“[*Quotes/highlights:*] “We continually re-create the discomforts we have not faced. There is no escape from the things we have ‘put out of our mind.’ That is the closest thing to hell that exists, though there is redemption in it.” []
[] “…we want oxygen, but we keep removing oxygen from our environment to put us back in that state in the womb when we needed air (oxygen) but did not get enough leaving us asking, ‘Please, mother, might I have some more’?” []
[] “…increased carbon dioxide & decreased oxygen naturally stimulate perinatal feelings. Lucky us, as we continue to turn the entire atmosphere of the Earth into such a ‘therapeutic’ carbon-dioxide chamber.” []
[*Chapter 20 text begins:*] "As a psychotherapist, I am adding the psychological effects of this oxygen loss to the already considerable statistically verifiable harm being registered to us physically.”
“Well, consider that a reduction of oxygen of only one half a percent is enough to cause unconsciousness & sometimes even kill a person—from twenty percent, which is optimal, down to 19.5% which is dire.”
“So how much of a reduction is merely noticeable & uncomfortable? How much of a change means we will experience “stuffiness”...assuming we have a point of comparison, i.e., when there exists “outside” air that is different?”
“Now ask yourself how you consciously know you are experiencing stuffiness or suffocation when there *is no* basis of comparison. If you experience reduced oxygen every instant of your life, do you consciously know it? I think not.”
“But that does not mean our bodies are not registering a change & that we are not unconsciously being stimulated into psychological states, like I have been mentioning.”
“& would these psychological states [involving reduced oxygen] then also—with no basis of comparison now either because of it being an ongoing situation—not themselves be thought of as normal?”
“Although [these psychological states involving reduced oxygen] would be somewhat altered from the way humans may have felt on our planet in earlier centuries...or decades?”
“So, environmentally—with oxygen starvation & air pollution—I submit we act out our unconscious memories of PME 2 fetal suffocation by burning up fossil fuels, further reducing oxygen in the environment,..”
“…destroying forests which release oxygen, moving to cities that have little in the way of trees or Nature, & allowing cities to bulldoze all Nature away & create suffocating sterility.”
“We continually re-create the discomforts we have not faced. There is no escape from the things we have “put out of our mind.” That is the closest thing to hell that exists, though there is redemption in it.”
“Sure, we want oxygen, but we keep removing oxygen from our environment to stimulate us back in that state in the womb when we needed air (oxygen) but did not get enough leaving us asking, “Please, mother, might I have some more”?”
“It is common knowledge that at a certain point in our evolution we began harnessing fire for warmth, for cooking, & for other purposes, including entertainment.”
“Consider that fact for a second...why are we the only species to do this? (And we are.) Now consider the aspect of our uniquely human fetal malnutrition as neonates & prenates we have been looking into.”
“No other species needs to burn carbon-based fuels for survival; we only need a tiny amount of air to stoke our “inner fires” when converting food to energy.”
“Yet we have added that incredible weight of setting things ablaze & burning fuels to our burden on the planetary resources & the environment ever since we began using fire.”
“Consider if the prenatal-malnutrition/oxygen-starvation we created for ourselves as unborns by standing upright might be manifesting itself as the need to burn stuff & thrby decrease the O2 in our immediate environment,& incr the toxins there.”
“For, as I continually point out, we are triggered into our unfaced early pain, at the same time as we seek to run from it, while we unconsciously act to bring it about, so we might at some point face it & heal ourselves (though we rarely do).”
“You think it a strange idea that we might be unconsciously wanting to re-create the “stuffiness” in the womb by burning stuff & creating air around us that mimics that state?”
“Do you not wonder why we are the only ones to burn tobacco & other vegetation so we might inhale the exhaust from it, the smoke from the fire we create?”
“If we came across a culture where they built fires & stood around sticking their faces in the smoke to inhale it, how would we view that? How is cigarette smoking different?”
