Autobiography
The BASIC EXPERINCE of BIODRUNK
IN SUMMER 1973 , WHEN THE PHYSICAL DILATITATION
OF THE EYES TOOK PLACE.
Father died on the fourth of October 1971. After the funerals, I got a permission from my mother and from teatchers, that I may go to my father’s summer cottage, in order to have some rest, because” I could not stand other people right now”. So I lived there two months with our dog. I was reading Bible and Rudolf Steiner, did not drink a drop of alcohol any more. I made water color paintings, sculpted from a piece of birch wood my first sculpture, which became to look like my father, although my purpose was only to make a cristmas present to my mother.
So, in january 1972 I returned back to school, still in states of severe anguish.
“You seem like you have had a good rest”, said, though, the teacher of art.
But soon I got pneumonia. The mild fewer lasted six weeks. On the wall, beside my bed I drew with a color pencils an open grave, and wrote above it:
“ Death will fix a coughing man.”
So I was still a lot away from school, in my thoughts, drawing at home.
Waiting summer, I heard about yoga and meditations,
I needed that peace. I would never drink. So I had promised to my father.
The scurf in my head and throat.
The skin itching, bleeding, discharging pus matter,
“There is a severe inflamation in your large intestine”, said the doctor.
Summer 1973 came. I felt, it was the time of fasting.
I went back to my father’s place. Could not go to the summer cottage, because father’s sister owned it now, and did not let me come there.
So I raised my orange tent on a cliff beside the lake. In my mind an ake,
I was just sitting there, staring the water. But my mind was so restless, that it only wandered from one small detail to an other.
Sometimes I was repeating the stupid mantra, those three letters from which, in my despair, I payed 500 marks, which was then about one week’s salary!
I was reading J. Krishnamurti’s book “The Only Revolution”. trying to undertsand his odd ways of thoughts. I tried to “see the water as it is”.
Two weeks, all the days, in hunger, asking “How to stop the mind?
How not to continue it’s repeating agonies, goin on and on.
I stared the waves. Do not get stuck into one wave. Even in the brances of the pines my sight scattered and was wandering restlessly.
I breathe deep, feeling still so bad.
Maybe I got tired to this whole thing.
I don’t really remember, how it happened, but somehow, suddenly
My “eyes just opened”, as they say. I just “saw the lake as a whole”.
Every wave at the same time, I saw! This harmonous movement,
in one stopped picture. No more were my eyes wandering.
The field of vision was total and wide open.
My eyes extended. Their physical dilatitation took place.
The eyes stayed like that. Anxiety and anguish was gone.
Eyes fulfilled with tears. I felt an enormous and sudden relief.
Intensive watching of waves. The eyes without blinking.
Wide range, field of vision, totally clear
from left corner to right corner.
No direction of attention. Not a single thought. No names.
Seeing everything at the same time. Intensive alertness.
Breathing heavy. In my mouth the tongue being two folded,
sucking itself. The tip towards the throat, against the hard palate,
Beating in my mouth, the tongue, like a little heart.
A flow and flush of saliva, driven drivel.
Every where to, I was turning my head, slowly, not a moment’s slack,
All around everything was flooding, exploding.
Tender burstings of crushing beauty. Where ever I happened to turn my head.
Weeping, seeing, feeling only love . . .
This must be, the so called, and famous, love.
Quiet slow motion stalking in the woods. Wave of wind bending hay.
Sun gleaming on straws. One movement, three days.
In the evening, still staring the dome of the tent.
Laying on the ground, on my back.
A candle, on the floor, casting a shadow of my silhuette against the orange cloth.
Mother always said, that my lips are big. Without turning my head I was
staring to center of the tent ceiling, yet I saw the shadow of my lips
at the same time, very clearly. So that the field of sharp vision was atleast one hundred eighty degrees. Laughing a little. my lips are really pouting.
In sleep I see a dream of my sister’s two parrots.
In reality the female died and so the male was left alone.
In it’s sorrow it started to hit it’s own image in the mirror, in the gage.
While then it’s eyes contracted to needle points, and then, surprisingly
the yellow okra colour of the iris became visible.
Before the unfortunate death of it’s mate, it’s eyes were totally black,
wide open, just like the eyes of lovers looking at each other,
Or like innocent small children.
( Or just like in utter fear and terror, I have to say, also.)
In the morning I understood that I had fallen in love with nature.
