Interview with Robert Bly on the Vietnam War

We're talking with the poet Robert Bly. He has published two books of poetry silence in the snowy fields and the light around the body. He has translated to English for love poems from four languages and he is cochairman of the American writers against the Vietnam War. And I'd like to know Mr. Bligh something about the American writer satire against the Vietnam War how it got started and and what it's doing now. Well I think it was in 1966 and spring in 1966 there were some teachings against the war on the campuses. But those tended to be rather low key. And they argued a lot about the Geneva Accords and finally everyone headed up to their ears about the Geneva Accord. So then the writers hadn't said too much about it there is a great it's very hard to feel how it was in 66. I'd say if you went to an audience on 90 percent to be in favor of the war 10

percent against it now in a college community it's almost turned around anyway so. So David Ray and I decided to hold on to try to get supporters together as we did the first one in Reed College and invited various people to come with the offer and getting Robert Creeley and others all came to me because it's me against the war. And then the New York Times was there and I had to do a good article on it and a lot of the colleges and you started to be an excellent idea because of what was happening was not some intellectual discussion about the war but the use of the poets of the past as I was in the present. So some some kind of emotional kind of feeling of disgust and range that the people in the audience felt which was not expressed actually teaching. And also it was a way for the writers to declare themselves one way or the other. And then this last spring then we got together again and this time we did a series

going across the country again. This time some of us traveled together. Alan was then going to the was there and Sanders and I would get in. And we did a series in this time benefit ratings for the resistance kids. So these were. These were things after all by this time the audience feeling about the war turned around and this was an attempt to make money for the resistance kids who were in prison. You visitation still active. Yeah. Do you think that the writers have been able to help persuade the American people that the war is a horrible thing and that it should be brought to an end. John I think everyone has joined in this writers of man have been a small part of it but teachers have done a lot to students themselves in demonstrations. Well right now it seems as though. With the president's policy on ending the war American people have sort of accepted the fact that it's going to take a long time and that the process does not have to be rapid. Why do you think the American public is willing to accept this when the sheep in the first place.

You know they didn't mean sheep they wouldn't go along with the Tonkin Gulf thing. Member at the time of the after the Second World War and the Russians took all the checks of Iraq here they put in a proper parliament and I wish I was actually talking and one half of this Senate was incapable of anything. The other half is capable of anything. That's what I was like and that's what it's like in the American Senate and that's what it's like in the American people when half of them incapable of saying or doing anything. The other half are capable but that's only one of the other brother Edward Dykes. That's half of the American people to go along with. But nevertheless a profound and or educated or a Vietnam War has been for the American people an educative process in realizing it's conceivable that this country could make a mistake. Now when I was in high school college there's no possibility of ever being able to make a mistake there's no question other

countries made mistakes but this one did not. But now so the American people have got to through their skulls where they want to bomb the Red River diagram that they've got it through their skulls that this country is not immortal supreme and above all others is just as capable of stupidity on the highest level as any other country. And that's a very valuable thing for the country to have learned unfortunately something like you know 300 million Vietnamese had to die for us to learn this little lesson the other night and I was listening to you read. You know it's always been my feeling that the war or the war is a horrible thing but somehow I was struck more profoundly than than usual by some of the descriptions of children exploding and burning and houses being cut down with machine guns and whatnot. Do you think if people were more. Well if the horrors of the war were brought closer if people were more aware of how horrible war is I mean life is pretty much going on as usual in this country right. Do you think that the opinion of the war would change if if we indeed were closer to

the horrors or had a closer look. Oh sure. But the interesting difference is of course that I was mentioning yesterday when we had a reading about the fact that. England had a lot of Vietnam. When she was shooting the Indians and using everybody through the 19th century but it wasn't until recent that time so they didn't know anything on what happened till about three four months later when the newspapers came. So there were 18 French and a television that is made just one possible as people under Now grounds and begin to understand. So. Therefore some of the har comes across by television and television has slowed up and stopped this war. Otherwise I'm positive that where these insane maniacs like Westmoreland and Johnson we would have simply gone ahead and use nuclear bombs on North Vietnam taking up the Red River dikes and drowned a hundred or two hundred thousand people at a stroke and it would have been all over and we would have done what we had wanted to do.