“Is it any wonder we portray hell as one of eternal fire? Not only does it coincide with the prenatal feelings of burning on the surface of the skin, which I explored under PME 4.”
“But in that human beings are the ones being referred to when we speak of the myth of Lucifer, it makes sense that Lucifer’s home after being cast from heaven would be one of fire.”
“Satan is always pictured in a cave of sorts—another womb symbol—with fires all around him. Humans compulsively create environments in which they are surrounded by fire.”
“Just look around you...automobiles, heaters, electrical energy created by combustion…. We also have myths that tell us alternately that use of fire is the great break with Nature that makes us humans,..”
“…as well as myths saying that our being too reckless & getting too close to fire is what causes our downfall. When you think of it, am I not saying both of those?”
“I mentioned how we have an oxygen insufficiency, a hypoxia, in the weeks & months before birth. Together with the reduced intake of nutrients it is called fetal malnutrition by scientists.”
“I pointed out how this [fetal malnutrition prior to birth] is analogous, in our adult world, to our situation of oxygen reduction & carbon-dioxide buildup, which is what constitutes our global warming.”
“However, there is an interesting sidelight to this. For both Arthur Janov & Stanislav Grof, at one time early on, experimented with a technique of carbon-dioxide ingestion for getting people into primal & perinatal states.”
“In fact, at the time—in the late Sixties, early Seventies—though not on a large scale, a number of professionals were experimenting with this procedure & even offering it as a means of “expanding consciousness.””
“…lower oxygen correlates with all of these—greater access to & influx of prenatal & perinatal pain-trauma, increased ability to experience non-ordinary states of consciousness, & heightened spirituality.”
“…I respond that the only reason that is confusing is for having confused spirituality with the elimination of negative emotions & the repression of unconscious dynamics.”
“Whereas true spirituality involves the facing & accepting of repressed memories. As Jung wisely put it, “One does not become enlightened by imaging figures of light but by embracing the darkness.””
“…through more regular access, increase the likelihood that some folks would resolve them & would grow spiritually out of these encounters with their usually unfaced underbellies.”
“…the emerging perinatal unconscious is related to certain personality dynamics arising in our times which have a direct bearing on our prospects for environmental & societal healing.”
“People will be pressed to integrate these rising repressed memories, yet until they do, things will be turbulent & difficult for them. This manifests, on the scale of society, as more tumultuous & dangerous times for us all.”
“And if you still do not believe that a perinatal unconscious is emerging at this time in history, I ask you how else to explain how the simple act of being “cut off” in traffic can trigger so much perinatal “no exit” frustration as to enrage…”
“…an “otherwise normal” person to pull out a gun & blow another’s life away. I also ask you how to account for the every-year increasing incidence of gun violence, mass shootings, killings of schoolchildren & other innocents, in America.”
“Thus these unconscious pressures on us contribute to both increases of gun violence as well as of gun purchases & of rabid support of the Second Amendment & the NRA in the United States in 2018.”
“The upshot of it all is that somehow or other we have managed to create a world situation that mirrors in a way unlike any other time in history our prenatal imprints.”
“We have manifested our worst nightmare, a prenatal Earth. With that prenatal time being the closest we have experienced to hell, yes, indeed, we are bringing about a hell on Earth.”
“If a sufficient number of us do that, we have the potential to turn our “hell on Earth” to a “heaven on Earth.” We can experience the rebirth that lies on the other side of seeming death.”
“Yet in the meantime, like persistent children who want to be attended to, when we are wanting simply some peace, our repressed pain bugs us until we turn to it.”
“So it is that our increasingly prenatal Earth—with its re-creation of our toxic, cramped, nauseated, & irritating womb experience—triggers the emergence of this prenatal & perinatal unconscious & those repressed memories of suffering.”
“Or, you might reverse that & say that an emerging pre- & perinatal unconscious—brought about by other factors, improved “child-caring” methods perhaps...more about that later—”
“—[an emerging pre- & perinatal unconscious] has resulted in our creating a world situation manifesting or acting out those unconscious perinatal elements, which are having increasing influence on our consciousness & on our behavior.”
