The Milgram Experiment

In 1961 a 28-year-old psychologist with a PhD from Harvard. With the ink still wet on his doctorate degree, he began his career at Yale University. One of his first acts was to contrive an experiment that shook the world. His name was Stanley Milgram and the experiment came to be known as the “Milgram Experiment.” This is how it happened (taken from Zimbardo, PG. “On ‘Obedience to Authority.’” American Psychologist 1974 (July):566).

Milgram’s experiment doesn’t begin in a laboratory, but rather a lecture theatre where a group of psychiatrists, university students and middle-class adults of various occupations and ages have gathered to listen to a lecture on obedience to authority. During the lecture, Milgram asks the audience to imagine the following situation:

In response to a newspaper add offering $4.50 for one hour’s work, you turn up at Yale University to take part in a Psychology experiment investigating memory and learning. You are introduced to a stern looking experimenter in a white coat and a rather pleasant and friendly co-subject. The experimenter explains that the experiment will look into the role of punishment in learning, and that one of you will be the teacher and one will be the learner. You draw lots to determine roles, and it is decided that you become the teacher. The three of you then proceed to an adjacent room, where the “learner” is strapped into a chair. The experimenter explains that this is to prevent excessive movement during the experiment, but its pretty obvious to you that the learner could not escape from the chair if he wished. Then, an electrode is attached to the learners arm, and conductive gel is applied to the electrode. The experimenter explains that this is to prevent burning and blisters. Both you and the learner are told that the electrode is attached to a electric shock generator in the other room, and that electric shocks will serve as punishment for incorrect responses. The learner asks the experimenter if “the shocks will hurt” to which the experimenter replies: “although the shocks will be painful, they cause no permanent tissue damage”.

You leave the learner in his room and return to the other room where the experimenter shows you the shock generator. The generator has 30 switches, each is labeled with a voltage ranging from 15 up to 450 volts. Each switch also has a rating, ranging from “slight shock” to “danger: severe shock”. The final two switches are labeled “XXX”. You are told that your role is to teach the learner a simple paired associate task, but that you must punish him for incorrect responses. You are told that for every incorrect response you must increase the voltage by 15 volts (i.e. one more switch). The experimented gives you a 15 volt shock (enough to make you arm tingle) to check that the generator is functioning correctly. Now the experiment begins. The learner finds the task difficult and makes numerous errors. Each error results in a higher voltage shock than the previous one. To begin with the shocks are weak, but soon they become more intense. At 75 volts you can hear the learner “grunt” through the wall. The same thing happens at90 and 105 volts. At 120 volts the learner says the shocks are getting painful. You know, because you can hear him through the wall. At 150 he cries “get me out of here! I refuse to go on!”.

His protests continue as the voltage gets higher and higher. If at this point, or any other point, of the experiment you question whether you should be continuing, the experimenter tells you to keep going, using such reasons as “you can’t stop now”, “he is getting paid to do this experiment” or that “the experiment depends on your continuing compliance”. He may even say “you have no choice”. As the shocks increase the learner screams out “I can’t stand the pain!” At 300 volts he begins pounding on the wall and demands to be let out. After 330 volts there is no longer any noise from the learner. At this point the experimenter tells you that the learner’s failure to respond should be interpreted as an incorrect response and to continue increasing the shock level. Soon either the highest shock level is reached or the learning task is completed and the experiment concludes.

Following the lecture (described above), each audience member is asked to privately record how he or she would have acted. All of the audience groups responded similarly. They all saw themselves as disobeying the experimenter somewhere early on in the experiment. On average, the psychologists said they would have stopped when the voltage level reached 120. For the university students it was 135. Remember, this is about the level when the learner would have first protested about the pain. Nobody in any group said they would have continued beyond 300 volts.

When asked to explain their disobedience, the audience members responded that they “didn’t want to hurt anyone”. In other words, the audience saw their disobedience as stemming from their empathy for the subject and compassion for those in pain and a sense of fairness. The psychologists predicted that only 4% of the teachers would progress beyond 300 volts. The students said that 0.1% would reach the highest level on the generator. These latter cases (who would use the highest voltage setting) were described by the psychologists as “pathological sadists”.

The experiment described above could have been a hypothetical situation, but in fact the experiment described in the introduction page actually took place! Not only that, but the results were completely different to those predicted by the various audience members to whom the experiment was described.

 When Milgram conducted the study, he found that with a little bit of coaxing, the majority (60%) of subjects would administer shocks right through to 450 volts. The people administering the shocks were not “pathological sadists” as the psychologists had described them, but normal everyday people. At this point I think I should point out that nobody actually received electric shocks… the learner was a confederate of the experimenter and was pretending to be in pain. The only real subject in the experiment was the “teacher”.

In a post-experimental interview, Milgram asked the subjects to rate how painful they thought the electric shocks would have been (on a scale of 1 to 14 where 14 is the most painful). The typical response was 14 (extremely painful). Although most of the subjects obeyed the experimenter, there were obvious signs on an intense internal struggle. Many exhibited unusual reactions such as nervous laughter, uncontrollable seizures, trembling and groaning. One of Milgram’s observers recorded a particularly insightful and disturbing observation (see illustration on left).

Although no-one actually received any electric shocks, Milgram’s study came under fire for the adverse it had on the “teachers”. Milgram’s interviews with his subjects tended to confirm the view that ordinary everyday people can cause pain and suffering to another person under the right set of circumstances. Milgram recounts one interview in particular with a devout Catholic married to a plumber… According to Milgram she gave the impression of complete humility. At 225 volts she turned to the experimenter and in a tentative voice said “I hesitate to press these”. But when the experimented told her to continue, she did. Later she hesitated again, but once again, when the experimenter insisted that she continue, she did… right up to the maximum 450 volt shock.