So that didn't happen however. Television is a mixed blessing in that respect as an mixes of all these god damn bra ads and everything. So the real horror of it does not come across the awareness of it is there but not enough closeness to it to feel actual physical repulsion and har. So that's why of course rating isolates them from the hands and everything you understand. Yes I can I can see arc I'm not sure exactly how you mean at the television screen it's not not really that personal medium anywhere you know well. Also Dr. McDonald in a marvelous essay some years ago and he was talking about the modernization of culture and a new thing he gave Life magazine example but the good television is the same stuff is another Life magazine says as mandalas because they're printing for the first time mass pictures of Win one for the people and this is wonderful what a great advance in civilization and all them as people can see what he says. Problem is that when one is followed almost immediately by an elephant who can one escape. And the general impression you get out of the whole

thing is that both elephant and Renoir had talent. Yeah they're both in the same book right there. That's a wonderful statement. Both men one elephant had talent. So that means it's all cut down to the level of the elephant skating. So they're all that intensity of art which should have been there is gone because of the whatever it is this a mixture of all levels of culture and just tone it all together and on television and saying I was simply talking about the levels of art you spend a couple of months each year travelling around the country reading poems. What's the state of an acceptance of poetry in this country. Well it's a fantastic amount of. I don't know if you call it progress. Yes I think progress in the sense of the number of course writing in the number of good sports writing and also the number of people interested in poetry. Ten or fifteen years ago let's say when I was at Harvard I remember I was an undergraduate went to one poetry reading there it was kind of fracture. And he read in the top of the library and there were six people there three old ladies two other young poets and myself

now approaching today in the usual columns will draw a six to seven hundred people. And one reason of that of course Dylan Thomas had just incredible reading voice and he helped start the interesting part three things and the second thing of course it has nothing to do with any living human being. It is what McLuhan calls the revolution in which we're passing from a culture interested in getting things through the eye through the printed page. We're passing into a culture which is interest in getting things through the ear. This is a very deep thing he got hold of and that's just endless in its implications. Therefore he says television of course and radio on the rock music all of those things were dissipated taken in things through the year which is a profound change and of course novel has not been able to adapt a novel was invented for an AI culture. And there were no novels as you know in very ancient times because it was near culture now it was invented only after the Gutenberg thing he read the Bible alone. You read a book alone in a room by yourself. Poetry is basically an oral thing and it's returning to the oral from the mouth of the year. Now it has not been

able to adapt to that and it's dying for that reason. The doesn't explain Motion Pictures and Television. No you can't explain everything but explain it if you're doing interesting idea. You know. I'm wondering you're one of the poets who was invited to come here to the march moratorium Poetry Festival. Well I got the impression that she said The time for reading poetry and has a moratorium protesters has long since passed them. There's a need now for a much more radical action and I got the impression that she she disapproved of the idea of having a moratorium poetry reading and I'd like to know how you feel about that. Well of course that woman was the nice neighbor Toff. She's the best one port in the country. So there's a. Wonderful mind and I know some poetry but you have to remember also that her husband was Mitchell Goodman who was one of those and diverse Spock. So they put her through the ringer I'll tell you what I was going through the ringer and he was not one of those that was let out. He may have to go through the trial again.

So therefore she has a straining of desperation was seen. That the American people actually don't give a damn about the war and she saw them persecuting her husband and mock just picking him of random out of many others they could have indicted they could have indicted me an acquittal indicted any number and I know it when they just picked a few at random and they wanted one rider and one graduate student and one priest you know or scare everybody. One baby doctor. So she saw how random this whole thing is. Mana cruelty that's involved in it and therefore she feels that it's possible that only violent action can can come up to the desperation situation. I don't agree with it myself but you think that's in Santa Barbara profoundly stupid. I don't know if that's what she has in mind but I think there's no way to do this except to to let the ideas of.

Compassion and love for others and trying to get rid of selfishness gradually spread. We're not going to end the Vietnam War with a few violent actions going to take a long time because it's deep in the American psyche. But there is a movement of compassion and so the spiritual life which you can see in rock music and poetry and it's growing and she's just too impatient and want to stop it right away. What do you think there's been such a predilection to violence lately because we're all going to go to violence as rabbi says American I mean Americans are just as violent as apple pie is just that sort of a contradiction. People involved in the peace movement of course rather wonder what they don't understand is that this violence runs so deep that it will get into Westmoreland. But you can't just by being a leftist you can imagine it's not going to get into you it's just like a strain boyo virus and the left was able to hold it off for a while and now to get an interim. And a lot of the STF people wear them and so I merely Westmoreland's with a different point of view they don't understand that they're

