of functional unity and this in turn
brings about inner peace. This is achieved through validat-
ing the childs right-brain capacities and through helping
the child expressing their emotions, through spontaneous
dance, painting and music, and later through creative writ-
ing.

The Childs Social Integrity

Within the group, children learn social behavior with-

out being directed into standard behavior patterns. We
have to avoid modeling children as partakers of a game of
ruthless competition as it is unfortunately done in many
schools.
When stress is too high, it may help some children to
achieve higher, but it will also push some other children
into retardation. What the stress of competition within the
group will thus do is to divide the group into several enti-
ties, a small circle of high achievers who will lead the
group, a larger part of rather mediocre achievers that al-
most automatically then take the role of the followers,

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and the marginal group of those who are pushed into re-
volt and defeatregularly to be seen standing in the cor-
ner, crying often and developing rather asocial behavior
patterns.
In order to avoid this mistake that I have seen to be
rampant in many pre-schools around the world, we have
to develop group activities that are peaceful and that do
not trigger emotional stress. This means first of all that the
teachers themselves are as stress-free and relaxed as possi-
ble and that the relations teacher-children are as harmoni-
ous as possible.
In general, children should not be segregated into dif-
ferent age groups, but play together while the older ones
naturally take care of the younger ones. The ideal balance
is a small group setting where children can work together
in creative units and individually still receive the nurtur-
ing attention of educators who have the time and the de-
sire to lift each child to his or her full potential.

The group then becomes not a rank and file arrange-

ment, designed to pigeonhole each child, but an interactive
environment in which the child can discover his or her in-
dividuality whilst still developing crucial social skills.

The Childs Creative Integrity

An integral approach to education consists of activities
that stimulate the child in various ways, physically, emo-
tionally and spiritually. Activities are always in conjunc-
tion with affectivity, and embedded in the unique affec-

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tional relation between teacher and child. There are basi-

cally five different kinds of activities:

visual activities

auditory activities

physical/sensory activities

literary-poetic activities

mental-analytical activities

Visual activities are those where children express them-

selves through painting and drawing as well as through
maquillage and mask-building, spontaneous theater play,
photography or video-production.
Auditory activities are those that center upon musical
expression, instrument play, the creation and experience of
sound carpets, relationships between colors and sounds
and sound healing.
Physical and sensory activities are those that focus upon
the body, spontaneous dance, rhythmical self-expression,
affective touch and tactile communication, massage and
water-related activities. As a matter of fact, the childs psy-
chosomatic health greatly increases with abundant tactile
stimulation. For toddlers, water and movement are natural
stimulatory means that associate their prenatal environ-
ment. Sensory activities with water, tactile communication
and literary-poetic activities reintegrate poetry and literary
imagination into the educational relation, for example

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through fairy tales and the spontaneous drafting of theatre

plays.
Mental and analytical activities, while they are clearly
over-stressed in most contemporary educational settings,
need not be thrown out entirely. Many children enjoy this
kind of activities and they can be introduced in many
ways. For example, the Apple Mac OS X computer system
is quite ideal for teaching logical and analytic as well as
intuitive thinking, because the computer serves a practical
purpose at the same time as it teaches logical and analytic
thinking. It has become a technical tool of an importance
such that it cant be unthought, and it would for this rea-
son border neglect to not teach children how to handle it
properly and for the best of the childs individual capaci-
ties.

Team Philosophy

It is essential for an effective curriculum to insure a

highly creative work environment for teachers, and the
setup of an organizational culture that favors the building
of respect for diversity.
Experts in employee relations found that best effec-
tiveness as well as optimized client satisfaction is the result
of proactive and loyal staff relations that emphasize open
dialogue, empathic exchanges and a sufficient level of em-
powerment for every worker to unfold a maximized level
of creativeness in doing his or her job.

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In the school setting, that means there must be a high

level of effective communication between educators and par-
ents for the best of each child enrolled in the school. This
implies ongoing training for workers on a daily basis and
with a sufficient amount of introduction time so as to being
sure they will fully implement the creative curriculum pre-
sented in this book.

A Value-Based Curriculum
Experts developed the values that are essential for par-
ents in the situation of seeing themselves unable to pro-
vide the necessary care of their children, for various pro-
fessional and career reasons. I have pondered long about
these values and needs and found that communication
with parents is a major issue in taking care responsibly of
their children. It is for this purpose that I find it of high
importance to maintain a constant and fruitful dialogue
with the parents to ensure the following values:
Continuity and non-friction in providing for each
child an education that is from the start in accordance with
the deepest-felt values of their parents;
Openness and transparence in the daily running of
the school for parents being empowered to have a direct
impact upon the education of their child through a system
of proactive communication.

This communication structure enables parents to make

suggestions and provide special information about their
child at any moment they wish to;

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 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

Regular parent meetings that are opportunities for

them to learn more about professional child care as well as
for educators to know more about problems and concerns
parents may have as to the education of their children or
their family situation; this enables both parents and teach-
ers to tackle issues that, while they may not be obvious
from the start, can help better understand each individual
child and his or her special needs;

Ad-hoc meetings on parents demand that address a

particular issue important for them and their child, ill-
nesses of their child that might have psychosomatic rea-
sons, allergies, or special diet concerns for the food pro-
vided in our pre-school, or any other issues of this kind.

Sigmund Freud, one of the major child psychologists,

has found that a childs education and upbringing is basi-
cally finished when the child completes his sixth year of
life. This astonishing insight means that pre-school is actu-
ally more important than primary school in the formation
of the basic intelligence, talents, and emotional integrity of
the child.
This insight leads to understanding the importance of
every day of happiness and emotional nutrition that the
nursery and pre-school setting provides in the life of small
children, so as to properly prepare them for the tougher
courses of later primary and even high school and univer-
sity.

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Educational Goals

Here is an overview over the basic educational goals

that any progressive child care paradigm should achieve:
Being a facilitator for high talent and gift so as to en-
sure that the human potential in whichever form it mani-
fests, is respected, recognized, promoted and developed
into its full realization, and this without regard to social
status, religious, ideological or political orientation and
free of any discrimination by race, gender, caste or heri-
tage;
Building a spirit of self-activation, responsiveness,
flexibility, synergy and active participation;
Educating towards effectiveness, using networking
with others as a primary tool to achieve visible results;

Helping to surpass the ego by creating a spirit of

sharing and contribution and a feeling and enthusiasm for
synergistic solutions;
Educating towards a positive mindset that is based
upon the truth of unlimited substance;

Helping in a non-discriminatory manner those who,

by their giftedness and motivation imperatively need sup-
port, help, care or sponsorship for developing their talents;
Helping build a generation of people who know to
effectively use their resources while respecting and helping
building the resources of others so that a resourceful com-
munity can be eventually created.

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 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

This curriculum is based upon an integral worldview

which sharply opposes the current fragmented worldview.
This creative worldview considers problems and solu-
tions as one interconnected field. Accordingly the answers
to current problems are systemic and holistic, so far not to
be found on any of the reigning educational agendas.
To give a simple example. You cannot bring a definite
solution to our environmental problems, global warming,
without changing the curricula of our schools.
It is not through a global tax or stricter laws that we
achieve people to behave in an ecologically literate manner,
but only through educating children early in life to respect
the environment. Hence, many of our global problems to-
day boil down to the need to improving education and
thus raising educational budgets. The systems approach
teaches us that pretty much all on the human agenda is a
direct function of our educational wisdom, the wisdom to
bring up our children responsibly. It is for this reason that
many social scientists consider the 21st century as a key
turning point in human development and the blossom of
the learning society.
I have thought through about every possible problem
in human society today, from child-rearing to crime statis-
tics, from youth suicide to health reform, from new science
to the understanding of the economy. And I saw that all,
really all, is a direct function of the way we have been edu-
cated and conditioned to deal with life, on both the indi-
vidual and the transpersonal levels!

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Chapter Ten
5 Arguments for a New Education
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

Argument One
Education Needs to Be Individualized

Critique
Institutional education does not serve the child since it
does not recognize the existence of individual, and indi-
vidually gifted, children. For mass education, there is a
mass, a herd, a quantity of humans to be educated, and not a
variety of unique individuals. This is the reason why mass
education is destructive and leads to devolution, not to
evolution. It does not serve cultural, but if ever, military
needs. It destroys what is human in us. It suffocates sensitiv-
ity, and cancels out the individual differences and particu-
larities of children so that they fit into a standard scheme of
thinking and acting.

It conditions good humans to become bad citizens. It

brings about bureaucrats by systematically destroying in-
dividual thought capacities and creativity in children and
adolescents. It brutalizes the child by ruthless competition
and even physical violence in order to transform them into
robots that fit, like wheels, into a soulless consumer ma-
chinery.