With any humans, I did not remember to have felt anything comparable to this.
x x x
Then, after those three blissful days, some thoughts “from the outside world began to occur: “I can’t stay to live here in the forest. I have to back. I wonder if this state is going to hold on in the city. When I see my mother, she asks right away, what had happened to you? Your eyes standing in your head, staring like a small boy. So I looked my face in the mirror, in the hall. So it really seems. I turn and see the familiar living room, but now the first time I see and strongly feel also the atmosphere. . . this home. . . my mother, my sister, the dogs, me. . . There is no “home”.
On a brown oak parkett, standing, this creature, me, myself, in my eyes, in the mirror turning to brown and slack. . . It has, that face, read pimples, skin skaling, dried out of diet experiments without “unhealthy” fats, ( because of eating soya beans, and wheat grains, without boiling them).
There, two eyes, wide open stoned, crazy, out of fear and terror. The body appears to be a soft stinky hunk of shit . . .
Like a ghost I walk , I lay this body down, somehow stiff, on the sofa, brown wollen soft sofa. Screaming then, being a real rat-head-shit-boy,
I am screaming, that” nobody has ever loved me.”.
Mother comes in her morning gown, plastic rolls in many colours, in her hair.
Look at me, she says, look at your mother! I have loved you, she says, her face twisted, crying. She shakes me at my shoulders, but my head does not turn. Neck is oddly stiffened. You may not die, she utters.
I can’t stay there any longer. Running out of house, throwing heavy iron gates on to the street, this I did not remember at all. Next, I am on my knees, grabbing moist dark brown humus soil in my hands, smelling the odour, looking at the sea, eyes blurred, between the narrow trunks of alders. Is this this life, which is ahead waiting for me? How could I stand this?
Then I remember, what I had just experienced beside the lake, in the forest.
If I only could somehow get back into that state,
life would, maybe, be worth of living.
But I understand that it is going to be a long and stony path, as father once said:
”That boy’s life is going to be a long and stony path!”, but at least,
maybe, it could be at least. . . long.
So the only task is to become so strong,
that I could endure all this shit, this world and my bottom self.
To stand this madness, but eyes wide open , in that state, feel that love,
which I experienced on that cliff, beside that lake, in that forest.
x x x
Only, a perhaps twenty years later, I am reading some book of psychology and then I understand, that this my experience of paradise and heaven at first and the utter paranoid hell, could also this heaven and hell, could also be named,
as . psychosis
After this arouse many interesting queastions. the experience of God, you may read of it, from bible, from other sources too. Then you coulld start to wonder, perhaps this question too: what is the the difference of god-experience and psychosis?
What is hell? What is love, real love? What is the utter terror?
What is that staring of human eyes?
When a human dies, physically
the dilatation of the eyes, it happens also then.
——————————
THE PRIMAL BIRTH EXPERIENCE IN SPRING 1986
As I have told earlier, I had practiced my “ self-made walking meditation” between years 1980-1985. And I did it alot, almost everyday. Usually that slow walking session lasted about three hours, being only eleven kilometers long. A remote and quiet, forest road tour, it was.
This practice, more and more, made my unconscious fluid and free.
It in a way dimished my ability to conscious control. And I became more emotional, more spontaneous, and finally even too much spontaneous,
to the extent, that normal reasonable daily life . . . turned out to be . . . almost impossible.
Then, in autumn 1985, we, my wife and me, we had got a baby girl, our first child, and she, Seidi, was born 14.9. 1984. So there was now a real need for responsible behaviour as being a father now. So I went to a group therapy, which connected jungian psycho analysis and reichian body therapy, so, including also breathing exercises and other methods of relaxing the unconscious tensions, in different parts of your body.
And during this kind of therapy session, suddenly, in spring 1986, I felt, that now I am falling into very deep and into the earliest layers of my memory. Spontaneously my body started to breathe very deep. Actually it began to gasp air, with a forceful manner. And I could not prevent that to happen. It was a spontaneous state of hyperventilation, and I was almost fainting.
Then I started to see colorful visions on the inner “screen of my fore head.” The gasping of air continued, and my body started to convulse with a very forceful manner. I was lucky , because the therapist, who at that time, happened to be aware, that obviously I am falling now into the primal experience, which means, that I started to experience, to relive my birth again. And that is why he, with all his body wight, he came to lay on my body, and tried to keep my wrigling body still. This weight on me , plunged me to see those visions, and at the same time made me feel all these happenings in my body with an intensive manner.
And this was then what I started to see:
At first I saw, in front of me a very big blue eye.
And at first that eye was behind black prison bars.
Then the bars were removed aside, and I jumped in to that eye.
It was like jumping into water, from the platform, head first.
When I was diving very deep into that blue water,
suddenly I noticed that the water has changed to a blue sky.
