Beyond Belief by Arthur Janov Ph.D

Author:Arthur Janov, Ph.D. [Ph.D., Arthur Janov]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual, Self-Help
Publisher: Reputation Books
Published: 2016-05-03T00:00:00+00:00

FRANK

I was born into a fundamentalist family in a small Oklahoma town. So much was considered sinful: movies, television, any sort of profanity, dancing, make-up, jewelry, drinking. I was made to go to church three times a week, with the terrifying threat of growing up a criminal and getting sent to the electric chair if I didn’t obey my parents. I never felt like I fit in anywhere, and I was ridiculed and tormented by other children, including relatives. My memory of childhood is of almost always hurting. I filled the emptiness of my life with an obsession with science and chemistry. When I was twelve, I discovered the theory of evolution and tried to explain it to my parents and other relatives. They were horrified by what I was telling them and denied that it had any validity. I felt confused and shunned. But scientific atheism gave me some comfort from the incomprehensibility of my parents’ religion and my painful life.

My obsession with science got me through life until my wife died and my house of cards began to collapse into a nightmarish alcoholic hell. I attempted to escape into the study of psychology. Maintaining my atheism, I became a therapist at twenty-three. By that time, I had become addicted to drugs (including eight LSD trips), alcohol, cigarettes, food and deceitful relationships. I also developed an addiction to a new belief system that seemed to make sense of my agonized life and ease my suffering.

In 1973, a reputed amateur psychic told me that I could be doing something that had never been done before. That I would help a lot of people, but to do so I had to “release the little one and let go of the old one.” It was a cryptic message, but my ego was fed. I felt like I would be somebody. Although still essentially a scientific atheist, I succumbed to the idea of taking a small dose of LSD and going with my best friend to see Baba Ram Dass, a former Harvard LSD psychologist who had become a touring yogi and was giving public talks. Since I was a veteran of LSD use, the one-third hit I took did not make me hallucinate. I only noticed that one area of a white wall seemed a bit brighter than the rest. Yet I was pleasantly high. After playing some sonorous music, chanting for a while, and giving a mystical talk, Ram Dass began to tell the story of when he had gone to see a guru in India. The guru had held his hand over Ram Dass’ head so that a circular bluish light played on his hand. The light then turned into a plastic man-made medallion with the guru’s image on it.

At that moment I thought, “Well, I believe that happened to you, or at least that you believe that happened to you, but nothing like that ever happens to me.” Suddenly, under my left hand (with which I had been propping myself up as I sat on the floor), I felt an object.

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