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Suggestion

Schools, colleges and universities can redraft their edu-

cational approach and tailor it to the individual student.
Within todays and tomorrows network society and
the computerized management of data, it is relatively eas-
ier today than before in human history to offer educational
services not in a standard, but in a customized fashion so
as to really meet the needs and expectations of the indi-
vidual student.

This will make for high educational effectiveness, a

better management of resources, and higher learning mo-
tivation of each and every student enrolled in a program,
class or curriculum.
Before hand, this new educational paradigm is more
cost-intensive, but the higher effectiveness and success rate
of this approach will return the investment within a rea-
sonable time span.

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 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

Argument Two
Education Needs to be Quality-Focused

Critique
Standard education focuses on a quantity of children to
be educated, and it measures educational success by look-
ing at groups of students, on a school, regional or even na-
tional level. Measuring is done using statistical methods,
without looking at the quality of the individual educational
success or failure.

The United Nations and UNICEF even have driven this

paradigm to its extreme when they set their mission to be
one of mass alphabetization on a global level. This approach
must fail to give satisfying results because education can-
not be quantified, and all such measuring beyond the indi-
vidual student level is a mock trial that serves to please the
eye of the beholder, not a real assessment of educational
success. Human potential cannot be quantified, it can only
be assessed on the individual human level.

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Suggestion

To focus on every individual student is only possible

when, from the start, we have a qualitative and not a quan-
titative approach to education. The quality approach does
not ask for efficiency, but for integrated solutions that serve
every child. The family model ideally fits the purpose of
life education since it is the form of education that comes
about naturally. It is, so as to say, created by life itself. It is
not artificial and integrates without hurt any particularity
of any child in a form of shared experience.
Thus, the first step of drafting a new educational para-
digm with regard to quality-based education would be to
empower the family, to serve as the primary educational
toolbox, prior to any and all schooling, be it public or pri-
vate.
The second step is to keep educational institutions fo-
cused on quality in the sense of assessing the individual aca-
demic success in terms of educational satisfaction, learning
motivation, learning skills, learning success, in a general
way, without stressing to assess the learning content.
Learning content is more and more relative, as our total
information has since long superseded the capacity of the
individual human brain; hence the need for producing ex-
cellent and highly motivated learners, not depressed super-
brains.

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Argument Three
Education Needs to Foster Intelligence, not Knowledge

Critique
Standard education is focused upon the accumulation
of knowledge, while it does not really understand what is
intelligence. Most people confuse intelligence with knowl-
edge and intellectualism without understanding that the
accumulation of knowledge is merely mechanical and not a
sign of intelligence. Knowledge had value in the past when
careers were such that one could make it through life with
basically one education, refreshing lacunas through profes-
sional training and seminars.
Today, knowledge is even more important, but for the
most part doesnt need to be memorized because its available
everywhere, through computer networks, databanks and the
Internet. Hence, standard education is out of sync with re-
ality since quite some decades, because it is out of sync
with the nature of our network society and therefore more
or less totally ineffective.

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Suggestion

Intelligence is entirely different from knowledge. It is

not mechanical, but a natural by-product of emotional integrity
and wholeness: to grow healthy means to not be fragmented
and to be rather intuitive.
Children and geniuses have in common that they are
emotionally intact and that they are not fragmented.
Our rational mind (left brain hemisphere) only func-
tions at full capacity when it is connected to our irrational
mind (right brain hemisphere) so that intellectual/analytic
and intuitive/synthetic thought processes go hand in hand.
Then, regularly, the rational and the emotional part of
us are well balanced and we experience a state of lasting
inner peace.

Hence, the new paradigm focuses upon fostering intel-

ligence through designing a learning environment that is
multi-vectorial, where emotional values are respected, and
where all four quadrants of intelligence are being devel-
oped, the logical, intuitive, sequential and emotional intelli-
gence.
Whosoever is truly intelligent, can handle knowledge
in a way to optimize creative output in whatever field of study.
In addition, this new paradigm fosters health and psychic
health because it significantly reduces learning stress and
anxiety.

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Argument Four
Education Needs to be Holistic

Critique
Intellectual capacities and skills that have no connec-
tion with the emotional life of the person and that are dis-
connected from the right brain as well as the heart are truly
dangerous. They make for humans to become ruthless and
cold-blooded functionaries that are able to lead concentra-
tion camps or will click out bomb rains on forest children if
those actions only fit in their thought concepts.
Only sensitivity acts counter to cruelty, not the cultiva-
tion of thought systems, ideals or religions. The danger of
the Cartesian approach to science is that it more or less
completely disregards nature, imposing concepts upon na-
ture, and thus projecting truth upon nature, instead of trying
to understand the truth inherent in nature.
This is the simple reason why Cartesian science de-
stroys nature. The same is of course true for education.
When education is reductionist and disregards soul values,
and is not imbedded in emotional integrity, it is destructive,
producing fears, depression, and even suicide.
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Suggestion

Holistic thinking goes along with emotional integrity.

Intelligence, sensitivity and understanding for the complex
functions of life can only be developed when cognition is
imbedded in the emotional life of the person and is thus a result
of wholeness, and not of fragmentation. As nature is itself
coded in holographic patterns, the holistic approach is best
for understanding the truth inherent in nature, thereby fa-
cilitating scientific solutions that are integrated and that are
compatible with nature, and sustainable.
Holistic education ideally prepares students for becom-
ing holistic scientists, artists, doctors, or bankers, or what-
ever other profession one may think of.
Holistic thinking is useful everywhere, in every disci-
pline, and in every kind of profession because it looks for
integrated solutions that are naturally intelligent. This is a
tremendously important paradigm change and it is a gi-
gantic amount of work to redraft all our educational curricula
in a holistic fashion because it entails to redesign our entire
educational and institutional apparatus.

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Argument Five
Education Needs to be Private and Competitive

Critique
In Europe and most countries except the United States,
most of the educational cycle is in the hands of govern-
ments, be this service free of charge, be it, as in most Asian
countries, subject to a fee. Experience has shown that gov-
ernments use to work rather slowly and ineffectively, that
they waste resources rather than using them economically,
that they follow ideological rather than functional man-
agement principles and that they are often years behind
the general standard of social development. In addition,
when all is offered for free, students tend to take it all for
granted and learning motivation drops.

Suggestion

I have seen a dramatic difference between my law studies

in Germany and in the United States. In Germany, services
provided by the university for actually enrolling students in
a later work life are completely non-existent, while in the
United States they are staged and orchestrated in an ex-

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emplary manner, with the result that the transition from

university career to professional life is smooth and without
hurt. This has of course a price tag, and students often have
to work for paying their tuition fees, but this work experi-
ence is again a positive addendum to their professional
cycle.
I suggest governments worldwide to privatize education,
all education, as much as possible and give it over to the
natural competition inherent in the market. This will make
for more professional quality education, for better and more
qualified teachers and professors, for higher learning mo-
tivation of the students, and for overall higher learning
results.

It has to be considered what an enormous space of re-

sponsibility would be off the shoulders of governments, so
that they can better focus on their real and most important
tasks, that is to draft effective laws (legislative), to adminis-
trate the public domain for the best of all citizens (execu-
tive) and to watch over justice being rendered in an equi-
table manner while safeguarding constitutional guaran-
tees, and give the individual citizen peace of mind (judica-
ture).

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 Chapter Eleven
A Brainsmart Learning Approach

How does a teacher have to perform in a school or pre-

school with a brainsmart educational curriculum in place?
I would say upfront that such a teacher has to perform
in much a different way than in ordinary and traditional
educational institutions! In one word, he or she simply
have to be brainsmart in their personal and teaching styles
and corresponding behavior. However, teachers cannot be
blamed for the current situation in the educational field, it
certainly not teachers who are the culprits behind the de-
plorable ineffectiveness of the educational systems world-
wide.

