The sane society, mental health and the fully functioning person.

Some readers may recognise the three concepts that make up the title of today's post. "The sane society" is, of course, the title of Erich Fromm's wonderful book, published 50 years ago (1955 in the US and 1956 in the UK) following his seminal work, Escape from Freedom (1941), also published as The fear of freedom. Other concepts in Fromm's 1955 book are "the pathology of normalcy" and "mental health" - the latter clearly being distinct from the concept of normalcy. Carl Rogers introduced the concept of "the fully functioning person" in several works (See his book, On becoming a person, first published in 1961). I first read these works in my Honours year in Psychology in 1974, although I had been introduced to them as early as 1971, during my first year as a Psychology undergraduate. I re-read them after graduating, as part of my preparation for my PhD. I have observed and experienced nothing during the past 30 years to make me think that any of the essential things stated by Fromm or Rogers is outdated.

What Fromm called a "sane society", we have called a "conscious community". A conscious community is one that is made up of and governed by individuals who have mastered the art of "conscious living", that is people who are "conscious", or "awake", that is to say, people who are "mentally healthy" or, if you prefer, "fully functioning persons". My reason for spelling this out is simply to make the point that there is nothing new or radical in our concept of conscious living but, on the contrary, these ideas have been around for a very long time (The world's indigenous people - as, indeed, our own ancestors before the "Neolithic revolution" that occurred about 10,000 years ago - have always understood these ideas - They just didn't need words for them, since the state of being conscious - or awake or mentally healthy - was the norm until they were colonised. An essential component of the process of colonisation was - and is - the colonisation of people's consciousness, a process that continues in all those places where there is still a strong indigenous presence, as in Australia).

Why am I writing these things you may well ask? The reason is that I am daily struck by the difficulty - nay, the near impossibility - of communicating what it is that we mean by these things, not as an intellectual exercise, but as something that is at the very core - or heart - of the work that Harbans, Tracy and I do in our seminars, support groups and therapy sessions. We are in awe of the transformative experiences undergone by several individuals in our seminars and one-to-one therapy sessions - mirroring similar experiences we have observed on other personal growth seminars and workshops over the last twenty years or so - only to see, within a matter of weeks, something that appears to us as a "return to normal". I've written about this before, referring to the near-impossibility of remaining conscious, even if, by some miracle, we have managed to become conscious.

The reasons for this have also been referred to and seem obvious to me. We do not live in a sane society. We do not live in a conscious community. The structures that could support mental health (or physical health, for that matter) simply do not exist (See http://www.consciouslivingseminars.com/aug03_journal.html#A%20conscious%20community
for a description of what such a society might look like). On the contrary, almost everything in "the real world" has the effect (and the function) of disempowering us, of sowing the seeds of doubt, of making us unconscious - and filling our heads with nonsense masquerading as information, knowledge and, even, "scientific fact". The purpose of all this propaganda and unconscionable brainwashing is to convince us that we can not trust our own inner voice but must turn to "experts", professionals and other external authorities for guidance. We are taught to have blind faith in those charged with responsibility for protecting us from harm, even when their economic interests dictate otherwise. This process begins in the womb, before we are born, it continues in the family setting during the critical first three years of life (but, for more and more babies and infants, in the childcare centre), when our communications (such as crying) are not listened to or validated, it continues through preschool, school, university and the world of employment and is supported by the institutions of science, medicine and government. We are taught not to trust ourselves, our own, inner knowing (our Higher Self, or our inner physician, or our inner voice), but to have blind faith in the experts (scientists, doctors and other professionals, including government spokespeople, university professors and so on). [To be continued].