exactly like Westmoreland and they have this American disease which is intense violence without thinking. And in my opinion the only way you're going to have a revolution is with a lot of thinking. And Marx for example did not burn down the British Museum. On the contrary he said in that damn place and he thought for about 30 years as to how he described the system which at that time was a capitalist system you can bring down anything unless you understand what it is. And he spent years thinking about it and then it fell. But we're not in a capitalist system anymore and Russia is not in the communist system we're both in some third system which really has to do with large corporate ownership. It's not capitalism it's not God doesn't. And no one has ever described it. We do not have a Marx and we don't have anybody who is willing to sit down and study and think it out. So therefore it's not going to be brought down by burning down the banks is going to have to have 10 years of thinking before any of these actions are going to have any good at all. But that's another American character said we don't want to think we want to do boy. He's exactly like these cowboys in the West they don't want to think about someone who could go out and shoot some

prowess I mean some of this is driving towards action rather than thinking which is destroying the New Left. You mention the American psyche. I'm perplexed by this problem because I know so many individuals. And they all or most of them I'll say are against the idea of violence then it might actually if we're talking you know you are talking out of going to condemn violence and yet somehow collectively we allow violence to run rampant We don't allow ourselves to to support a very violent regime of fighting in a war. How is it that as individuals we we are against violence and yet somehow we all get together in a little pack we sort of allow it. I don't know what explains it it's something that perplexes me. Now to your question. Have you read on aggression by Konrad Lawrence now I have this funny look we look at as I look at those doors and my reading as you spoke and this is a Freud of the

animal world. And this incredible book in which he describes how deep the instinct of aggression is in all living things and as a matter of fact. As he says aggression is tied in a curious way with friendship and love. We always thought they were totally opposite in the 19th century and the idea of getting rid of aggression is impossible it's builtin in fact is closely connected with the highest levels of both spiritual and psychic and affection attainment. So the problem is then is the cut off. There are certain things which cut off as he said or cut off things in animals which cut off the aggression. For example a deer will never kill another deer or they'll fight two males will fight. But they're fighting for the territory and one of them is wounded the other will never kill them and here you do not kill members your own species. The only creatures who do this are rats and human beings in which the cut off violence has somehow failed in an evolutionary way that doesn't happen.

He says that occasionally this cut off from violence will happen whether certain human being I remember in the second world war. There may be cases of a man gets in a fight with a German soldier and starts to strangle. And he gets in there and he strangles and he gets in with the hands around the throat and the face starts to turn blue and I start to bulge out. Then suddenly for some reason you can't understand his hands break away like this. And he gets up and leaves. That's the cutoff which worked at that moment. You know what's worse kill members you know it's vicious but when men develop the weapon they lost this kind of thinking you can take a stone throw to somebody else's forehead just seen before it's cut off the guy's dead. You can be up in these bombers of Vietnam into these things and women and children. That's what I was trying to say in that poem that you can burn all these kids from up on top and go back and drink your Coca-Cola on your on your show and watch a movie. But if you actually saw a burning child come out of a building and I think Laurence pointing to the same pilot would drop in on these kids if he saw one child come out of the burning building alive

in burning he go crazy and all that stuff in a member of my own species burning guy and he'd go Wow and that's where this image is of him. My point I think we're suggesting it was a single remark or. Comment. So therefore the fact is that this evolutionary Connaught does not take place. And and that's the that's a serious problem in a given human being they can still work some of the cut off but when a whole bunch of human beings are together in this evolutionary failure it becomes more and more and more prominent and as we all know a mob or anything can do any acts of violence against members of their species or any other species. So that's a long involved answer but I think the only way you can understand it is to throw out the 19th century stuff we were taught and read Konrad launches a book on aggression. I have a feeling that we just sort of as individuals will be very much against the concept of violence and yet somehow we it is that we structure a little games or little things within our society whether it be football games or hockey games. Or Boxing matches or or wars on an extreme level and.

In this way we almost legitimize. The outlet for the strain of violence that we have when of course one of the problems that lonesome touches on a dozen grantor very deeply is that capitalism itself is in fact. A social system for increasing the amount of selfishness and violence in the individual human being. And this is what's called competition and free enterprise. You're competing against members of your own species. And these deaths occur in companies in which you knock off some other company when this is the essence of capitalism. So obviously in a capitalist society every human being is set against every and every other one and the result of that is that these these evolutionary cutoffs really have no chance at all to work in a capitalist society. Result is a as you said for touching things that in the animal world everything is done for the next generation. Any animal man and woman can get along with each other because they have evolutionary cutoffs at the moment they start to fight as a cutoff.