This being said, teachers will gladly accept a brains-

mart educational style for they will realize that such a cur-
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

riculum is way more relaxing as a work environment and

produces far less stressful than the traditional educational
system, and also rewards teachers far more for their crea-
tive input as this is and was ever possible thus far in edu-
cational institutions.
Here are some of the basic advantages of a brainsmart
curriculum:

Increased Intelligence, Creativity and Memory

Improved Academic Performance

Increased Use of Hidden Brain Reserves

Increased Coherence of Brain Functioning

Benefits for Health, Energy and Wellbeing

Decreased Fatigue and Insomnia

Reduced Health Care Costs

Benefits for the Personality and Relationships

Increased Self Confidence and Self-Esteem

Higher Levels of Self-Development

Decreased Anxiety, Depression, Aggression, Hostility

Increased Emotional Stability and Tolerance

Increased Appreciation of Others

Our school systems worldwide are not only ineffective

but they are outright opposed to brainsmart education. With

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all the insights we gained through brainsmart educational

approaches such as Suggestopedia, we know that children
who have to sit upright on hard benches are about in the
worst position to learn in a relaxed mood, which is the
way the brain learns. Another secret of Suggestopedia is that
it was not at all developed, as later propagated in the me-
dia, as a method for diplomats to learn a foreign languages
as quickly as possible. It was developed by Bulgarian psy-
chiatrist Georgi Lozanov for children to learn to read and
write. The results were jaw-dropping. Children learnt to
read and write in less than six months and adults can learn
a difficult language like Arabic or Chinese in only two
months. And they speak the language without any accent,
just as a native speaker would express himself or herself.
But not only are our educational systems not brains-
mart, they are also on the social level not fostering the de-
velopment of culture, but are rather the breeding cages for
chaos. To express this truth in even more general terms, we
can say that our schools do not bring about integration of
knowledge, but disintegration of intelligence.
At the secondary level, the problems of school drop-
outs, antisocial behavior, lack of motivation, dullness, and
even despair are symptomatic of the great frustration stu-
dents experience when they are not educated to systemati-
cally unfold the unique creative possibilities latent within
each of them. The segmented and fragmented experience
of studying separate disciplines and specializing in an
academic field, without the concomitant experience of the

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wholeness of knowledge and the wholeness of life, not

only fails to develop the brains potential; it actually hin-
ders the development of the mature intellect and personal-
ity by directing students attention only to partial values of
knowledge. In other words, scrutinizing educational cur-
ricula worldwide delivers the result that education is not
offering the knowledge for actualizing human potential. It
is not enough to grow; true growth is always nonlinear,
balanced and integrated, not linear and cancerous. To grow
in a balanced manner means that the various elements are
integrated in the learning process. These elements are to be
found on the social, economic, environmental, technologi-
cal and political levels. Graduates from traditional educa-
tional institutions generally lack the breadth and depth of
comprehension to spontaneously make decisions that will
serve the progress and wellbeing of everyone in a net-
worked global culture.
Krishnamurti pointed out in his book Education or the
Significance of Life (1978) that rather than giving students
the knowledge and experience to live the full value of life,
formal education restricts the students awareness to nar-
row boundaries, and in so doing prevents the total devel-
opment of the brain toward higher states of consciousness.

It is not that we did not know what to do about the de-

plorable state of education in the world. We know very
well because research showed that students at some elite
universities and schools improve significantly in mental

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capacity, academic achievement, health, and social skills

and behavior, compared to students in other institutions.
It is known from institutions such as Maharishi School of
Management in Fairfield, Iowa, United States and their af-
filiate schools that at elementary and secondary levels,
year after year classes of students who enter at an average
level of performance, score among the highest in their na-
tions on national standardized examinations by the time
they graduate. They also distinguish themselves by win-
ning top state and national prizes in an unusually wide
range of subjects, including science, mathematics, speech,
history, poetry, drama, art, music, and sports.
Why is that so? Its because this educational approach
makes greater use of our brains potential, which is why I
call this education brainsmart.
Research on brain development in a variety of species
shows that specific types of experience are necessary for
the brain to develop properly.

For example, in the early stages of life, sensory experi-

ences are critical for the development of the corresponding
sensory structures of the brain. It has also been found that
an enriched sensory and motor environment in infancy contrib-
utes to significantly enhanced development of the brain.

Brain development is thus intimately connected with

experience. From this perspective, the purpose of educa-
tion, including early education in the family, should be to
provide the appropriate experiences, at every stage of
growth, that develop the full potential of mind and body.
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Even if educators do not attend to the process of brain

development in childhood, they do select learning experi-
ences that suit the state of sensory, motor, and cognitive
development of school children.
In so doing, they are in fact selecting experiences most
suitable for the childrens current state of brain develop-
ment. For example, preschool education and family inter-
actions in the first years of a childs life naturally stimulate
the development of sensory and motor competencies, and
basic but important language skills.
Unfortunately, education has not included a systematic
means to directly promote integrated brain functioning.
Rather, education primarily exercises the individuals logi-
cal reasoning ability in relation to specific bodies of knowl-
edge.
It is true that reasoning ability depends on the matura-
tion of the brains integrative systems; however, limiting
the educational experiences of students only to the contin-
ued exercise of their reasoning skills is not sufficient to de-
velop the brains potential, and to unfold higher integra-
tion of brain functioning.
Evidence that current education does not promote full
development of the brain is found in research on human
cognitive development.
From infancy to adolescence, during the period when
the brain is rapidly maturing, there is concomitant growth
in general intelligence, ego development, field independ-
ence, and other related cognitive variables. However, after
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adolescence, when the initial maturation of brain processes

is largely completed, these cognitive abilities do not con-
tinue to develop. This indicates that despite all efforts of
secondary and higher education, higher cognitive proc-
esses, and the corresponding higher potential of the brain,
are not being developed.
Stagnation of development has been rationalized as
adulthood; it is assumed that with physical maturation
comes the end of fundamental development of the brain
and cognitive processes. Accordingly, higher education
students apply their already developed intellectual skills to
increasingly specialized bodies of knowledge.
That is, education remains intellect-predominant; and
as students advance in their education, they focus on in-
creasingly segregated or isolated areas of knowledge.
As educational experience continues to be restricted to
narrow channels, the adult brain in fact continues to mod-
ify its functioning to accommodate those specific narrow
channels of activity. For example, when perceptual or mo-
tor skills are learned, as for example playing the piano, the
adults brain modifies its functioning: the cortex has been
found to reallocate the proportion of its area that is de-
voted to the sensory or motor inputs that are most used.

In practical terms, this means that the skill gained in

playing the piano or in any academic discipline does not
lead to skill in all the other activities of life. In other words,
it does not develop into mastering life as a whole.

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Another type of research indicating that educational

experiences do not develop total brain functioning is the
study of brain activity during mental operations. The con-
clusion of this research is that specific cognitive processes
and specific domains of knowledge are associated with
activity in specific localized areas of the brain. For exam-
ple, research indicates that the mental activities of reading
words and of speaking those words each activate different
and very specific cortical areas. Similar studies show that
separate areas of the brain are activated by memory of dif-
ferent categories such as tools, animals, and names of peo-
ple. Thus, the educational experiences of mastering specific
areas of knowledge or engaging in a variety of focused
cognitive performances activate only very specific areas of
the brain rather than develop higher integration of brain
functioning.
What are the consequences of such an educational ap-
proach? The ineffectiveness of education can be viewed as
resulting from focusing the brains activity only in narrow
channels without also developing holistic brain function-
ing, particularly greater integration of brain functioning.
The research findings that directly pertain to increased
integration and effectiveness of brain functioning can be
summarized as follows:

Greater integration of all cortical areas through meditation,

yoga and whole-brain activities;

Greater integration of diverse styles of brain functioning, as

measured by greater activation of each brain hemisphere,

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and by experiencing higher states of consciousness through

integrated learning.

Tasks that require analytic cognitive skills (verbal and

mathematical tasks) involve greater activity of the left
hemisphere of the brain; tasks that require spatial ability
involve greater activity of the right hemisphere of the
brain. These findings indicate more flexible functioning of
the whole cortex, in which diverse cortical areas are more
capable of active involvement, as required by the task.
Cognitive processing involves a sequence of responses
in a variety of neural structures; faster processing thus re-
flects more integrated and efficient brain functioning. Re-
search shows that experience directly shapes the develop-
ment and modification of brain functioning.
Research also suggests that the type of experience most
valuable for brain development after childhood is greater
integration of brain functioning, which is not systemati-
cally provided by education.
Many aspects of cognitive functioning have their basis
in the growth of higher, or more integrated, brain function-
ing. Despite the efforts of educators applying a variety of
teaching and curriculum approaches, these cognitive abili-
ties have been found to stop developing after adolescence.
This lack of continued growth of cognitive abilities is
compelling evidence that education fails to continue un-
folding the full brain potential of each student.
Research also shows that the brain continues to adapt
its functioning to specific channels of learning and behav-
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ior. The cognitive activities typically exercised in education

(reading, speaking, memorizing and recall), as well as spe-
cific categories of knowledge, activate highly specific areas
of the brain, rather than promote more holistic or inte-
grated brain functioning.
The conclusion from the research is that the segmented
approach to knowledge that characterizes education today
restricts the awareness and brain functioning to narrow
channels of activity. Restricted awareness leads to prob-
lems, mistakes, and the inability to evaluate the environ-
ment and act in a way that consistently favors progress
and happiness.
Educators who are sincere in their desire to do the
most for their students and to eliminate the weaknesses of
education will avail themselves of this knowledge. The re-
sult will be generations of students who are enlivening
their total brain functioning, on the basis of which they
will lead increasingly problem-free, productive, and fulfill-
ing lives, directly contributing to progress in every area of
national life.
But a brainsmart educational approach is only half ef-
fective if it does not also care for learning motivation. It is
obvious that children today are naturally motivated for elec-
tronic learning. They are enthusiastic about handling elec-
tronic learning devices and have a natural ability to handle
these devices better and faster than we other adults do.
This has of course an ultimate advantage because it
clearly constitutes a factor of learning motivation. But for

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that matter it is equally important to not overdo the intake

of radiation all such devices emit on a constant basis. An-
other reason for the success of the e-learning environment
is that the applications that today are available on the
market have reached a high standard. They are versatile
and offer virtually unlimited opportunities for small chil-
dren to discover their creative and intellectual abilities,
and to use these abilities in a way that is playful and fun.