Milgram also conducted several follow-up experiments to determine what would mediate the likelihood of maximum shock delivery. He repeated the experiment described above, except that this time he had four conditions. One condition (the verbal condition) was exactly the same as before, i.e. the “learner” was in another room but could be heard by the “teacher”. In the second condition, the remote-feedback condition, the only feedback on the learner’s condition was a pounding on the wall at 300 volts. In the third condition, the proximity condition, the learner was seated right next to the teacher. In the fourth and final condition, the touch-proximity condition, the teacher was required to hold the hand of the learner on a “shock plate” in order to give him shocks above 150 volts.

The most amazing thing to note from this follow-up experiment is that 32% of the subjects in the proximity-touch condition held the hand of the learner on the shock plate while administering shocks in excess of 400 volts! I don’t know about you, but this result both shocks and intrigues me! Further experiments showed that teachers were less obedient when the experimenter communicated with them via the telephone versus in person, and males were just as likely to be obedient as females, although females tended to be more nervous.

Milgram’s experiment has been repeated in Australia, South Africa and in several European countries. In one study, over 85% of the subjects administered a lethal electric shock to the learner!

Milgram felt that his experiments helped provide light into how behavior such as the Nazi war crimes and Vietnam massacres. He notes that Nazis frequently described themselves as helpless parts in a big machine. He also notes their tendency to “devalue” their victims… the European Jews were the subject of a massive propaganda campaign designed to make them appear as sub-human. Milgram found a tendency to devalue the “learner” in his experiment… utterances such as “why doesn’t the dumb guy get it right” were not uncommon. One “teacher” even claimed the “learner” was “so dumb he deserved to get shocked!”.

The experiments carried out by Milgram have given insight into human obedience. While not giving us the complete picture, they are certainly sobering and give us a glimpse of one of the darker sides of human nature–a side that we would probably want to pretend didn’t exist.

I studied this experiment in 1964 as a psychology student at the University of Portland. Later, in 1974, a TV movie was made based on the experiment that stared William Shatner, Ossie Davis, and (believe it or not) John Travolta. This freshened and dramatized my memory, and got me to thinking about it again. Periodically over the intervening years I have thought about it again and again. It has been particularly troubling to me to try to integrate this into my personal philosophy that we all are creating our own individual realities. And that is why I am writing this piece. Basically, here is current state of the art of my own thinking on that subject.

First, in the TV version (for which Milgram was a technical advisor), there were follow-up studies done of the subjects of the experiment.  My recollection of that (which I have been unable to confirm) was that there was at least one suicide, several instutuionalizations for psychiatric reasons, and other major life disruption that followed in the wake of the experience. People changed careers, one young man declared that he was a conscientious objector and refused to be inducted into the military (which I have confirmed), and many other dramatic stories. Which is all by way of saying two things: the subjects of this experiment experienced significant repercussions from their participation; and no two had the same experience.

In the end, regardless of how they reacted to the fact, they were nearly all most struck by the knowledge that they were capable of committing such acts under such basically innocuous circumstances (i.e., no coercion, no fear, no threat of punishment for failure nor reward for success). It was this realization about themselves that was the prime force in whatever consequences followed.

So that is my jumping-off point: everyone learned something about themselves that surprised them, and that they each responded differently to that knowledge. That is in keeping with my meta-view of human experience, which I have written about in connection with many topics, especially natural disasters.

In effect, there was no single Milgram Experiment. There were as many as there were people involved, and that includes all those who have read about it, seen the TV movie, and now, even you. And we each respond in our own ways.

Another important point is that we each experience something different, because we each are drawn to it for reasons of our own, and those reasons are not the same for any two of us.

Similarly, there are as many circumstantial way in which we can participate in the experiment, from those who were subjects, to the other participants, to those of us who were not there and had to experience it vicariously. Dr. Milgram himself actually had his credentials withdrawn by the for a while because of ethical considerations. These disparate juxtapositions to “the event” are a direct outgrowth of our respective purposes for getting involved in the first place. They are each custom made to provide us individually with the ideal venue in which to experience what we intended to experience in the first place.

Keep in mind, too, that no one was actually hurt in the experiment, at least not by anyone else. Any injuries-physical, psychological, or otherwise-were strictly self-inflicted. Those who chose to come away with a huge dose of guilt presumably came into the situation with a predisposition to that type of self-image, and simply found their own behavior amplified that. Others actually thanked Dr. Milgram for providing them with valuable knowledge about themselves that they found extremely useful and beneficial. It’s all a matter of individual perspective, and obviously there is considerable range.

One last point: in reading contemporary interpretations of these events, I have noticed many references to this all being part of “human nature,” even in the citation above. This I disagree with most strenuously. It is no more human nature to do the things these people did than it is to fly to the moon, which only a handful of humans have ever done.

What is true is that everything we do is within the scope of the possible universe of purposes to which real human nature can be applied. And that scope  is vast indeed. But it is wholly untrue to say that any particular thing is human nature, unless every human being throughout history and for all time is or does that very thing. Even in this experiment, not everyone did the same thing.

Those who make such assertions are saying nothing whatsoever about the subjects of the experiment, and speaking volumes about their own prejudices about what it is to be human. And perhaps that is my real point.

In the end, are we all candidates for the SS? Are we all to be judged ethically and morally spineless? Not to me. We are, however, capable of the most amazing things, and this is just one of them.

Over 300 million years ago, the land mass now known as the Middle East was covered by swamps and shallow seas and populated by countless forms of life. Now, the residue of those creatures and plants have transformed into oil deposits beneath the sands of the region. When that oil is resurrected and processed, it becomes energy, and the world is hungry for it. Most addicted of all is the United States, and that addiction binds us to its custodians: the countries and peoples of Arabia, including Iraq.