But since that fails especially in Catholic society you have more and more divorce. No one gives a goddamn about the next generation. They're willing to divorce anybody throw their kids in the street and this is exactly that selfishness which a capitalist society increases so the communists are trying to do to solve this problem. And Castro has evidently made some steps in Cuba in solving it and he does it exactly in that way by pointing out that the whole nation is a single species and you have to think of others and not to think yourself and it's a desperate attempt to true true true. To catch up on the selfishness after a thousand thousand years of Western moving a little bit too far in the other direction. I know I kind of consider myself an individual and I like being considered an individual that's right because you're a cancerous Westerner and you like that selfish feeling of being an individual. Say I'm not trying to make funny I'm just saying that we've got a lot of hokum here about being an individual and half of it is true sense that yes I am an

individual I want to become myself. And that one half it is all genuine and spiritual. The other half is pure damn selfishness in which you want to be an individual so you don't have to give a damn about anybody else. So you decide how you spend your day if you want to spend your whole day listen to rock records. You call that being an individual. Yeah and someone says you want to go in and help the poor go to the Peace Corps you say man I don't mind and I want to be an individual. I'm going listen to rock records all day and that's pure capitalist selfishness. And this is exactly what the businessman does he says I don't give a damn about all this pollution going in the air from my smoke stacks. I want to be an individual. I don't want the government telling me what to do and see how they're mixed. Well I'm wondering whether or not there is a movement within our own society. With young people you know who are opposed to the war. Oh now a lot of people say well look you know they they're too much involved in it they're likely to go into the fighting or their or their husbands or boyfriends or like to go

to the fighting so they can't make a rational judgment on it. But there's more than that. I mean anybody we have been around the college campuses you know that there must be more of it than just the selfish feeling of not want to go and fight. Oh I'm not saying that so i know i know i know i'm saying i'm trying to sort of frame this question and I want to cancel that argument. Yes we can take down its castle and I will cancel that one and we'll get into the point of whether or not there is a developing feeling of community or care for one other among young people you sense this. Absolutely. And I've been very interested recently. Some of the new brain research done by PAUL MCLEAN and others and it's a very hairy stuff and developing last 10 or 15 years and the basic conclusions of it are that there are three separate brains inside us. The old reptile brain is preserved perfectly at the base of the skull and that was not reorganized when we became a male instead of mammal brain was folded around that

and then when there was a new developments at the end of the male period the neocortex and outer anything to the brain development on both the evil number of nerve neurons and their opinions are just incredibly complex thing which basically makes your third brain it's called A New York cortex as opposed to a court. Anyway the implications of the whole book as a whole thing is a fantastic man named Charles Ferrer brain researcher at Mass General has written it up recently and it's in the book is called the dying self published by was when I was depressed. They were in fact there's no central organization ever since and all three of these brains compete for energy. Now the older generation is primarily dominant rather brain which is interest in the survival purity of itself. So John Foster Dulles is a case of a man dominated by the reptile brain. And all he does is extend his own survival to the survival of America he says I am America. And then he doesn't give a damn about anyone else in the world he has no sense of world community whatever he will start any kind of war kill any number of people you know order thinking purely to survive the United States and this is the reptilian characteristic It's a capitalist characteristic

and the older generation basically you know now the younger generation are not going to live in a brain they're moving to the mammal brain in which you have a sense of community and you have sexual life and you have for us city also by the way reptile brain is not for this is this cold this fight's called me there's no fossils you know firing there anyway. So in the mammal brain you have sexual instincts and community. So the young kids express is absolutely magnificent playing by the statement make love not war. Which means I do not live in the reptile brain. Maybe the male brain and therefore Woodstock is a perfect example of this and Woodstock you have 500000 people coming together interested in a mammal sense of community and rock music is minimal music and the beans and all of those things along here as mammal here reptiles will not have long hair and that's one thing that bugs the young reptile types is to see this movement towards him I mean. And then and so that's what this generation is trying to do. So I think you're absolutely right. And therefore they feel a community with the South Vietnamese and the babies and

everything are being killed and that and that is in the mammal brain and that can be developed in these kind of stupid nationalistic wars would stop and the kids are right that the only way you can stop this is by not hiring a new man. You get a new man the presidency has so many reptile types in the Senate there's absolutely nothing he can do. It's a long term process of transfer of energy and whether we'll get knocked out before this transfer is made I don't know. But I've never known anything in human history that corresponds to the magnificence of this attempt by the younger kids to make this movement from the reptile where their parents are to the male lead me to ask you know what. Will be the results when we move to the third break. Then that's interesting and I think this generation is going to try to make it in male reign and that is not sufficient in the stuff doesn't have to be a major effort right. They don't. That's right and there won't get to the new brain because a new brain in a new way and you can't have a stronger brain without a lot of spiritual leaning and a lot of spirituality in a lot of meditation meditation is an

attempt itself it's an attempt at the Orient used. You move from the reptile to the mammal. Then you use meditation to move from the mammal to the new brain. Now these and these kids are doing some imitation but very little reading really. You must listen to records and all that stuff. So it'll be that this generation will fail in that respect you know be the next generation after them who will see see the necessity of doing a lot of reading and a lot more discipline in that respect and I think a lot more meditation in any of these Considering I've always had the impression that when a biological change of any sort took place in the human species that it was something that would take place over a long period of time something it might it might not even be noticeable you point to and yet you are part of our history. How is it that within forty or fifty years or less perhaps a change of this magnitude could take OK to do with the atomic bomb in the first place the possibility of human species being wiped out absolutely entirely. So therefore some of the speculation is that there's a fourth being.