On the other hand, children tend to be to a high degree

addicted to these devices if the teacher or parents do not
offer other, that is, non-virtual activities, such as playing
outside or discover nature other than through the eyes of
an electronic application and device.

The third reason for the success of the virtual learning

environment is that parents can easily interact with their
children using mobile devices, sharing privileged mo-
ments with their children around these devices, instead of
needing to buy a whole room full of learning material. Its
all in the box, handy and mobile. In addition, as there are
many free Apps and many that do not cost more than
about five dollars, the virtual school is actually more savvy
than the old-fashioned school.
And it is certainly more fun! Of course, some teachers
and parents still foster the outdated view that education
needs to be hard and almost painful. Statistics however
show that high learning is the result of learning by play-
ing, not the result of learning by discipline! While people
would agree that when something is fun, we are more mo-

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tivated doing it, they apply this wisdom strangely only to

themselves, not to their children. This is of course but a
shadow of old traditions that have no place in a secular
and highly organized society that needs fast and highly
effective learners!
How can children profit from the freedom to play?
Playing is essential for children because it is their primary
and natural mode of learning. Traditional schools have by-
passed play in an attempt to improve nature, while the re-
sult was exactly the contrary.
The more children play, the more they learn, and this is
even valid for adults for we all have an Inner Child.

See also Peter Fritz Walter, Coaching Your Inner Child (2014)

In other words, play and learning cannot be separated

or the learning experience and output of the child will be
and remain poor.
All research on peace versus violence has shown that
human beings need freedom for unfolding their creative
potential and for leading happy lives! When we work for a
smooth and creative learning environment for our children
we are working for peace, for world peace, it is as simple
as that!
All intelligent human beings require a basic amount of
freedom for their full blossoming, and this is valid for
children just as much! Freedom to learn with pleasure is
the starting point!

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What is rendering childrens brains more creative?

Neuroscience has made huge progress over the last twenty
years. It has given us a chart of our brain that shows how
important it is to have both brain hemispheres working in
sync.
High learning input and creative output are namely the
result of a more or less perfect coordination of our brain
hemispheres. While the left brain hemisphere fosters de-
ductive logic, the use of language, rationality and order,
the right brain hemisphere fosters inductive and associa-
tive logic, the use of dream, irrationality and disorder. Both
these realms are important for our living and learning.
Every creator knows that for creating something new
we need to dissolve the order of the old. In such tiny mo-
ments of chaos, the old order is dissolved and space is
made for new order. This is how for example a painter or
composer abandons an old style in order to find a new one,
for a certain period of time.

Children learn in the same way. They need both order

and disorder, both language and dream, both rationality
and irrationality. When children are held from behaving in
an irrational manner, they become disturbed! This is one of
the main reasons for learning handicaps as they are so of-
ten to be found in traditional schooling.
When children can learn according to the internal logic
and structure of their brain, they learn with ease, fast and
effective, and with a high amount of pleasure. Then learn-
ing is fun and there is a never-ending creative flow that

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motivates the child to continue and go on and higher on

the ladder of learning input.
What is the benefit of e-learning for pre-schoolers? E-
Learning is important because the learning experience
should be relaxing and enjoyable. But e-learning is even
more important for small children than for bigger children
because it is between ages 4 and 6 that most of the pre-
ferred pathways are laid in our brain.

Since the groundbreaking neurological research of Brit-

ish neurologist Herbert James Campbell in 1973, we know
that all our main characteristics are formed until the com-
pletion of the age of 6.
The brain forms all major neurological pathways in our
brain very early in life and it is later rather difficult to
change these preferred pathways again. That means that
all our major character traits are laid before the age of 7,
the so-called Age of Reason (Piaget). That means also that
our attitude toward learning, and how we tend to experi-
ence learning, are built before the age of reason. For exam-
ple, if we experience learning as difficult in Kindergarten
and Pre-School there is a high chance we will experience it
as difficult and tedious also later on. But if we experience
learning as easy and joyful as a pre-schooler, we are posi-
tively conditioned as to being an easy learner.
Then we remain an easy learner!

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 Chapter Twelve
Are the Teachers Adequate?

In consciousness-based and brainsmart education, the

agenda of vocational training for teachers is different, on
one hand, and more varied and expanded, on the other,
than in conventional vocational training for teachers and
day care workers.
There are some rules of conduct and of attitude that are
really different in such an educational setting, compared to
traditional education. The stress is namely on conscious-
ness, the way a teacher handles perception and expresses
it, and to develop self-awareness. In this context, emotional
awareness assumes a very important role in order to avoid
the common projections that are rampant in traditional
education.
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

Projections are not the result of reflection but in the

contrary, the result of repression. Repression brings about
regression and projection. All content of consciousness that
is not embraced but repressed falls out of the cultural frame,
and thus regresses into archaic behavior models, and in
addition, the repressed desire or emotion is subsequently
projected upon others. That means for teachers who have
such an attitude that they will project their unassumed de-
sires and fantasies upon the children with the result that
verbal and nonverbal communication becomes distorted
and children receiving ambiguous messages.
However, in a progressive consciousness-based educa-
tional approach, communication is a major pillar for help-
ing children to widen their conscious perception of life and
of themselves. This communication must be truthful and
whole if it is to serve its goal.
As a result, teachers must learn to handle their inner
trials, their contradictory emotions, feelings or desires, and
their shadow self. For this task, they need to receive ap-
propriate vocational training which goes beyond the usual
vocational training provided to teachers in that it is nour-
ished by the insights of neuroscience, child psychology
and psychoanalysis.

The present approach does not go as far as the one

practiced in so-called psychoanalytic Kindergartens as
they have existed, back in the 20th century, in Russia, Ger-
many and France. For example, the famous Maison Verte
in Paris that was founded by Dr. Franoise Dolto (1908-

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1988), Frances leading child psychotherapist at the time,

was requiring applicants for the work with children and
babies to be psychoanalyzed. I visited the Maison Verte
back in 1986 and subsequently was invited to interview
Madame Dolto in her apartment, Rue St. Jacques, in Paris.
We had an extended talk about various subjects and
my first question was why teachers or facilitators in her
communication center had to be qualified psychothera-
pists? And Madame Dolto told me more or less what I was
just writing here. She spoke about childhood hangups, re-
pression and projection.
However, I believe that it is not needed to have gone
through several years of a Freudian psychoanalysis just for
developing emotional self-awareness. And I have met doz-
ens of people in my life who had gone through years of
Freudian therapy and who had absolutely not the slightest
emotional self-awareness and would have been horrible
teachers!

So in my view what we need is an extended vocational

training for teachers, and not the transformation of the
school system into a whitewash of Freudian psychoanaly-
sis!
This being said, how should we go about to foster emo-
tional awareness in our lives as teachers? Can we do some-
thing for it or should we wait until the vocational training
for teachers has gone through a total overhaul? I believe
that we can do something for it, individually, and with an

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effort that about everyone can deliver without adopting

the sometimes ridiculous mannerisms of a psychoanalyst.
This doesnt mean that my insights have grown in a
vacuum. I am well aware of the origins of my ideas and do
not hide their sources. They namely come from Eric
Bernes teaching of Transactional Analysis (TA) and from
Frits Perls approach to Gestalt Therapy.
Both of these therapies are holistic approaches to self-
healing and have developed way after the proliferation of
Freudian psychoanalysis. They offer much more effective
therapeutic approaches and do not intellectualize psy-
choanalytic knowledge.
And there is another source of knowledge that we can-
not disregard; it is Bioenergetics, the teaching of the bio-
energetic logic of the body, and of human emotions, that
was developed by Wilhelm Reich and later popularized by
Alexander Lowen.
Many concepts and ideas around that mysterious word
education are obfuscating the simple truths of life. One of
them is the insight that no real education is ever done by
preaching eloquently, but by living the truth. A teacher is
not a politician in the sense that truthful education is most
of the time done non-verbally, not by holding speeches and
still less by blame or admonition.
It may sound extreme but when a student says or does
anything indecent, this is a signal not to be overlooked by
the attentive teacher, a signal that says Where is my part
in this behavior?
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A responsible attitude requires the teacher to be sensi-

ble to perceiving the complexity of the psychological intricacies
in the relationship s/he maintains with every single child
in his or her class. When student behavior derails from the
social code, the appropriate response is observation, and as
a consequence, self-observation. In this sense, education is
always also self-education, and this is an ongoing process.
We are not perfect and we know that. But as educators we
often overlook that playing the game as the majority de-
fines it means ultimately to be hypocrite; it is easy to do as
if and pretending one had achieved a certain level of per-
fection, thereby suggesting to the child that he or she is
imperfect. Oh, poor thing!