Around 5,000 years ago, humans migrated into the same lands to settle and develop the area that has long been called “The Cradle of Civilization.” It is formed around an area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and at its center was once the city of Babylon, just a stone’s throw from present-day Baghdad.

While the land has preserved the oil, the cultures of the region have acted as caretakers, too. But they have, instead,  preserved a worldview for the last several millennia. They have retained, with remarkable faithfulness, the prevailing views held in the days of the Old Testament. It is a rigid, harsh, and sometimes brutal approach to life and social order. But in the unforgiving environment of rock and sand, brutality can easily appear to be a survival skill.

While the original inhabitants of the Cradle did not themselves spawn humanity, they did play a pivotal role in the development of civilizations and cultures worldwide. Few surviving cultural traditions contain no trace of the views, values, and beliefs originated there. Even the Garden of Eden is believed to have been located in what we now call Iraq.

In the thousands of years since the Cradle gave birth to civilization, many variations have emerged in our individual and cultural paradigms, but we still retain some of that original belief system. For many, it is the core around which all other perspectives are formed.

The kill-or-be-killed, eye-for-an-eye simplicity of that ancient world are proving to be hopelessly out of date. It was at best a crude approximation of true wisdom, and the farther our world moves into the future, the more inadequately such views serve us.

But ancient thoughts do not die easily. They have an almost genetic tenacity. To make matters worse, the demands placed upon us by our social and technical evolution require us to continually upgrade our views of life, the universe, and everything. This is a new kind of challenge for humanity. We are called upon today to make deep, sweeping changes to the very core of our psyches, that no other generation of humankind has ever had to face. Because it was never necessary, or even particularly important to make such changes, we have neither traditions, nor institutions, nor technologies to aid us. And the stakes are unimaginably high: nuclear annihilation among them. Clearly, we must adapt successfully or perish.

I have long found that taking a symbolic view of such phenomena can offer great insights into their real meaning. In today’s world, for example, America can be viewed as the preeminent symbol of humanity’s journey into a future that is both brave and beautiful. Conversely, Iraq (and the Middle East at large) is symbolic of the dogged preservation of antiquated values. And the two are now at war.

America is a forward-looking, young and eager force, bound by an addiction to ancient energy without which it believes it cannot move ahead, while Iraq is a veritable treasure trove of ancient thought and, of course, energy (a.k.a. oil). The struggle is one of technology against thousands of years of ruthlessness, guile, and tough-mindedness. It is a classic engagement indeed.

What no one seems to see is that in bombing Baghdad, we are symbolically trying to rid ourselves of our own latent views that have been held in trust for all these centuries. We are frustrated at the limitations they represent to us. We are appalled by barbaric practices, both public and private. And, of course, we require the energy.

For its part, the Arab world believes their cultures and value systems are, both figuratively and literally, quite sacred. They see the U.S. as imperialistic, high-handed, and to some, the personification of evil. As I said, it is clearly a classic struggle.

But one cannot obliterate a thought with a bomb, and beliefs are nothing if not thoughts. So when the U.S. and its allies drop explosives on the heartland of the ideas they think of as their enemies, they accomplish nothing they intend to. It is not possible. Even a nuclear explosion is not powerful enough to do that job. I have found that there is only one way to divest one’s self of any troublesome idea: withdraw life support from it. In other words, the way to kill a thought is to refuse to think it.

Translating the symbolic into practical terms, the way to deal with Iraq or any other stronghold of offensive belief is to turn away and never look back. No, I don’t mean the “sanctions” imposed by the UN years ago. I mean cutting off all relations to everyone with whom we have such differences. Unfortunately, that would not just include Iraq, but virtually all other Arab nations as well as Israel and many others. But there is one little problem: we would have to do without what they have that we want, which includes, of course, energy in its liquid form.

So, what separates us from making a clean break with our own past is our addiction to ancient energy. It seems to me that symbolically that translates into one simple fact: our belief in new sources of “energy” still lags behind our belief in the ancient ones.

Oil is only a symbol for a much deeper energy, though. It is also symbolized by ancient religions, ancient customs, ancient beliefs, ancient superstitions, and more. Is it really time to cut all our ties with those old, well-worn artifacts of our heritage? Are we really ready? It would seem not.

This, of course, raises the question of what will have to happen before we are ready. I think religious thought and practice may be the best monitor of our progress, past and future. In the last half of the twentieth century, traditional religions worldwide changed more than they have in centuries. People by the millions began finding them long on tradition, but short on real wisdom that could guide them on the difficult path into their individual and collective futures. They began to shop around. In the ‘60s, the Eastern religions gained in popularity for a while. In the ‘70s the “human potential movement” made a brief, but dramatic surge into the spotlight.

Since then, it has been something of a free-for-all. The only two patterns that stood out in the noise were the falling back by some onto “fundamentalist” religious dogmas, and the emergence of “New Age” philosophies, propagated by teachers both living and dead. But these are all just experiments, of sorts. They are desperate attempts to grab onto something that at least gives the illusion of solidity. When they fail, as most of them must, you just jump to the next, and the next, and the next. But what then? What does one do when one can no longer take any known dogma seriously enough that it offers even temporary comfort?

That seems to be the question most in need of answering, and yet the one least often asked. The answer, however, is quite simple: look into yourself. I never said it was going to be easy, just simple. In the end, the answers we cannot provide ourselves, we may have to do without.

The good news is that increasingly there are those who learn that this is true, and who, often at great personal sacrifice, devote themselves to finding the means to real self-discovery. Anne Sekel said, “You cannot find yourself, only create yourself.” So it is really about self-creation. There has been a veritable groundswell of interest in the “technology” of self-creation in the last quarter century, and it continues to build. How long will it take to change our world in that way? The most accurate answer is: less than a nanosecond. It may, however, take considerably longer to arrive at that moment. Meanwhile, we will presumably busy ourselves with Iraqing the Cradle and other equally fruitless occupations.