Who is aware of these three brains. I mean there's a trinity. See the Trinity is very eerie because that's basically the Trinity the Father Son the Holy Ghost all he's trying to refer to these three brains which are subconsciously understood by something in this. The idea then would be that whatever illness understands of the human race maybe why God is not into us not possibility. And therefore it's making a storable change as rapidly as it can in desperation to try to get that thing done before the reptiles manage to wipe out the whole world. And it's a neck and neck race I don't know if it's going to make it but I think that's a good question and the real reason for that is because the atomic bomb and the possibility of actually being worked out before that they were making mistakes and if you had a thousand years to make a change. Now the human beings with. The reptilian or the reptilian brain dominating their process in their way of life now they also are structured their brains are structured with these other Exactly everyone else people use now

why would it be that well I don't want to get down to names but I'll give you a couple of Richard Nixon for example Now why would it be not he has the same knowledge the same awareness of the atom bomb and its effects that that say most young people would have. Why is it that his brain structure would not also be making this rapid transfer as rapid as possible to get into the mammalian stage where he would and he would in the end gave himself in this way to achieve a spirit of community. That's a fine question and cement a fact well Charles ferret aims to answer that in his book doesn't refer specifically to Nixon but he says what happened to the Catholic Church which was intended to bring new brain ideas into Europe and which in fact did. In your new Europe had a fantastic explosion of new brain activity ending about 15:00 with incredible art of Michelangelo. Yeah. People what happened to that why did the new brain start to decline after that and we slumped into the mammal and dropped out. So one of the Catholic Church as a personality develops there we have not recognised and he calls his

personality adaptive personality. This personality has a very strong reptile tone and it adds some new brain there enough reasoning power from the new brain that skips over the mammal brain almost entirely. Now with the union of these two with a new brain characteristic which is intelligence varies only thing with the reptilian thing he rises in bureaucracies with incredible speed. Because a reptile characteristic of self defense makes you more aware when someone about him behind him is about the stabbing and in IBM or something like McNamara for example going up and forward. He's able to tell one time he turns around stabs him. And that's how they rise. That's all they want. It's in every organization that the top will have a debt to personalities and when they get into the Catholic Church they destroy completely the new brain ideas and he quotes innocent a third saying I have no time for extra Mundine things. So in the case of Nixon you have a perfect adaptive personality who has risen in exactly that way. He only had one mammal outburst and that was a time

at the end when the press he said you know now the original action around anymore and that was a little man of a lot of birds is kind of touching but of course in the rest of his brain said Listen Dad you can't climb that way with those mammal uppers not just cut it out and stick you know so. Anyway so therefore the membrane is very weak in him as you can see by looking at him we can see by looking at Pat Nixon. There's nothing mammal between those two was telling us all out. So therefore that is why that is why you have this situation. He's outflanking the younger kids who are mammal because of because of some new brain stuff and so on. Games that help answer that. It would also be a possible explanation to answer that question. You pointed out that the atomic bomb was something that made a lot of people begin to move up to the membrane. It means it made maybe young people move up to the man made whoever is the controlling being of the human race. Not God but some instinct deep inside of Rejean understood this and then spreads the word.

It would be something that perhaps just this particular young generation would be aware of being you know as Richard Nixon grew up at a time exactly number one exactly just never say anything exactly and that's that's what people are hinting at they keep knowing there's some connection between the atomic bomb and his younger kids. They can't quite piece it together but you're absolutely right that those older men you have your main impression on your brain up at the age of 30 and he's still living in an old world in which there's no danger of wiping out the human race. And all of this all of this. I just want to add this comment sounds a very very play tonic. I remember reading the Republic of Plato when he talks about different levels of society and he talks about the the. Working class of society the artisans and he talks about the soldiers. And he talks about the third and highest level the Guardians these are the people that are thinking and reading and trying to meditate and find the truth try to for trying to find the world of ideas and all this sounds very much like that it has meaning so

