OXYGENESIS
The language of the breath is the
subtlest known and the least known.
Its link with the autonomic nervous
system can be found. The Oxygen-
etic process provides psychoanalysis
without words, regenera tion without
medicine, information without think-
ing.
Maurice Rowdon has worked in this field in four countries.
All nervous systems are strong, even when they function
badly. They convey messages to the brain without fail.
If the two sides of the brain were removed and the brain-
stem only left, the organism would continue to function
autonomically---that is to say, it would continue to
ingest and digest, evacuate liquids and solids, withdraw
muscularly from unpleasant contact. The brain, if re-
placed, would then continue to receive the information.
It would become. 'aware'.
It is this awareness that leads us to believe that the
mind is actually in control of the organism, and guides it,
and is even the seat of the ego. But in the Oxygenetic
process this conviction (virtually the basis of western
thinking since the seventeent th century) undergoes a deep
change, but not through argument or exchange of ideas:
it comes about in the organism. The organism finds
itself living in a different way. It no longer feels
in the grip of the mind, least of all of a super-ego
intent on ideals, punishment, goals, blueprints of behav-
iour. Something more intelligent, more dependable, more
in touch with the objective world seems to have taken
over.
Emotions are no fewer or less strong but the
organism is now insulated: for emotions are the mental
symptoms of our encounter with the world, and the bridge
for that encounter is the nervous system. In the case
of schizophrenia the ego is split because the sympa thetic
and para-sympat thetic systems, in their interaction, have
lost the power to distinguish inner from outer, subjective
from objective, private from public.
Maurice Rowdon's interest in this field be gan at Oxford
where in his studies of the various metaphysical theories
of perception he began to suspect that the mind was not
in fact the sea t of our power to 'objectify' our sensations,
as the great philosophers argued. His claim today is
that the seat of the ego is the nervous system, which can
be reached by dieting, fasts, medicine and surgery, but
can be altered, individuated and aligned only by the breath.
Above all, that system is our sole source of information


about the world.
Whatever is known to us must be
received through the nervous system; and the mind is
secondary receiver. This is the case even with ma terial
of a telepathic or intuitive nature which we often assume
to come in some way 1 through' the mind.
For the mind to receive the right information no changes
in the mind itself will avail, since it is a receiving,
analysing and ordering agency. Only a change in the
nervous system will ensure that the information service
is a sound one.
Once it is sound, information of a quite
unexpected na ture begins pouring in.
It is well-known that thinkers sometimes make a breakthrough
in their work which they find quite unaccountable. The
answer is suddenly there after perhaps years of wai ting.
The mind just doesn't know how it happened. This was
because the nervous system was quietly and invisibly at
work, and presented the answer when the organism was
ready to receive it or act on ito
The intake of large quantities of oxygen may be, but need
not be, beneficial. It can be harmful and deeply disturb-
ing to the organism. Oxygenesis is the process of learn-
ing the language safely, carefully and confidently, in
private consultation.


The human's fictional concept of death and his consequent
terror of it are not only a key-factor in his biological development
but the very source of his civilisations. That concept created in
him a distress unknown to other creatures, and the human's search
for habitat became even more frenetic, the more the search failed.
This new, alternative, fixed habitat would provide all the
consolations of the old' habitat, would no longer stare him in the
face with the horror of the unfixed, the impermanent, the fleeting,
the accidental, the unpredictable, the uncontrollable.
'Every minute dies a man,' wrote Lord Alfred Tennyson
(Charles Babbage, a Cambridge mathematician born in 1792, probably
the first designer of the calculating machine, pointed out to
Tennyson that in fact men die much more rapidly than that, which
is why the final version of the poem reads 'moment' instead of
The human faced not only this endless procession of
the dying but the apparent inconsequénce with which the young,
the healthy, the good and the wise were picked off, suddenly
lifeless maybe a moment after the fullest vigor: this discomfited
the mind in its search for a habitat no longer subject to the
unintelligible design of unknown forces.
When these
deaths happen---when someone is 'snatched away'--our regular daily
habits (the ease with which we assume that tomorrow will follow
today) suffers a kind of ridicule. All we can do is mourn, then as
quickly as possible fall into the old bland assumption---to be
shattered again by an accident on the road, news of an air
disaster. Or we try to mend the tear in the illusory curtain of
'permanent reality' by saying that the accident was 'destiny', as
soldiers say that the shell or bullet that gets you has your number
written on it.
Doctors, scientists, healers, even therapists who write best-
selling handbooks on health and longevity are as suddenly snatched
off as others, and their comforting (or frightening) suggestions that
life could be brought under control, whether with computers or
nuclear energy or transplants or space-travel or pills, are given the
lie. We know from the Hayflick researches that the human cell is
capable of living 120 years, and that the human span could possibly
become immeasureably longer: but the accident, the unforeseen?
Little wonder that science' became necessary, as a climax of
centuries of religious effort to substitute for a seemingly chaotic
and formless reality one that would suffer no changes.
Few
churches can avoid the temptation to promise good fortune now to
the devout, and bad fortune now to the sinner.
Even eastern
gurus promise health, wealth and happiness to those who do their
asanas, or meditate, or follow the rules of the ashram.
The
implication is---not the proper religious one that realisation' will
bring you freedom from your own fears---but that reality outside
will somehow accomodate itself to you, remove its 'stings'.