In 1961 the East German government started work on the Berlin Wall.  Not long afterward The Chad Mitchell Trio recorded their first album.  Remember The Chad Mitchell Trio?  The Mitchell Trio?  Maybe this will help.  When namesake-tenor Chad Mitchell left the group, his replacement was another blond tenor, Henry John Deutschendorf Jr.  You probably know him as John Denver.

The connection between the trio and the Berlin Wall began when the original group recorded a song on that first album called “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream.”  It was a pleasant little waltz about a dream in which the people of the world agreed to stop fighting.  There was a room filled with men signing papers saying they would fight no more.  Copies of the papers were made and sent around the world.  The streets were filled with people, dancing with joy as they piled guns, swords and uniforms never to be used again.  It was a lovely ditty with a joyous, if unlikely, story to tell and I loved it.  Too bad it was so far fetched.  It was more than twenty years before I heard it again.

During the seventies, like the rest of the world, I forgot about that simple tune.  We were all far too busy with Viet Nam, Watergate and the gasoline crisis.  It wasn’t until 1981, while glancing through a songbook on a friend’s piano, that I ran across that dream again.  It was a bittersweet reunion.  The dream was at once more distant and yet somehow more believable than before.  I tried to sing it that day but could not.  I didn’t know how to sing and cry at the same time.

On November 9, 1989 the East German government lifted the ban on travel to the West and the next day a flood of humanity swept through the wall for the first time in twenty-seven years.  Late on the evening of the 10th I watched a television special, live from the wall.  At the end of the broadcast, as the credits rolled, I saw a group of East German school children.  Their teacher had taken them on a field trip just across the wall, just to be there, just because they finally could.  There they were, a couple of dozen of them, whose parents were themselves children when the wall was begun, and they were singing in German.  I didn’t understand the words but it didn’t matter; I recognized the tune.  I began singing with them, “Last night I had the strangest dream I never had before.  I dreamed the world had all agree to put an end to war….”  That’s as far as I could go.  I never did learn to sing and cry at the same time.

I have been blessed throughout my life with the presence of extraordinary people.  Alvin Bach was one of my favorites.  Al was a diminutive man, barely 5 feet tall and a bit elf like.  He was soft spoken with a sense of humor as crisp as the first bite of a fresh apple.  Annie, his wife, had born him two children, boys, who were about to enter school when the Bachs moved in next door.

I was 18 then, a high school senior bound for college in the fall.  Al and I hit if off right away.  The more I got to know him, the more I admired him.  He and Annie had been married for 11 years and during that entire time, Al had been in college.  Now he was a doctoral candidate in Clinical Psychology.  The house next door, two stories with full basement, was the first habitat their family had ever lived in that had more than one bedroom.  They were in heaven.

While probably not brilliant, he was smart enough and worked very hard.  He spent as much time with his family as he could, but most of his days and evenings were spent either at school or preparing his thesis which was on autism.  The work he really loved was with autistic children.

By spring, he had completed all the requirements for his PhD except serving his internship.  He had narrowed his choices down to two; a highly paid position which would have kept him all but isolated from patients and a poorly paid position working with autistic children.

There was little doubt which one he wanted to take.  But the other job would offer he and his family luxuries they had never known; new clothes, a color tv, their first ever family vacation.  Al felt that his family, Annie in particular, had sacrificed so much for so long that he just wanted to give them something back and for the first time he had an opportunity to do so.  There was no question which job was the best suited to the development of his career nor was their any doubt which one would affect their standard of living.

Al’s debate wore on for weeks.  I saw him become visibly stressed, the bounce abandoned his step and the smile his face.  It was a sad thing to see this wonderful man reduced to a near zombie.  I was beginning to wonder how long he could stand it.

Then one night, as I was watering the front lawn, Al hopped over the flower bed that separated our property, and bounded up to me like a young colt.  I knew immediately something dramatic had changed.  Rather than ask him outright, I waited for him to make whatever announcement he had in his own way.

He asked if my mother was home and I said that yes, she was in the house.  He motioned me to come along and we walked into the house to find my mother.  She was sitting at her desk when we came in and I could tell by her expression that she too recognized that change was in order.

When we had sat down, Al announced, “Well, as you may have guessed, I have made my decision.  I start next week in the childrens’ ward at the hospital.”

Mom and I both smiled and said how happy we were for him.  And it was true, as much as we wanted to see the Bachs improve their financial situation, we also knew that Al’s heart would never have been in that other job.  When the congratulations were ended and the conversation slowed, mother said, “How did you finally resolve the dilemma, Al?”

“In the end, it was fairly simple.  All the time I was grappling with my decision I was trying to find a reasonable, rational way of choosing.  I looked at the facts, the implications, the reasons, until I felt as my daddy used to say, like I was ‘rode hard and put away wet’.  After weeks of that, I was simply no closer to ending the dilemma than I was at the beginning.  If anything, I was even more confused.  This evening I finally gave up.  I realized that if I waited until I had everything I needed to make a completely rational choice, I would be a very old man.  I realized that it was just a crap shoot and that it wasn’t going to change.  That made things simpler right away.

“Then I asked myself what was the best way to deal with this new situation, where rationality and reasons were not relevant.  And that’s when it came to me, the way out of the quagmire.  I realized that no matter what I do, if it’s the right thing, there’s no problem.  Right?  It’s only if I choose wrong that I’ll have something to deal with.  Then all I had to do was to project myself into both situations feeling that I had made a mistake and ask myself, ‘which mistake would you rather make?’

