Noble Peace > Experimental Peace Research and Learning Centers> The First Functioning Community
Note: Unless otherwise stated, the following text has been curated by The Noble Peace Tribe team from “Terra Nova: Global Revolution and the Healing of Love,”
by Dieter Duhm
The future without war begins with the first functioning community
“Community” – an easy word and a complex issue. It is actually no more difficult than establishing a functioning company, though. The only difference is that there is already a morphogenetic field* for setting up a company, whereas there is yet none for building a functioning community. This still needs to be created; it is key to the success or failure of the entire peace movement.
p. 171
*Morphogenetic field: Immaterial information field that influences
and determines the form or patterns of things and that stores the
collective habits of species. According to Rupert Sheldrake, it is
due to morphogenetic fields that as soon as something new is done
somewhere it becomes easier and easier for it to be repeated
anywhere. Evolution moves forward by creating new fields. In this
book the term is used in logical extension of its original form,
applying the field theory to the societal and political realms.
P. 217
… the longing for partnership with one comprises part of the morphogenetic field of a functioning community. This answer, which we all need and which the world needs, will not come about on a psychological or therapeutic level, but from a new integration of human life into the universal order or community.
To establish resilient human relationships capable of enduring the inevitable conflicts, we need a profound basis of truth. What is truth? Certainly truth means that one does not lie. As we have seen, this is already quite a demand. But truth goes even further and deeper; truth is the congruence of my words and thoughts with what is really happening within me. Here lies the challenge. When a group debates an issue, the design of a basin for a spring for example, different opinions can collide. Misunderstandings and accusations might arise, with emotions ranging from aggression all the way to open anger. If one looks into what is actually happening one sees the extent to which the undigested inner problems of those involved – the subconscious Oedipus complexes, authority conflict or power struggles – are at work. Arguments ostensibly about subject matter are actually driven by psychological and interpersonal conflicts. One group member refutes another vociferously only because last night the latter kissed the woman that the former would himself have liked to have kissed. Many talks fail due to the entanglement of subject matter and ego problems. I have witnessed a person asserting that water is hurt when it is captured in a stone basin. In reality the pain was clearly not on the side of the water, but within the person. Subjective processes are suppressed when they are projected into the objective world. Every “normal” colleague would be indignant if we were to tell him that his assertion actually refers to his own problem and not to the water’s problem. However, for the creation of a community of trust conflicts such as these need to be seen through and resolved. It was for this purpose that we introduced the SD Forum in…
p. 172
… which with the agreement of the whole group, one is allowed to speak the full truth. Forum is facilitated by people who have recognized, to a considerable extent, the working of these processes in themselves and are ready and able to speak the truth. Whenever self-disclosure occurs without judgement, the group experiences something new in terms of truth. For many this is a very moving, even overwhelming experience. A community intending to collaborate over a long period relies on this kind of psychological cleansing. It reveals a deeper level of truth, which has to do with self-knowledge. It is only on this level that true communication among human beings can begin.
p. 173
The project is not focused on one specific problem, such as famine, but on all problems for they all are inseparably related
p.166
So long as there is single child starving, one single animal tortured, one African girl circumcised, one woman raped, one person mistreated on the grounds of their faith, one young person forced to go to war then our world is in disorder. It is our definite task to free this world from such atrocious pain. We could always say “this is an illusion,” but as soon as our eyes start to open, as soon as we see the suffering of these victims, as soon as we ourselves are one of these tortured beings, there is just a single cry – the cry for relief.
p. 208
The network of life is a network of information
When we enter new information into the network it will take effect everywhere provided an appropriate receptor (the human brain for example) is in place. When information and thoughts occur that are of great importance to the whole it becomes highly probable that they will soon be thought everywhere. I assume this will even be the case for thoughts that today might seem far-fetched or unrealistic, such as the ideas of free sexuality*, cooperation with wild animals, communication with natural spirits, and that all diseases can be healed.
p. 201
*Free sexuality is simply the fulfillment of sexual wishes without
lies or deceit, without humiliation or violence. P. 145
Somewhere someone proved that one could walk barefoot over glowing coals. This gave rise to a worldwide fire-walking “movement” in which participants could cross a seven meter-long carpet of burning coals without hurting themselves. This was made possible by the power of fields*, without which most participants would certainly have burned their feet. The field power is generated through information. In this case the information that “it is possible”. The case of Reinhold Messner’s ascent of Everest without additional oxygen is similar in that his achievement also released the new information that “this is possible” and many people could then follow suit.
The kind of “leap” that applied to fire walking can also be made in social and sexual arenas. As soon as an idea spreads, the inner switch can turn from “impossible” to “possible”, from “no” to “yes”, from “ugly” to “wonderful”. The variability of human judgement is nearly limitless. It is not questions of individual taste, but field powers* that will integrate free sexuality into the planetary community. The same holds true for nonviolent behavior towards animals, for abolishing slaughterhouses, for discovering the Sacred Matrix, for implementing the global Healing Biotopes Plan, and eventually for the entire global revolution. The revolution will end the world process of capitalism and replace it with a highly interconnected system of decentralized, autonomous communities. That which is currently working only crudely in some groups will tomorrow be the cultural treasure of all humanity. Social and sexual renewal will assume a central position in the new culture – as will the principles of decentralized water, food, and energy supplies. Independent, free communities will follow principles of regional subsistence economy on their land and share their surplus with those in their surroundings. There will no longer be foreign powers watching over their land and demanding money for its use. The curse of the past will have ended. How could we have gone so far astray? We will lift this spell by establishing a powerful morphogenetic field* of liberation.
p. 203/204
More than seven billion people need to organize themselves anew. A collective shift of this scale is possible within the power of a field. The power of fields is generated by the centers and projects, the movements and events that people all over the world undertake for the creation of Terra Nova*. The great transformation that we are currently going through is a profound shift from one field of power to another. Within a new field we no longer submit to an overpowering God, but activate the God we carry within us. We do not increase our strength by dominating nature, but by cooperating with it. New intellectual and spiritual power fields are rising for the fundamental issue of life, from the material basis to the soul realms of Eros and religion. According to the principle of spiritual attraction, every power field draws the potential for manifesting toward itself. Those who activate within themselves the power field of love attract all that serves love. When we establish the power of field of a Healing Biotope it will attract all that serves its realization. The work we need to do consists above all in establishing new power fields of intellect and spirit. It will serve every new Healing Biotope to have a school and a “church” to establish and affirm the new intellectual and spiritual power fields. In Tamera we hold a “matinee” every Sunday, a gathering in which the intellectual and spiritual foundations of our work are revisited and affirmed.
p. 204
“If we are to survive the ecological and social crisis we have caused, we may be forced into dramatically new kinds of cooperative ventures.”
Lynn Margulis, Biologist p. 170