I was, like floating, on high blue sky.
And I felt, that my body was a small embryo, full of sun shine inside.
Then I felt enormous, blissful happiness,
making my joyful turns in the middle of the sky.
When I looked around, I saw dark green fir trees,
they were growing towards me.
And I was the sun itself. A sun turning out to be a growing embryo,
in a blue water womb, which was the whole world of earth and sky,
but in an inverted , and thus, in a hollow negative form.
But when that forest, of mostly fir trees, was growing taller and taller,
this embryonic boy – I – found out that my space was diminishing.
I could not move freely any more. And also the bright light vanished.
The sky turned to dark grey.
Then I saw a black hose flying on that dark grey sky.
It was like a black snake, and was biting me.
Having its teeth in my stomach.
I tried to move, but I couldn’t move my body at all.
I got in panic. I was paralysed, heavy like lead.
I was stuck, I wanted to get out. I knew that I will die.
I was fighting for my life, using all the force I had.
Physically, I was lying on the floor of that therapy room.
That man, about my size, was lying on me,
I was panting heavily, and he has to use all his strenght too.
I felt that I cannot get air! That I am suffocating.
Swetting profusely, absolutely wet, I was wrestling of life and death.
Then, suddenly, the total pressure was gone.
What happenend then?
I felt my body like axploding. It was numb and tickling.
I felt like every shell of my body exploding, spreading into space.
I had no limits. Helplessly, in horror,
I was diluting into . . . dark and cold space.
And again, in that paralysed state, I just hoped that some one,
some thing would come and pull me back together again.
But nobody came. And I passed over.
And when I woke up, I was again in one piece,
but like flying slowly in the air.
I saw a big breast coming bigger and bigger.
I saw its dark brown center getting wider,
and the nipple in the middle, it was just in my reach. . .
with my lips I could get it into my mouth.
And I sucked with all my strenght. . .
But nothing came out of it. It was absolutely dry.
And then . . . that huge breast sucked me in – in stead!
And it was a dark stony cave inside.
I was like landing into it, from above,
like into a deep hole, in side a rock.
And there was pale yellow, dry fine sand at bottom.
And I landed onto that sand.
I was naked, and it was cold.
So i curled my body like to a ball.
And I waited, that some one would come,
but no body came.
x x x
When I woke up from this . . . ENERGY VISION! That’s the right name for it! I could not understand nothing of it. It was just wierd, amazing, confusing. It took even some years to understand, that it was a coherent
sequence of images, really telling the story, how I have experienced my coming into this world. And now, almost thirty years later I am still happy that I saw those visions and felt those extreme pressures and relieves in my body.
What happened to me? In that “normal and easy” therapy group?
Nothing like that happened to those others . . . But I explained it already at the beginning of this text. It was my own allowd spontaneous biodrunk
which , during about five years practice, had made me so “soft and porous” already, that I needed only a slight push, and it plunged me into that primal birth experience.
More of Primal Experience, see a book of Dr Arthur Janov :
The New PRIMAL SCREAM . Primal Therapy Twenty years Later.
An Abascus Book 1990.
This book I have found and bought 23.12.2003.
In Finland the writer Matti J. Pulkkinen has written one book of this issue. It is called Elämän herrat. That I read afterb my own experience.
—————————–
SOME EARLY HISTORY OF BIODRUNK
All right, it is a bit stupid name, but have to just live with that.
In the year 1970, when I was fifteen, had been in judo for a while, learned some basic principles of that “soft way”. During that year I also went to my first meditation course. I felt that I desperately needed something else than the shcool and my home was offering . . . to us, children. Not many ways of meditation were available in Helsinki then. It was the Transendental Meditation (the same which David Lynch has been practising). I felt my self so stupid when paying about one week’s salary – from three letters! They made the devotees to kneel in front of the guru’s picture. I had to offer flowers and fruits to that stupid Santa Claus looking ,white beared “cosmic male figure, in his white clothes, even! But in my desperate state, I swallowed all that.
They warned me, not to reveal that secret mantra to any one. It might be dangerous, if used by an” other kind of personality”. Those matra sellers.