“It was obvious.  If I took the money and later felt I had made a mistake, I would feel devastated.  But if I work with those kids and it turns out to be a mistake, that I can live with.  End of story.  The moment I realized that, the decision was made and I feel absolutely great about it.  So do Annie and the kids.  They’re behind it 100%.”

How many times has that question been asked, in various forms, since the Indian Ocean’s belated Christmas present arrived in South Asia? And children aren’t the only ones asking. Most people, even those who are thousands of miles away, are trying to come to grips with the magnitude and impact of this dramatic event.

The answer you get depends on who you ask, however, and they are countless in variety. If you ask a geologist, you will hear something about geothermal cooling and tectonic plate shifts. If you ask other scientists you will probably hear something about random chance. Some religious people will tell you that it’s God’s retribution. Personally, I find the common answers about as satisfying as a picture of a Big Mac would be to a starving man. The real question, it seems to me, is far more basic: are we the helpless victims of such events, or do we exercise authorship over our lives and their contents? Now there’s a question worth answering. So I will attempt to do so.

The simple fact is that either we are all creating our own personal realities-and collectively our shared one-or we are not. There really isn’t any mid ground. Albert Einstein once declared, in objecting to quantum physics’ uncertainty principle, that he just couldn’t believe that God is rolling dice to see what happens next. I’m with you, Al. Nor can I believe that God is some white-haired old puppeteer pulling the strings and watching us dance. In fact, the only perspective that has ever made any sense to me is that we are all divine creatures with, as Seth put it, “the gift of the gods,” to wit: we create reality. But applying that to events like the recent tsunami stretch the credibility of this idea beyond most people’s ability, or willingness, to keep faith. It is hard for them to see how, much less why, hundreds of thousands of people would give up their lives in such a way, and millions more decimate their lives from end to end. It is to address those questions that I offer the following interpretation.

The first real clue I got about how to view such events came from Seth’s description of a flood in Elmira, New York. He talked about how the people in the area had become concerned about a stagnating economy and an overall sense of hopelessness. They had become increasingly fragmented and withdrawn. Something had to be done. It was as if they called a town meeting (not literally, of course, but perhaps in dreams, etc.) and discussed various alternatives. The flood option was adopted.

In the aftermath of the “natural disaster,” people pulled together, rich and poor, young and old, to minimize the damage and later to rebuild their town. Massive amounts of federal aid poured in. Old businesses died, but new ones were created, and the entire community was rejuvenated. In other words, the purposes, individually and collectively, of the people involved were served.

Now, some people didn’t want to participate, and had the “good luck” to be visiting Aunt Amy in Chicago, or in Los Angeles on business. Others chose this opportunity to die in the way that served them best. But there were no “victims:” only volunteers.

Another piece of the interpretive puzzle was provided by both Seth and Richard Bach (in his best seller, “Illusions”). They brought out the fact that romantic comedies are not the only kinds of movies people pay to see. They also flock to see “The Bride of Frankenstein,” disaster films, and just about anything else you can mention. Why? Because they have an indescribably wide range of tastes, needs, desires, and interests. Why should life be any different?

So we choose to be born in a certain time and place, in a certain environment, family, and culture. And we choose to die in the way that is most meaningful to us. No exceptions. None. And, of course, most of us are completely unaware, consciously at least, of any of it. Being fully aware would ruin the whole thing. It would be like reading the last page of a murder mystery first. So we keep our conscious minds in the dark for the most part, because it serves our purposes, whatever they may be, to do so. Neither does this start at birth, nor end at death. Our creativity is forever, as are the choices we make in directing it.

With that as backdrop, we can now look at the tsunami of 2004. Of all the billions of people who have participated in this drama, which includes even we who only read about it or watch it on television, no two experience the same thing. We each are affected differently. Some died a horrible death, while others are to all intents untouched. Some lost everything, while others will get rich from it. That is because we are all serving our own purposes and desires.

And yes, even the children are parties to this essentially benevolent conspiracy. Just because their odometer reads in small digits doesn’t mean that they are at the mercy of a reality run wild and a natural world that is out to do them harm. In fact, it has been my experience that they are among the most gifted creators among us, because they have not yet forgotten the magical knowledge we are all born with.

Now, in case you think I’m just saying “they asked for it, so who cares?” let me make it clear, nothing could be farther from the. In terms of the human caring aspect of the situation, I have tremendous compassion, even admiration, for those who have chosen to take on such a massive challenge. It is clearly not for the faint of heart. And I look kindly upon anyone who tries to make their path less bumpy. But I do not pity them, nor feel sorry for those “poor, helpless victims.” I see them as courageous and determined gods setting the bar higher than most of us can imagine. And they will get their money’s worth from it. They will live and learn and grow and create in the ways that are most important to them. I will not insult them by viewing them as weak and helpless victims of events they could not escape. I consider that an act of spiritual violence. Instead, I try to learn through and from them, and thereby add to the benefits purchased in such a way and at such a price. It is a gift to our world as massive as the forces of nature that were collected and focused by us all on the day the waves came. Let us not squander it by demeaning the people involved by seeing them as victims, but rather celebrate their valor and determination by celebrating their willingness to choose such a path at such a price. Neither they nor we deserve less.

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Once upon a time in the mid-1970s, toward the end of the Watergate fiasco, impressionist Rich Little did an impression of President Richard Nixon. In it he said, “Richard Nixon is the kind of man who, if you were drowning 20 feet off shore, would throw you eleven feet of rope and say, ‘Let me make myself perfectly clear: I went more than half way.’”

That really caught my attention on the one and only time I saw it. It has stuck with me to this day, and it seems that I see more and more of it every day. The clearest examples seem to come in politics and advertising. What is most intriguing about this kind of “truth” is that it is, technically, true. Eleven is certainly more than half of 20. But to one who is drowning nine feet away from the end of the rope, it is a profoundly hollow truth.