obviously no scientist and no one has ever realized first of all that there is no central organization of the brain. That's absolutely new. And no one ever sought it except Buddha Buddha said thousands of years ago that in fact his basic idea is that there is no eye inside of you. You're wrong about that. There is no I. That's exactly the same thing as a mystery brain. So this is anyway but no one has ever and has ever gotten the trinities of the divisions in regard to the brain isn't handsome because of break up societies which seem quite natural and those break ups last the divisions of Simon as of a thousand 2000 years of the must be something true where you know it's interesting that Plato just saw these divisions and he talked about the world of ideas sort of a fourth Yeah brain perhaps a higher brain and what you were trying to do in meditation was trying to find that that was inside you when you were trying to find it. Well you know the intern I've met many people who are very pessimistic their outlook as to the future of mankind is not a very bleak bright one rather one that assumes that we'll probably destroy ourselves before too long if not with an atomic bomb

than with the pollution that we're building out into the US and our atmosphere and our earth. If there is a change going on and if it is a widespread change then up to this from early into the mammalian brain do you then have a rather bright outlook that I think is going to make it yeah now a pollution thing is very interesting to see because the anti pollution thing implies a sense of community that we're all living on earth together. That's a deep mammal idea. And it's fascinating to watch it take take effect in the last couple of years. Most of the reptile types never made any sense at all I mean Reagan says seeing one trace in a mall. I mean you know what he said he had a plan which was that you would make a plastic redwood tree and then you take it around to all the high schools in California showing what a redwood tree looked like. And then we could do something because all the other red would write and destroy the marvelous half time idea. Well no sense of community for you know family for goodness you know your understanding you know

you are going to tell me what happened when when we reach let's say this the third brain the third level what will be will we go beyond in some way the sense of community and become one never get there will be two leading senators. I mean this is is this what could conceivably happen. Well no one can say except to separate individuals and right now if they wish they can get there and for example in many Tibetans now in England in various places the communists are kicked out and they let me have the Americans for example are capable of spiritual progress now which they were not a hundred years ago and they find them very good students as Buddhist groups. This means that individual Americans are now have enough of their energy free that they can take it from the reptile brain give it to the mammal brain and with good instruction meditation in fact can give it to the new brain. But it's totally impossible for the society as a whole to move into the new brain it's never happened and it's never going to happen. Now we mention a few moments ago. Well for example the way Robert McNamara would move up

through Ford. Yes he would. He would see something and he would strike it down and write it for his own progress and this would indicate to me that the way the society or the way business the way government is structured is structured to favor the reptilian type of action. Now if the structures don't change why is there or is there a strong possibility that the million development is going to have a relapse for instance for survival. Because it's interesting but what do you mean by structures. Well I'm thinking that if if the way forward for example is structured the way the way a man rises up through the positions in Ford the way a man has to rise up in government. Yes. If it's necessary for him to. Grasp onto and retain the reptilian action yes in order to succeed yes then isn't it possible that whatever whatever development into the second stage is going on will be. Hampered or perhaps eliminated by the fact that if the structures are changed and those people who are leading the country

and those people who are in the top positions in industry and in government if they're still being led by this idea of the lower you know the thinking then does the movement really help to break out of. It's hard to tell what's going to happen but. Already and the corporations have noticed that it's harder and harder for them to find good reptilian where adaptive types they're having trouble getting young executives who are willing to stab each other because they go home and a small pot and listen to their thing rock records in other words they go into a mammal state assumes only in the office. They're not as good candidates as I say as they were 15 years ago. So therefore the structures may collapse from an inability to find enough adaptive personalities to keep stabbing each other to keep to keep it going. I was having the same problem the kids now don't want to fight as much as they did in the second world war. Again it's a mammal characteristic when a lot of law firms are having trouble getting people out of Yale and Harvard who are going to come in and they sit on their desks. These guys are coming in and saying look you know.

I want to work. I'll give you four days a week but let's set an office up in the ghetto and exactly enough Exactly. There's a wonderful mammal. Yeah well that's what's going to happen. We're talking about aggression before and the this whole this whole thing about human beings being able to develop intense friendships. Yes. How does this fit into the mammalian concept of community. Is this a contradiction. No I said that in the mammal brain there are two things I don't say that the brain researchers say and that in the reptile brain there is basically a sort of a cruel desire for survival in the mammal brain are two things quite close to each other. Sexual instincts and for us sitting now in a way that's exactly what Lance was saying that the goose who is black nations is capable of intense friendships and finery. So the goose in some way has a membrane whereas of course the herrings do not have a mammal. So they have no integrity isn't each other they don't have reptile brain you know they