This paradigm of the old school of teaching was not

even questioned as the teacher was put on the same pedes-
tal as the father whose omnia potestas was one of the pillars
of patriarchy. Authority figures were idealized yet silently
feared. Carl Jungs saying comes to mind that the cabinets
of psychiatrists are filled with people who had ideal par-
ents. Yet to think we have put behind us all of this, as a
matter of our advanced psychological understanding is
equally a fallacy. Real understanding of children comes as
a result of teachers really understanding themselves, and
their behaviors and reactions! This cannot be taught nor
can it be learnt other than by a process of continuous self-
observation.
Behold, I have not used the term self-criticism, and for
good reason! In fact, self-criticism often leads to guild and

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toxic shame for we all have in us an inner critic who is an

opponent to our healthy ego. Progress can only be made
when we learn to observe ourselves passively, without the
blade of obnoxious criticism that all-too-quickly tends to
undermine self-esteem. As a matter of projecting repressed
behavior, the person who is very self-critical is also very
critical toward others, which leads to a double toxicity. The
person with her self-esteem ruined by constant and outra-
geous self-denial will tend to deny the reality in all others
around her; such a person will unconsciously undermine
the self-esteem of others. An educator who is sharp toward
their own self-esteem will be sharp toward the children in
their care; such educators tend to be harshly critical to a
point to ruin the learning motivation in the student. This is
so because learning motivation is fueled by the positive
emotional and affectional relationship between teacher and
student.
As a teacher, responsible to keep the relationships with
your students intact means to be harmonious and gentle in
your overall demeanor and to be positive and encourag-
ing, not negative and overly critical.
Lack of self-criticism is often misunderstood as lack of
format, lenience and emotional indulgence. But to repeat
it, we have to see the difference between self-criticism and
self-observation. The first behavior is negative, the other is
positive. I do not need to criticize myself, to make myself
down, in order to improve my behavior and attitude; once
I become fully conscious of it, there will be a change. This

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is so because consciousness always is self-cleaning and

self-correcting. Passive self-observation is the key for any
kind of personal transformation; in addition, teachers who
master this technique are much more at ease in informal
situations, especially in the day care and pre-school set-
ting. They are not only more relaxed and experience much
less emotional stress, but they also tend to bring over to
the children this valuable technique of introspection that
fosters inner peace. While self-criticism leads to inner war!
As education is an ongoing process, so is the eduction
you give to yourselfalso called self-education! It requires
an acute awareness of ones emotional processes, ones in-
ner life. All our desires and fantasies have an impact upon
people around us, especially upon small children. This im-
pact is positive when we assume our inner life, and nega-
tive when we repress it and project it.
That is why emotional self-awareness is so important
for teachers. Of course, this is not really an agenda point in
the vocational training for teachers and daycare workers
and it is for this reason that I stress it here so much. I be-
lieve that teachers have to be trained to develop this pas-
sive self-awareness, which is why they should learn to
meditate. Meditation is but that, a peaceful, stress-free and
lucid form of self-observation, the awareness of all our
thoughts and desires. One may argue if small children
really need to learn meditation, and I do not pronounce a
definite opinion here about it. There are arguments in fa-
vor and against it. I am speaking about children between

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the ages 2 and 6, not primary school level children. I be-

lieve that the self-regulatory processes in children that small
are so strong and vital that an add-on is not needed to boost
their self-awareness. This is so because small children are
acutely self-aware when they are healthy and emotionally
vibrant!
But meditation is well needed for teachers to learn the
process of introspection with the result that fragmented
and contradictory desires are rendered conscious and inte-
grated. As already mentioned with a pointe of humor re-
garding Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his persecutory desires
projected upon a young boy, while the whole plot was a
matter of fantasy, it is a psychological fact that when sud-
den or transitory adult-child erotic attraction is not ren-
dered conscious, it cannot be sublimated. Then the educa-
tor may find himself trapped in a desire he cannot possibly
assume as it is against the social code. Passive awareness
of the emotional streaming between educator and student
suffices to handle such moments, without acting, so that
the emotional safety of the child is not jeopardized.
Last not least, self-education also means that teachers
are constant learners; it is barely conceivable how teachers
can come over as vibrant and charismatic if they think of
themselves as wisdom dispensers for undeveloped youth.
Education is not a one-way street if it is to be effective.
When children perceive their teachers are stagnant on
the intellectual level, they are not really motivated to par-
ticipate in the wisdom quest. I have seen it over and over

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again, in schools that those teachers are given the greatest

love and respect who are humble enough to learn together
with their students! These teachers also score highest in
learning output per class, and per student, if this can at all
be measured! It is in this sense that I feel education and
self-education really hang together, for one is the reflection
of the other, and both are but head and tale of a coin.
In this sense, a great learning institution is one where
all and everybody learns, not just the students. This is an
idea that today is even discussed in management training,
not just for the management of schools but for all kinds of
businesses. It is called a learning culture. I would go as
far as saying that if this is true even on the general man-
agement level, it is certainly an inseparable element in the
curriculum of a progressive pre-school.

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 Glossary
Contextual Terminology

Antipsychiatry
Antipsychiatry is a movement founded by the psychia-
trists Thomas Szasz and Ronald David Laing. Antipsychia-
try claims that what we call normal is a product of re-
pression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other
forms of destructive action on experience. It is radically
estranged from the structure of being.

The more one sees this, the more senseless it is to con-

tinue with generalized descriptions of supposedly specifi-
cally schizoid, schizophrenic, hysterical mechanisms.
There are forms of alienation that are relatively strange
to statistically normal forms of alienation. The normally
alienated person, by reason of the fact that he acts more or
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

less like everyone else, is taken to be sane. Other forms of

alienation that are out of step with the prevailing state of
alienation are those that are labeled by the formal major-
ity as bad or mad. Laings convincing criticism of conven-
tional psychiatry, and Thomas Szaszs book The Myth of
Mental Illness (1984) show basic rules of the morally integer
psychiatrist in our society.

Brain Research
Latest consciousness research suggests that the brain is
something like an interface for the mind, and that mind is
the larger notion, as it bears an essential connectedness
with the whole of the universe and creation. This holistic
view of the brain-mind replaces the former view that saw
mind and brain as separated, thereby granting an undue
importance and exclusiveness to the human brain in ex-
plaining cognition. Typically, this scientific residue concept
was unable to explain extrasensorial perception (ESP) and
psychic phenomena.
What is the relationship between the mind and the
brain? This question was still some years ago controversial,
but today we know that neural networks transmit vast
amounts of motor and sensory data, and that mind is not a
thing but a process; the process of cognition, which is iden-
tified with the process of life. The brain is a specific struc-
ture through which this process operates. Thus the rela-
tionship between mind and brain is one between process
and structure.

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 GLOSSARY

Cartesian Science and Worldview

A Cartesian or Newtonian worldview is a life philosophy

marked by a dominance of deductive and logical thinking
to the detriment of the qualities of the right brain such as
associative and imaginative thinking, and generally fan-
tasy. Its also a worldview that tends to disregard or deny
dreams and dreaming, extrasensorial, multisensorial per-
ception and ESP faculties, as well as genuine spirituality.
The term Cartesian has been coined from the name of
French philosopher Ren Descartes. While nature is coded
in energy patterns, Cartesian scientists deny the cosmic
energy field as a vitalistic theory; they splitted mind and
matter into opposite poles.
Historically, and philosophically, it was not Ren Des-
cartes who has been at the origin this schizoid worldview,
but the so-called Eleatic School, a philosophical movement
in ancient Greece that opposed the holistic and organic
worldview represented by the philosophy of Heraclites;
but it was through the affirmation and pseudo-scientific
corroboration of the ancient Eleatic dualism that in the his-
tory of Western science, the reductionist approach to real-
ity, which is actually a fallacy of perception, became the
dominant science paradigm between approximately the
17th and the 20th centuries.

We are right now at a point in time where this limited

worldview is gradually being overcome and replaced by
the novel insights of quantum physics, systems theory, and

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a new holistic science paradigm that connects us back to

the oldest of wisdom traditions.