“Yet, if the birth trauma is extreme, or if subsequent child-caring is abusive & neglectful—as is the case in any of the “less enlightened” of deMause’s psychogenic modes of child-rearing—”
“—[if the birth trauma is extreme, or if subsequent child-caring is abusive & neglectful] or both, then complete splitting, repression of the perinatal, & dissociation from the perinatal occurs.”
“Thus a person can project his or her pre- & perinatal unconscious onto the world & be completely unaware that it has anything to do with him- or herself.”
“However, with more humane child-caring modes—deMause’s latest psychogenic mode, for example—less repression, & less defenses, are necessary & total dissociation does not occur. In this situation,..”
“…the pre- & perinatal is not completely projected onto the outside world. We have more access to it. Hence we act it out & manifest it in lesser ways, which reflect back to us, for the times we are able to see them, our prenatal underbellies.”
“On the one hand, the world is becoming increasingly pre- & perinatal & thus is stimulating more of the perinatal unconscious than previously. On the other hand,..”
“…we have more access to & are closer to our pre- & perinatal unconscious so that we exhibit it more blatantly in our behavior & cultural creations & thus stimulate, again, in ourselves & others, the underlying pre- & perinatal matrices.”
“In Chapter 1, “Humanicidal Times,” we entertained the notion that the reason things seem so much different nowadays than anytime we can imagine from the past is because they *are* different.”
“We have looked at how the character & events of our age are remarkably like the feelings & events surrounding our births & prenatal existences. & unfortunately: traumatic wombs, traumatic times!”
“What does this all mean for us? Is it the “end of the world,” really, like some are claiming? Are we seeing the “dawning of a new age,” an age of harmony & understanding, an Age of Aquarius, as we once thought?”
“Is it hopeless? Or is there at least a vision which can guide us in surviving, perhaps even thriving? Will our “hell on Earth” be akin to a purgatory; & we,like Dante, traversing it realize something more like a heaven & Earth coming together?”
“These are not unimportant questions. & they have all the implications of life or death, again indicative of the perinatal, about them. Will we live? Will we survive? Or are we doomed?”
“& if it is within our power to decide our fate, well, just what the hell are we going to do about it? What can be done about our situation? What can each of us—you...me—do?”
“There are some processes of change in these times—processes of change unlike any that we normally encounter—that will weigh heavily on the outcome of the current emerging prenatal-perinatal unconscious.”
“These include not only the concepts & processes of the healing crisis—as stipulated in the chapter after next, Chapter 22—but also that of macrocosmic processes beyond our human scope, some of which we look at next chapter, “Gaia’s Cries.””
“Others of these factors at play I take up in subsequent chapters. They include changes in child-caring & personality development that are fortuitously aligned with the crises we are meeting.”
“Also, there are planetary factors, like the prenatal-perinatal access come of pollution, which might, completely unintended, redound to our benefit in largely invisible & incalculable ways.”
“Finally, having considered the pre- & perinatal nature of our times in Part 2 on “Prenatal Matrix of Humanicide,” as well as the corresponding unique processes at work in these times in Pt 1, “Apocalypse & Insanity,”..”
“…we can look at some directions forward for our species that actually have us continuing to live. In Part Three coming, titled, “Healing Crisis & Regression in the Service of Humanity,” we will look deeper.”
“What we will see revealed emerging out of the black morass or our current futility & hopelessness is the vision of our necessary future & the necessary hero. “
“Finally, in Parts Four & Five, “The New Hero’s Cycle” & “Sanity & Activism,” I will detail the personalities & actions corresponding to such a future & such individuals. These parts tell us what to do & how to go about doing it.”
The *Prenatal Matrix of Human Evil* theory traces our drive to annihilation to the unique human experiences prior to birth, occurring in the third trimester, which arise of the fact that in our evolution humans became bipedal.