have they they don't have any loves. So are those are not contradictions. But it's still a problem when you go into the mammal brain. You're also opening yourself up to real for us city. And this for us a day of burning down the bank in Santa Barbara or this idiot Manson who goes around killing people for kicks. These are not extraneous to the whole movement they have to be understood as a part of it. That's one of the disadvantages you get as you move into the mammal brain is that this ferocity that's in you increases and what to do about that. And Christ for example I was interested in moving from the reptile brain to the mammal brain and he would say for example if the reptile brain is always thinking about the more and you're getting a job and everything. And he'd say things like well you know don't worry about the weather you're so well just look at the lilies I mean they don't spin so and they're locked in a dress and you are and this is a put down to the reptile brain the serious part. Now what to do about the mammal brain with this ferocity he had surprising suggestions there too and he said If someone slaps you on the on the cheek by the

mammal brain is right there boy slapping back to ask him Well how does like this. Where's the reptile brain. He's going to retreat a little bit. And it's going to look you in the eye and it's going to make some sarcastic. Noone is going to come back three weeks later and take your job. But the mammal brains can react immediately and so he said the only thing to do is to put down a frost in a mammal brain keep the community but put down the ferocity and you do that or someone slaps you want to cheek you turn the other cheek and say here's another one why don't you try this one. And he knew exactly what he was doing. So that has to be learned and the kids are not learning it. And when you're calling the cops pings they're just increasing their ferocity that's in their own brain and what they ought to be doing is an early days of the hippie movement you know they were going up and giving flowers to the policeman. And for a policeman who arrested him you say How's your kids you know how are things in the home. Well that's a wonderful mammal kind of thing and they're going to have to relearn it have these kids do not learn that

if they keep calling cops pigs. The next generation is going to have to learn. So these kids may be famous and that's where you're also not understanding the close connection of community and city and it's you you can't if you have both. You're ruining it. This leads me to ask leave me to wonder and something I've been thinking about for many years now and the role of religion in this whole in society you know organized religions that have been around for a couple hundred years a Catholic church you know Protestant religions Judaism these things of all at least in this country which is where my experiences have the Clyde to the point where they're there they're just just quit. So the social clubs are right and they made a mistake they made allowance for the day after brain and therefore with the reptile brain. And since we're moving away from that they have trapped themselves now and therefore I just I just wonder what what's going to happen are we going to see perhaps some new forms of religion by some totally new thought of forms of religion not on thought about just when there are little hints all along this line is the fastest growing religion on states and it

has very few links with the reptile brain. Fact as I say it's meditation practices are a practical method to solve things and for the first time we have Buddhist centers in the United States where you can go for instruction meditation there's one in San Francisco staffed by two monks about 70 year old Japanese monks the first time you can get genuine instruction meditation costs about $5 a day. Anyone can go there as incentives like there's an American in Philip Capullo in Rochester who gives instruction in Japanese meditation he's an American an excellent book called Three Pillars of Zen published by Beacon Press. So this kind of meditative practice is going to go on and then the rock music is also a kind of religious movement in music and the Roman Empire noticed the same thing happening around the time of Christ that ecstatic music from the Orient was coming in at the same time as these new brain Christian ideas were coming in. So much repetition the same thing and in my opinion you will develop. Really that's really very funny because in the last couple of days I've been we coming around to that we've been talking of

yesterday having a poetry reading we talked about it talking about comparing the Roman Empire. You know I studied history so that's that's my my field comparing to the reasons why the Roman Empire fell. And just the whole Roman Empire I see the you know the Roman Empire in the US and our culture here in the United States is very similar. Yes you know we're both very they're both reptile type right. Exactly and they lost the reptile types lost out to start to move into the mammal and that was it. And we just that there's something that that I'm concerned about now if if there was say a development into the mammal brain in this country you know and yet the rest of the world say if it if or many of the great powers in the world are not moving in the same direction then is it is it possible that the United States could just you know get crushed under it do you think is any sort of international movement going on this. Yes I think as I say in this thing which is interested in moving to the mammal brain has no and has no relation to any given individual. And the people like I like Shaw tried to describe it as a vital force.