Code or Social Code

The Code is a concept of psychoanalysis and means a
codification in language of patterns of behavior that are
part of human conductwithout asking if such patterns of
behavior are wanted or unwanted, productive or counter-
productive, legal or illegal. It has been observed by Freu-
dian psychoanalysis that the code sets up a structure in the
human psyche that is conducive to law-abiding behavior,
while uncoded desires or forms of conduct tend to bring
about chaos, destruction, and crime. Hence the necessity
for the social policy maker to code as much as possible de-
sires and social behaviors so as to humanize the desire con-
tained in them and render these desires conscious and sub-
ject of conscious control. Desires are not coded cannot ac-
cording to psychoanalysis be sublimated and will instead
be repressed and projected. Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) and
Franoise Dolto (1908-1988) have put particular stress upon
society's obligation to code desire in language.

Complexity

Complexity is a major characteristics of living systems;

generally in all flow patterns, complexity and simplicity
are complementary opposites. This is so not only in natural
phenomena, but also in ontology and in human psychol-
ogy. This duality that is inherent in human psychology has
very well been recognized by the ancient Mesoamerican
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 GLOSSARY

natives. Complexity is a function of the energy flow; when

energy flows freely, complexity tends to be high, while it's
reduced when energy is blocked or obstructed. As a matter
of evolution, life tends to increase in complexity over time.

Direct Perception

Direct Perception is the primary mode of learning that

nature applies in evolution. Direct perception is the mode
the human brain uses to receive and store information in
its capacity as a passively organizing system.

The child learns his or her first language through direct

perception, the picking-up of whole patterns, using the
integrative and associative mode of the right brain. Obedi-
ence and imitation are not the appropriate means to de-
velop the human potential; therefore civilization can only
function on an outside or superficial level, but not as a mo-
tor of integrating man into a truly functional power unit
that is operating on all levels at once.
The mainstream educational system has put this natu-
ral intelligent and holistic learning mode upside down in
forcing children to learn with their left brain hemisphere
only, cutting off the necessary mode of synthesis provided
by the right brain hemisphere. This is the single major rea-
son why the modern educational system, while it is very
costly, is totally ineffective, and brings about people who
are alienated from their own inner source, out of touch as
they are with their innermost human potential. This also is
the reason for the astonishing lack of creativity in the cor-

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porate world, that the world-famous coach and corporate

trainer Edward de Bono deplores in his books.

Emotional Flow
While todays mainstream psychology has to some ex-
tent admitted the cognitive nature of emotions, it has re-
lated emotions to thought and perception only and located
them in the brain, while the overwhelming number of per-
ennial science traditions and newest research on the hu-
man energy field shows that emotions are located in the
human aura and possess an inherent quality of flow, as
well as their own intrinsic intelligence. Thought and emo-
tions are vibrations that flow through our etheric or lumi-
nous body. In this sense, also animals and plants do have
emotions, which was something discarded or overlooked
by traditional psychology, while Wilhelm Reich, as early as
in the 1930s, was on the right track with his bioelectric
evaluation of emotions, writing that emotions are specific
functions of the protoplasm.
Emotions are manifestations of the Life Force in the
living organism. They are to be found as biogenetic and
bioenergetic vibrations in the cell plasma. In this sense,
emotions are functional, and they are directly related to all
visceral life functions. An indication that an organism has
died is the absence of emotional flow. This is valid also for
human beings and in the sense that while people may
physically be well alive, they may be emotionally dead
since many years.

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 GLOSSARY

The conscious perception of our emotional flow in-

cludes awareness of our emotional predilection and sexual
attraction in every given moment or situation. For exam-
ple, a nurse should be conscious of her emotional flow re-
garding patients she is working with, or an educator needs
to develop emotional awareness regarding any transitory
erotic attractions toward the children they are working
with.

Inner Selves

Inner Selves are energies in our psyche that form part

of our total and integral wholeness. In the ideal case, they
should be balanced and in harmony with each other. This
means that all inner selves should work as a sort of inner
team. It is essential that all members of this inner team are
fully awake and communicate with each other.
Eric Berne recognized three essential inner selves: Inner
Child, Inner Parent and Inner Adult. In my own research and
work with the inner dialogue during a two-years Erickson
hypnotherapy, I encountered the presence of additional
entities such as the Inner Controller or Inner Critic as the in-
stance in the psyche that represents the societal, cultural
and moralistic values that we have internalized through
education and conditioning. If the Inner Controller is hyper-
trophied and thus dominating the psyche, the result is that
we are unable to realize our love desires. In addition to
these inner selves, I encountered an entity of superior wis-
dom that I called Lux and a shadow entity I called Sad King

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and which embodied repressed pedoemotions that had

turned into sadistic drives.
Inner Child is an inside entity, part-personality, or psy-
chic energy, created between our 7th and 14th year of life,
and that is part of our inner triangle. Positively, the inner
child energy is primarily emotional and wistful, predomi-
nantly creative. It is the motor of every human beings
creativity. Negatively, the inner child is either mute or cata-
leptic so that its energy cannot manifest, or else its energy
is turned upside-down which makes an inner child that is
rebellious, capricious, willful or overbearing.
Inner Adult is an inside entity, part-personality or psy-
chic energy that represents our logical thinking, our rea-
son, our maturity. Positively, it makes for our balanced de-
cisions, our down-to-earth attitude and our sense for daily
responsibilities. Negatively, the inner adult manifests as
the intellectual nerd or through emotional frigidity, cyni-
cism or an obsession to measure human relations on a
scale of reasonableness or straightness without considering
the emotional dimension and without sensitivity. The hy-
pertrophied inner adult energy plays a major role in mod-
ern education where it results in devastating damage on
the next generations emotional integrity.

Inner Parent is an inside entity, part-personality or psy-

chic energy that represents our inner value standards, our
moral attitudes, our caring for self and others, but nega-
tively also our judging others, our I-know-better attitude
or blunt interference into the lives of others without regard

208
 GLOSSARY

for their privacy. The hypertrophied inner parent energy

plays a dominant role in tyrannical and persecutory socie-
tal, religious and political systems.

Inner Dialogue is a technique to get in touch with our

inner selves through relaxation or self-hypnosis and sub-
sequent dialogues with one or several of our inner selves,
in a state of light trance. This state of light trance can be
self-induced. The inner dialogue should ideally be fixed on
paper, at least in the beginning, because the voices that
come up, are very soft and writing down the dialogues
helps to keep focus. The technique is also called Voice Dia-
logue, for example by Stone & Stone, in their Voice Dialogue
Manual.

However, the expression could mislead novice users as

the 'voices' are not really voices, as they are not to be heard
with our ears, but something like intuitions, or flashes of
intuition, or sudden precisely formulated thoughts that
apparently come from nowhere.

Krishnamurti, J. (K)

Jiddu Krishnamurti (18951986) was born in a small vil-

lage in south India. Soon after moving to Madras with his
family in 1909, Krishnamurti was adopted by Annie Be-
sant, President of the Theosophical Society.
She was convinced that he was to become a great spiri-
tual teacher, and Reverend Charles Webster Leadbeater
became his personal tutor. Three years later she took him
to England to be educated in preparation for his future

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role. An organization called The Order of the Star was set up

to promote Krishnamurtis anticipated role as a World
Teacher and Maitreya. In 1929, however, after many years of
questioning the destiny imposed upon him, Krishnamurti
disbanded the organization, turning away the followers
with the following announcement: Truth is a pathless
land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever,
by any religion, by any sect. Truth, being limitless, uncon-
ditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot
be organized; nor should any organization be formed to
lead or to coerce people along any particular spiritual
path.
From that time until his death in February 1986 at the
age of ninety, he traveled around the world speaking as a
private person, teaching and giving talks and having dis-
cussions. His aim was to set people psychologically free so
that they might be in harmony with themselves, with na-
ture and with others. K taught that humanity has created
the environment in which we live and that nothing can
ever put a stop to the violence and suffering that has been
going on for thousands of years except a transformation in
the human psyche. If only a dozen people are transformed,
it would change the world. He used to call this transforma-
tion psychological revolution.
Krishnamurti maintained that there is no path to this
transformation, no method for achieving it, no gurus or
spiritual authorities who can help. He pointed to the need
for an ever-deepening and acute awareness in which the

210
 GLOSSARY

limitations of the mind could drop away. K was a universal

and cosmopolitan mind. Although born of Indian parent-
age, he stated repeatedly that he had no nationality and
belonged to no particular culture of group. What he hoped
his audience would learn, he himself was the living exam-
ple for it, which is, in my view, the only way a guru can
legitimize himself as a true leader. Only what is brought
over as incarnated can be shared, not what is merely
preached or lectured as true as it may be.
Education has always been one of Krishnamurtis con-
cerns. If a young person could learn to become aware his
or her conditioning of race, nationality, religion, dogma,
tradition, opinion etc., which inevitably leads to conflict,
then they might become fully intelligent human beings for
whom right action would be a natural way of life. K rea-
soned that a prejudiced or dogmatic mind can never be
free.
During his life time Krishnamurti established several
schools in different parts of the world where young people
and adults could come together and explore this possibil-
ity further in actual daily living. Krishnamurti said of the
schools that they were places where students and teachers
can flower inwardly. Because, schools are meant for that,
not just merely to turn out human beings as mechanical,
technological instrumentsthough jobs and careers are
necessarybut also to flower as human beings, without
fear, without confusion, with great integrity. He was con-
cerned to bring about a good human being, not in the re-

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spectable sense, but in the sense of being whole, and un-

fragmented. He wanted the schools to be real centers of
understanding, of real comprehension of life.