Then after father’s death and after that extremely intensive experince in summer 1973, (see int. 2003-09-08) I felt my self so scared of my “inwards” that for seven years I tried to live like any other normal people. Interested though I was still interested, about Alan Watts’ Zen, from that I was reading that fundamental sentence: “the monks used ordinary house hold – and farmiong works, as meditation practice. My immediate question and will from that on was:” From where in this sociaty, co8uld I find a work like that, for me too?! Jiddu Krishnamurti, who said that “the Truth is a pathless land”. So do not follow anybody. Think it through by your self. Erich Fromm wrote about “ To Own or to Be”, and some others intersted too, like H. D. Thoreau, his life in Walden foirest, it was my dream, but tried to keep my self in this secular world. I did my civil service, in hospital. Did not go to army. I was working in biological and bio-dynamic “steinerian” gardens.
My relationship to my first girlfriend and also to my first wife . . . it was not good. And finally after our ways, permanently, separated, I felt despairingly lonely. We , during our relation, we both used alcohol, in our disstress, more and more. And now , alone at the age of twenty five, I found out that I am now on the same “stony path” as my father.
From here could my drinking and ruin start.
I had to get away from Finland now. It was January 1981, I had no money. so I decided to go to work to Israel, to a kibbuz farm. There I spent about two months. I fell in love to a beautiful jewish girl. But was so afreaid of that too. They offered me the work as the “director of the chicken house”. 16 000 chickens, in six huge halls. That country was in war, That farm was only six kilometers from Libanon border. In the neighbour village people had died, during sudden attacts. This kibbuz also gave money to the army. So we european idealists, young people, we were also suppoorting that war.
But mostly because of personal reasons, I left there. I went to the southern parts of Israel. I walked alot.Slept under starry sky in the dry desert. I was still so afraid of . . . all women, so dissapointed to them and to my self too, with them. I thought that perhaps I am gay. But after one that kind of experiment, I was sure that Iam not.
I wealked there alot. And during those walkings, I slowly became more able to live in the present moment. I was able to see beauty again, like that what I had experienced in summer 1973. I took quite much photos too. I made a wooden hard wooden primitive mask. Sculpted it already in the kibbuz. Then , in spring 181, came back to Finland. Living, after ten years, with my deppressed mother again.
I remember, then came the decision, that despite of the dangerous and scaring elements of that experience in summe 1973, I should try to get
“that state back”. I was also, during those years, I was reading Carlos Castaneda’s books. I did not like the use of hallucinogenics, but for me it was anyway some spiritual life, which included laughing, fun, comedy, strong feelings, like in theater. In the book Second Ring of Power, the “mexican sorcerer, called Juan Matus” ( Im not sure if this all was but pure fiction, but at that time I took it seriously, in my” distress and agony”) I read that “the only way to stop the internal dialogue of mind, is to walk in the woods, and stare so, that the eyes are not fixed to any thing, Thinking during this type of walking, is not allowed either. “ This made some sense to me. I remembered how I had been stalking and walking, also in that summer 1973. To live completely in the present moment, without thoughts, without memory, as a real neorotic I was, it was so difficult to me. And when I could , reach a bit that alert intensive state, soon my suppressed unconsciuos content started to burst out. Spontaneous, instinctual movements aroused from my body, like jolts and shakings started to occur, during my “meditation walks”. Usulally those walks, on lonely forest roads, they lasted about three hours. I had also understood that the meditation practice ,must be also related to the climate. Sitting legs crossed, it is a style developed in hot India. And I was so thin and stiff already, and winter was cold. I remembered that chinese Tai Chi, or aikido, The meditation happened along the moving body. So it happened that during these walks, staring like an alert rabbit , to all possible directionsa at the same time, or like a wolf chasing that poor rabbit, like this while proceeding slowly, sometimes dragging my feet, without any logical reason, I became conscious of my body. It was like a mirror, reflecting my neurotic, traumatic wounds. Thus psycho-physical entity, so full of fear, who could not really laugh or cry anymore. Mostly the tensions I became aware, were located in my chest, my curled posture, of my back bone, reflecting my crushed self-esteem. and like an iron band around my pelvis, hindering my walking, which seemed more like skiing.
no wonder that I felt so much sympathy towards the figures in Samuel Beckett’s plays. I was just like one of them.
I was nothing, I had no job. I had quit my scools. I could not stand crouds of other people. From somewhere I had read: J. P. Sartre has uttered that “The Hell is Other People”. That attitude i could easily share. My mother gave me money for food. In any way was I cabable to take part in this society, which even, seemed to based on competition and . . . victory. I did not even want to win any body. I just wanted to get rid of these unbearable “feelings” , which even were not any real feelings, but some frozen solid stifness, asnxiety, deppression would some say. But from that I was not aware.
So, slowly my feelings arouse. My body, it like woke up, became more alive. But not much. For five years, this “spontaneous system” of early biodrunk, was my consolation and temporal relief.
And alcohol I did not take.