What I have finally decided is that the lie is not in what is said, or even what is left out. The lie is implicit in the assumption that this truth is the most important and relevant truth about the situation. In Little’s example, the implicit assumption is that the helpfulness of the rope is directly proportionate to the length of the rope. This is, in fact, utterly irrelevant to the situation. Either you give the drowning person a means of survival or you don’t. Proportion has nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Yet on the surface, such statements seem to make sense. And you certainly can’t call a person a liar for saying so. And that is how such lies are used: to give the appearance of telling the truth, and to do so in such a way that you can’t be accused of lying. All you have to do is measure the length of the rope, and the truth of the assertion can be easily verified.

You see this in personal relationships of all kinds. For example, a father who says, “I have always made a good living for my family,” may be telling the truth. But what if he beats his wife, or  constantly criticizes and belittles his children? Is the size of his paycheck more important, more relevant?

Similarly, what about a woman who truthfully says, “I have always been faithful to my husband,” but spends her days at the local pub squandering the mortgage payment on video poker and Keno? Is she really telling the most important truth?

One of the most insidious examples I learned from Eric Berne’s wonderful book, “The Games People Play.” In it he describes a game he calls “Now I’ve got you, you SOB,” or just NIGYSOB for short. In this little drama, a wife cuts her husband off from all affection, physical and otherwise, and when the husband, in desperation has an affair, they have a rousing game of NIGYSOB. Now, she can honestly say that she was never unfaithful to him, but he cheated on her in a most egregious way. Yet when you look at the larger picture, she played a major role in the circumstances leading up to his “indiscretion.”

You can almost always tell when someone, even yourself, is telling an eleven-foot truth: it feels icky. If you are the teller, you know at some level that you’re lying, even if you don’t let your conscious mind in on the hoax. If you are hearing such an assertion, you feel funny because you are being asked, by implication, to accept and agree with a covert lie. The key to defeating such things is to have the presence of mind to notice these feelings, and the insight to see through them to the larger truth that is hidden in plain sight, and the integrity to say the emperor has no clothes.

An excellent place to get a superb education in this tactic, though not its cure, is listening to politicians and watching TV ads. They are almost always composed of little else. When stripped down to the naked elements, they say very little of substance, and even less meaningful truth. When we accept these kinds of lies-that-aren’t-lies, we get exactly what they offer: nine feet less rope than we need.

All That Is creates the Universe because of its desire to know itself completely. It expresses itself, then experiences those expressions as itself. We are part of that process. We are All That Is expressing itself as us, and our unique experiences are All That Is experiencing itself from our unique perspective.

As chips off the old cosmic block, we too desire to express ourselves completely so as to know ourselves completely. We do this at three levels. The most intimate of these expressions is our inner experience of thoughts and feelings. The next most intimate is our bodies and the conditions and sensations they provide us. Next is our “exterior” reality, the world of objects, people, and events. We express ourselves in all three of these ways constantly. It is so automatic that we usually think no more about it than we do about our heartbeat or the digestion of a meal. It is so far in the background that we can be completely unaware that it is even happening, yet it is-constantly.

Part of our nature as human beings is to transform our every thought and feeling into some form of expression. We can project them on any or all of the three screens: the body reality, the inner reality (thinking about our thoughts, having feelings about our feelings), or the physical, external world. We are here in this physical universe to learn to take responsibility for the contents of our conscious minds. Then we can express ourselves creatively, consciously, in whatever ways and at whatever levels are the most authentic expression of our hearts and minds. For now, let’s overlook the bodily and inner expressions, and focus on the external ones, the outer mirror of our most intimate thoughts and feelings.

Our physical reality includes every object, person, and event within our experience. (Remember the word “experience” as just used. It is a powerful key to understanding the workings of the mirror.) It is at once an expression, a mirror, and a work of art. As a mirror, it provides us with the feedback we need to refine our creativity to best express our highest ideals. Imagine painting a picture in pitch blackness, without any feedback. The mirror cannot serve us in this way unless we understand and use it appropriately. This means we must realize it is a mirror, that it is there to express our thoughts and feelings most faithfully, and that it is a powerful and invaluable feedback mechanism in the bargain. We must learn to use it accordingly.

What our physical world is not, is our enemy, dangerous, senseless, random, objective (in any meaningful sense), or separate from us. It is simply a true and accurate expression of ourselves within the properties of space, time, and matter. Think of it as a theater in which there are three projectors: the body, the interior universe, and the exterior universe. Each projector transforms the original image into expressions and experiences that are appropriate to one of the three screens. We experience the screens through our bodies, our inner senses, and our outer ones. These three arenas of experience are overlaid into a cohesive multi-dimensional experience of ourselves. This is what being conscious as yourself feels like.

So what is the movie about? The film projected by all three cameras is the same: it is the ongoing contents of your mind and heart. That is what is projected on the screens which you experience as your life in progress.

Now wouldn’t it be convenient if the moment we had a thought, it would suddenly appear on one or more screens. That would be the ideal kind of feedback loop. I think, I see, I think again. And in some systems of reality, that’s just about the way it is. You spend a third of your time in one of them: dreams. But we usually cast ourselves in the role of victim there, too. Even wonderful dreams often involve no awareness of our own creative forces at work creating it. Only in so-called lucid dreams are we able to take conscious charge of our dreams, to assume our true godhood.

In our ordinary waking life, here in the physical world, things are a bit more demanding. Here we must create physical forms, not just thought forms, before we can experience ourselves as external events. This takes what we call “time.” It is also good practice in focusing our thoughts intently, precisely, so as to hasten their clear translation into the physical world. It is also important to learn to concentrate the emotions that accompany those thoughts, because the thought only gives the incipient reality its form, it is the emotions that provide it with the force to be manifest physically. It is the power of the feelings attached to the thoughts, along with the clarity of focus of the thoughts themselves, that determine how quickly the materialization occurs, how faithful to the original it is, and how profound its impact will be in the symbolic world of the physical.