Ks teaching has had a strong impact upon my own

philosophical thinking, and in fact, when I first encoun-
tered it in 1985, as a member of a Krishnamurti study circle
in Switzerland, I was in a state of shock, like hit by a light-
ning. Never in my life had I been electrified to that extent
by a philosophical doctrine or life teaching.
I found his method practical and down-to-earth, some-
thing that every intelligent human can apply right away,
on the spot, and without further learning. Its something
like pure consciousness. I actually never considered Ks
teaching as philosophical, and use this expression only be-
cause he himself insisted that his teaching was not religion,
and that he was not the Maitreya of the theosophists and
that he was not the World Teacher and Super-Guru, but
simply, a philosopher. In that study circle I met some of
Krishnamurtis lifelong friends, such as Raffaela Ida San-
giorgi, Princess of Liechtenstein, the wife of Prince Alfred
of Liechtenstein. They hosted K for many years in their
premises when he came to lecture in Saanen, and intro-
duced him to leading intellectual and spiritual circles in
Switzerland and Liechtenstein. I was introduced to the cir-
cle by Jean and Cathrine Demaurex who were friends
with the person who received our little study group twice
a month in his villa in Morges, at the Lac Lman, the Ger-
man entrepreneur Friedrich Grohe. And it was there where I

212
 GLOSSARY

met the Princess who subsequently revealed to me inti-

mate details about K., his life, and the many highly un-
usual feats about him See, for example, J. Krishnamurti,
The Ending of Time, Dialogue with David Bohm (1985).
I have published an essay and an audio book on the
subject of Ks idea of a Psychological Revolution. In these
productions, I was asking particularly the question if, as K
claimed it, we can really empty the content of our con-
sciousness? While I see in the meantime that Ks uncon-
ventional ideas about dreaming, or rather, the absence of it
(he said he would never dream) bear some truth, when
ones consciousness is not fragmented, I came to the con-
clusion in my essay that the expression emptying the con-
tent of consciousness can only be meant metaphorically,
not literally. But its metaphorical meaning has great sig-
nificance despite the terminological difficulty.
What K meant is that we can renew or for the least up-
date our awareness so as to come closer to a direct percep-
tion of truth.

Life Force

Traditional Science Terms: Cosmic Energy, Bioenergy,

lan Vital, Vis Vitalis, Spirit Energy, Vital Energy, Cosmic
Energy, Chi, Ki, Mana, Prana, Wakonda, Hado
New Science Terms: The Field, Zero-Point Field, A-Field,
L-Field, Akashic Field, Human Energy Field, Quantum
Scale, Quantum Field, Quantum Vacuum, Unified Field

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When we try to find a unified terminology for the cos-

mic life energy, we need to make abstraction from the mere
wrapper that verbal language represents for content that is
subject to observation.

Lozanov, Georgi

Georgi Lozanov (19262012) was a Bulgarian, psychia-

trist educator and psychologist who emerged in the 1970s
as a leading figure in the field of accelerated learning with
his theory of Suggestopedia where various techniques, in-
cluding breathing and music, were found to enhance learn-
ing. Suggestopedia that was later named and trademarked
as Superlearning is a technique that is using the natural
holistic learning capacities of the human brain better than
any other known learning technique.

Maharishi University

Maharishi University of Management (M.U.M.), for-

merly known as Maharishi International University, is lo-
cated in Fairfield, Iowa, United States. It was founded by
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the Transcendental
Meditation movement. Its campus is located on the
grounds of the now-defunct Parsons College. It is an ac-
credited university with a consciousness-based education
offering degree programs in the arts, sciences, business,
and humanities. (Wikipedia)

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 GLOSSARY

Montessori Education

Montessori Schools are based on an educational method

for primarily intellectual child-rearing, based on the educa-
tional theories of Italian educator Maria Montessori in the
late 19th and early 20th century. It is applied primarily in
pre-school and elementary school settings, though some
Montessori high schools exist. The method is characterized
by an emphasis on self-directed activity on the part of the
child and clinical observation on the part of the teacher
(often called a director, directress, or guide). It stresses the
importance of adapting the childs learning environment
to his or her developmental level, and of the role of physi-
cal activity in absorbing academic concepts and practical
skills. Maria Montessoris main publication, in which she
explains her method, is The Absorbent Mind (1995).

Mythology

Mythology can be said to be a perennial story collec-

tion. The stories are not just fairy tales, and they are not
just real-life events either. They are epic tales that count, in
their integrality, the story of human evolution, and espe-
cially of human psychic and spiritual evolution. In psycho-
therapy, it has been found that myths and mythopoetic
content in general are highly conducive for soul healing
and for healing the psyche from early fragmentation, that
may have occurred through trauma, abuse, confusion,
emotional entanglement, accidents, and karmic events.

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Pleasure Function

During childhood and depending on the outside stim-

uli we are exposed to, certain preferred pathways are
traced in our brain, which means that specific neural con-
nections are established that serve the information flow.
The number of those connections is namely an indicator
for intelligence. The more of those preferred pathways ex-
ist in the brain of a person, the more lively appears that
person, the more interested she will be in different things,
and the quicker she will achieve integrating new knowl-
edge into existing memory.
In 1973, Herbert James Campbell published his book
The Pleasure Areas which represents a summery of more
than twenty years of neurological research. Campbell suc-
ceeded in demonstrating that our entire thinking and liv-
ing is primarily motivated by pleasure. Pleasure not only
as tactile or sexual pleasure, but also as non-sensual, intel-
lectual or spiritual pleasure. With these findings, the old
theoretical controversy if man was primarily a biological or
a spiritual being, became obsolete. For it is in the first place
our striving for pleasure that induces certain interests in
us, that drives us to certain actions and that lets us choose
certain ways. Pleasure also was found to be a prime moti-
vator in learning, provided the learning process does pro-
cure pleasure, not, as in traditional school systems, dis-
pleasure.
High memorization, Campbell found, is depending on
how easily new information can be added-on to existing

216
 GLOSSARY

pathways of information. Logically, the more of those

pathways exist, the better! Many preferred pathways make
for high flexibility and the capacity to adapt easily to new
circumstances.

Psychodrama

Psychodrama is a form of therapy which explores,

through action, the problems of people. It is a group work-
ing method, in which each person becomes a therapeutic
agent for others in the psychodrama group.

Developed by Jacob L. Moreno, psychodrama has

strong elements of theater, often conducted on a stage with
props. In psychodrama, participants explore internal con-
flicts through acting out their emotions and interpersonal
interactions on stage. A given psychodrama session (typi-
cally 90 minutes to 2 hours) focuses principally on a single
participant, known as the protagonist. Protagonists exam-
ine their relationships by interacting with the other actors
and the leader, known as the director. This is done using
specific techniques, including doubling, role reversals,
mirrors, soliloquy, and sociometry.
Psychodrama attempts to create an internal restructur-
ing of dysfunctional mindsets with other people, and it
challenges the participants to discover new answers to old
situations and become more spontaneous and independ-
ent. The psychodramatic method is an important source of
the role-playing widely used in business and industry.

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Psychodrama offers a powerful approach to teaching

and learning, as well as to training interrelationship skills.
The action techniques of psychodrama also offer a means
of discovering and communicating information concerning
events and situations in which the communicator has been
involved. (Wikipedia)

Relaxation/Meditation

Relaxation and meditation are not synonymous. For

many Westerners meditation is something rather inacces-
sible, and outlandish, which is why they would prefer re-
laxation. We know meditation in the West, but we do not
use the word meditation for it, its as simple as that. What
we call, for example, Inner Dialogue, the dialogue with our
Inner Selves, is nothing but meditation, but it has never
been called that way. This is simply a matter of cultural
conditioning.
Progressive relaxation, which is the presently most
widely used relaxation method in Western countries, was
invented in 1926 by Dr. Edmund Jacobsen, M.D., the late
Harvard Professor. The secret behind this simple yet pow-
erful technique is what we today call biofeedback.
When I begin to relax, my mere will to relax is by far
not enough to really induce the relaxed state. I need my
body to help me. The body helps by giving a response, a
feedback. To do this, I simply tell my body what to do. I
say: When I relax my arm, I get a slightly hot sensation in
the arm muscles. The body responds. When you do this,

218
 GLOSSARY

you will indeed feel a little heat in your arm. The body
feedback reinforces what the minds tends to do, that is to
relax. That way, a self-reinforcing cycle is put in motion
that gradually leads to the relaxed state. Its a fantastic
technique because it is simple and effective. Its effective-
ness comes from the fact that our body possesses its own
intrinsic intelligence.