God Dick the great psychoanalyst called it the it yet and yet he said it inside you which knows everything that's happening to you and me. So this it is an international I mean it's a it's and the whole human race it's it's there's a great man who wrote a book called The Soul of the white ant. He also wrote the soul of the ape They just came out recently where he died years ago and says of course and he has a soul which communicates itself to every ant in that heap. That's what he calls the soul of the way. So human race has a soul to him. And it's this which is happening. However certain countries are determined to move continue moving into the reptile and Communist China for example has always had this fantastic mammal brain this incredible sense of family. You know the Confucius that's a mammal brain thing which an adept or personality can also move it's a civil service movement but nevertheless the deep they never got as deeply into the reptile as we do. And so now they're trying to unite the sense of the

mammal by having a sense of community of all of China and also to keep their ferocity and keep their. So they're in a very different situation than we are in Israel for example is moving very fast into reptile stuff. And of course you know because in the sense that they're preserving Israel. And there's the Rossignol is also you know using the ferocity in Israel is increasing these bombings and killings of people will increase. In my opinion I was saying something as I said we're just on the verge of a rich empire that eventually they will take North Africa and they will take their own European countries. And anyway so they clearly are not going in there aren't there is very little long here in Israel there's not a single high school student in Israel evidently who is against war. I took a single times and I have learned recently. They were these are just little hints in this direction on everyone's moving but these are his it was a very small country in a very separatist situation and China has been pressed by the reptile countries for so long as reacting in a certain way.

Russia is going exactly in our way there's no question about that. So all these countries. So it's possible the West will go down as a mammal group and maybe the eastern people will take on some of the reptile characteristics and around the world for a while a sign. OK there's a whole interesting historical analogy to go back to the Roman empire again the Roman Empire fell and who came in taken over but the Germanic tribes from the north. Yes. Very aggressive you know sort of reptilian. Yeah and of individuals they took it over which is right which is what could happen to Western culture. Yeah well and there are people from the north where neither opinion nor me and no one knew it was a total mixture they are not committed in any brain. The Romans had been committed to the red light when they failed. So therefore some of their energy was lost there by laughing. And of course they were taken over rising by strong tribes who hadn't committed themselves and had not failed in any brain and Christianity for them made an incredible movement in the brain for these Germanic tribes but of course the Germans didn't

quite make it. And they recently fell back a little further to. Those last seems as long as there is an atom bomb. Somewhere around who's willing to use it. Whatever whatever movements are going on might not really affect whether or not say one country overtakes another because there's still that. That last desperation thing where if you're about to be consumed you might take everybody down with you like with this like with this. There's another interesting thing though I think maybe for instance in the reptile brain is in power in almost all countries at the moment. That's why the military budget is increasing in all countries and he says if you want an example of the creation of the reptile brain. The tank is a perfect example. It's a reptilian moves in a reptilian way it has armor and its only interest in survival of those inside the tank and the tank is primarily a 20th century thing it was invented but not used before. That's our twentieth century thing. So he says the reptile brain is increasing isn't controlled United States government in control of every other government but if that's true

then there will be no we will not wipe ourselves off of timing because that would mean reptile brain would lose it. That child brain is going to keep this damn species in survival it's going to survive this damned thing. It's not going to use the atomic bomb. So in a way that's the only hint that you're going to get sort of encouragement out of this insane business about the possibility of the reptile brain running if it's true. If the mammal brain were in control right now it would use the atomic bomb in its moments of ferocity. And as a matter of fact if we get into the mammal brain of the mammal brain types take over too quickly. It's quite possible that they would use the atomic bomb whereas the reptiles wouldn't. But what we have to hope for is that the mammal ideas will so penetrate the society by that time by the time that the mammal brain types take over that they will not that they were their own ferocity will have been diminished. I suppose it's very likely that the people who I mean you really can't classify someone as always as being purely reptilian or pure Oh no no no I'm not at all based on a very vague

tone coming out and. If I can skin so you have a situation where an individual in power would perhaps momentarily go and will go insane or just something to cause them to use that bomb just that's what everyone is afraid of. By the way this whole business of prosody insatiable instinct in rock music and came to the fore very interestingly in a Rolling Stones concert in Eltham on because he got the Rolling Stones very interesting stone as a reptilian thing but it's rolling it's moving it's moving into the mammal and Mick Jagger has this fantastic mammal face and this fantastic mammal lyrics and everything. But what happened in that concert of course was that these god damn Hell's Angels came and killed a negro with a Q and with the knife right on stage. There's pictures in the Rolling Stone magazine of Mick Jagger looking on one there killing this guy about two feet phone so it's not an accident. This may have had more and more at the rock concert they hired the Hell's Angels. Sure they did to protect them so they did. 500 cans of beer that's right.

That's why they've done that for a long time now they saw their mistake as the Hell's Angels are basically fantastic reptilian and ferocious types and they just get too excited by this metal music and I start killing people that's a good example anyway of the of the validity of the brain researchers theory of the connection between the ferocity and the community. In one little thing Robert Bly I know you've got an appointment to get off to I want to thank you very much for taking some time out to come in and visit us today we've enjoyed it. Thank you.