The clearer the thought, the sharper the reflection in the mirror: the stronger the emotion, the quicker and more powerfully the reflection will materialize.

One of the rules of reality creation is that all thoughts and feelings must be materialized, not just the “nice” ones. Most of us are not here on some frivolous vacation, we’re after more serious fun. We are here to learn to become masters of conscious reality creation. How could we possibly do that if only our favorite thoughts were materialized? So even our most unpleasant thoughts must have their day in the sun, as always, in proportion to their clarity and the power of the emotions they carry with them. This can make for a very interesting stew when conflicts arise.

The key to interpreting our physical mirror lies in how we experience the reflections, for they are an exterior expression of our inner state of thought and emotion. The thought defines the form the events will take, and the emotion defines how we will feel about them when we meet them on the street.

If the thought is about children, and the emotion is love, then we will draw children into our lives, and we will feel love toward them. If, on the other hand, we fear dogs, then our thoughts will create images of dangerous dogs, we will feel that fear, and we will project those thoughts and feelings outward into dogs we are afraid of. It is just that simple.

If our thoughts are somewhat vague, then we allow some leeway in the particular form that will be created. If the thoughts and images are clear and vivid, then their expressions in the mirror will be faithful to those images. If the emotions are strong and clear, then so will our feelings about their reflections.

As an example, suppose you believe that you must follow the rules as set down by society. You feel safe when you conform, and at risk of retribution when you don’t. Further suppose that you also resent the restrictions they impose on your creativity, spontaneity, and freedom. It makes you angry when you think of subordinating yourself to arbitrary rules. How do you express those two differing thoughts appropriately. There are countless ways. One is that you could grapple with decisions about whether to follow certain rules or not. You could even make it an obsession. You could become paralyzed by indecision if the feelings are strong and equal enough. Or you could bring someone into your life who is dealing with the same kinds of dilemmas, and experience yourself vicariously through them. You would observe them, and interpret their behavior in a way that allows you to feel the feelings that you yourself would have in the same situation.

You could simply choose to be a conformist and deal with the inevitable frustration and resentment it brings up because of your desire to be more free. Conversely, you could be a free spirit and deal with the consequences of breaking the rules.

A more creative approach might be to identify with one or the other view, and bring in someone else to play its opposite. Be the “team player” and recruit a non-conformist to express the opposite. Then you could experience one side directly through your own conscious thoughts, feelings, and actions, and experience the other view through your feelings about the reflection provided by the other person. Obviously, the roles could be reversed just as easily.

What must be true, however, is that all of your beliefs, thoughts, and feelings on the subject be fully expressed in one way or another, and you must respond to those expressions in one way or another. That is how our kind of reality creation works. It is intrinsic to our humanity.

What is not hard-wired is the choices we make about what we think and feel. We are taught that our feelings, and even our thoughts, are not chosen, but thrust upon us by exterior events over which we have no control. We do not create it, so we have no choice in how we respond to it. “He makes me angry,” is a typical view from this perspective. We seldom realize that we chose the thoughts and feelings that mandated the particular expression, and we can choose other thoughts and feelings if we want to. But first we must accept that we created the ones that are already manifest.

You cannot give away what you do not own.

I can’t change your mind. Nor can I sell your car, nor eat your dinner, nor die your death. Only you can do those things. In like fashion, I cannot keep you from “making me mad” as long as I see your presence in my life as your doing, not mine. Once I accept that you are a necessary expression of something in me, I can decide whether to continue to think and feel the things that put you (or someone else) there. This presupposes one thing, however: that I am able to find within myself the thoughts and feelings of which you are the external materialization. Again, the key is the experience I feel in regarding you.

If I feel anger, then I must look within myself for that anger. Usually, it is unexpressed in me. That is why I need you to do it for me. I’m a nice person, and nice people don’t get angry without “good reason.” You provide me with that reason. Just realize that the people and situations in your life are there to bring your own feelings and thoughts to life. They are there to show you who you are (or at least who you think you are), like it or not. If you can’t find the thoughts and feelings that generate a circumstance, it will be very hard to change them, and consequently the reflection in the mirror.

Now, we can often get an offending person or situation out of our lives by just leaving. Of course, since the real source was within us to begin with, and since we cannot escape ourselves just by moving on, it will be back. This is how people create an endless string of “bad” relationship, jobs, health, etc. They try to change reality (their own beliefs, thoughts, and feelings) by changing the reflection in the mirror (the people and situations they encounter). It is like walking up to a mirror and noticing that your hair is parted on the wrong side, then taking out your comb and applying it to the mirror image. Amazingly, the hair doesn’t change a bit, nor does the reflection. So you comb harder. No change. You get angry. No change. You cry and plead. Nothing. You pray. Nothing new. Finally, you stomp away convinced that the mirror is out to get you and there isn’t thing one you can do about it. You are powerless. And if that weren’t bad enough, you have this compulsion to seek out mirrors, each time hoping to see your hair parted “correctly,” but alas-every mirror turns out to be the same. Drat! Ring any bells?

So here’s the drill:

1.       Realize that the “real world” is an expression of your (often unrecognized) thoughts and feelings.

2.       Accept that everything there is just such an expression.

3.       Realize that the way you feel about the reflection is the way you feel about the thoughts that require its presence.

4.       Find those thoughts within yourself.

5.       Change the original thoughts if you wish to.

6.       Wait patiently for the new thoughts to appear in the mirror.

In case you haven’t yet noticed, this requires a high degree of self-honesty. You cannot expect to do very well with rewriting your reality unless you are willing to encounter yourself completely. This may stretch the bounds of your self-image beyond any previous limits. But that is why it is so important to do it. How close you come to the level of integration (and hence integrity) needed to live the happy, peaceful, magical life we all want, depends on your commitment to healing the differences between your conflicting beliefs.