Perversion

Definition
Perversion, in a general, and non-moralistic sense, is to
put nature upside-down and to replace natural healthy
organismic processes by artificial unhealthy mechanical
processes. In a metaphorical sense, perversion is the image
of the dethroned, ravished and reversed goddess, or the
reversed lunar bull as her traditional consort. The quintes-
sential example of a perversion is the repression of natural
desires because they are judged unwanted under a certain
ideology or contrary to well-defined norms of conduct.
What then happens is namely that the vital bioener-
getic continuum and equilibrium that is part of all natural
desires is disturbed or disrupted and the result is a reversal
of energy polarity that brings about a retrogradation of the
original impulse. This retrogradation is the actual perver-
sion of the impulse. The result is violent sadism.

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 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

What Emerson Said

The following quote from Emersons essay Compensa-
tion says very clearly what I want to convey:

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The history of persecution is a history of endeavors
to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a
rope of sand. It makes no difference whether the ac-
tors be many or one, a tyrant or a mob. A mob is a
society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves
of reason and traversing its work. The mob is man
voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its
fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like
its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it
would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice,
by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and
persons of those who have these.

The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Compensation (1987), The

Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1987, 69

Perversion appears to be produced by fear. And it is

equally true that psychological fear is perversion, an
upside-down of the lan vital, a retrogradation of the love
energies, an obstruction of the life force. The most impor-
tant to know about perverse desires is that they come
about through the repression of original desires; thus, the
perverse desire kind of replaces the original desire and
compensates for its lack.
In other words, the perverse desire has two functions, a
replacement function and a compensation function. Per-

220
 GLOSSARY

version, we could attempt to define, then, is a strongly dis-

torted form of sexual love, a sexual desire that is mutilated
in a way to result in its very contrary. Instead of love and
life, what comes out in perversion is hate and death. In the
Freudian terminology, we would say that perversity is not
a form of libido but a variant of the death instinct.

Perversion is Fear
Perversion is paranoid, it is avaricious and takes only,
unable to give, utterly narcissistic. Love is sharing, and
shared pleasure, while perversity is egotistic and lonely
enjoyment at the cost of another, even at the cost of his or
her life. Thus, while in love there is always natural care,
perversity typically is little or not caring about another.

Religious Perversion
Calvinism was an atrocious extremist perversion of the
Christian dogma in its Protestant vintage. It was brought
up by the French Swiss Jean Calvin (1509-1564), a lawyer
and fanatic Protestant Reformer. Calvinism is best known
from the tortures it has inflicted upon children and even
infants, to withhold them from masturbating, thus attach-
ing their tiny hands to the beds wooden frame, which
caused in some cases long-term paralysis and even death
of the infant. The horror of these tortures is described in
many studies, that were carefully reviewed by the Swiss
psychoanalyst Alice Miller, in her books Thou Shalt Not Be
Aware (1998) and For Your Own Good (1983) as well as the
American psychoanalyst Lloyd DeMause, in his book His-

221
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

tory of Childhood (1974). Both authors have the merit to

have unveiled one of the best kept secrets of our history of
education.

Puritanism began in the 16th century during the reign of

Queen Elizabeth I as a movement for religious reform. The
early Puritans felt that the Elizabethan ecclesiastical estab-
lishment was too political, too compromising, and too
Catholic in its liturgy, vestments, and episcopal hierarchy.
Calvinist in theology, they stressed predestination and de-
manded scriptural warrant for all details of public wor-
ship. They believed that the Scriptures did not sanction the
setting up of bishops and churches by the state. The aim of
the early Puritans such as Thomas Cartwright was to pu-
rify the Church (hence their name), not to separate from it.
After the 17th century, the Puritans as a political entity
largely disappeared, but Puritan attitudes and ethics con-
tinued to exert an influence on modern society, especially
in Anglo-Saxon countries. They made a virtue of qualities
that made for economic success such as self-reliance, fru-
gality, industry, and energy, and through them influenced
modern social and economic life.
While this movement may have had good reasons for
its existence at that point in time, and as such we cannot
qualify it as a perversion, what is unnatural is to use puri-
tanical ethics in the education of children today, at a time
where such behavior simply is anachronistic. In such a
case we are facing a situation where a certain morality has
become a convenient shielding of unnatural attitudes and

222
 GLOSSARY

personal hangups. Often, parents who are persecutory to-

ward their children by advocating and enforcing puritani-
cal attitudes and practices are in fact inadequate as parents
because they are insecure as caretakers, and often emo-
tionally stuck or suffering from an abuse problem that was
not therapeutically worked through.
In these cases, and there are many in our still subtly
moralistic modern society, it is difficult to identify inade-
quate parenting by social institutions who could help and
give support, as the problems are veiled behind a phrase-
ology or good morality and a vocabulary that puts the
parent up as being ideal and the child down as in need of
a strong guidance and paternalistic control and supervi-
sion. What is perverse in this attitude is the fact that nature
is not believed to be regulatory by itself, thereby replacing
natures wisdom by human willfulness.
The Inquisition was organized murder perpetrated by
the Christian Church in a to this day unmatched holocaust
in which for the most part young women and children
were persecuted as heretics, tortured in unspeakable ways
and put to death by quartering, hanging or burning. This
plague of religious perversion and violence lasted for sev-
eral centuries in Medieval Europe and was never really
labeled by any modern human rights movement as what it
truly was, the first organized global genocide in human history.

223
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

Television

Paralleling televisions growing primacy in family life

and society, an increasingly vocal chorus of legislators, sci-
entists and parents are raising objections to the uncritical
acceptance of the medium. For example, the Swedish gov-
ernment imposed a total ban on advertising to children
under twelve in 1991. Fifty years of research on the impact
of television on childrens emotional and social develop-
ment (Norma Pecora, John P. Murray, & Ellen A. Wartella,
Children and Television: 50 Years of Research, published
by Erlbaum Press, June, 2006) demonstrate that there are
clear and lasting effects of viewing violence.
In a 2006 study, published in the journal Media Psy-
chology, volume 8, number 1, pages 25-37, the research
team demonstrated that the brain activation patterns of
children viewing violence show that children are aroused
by the violence, demonstrate fear in response to the de-
picted violence, and store the observed images in an area
of the brain reserved for long-term memory of traumatic
events.
A longitudinal study in New Zealand involving 1000
people from childhood to 26 years of age demonstrated
that television viewing in childhood and adolescence is
associated with poor educational achievement by 26 years
of age. In other words, the more a child watches television,
the less likely he or she is to finish school and enroll in a
university. In Iceland, television broadcasting hours were

224
 GLOSSARY

restricted until 1984, with no television programs being

broadcast on Thursday, or during the whole of July.

Waldorf Education
Waldorf Education, also known as Steiner Education or
Steiner-Waldorf Education, is a pedagogy based upon the
educational philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of
anthroposophy. Learning is interdisciplinary, integrates
practical, artistic, and intellectual elements, and is coordi-
nated with natural rhythms of everyday life.

The Waldorf approach emphasizes the role of the

imagination in learning, developing thinking that includes
a creative as well as an analytic component.
Studies of the education describe its overarching goal
as providing young people the basis on which to develop
into free, moral and integrated individuals, and to help
every child fulfill his or her unique destiny (the existence
of which anthroposophy posits). Schools and teachers are
given considerable freedom to define curricula within col-
legial structures. (Wikipedia)

See, for example, Rudolf Steiner, Theosophy : An Intro-

duction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the
Cosmos, New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1994; Francis
Edmunds, An Introduction to Anthroposophy: Rudolf Steiners
Worldview, London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 2005 (revised and
updated edition); Jack Petrash, Understanding Waldorf Edu-
cation: Teaching from the Inside Out, London: Floris Books,
2003.

225
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
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 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

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 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

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 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

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 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

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 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

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243
 CREATIVE-C LEARNING

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244
The only valuable thing is intuition.
Albert Einstein

Intuition comes very close to clairvoyance; it appears to

be the extrasensory perception of reality.
Alexis Carrel

Often you have to rely on intuition.

Bill Gates

You must trust your intuitionyou must trust the voice

inside you which tells you exactly what to say, what to
decide.
Ingrid Bergman

The fact that modern physics, the manifestation of an

extreme specialization of the rational mind, is now mak-
ing contact with mysticism, the essence of religion and
manifestation of an extreme specialization of the intui-
tive mind, shows very beautifully the unity and com-
plementary nature of the rational and intuitive modes of
consciousness; of the yang and the yin.
Fritjof Capra
Personal Notes