Barbara Marx

From Chapter XII

John: We have to die at least once every three or four years. Some of us die once a year. Thanatos death - - It is a very deep instinct of the human race. We have always had rituals of death, transition, and resurrection. We are the first civilization since the Renaissance was not a viable mode of catharsis and death, to die to ourselves - and then being reborn. Who can say how the neurosis of the psyche and history in the twentieth century - all disasters, genocide and the historic collapse - are due to the fact that we could not die and had to objectify and project with genocide of millions?

And you, Barbara, wanted to die, and that your time has come to die. Not that you do not remember - you. But something has to be dropped. A major problem with male is that they have forgotten how to die. That is why there are so many killed, so they reoffend. Probably once a year we need rituals - Nice easy eruptions of death -

Hazel: Purge!

John: Yes. And you must go to a place where you can die. When you come back, being dead, then all the old records in the world can not play loud enough to stifle the power of your new being. So you go for a while, so they re-offend, so they create this monolith GNP. So what?

Barbara: But they do not do it, too.

Hazel: No, of course, but they have great visions of grandeur.

John: But you have died and the power of creating a new life. Personally, I do not think Jesus himself died on the cross. I think it was probably someone else up there. But they needed to create this image seeding. There is nothing like someone who has abandoned time and space, and back. Everything you want to say the points to the fact that you're dying - but you try to do in the middle of a parade!

[Laughter]

Hazel: And they will not let you do!

John: But you'll also revived because it is the nature of the beast. It follows as night the day.

Barbara: Well, I'd be dead after the bicentennial!

[Laughter]

John: Well, I'm sorry, you die now. You better get out of the parade and do it with dignity, Uganda - Greece is the ideal place to die, if I may say so. The islands of Greece!

Hazel: The part of you, Barbara, who does not just slip quietly away from all this is the part of you that feels responsible and locally. You may be starting something just because you feel you should be starting something. He feels better. Everybody looks to you because you are not the vision of the starter? They all call you a spark plug and spark plugs are supposed to start things. When you return to Washington they all rush to you and try to infuse this thing they want you to do. And you feel a responsibility towards them. I found myself in this position so many times. It is also a very "mother" kind of function. But the mother role is to get chicks off the nest.

Barbara: I have an instinct for this thing. I think if I just had to leave, he would go. Somehow, I'm on the road. I'm really at another level.

John: You're on a plane and you're not concerned. It's like a bunch of ions is trying to rally around a wacky atom, an atom that has followed its own path. Coherence can only happen if you go out.

(Reprinted with permission of the power of Yin).

(Note to editor: We leave the three co-authors, Hazel Henderson, Jean Houston and Barbara Marx Hubbard, to perform excerpts from their book signing at the energy of Yin - they are all referenced in the subject box of the author).