As a clinical psychology instructor at the U.S. Army’s Medical Field Service School, in San Antonio, my job was largely involved with teaching a wide variety of forms of psychological testing. The famous Rorschach inkblot test was among them. It is a specific example of a category of test called projective tests. The other main type is called objective tests. The difference is that in objective tests, there are right and wrong answers. The capital of New York state is never Los Angeles. They are pretty cut and dried. Projective tests, on the other hand, are intentionally designed to be as ambiguous as possible, because their purpose is not to find out what someone knows, but to find out how they think. By providing an ample sources of ambiguous stimulation, an observer has little choice but to remain silent, or expose themselves.

But most people don’t realize how much they are exposing let alone what it is. They usually aren’t aware of revealing much of anything. That’s why tests like the Rorschach have become popular to clinicians.

The key concept here is that when asked to fill in details, interpretations, and meanings in an ambiguous situation, we instinctively start making things up. It’s the only way to respond. And as we choose from what is before us that which we will focus on and embellish, we reveal our preference. And by reading the flow of preferences and the choices they dictate, we can see into the very matrix of beliefs around which that person’s entire reality is being formed.

Now here’s my point. Reality is the mother of all Rorschach inkblots. It is totally ambiguous, but it’s in full, three-dimensional living color, not two-dimensional black-and-white. It can also be used just like the Rorschach, to see into the psyche. We make interpretations of (what we think of as) reality constantly. Because of the ambiguity of reality, we have to make a lot of it up. Actually, all of it would be closer to the truth. And we do this in whatever way we do because our beliefs tell us that this is the best, most beneficial way to do it. In “problem areas,” we are at crossed purposes with ourselves. We have conflicting beliefs which predict opposing outcomes, and we don’t know which one to believe. It is the classic double-bind: you’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t.

But when you view life as a gloriously improved inkblot, you can see so much about yourself. Now at first you may be talking about looking at a few specific situations, but I’m not. I’m talking about trying to catch yourself, I mean really catch yourself, making it all up. To see clearly, even if for just one fleeting moment, that you are taking a perfectly neutral canvas and creating a picture with your eyes, heart and mind, of that experience you know as reality. It’s all you experiencing yourself in external form(s).

Which leads me to my view of what/who God is. It may not be perfect, but it’s by far the best I’ve been able to come up with. We are gods within a God, who, according to my best sources, is not sure if he/she/it is also a god within a God. She/he/it is highly suspicious that it’s true, and really wants to find out. Meanwhile, this God, and all the gods within it, are playing the same game, and it’s the only game it town. It’s called Find Out Everything There Is To Know About Yourself, or something like that. But it’s taken very seriously by every bit of consciousness in the system in which we have our existence. Now, GOD creates Gods, who in turn create gods, and so on. And they all have the same agenda: knowing themselves completely. But there is a slight problem: every time you learn something new, you get bigger and there’s more to learn. Seth calls this the Primary Cosmic Dilemma.

Now here we are, these gods within Gods within GODS, all just trying vainly to know ourselves completely. And it’s the tragedy and the glory in living. It’s what’s made this little biosphere such a cosmic tourist trap.

So when you look at what seems like an external, objective reality, know also that it is just you projecting yourself outward in service of becoming more intimate with yourself, and through that all the other gods and Gods and GODs and…

I have considered many times over the last two or three decades various descriptions of what I wanted to represent in the lives of those with whom I interact. My focus has been on finding the best way to express the effect I have, or the role I play, in each person’s life and experience. Usually, I have defined it as a symbolic role I play, or a situation that captures that role ideally.

My first attempt to do this defined me as the first person you come to when you’re ready to celebrate a quantum leap in the quality of your life, whether because of a sudden insight or breakthrough, or to solve a troubling problem, or just by experiencing a dramatic expansion of your sense of personal freedom or power. But when the cork is popped on the champagne bottle, I’m there to propose a toast. Maybe I played an active role leading up to the celebration, or maybe not. But for sure I want to be there for the party. I have made some refinements to that version periodically, but it has remained largely in tact for a long time…until lately.

For several months I have been indulging my curiosity by exploring how I might want to recreate that dimension of my self-image and bring it to a higher level. So I have done some poking around in my heart, mind, and soul for clues that would lead me to a higher version. Tonight I found it.

I want to be Narcissus’ pond, and this is what I mean.

You probably heard or read the story of Narcissus when you were I child. I know I did. And I understood it to some degree. In case you don’t remember, Narcissus was a mythical young man who fell in love with his own reflection in a pond. His name is what propelled the word “narcissism” into the Oxford English Dictionary. But on its way into the common vocabulary, a critical part of the story was lost. As soon as the word came into my vocabulary, in its common interpretation, I began to forget this critical story element. Only a few years ago did I read the story in its original form (translated from the ancient Greek) and recognize my previous omission.

What I had forgotten was that Narcissus did not know it was his own reflection that he saw in the pond. He was so naive and innocent that he responded only to the beautiful face looking up at him from the glassy surface of the pond. Narcissism is universally used to describe a vain, ego-centric person whose apparent self-opinion is thought to be overstated. But this is not a description of Narcissus himself. He did not fall in love with himself, just a face he saw that happened to be his own. That is a very important distinction.

So now I can tell you what I really mean when I say I want to be Narcissus’ pond. I want to be the mirror in which you look when you are ready to fall head-over-heels in love with yourself, not out of vanity or an exaggerated sense of self-importance, but with the innocence of that beautiful your boy who responded with his whole heart to the compelling and very real beauty he saw on the surface of that pond. This is who and what I most want to be.