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Rebellion, Disaster, Vision
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“I would escape … become a Zen monk. And not come back!”
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So, let’s turn to your teenage time.
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I noticed actually a question which …
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I also every now and then am making a reference to what happened during that time.
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So we’re now talking the year ’67, mid 60s and up to ’76 thereabouts.
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You grew up in a time when there was unrest in China and in Russia – Solschenizyn may still be a trigger word for you.
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The anti-baby pill had its impact in the world, Kommune 1, the ideology and the terrorism of the RAF (Red Army Faction).
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The Vietnam War ended in 1975.
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The flower power of the hippies gave way to the punk movement when you became a teenager.
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So, the moment you rebelled actually I also had down when you witnessed that
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a pupil in your class got the beating from a teacher when you stood up for him and basically …
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Well, you tell the story.
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So, this was my last adventure in school.
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So, as I told you earlier, I was kicked out of high school because I wasn’t cooperating,
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I wasn’t doing anything, I was so lazy, cannot imagine.
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And the reason for that really is that I’ve never learned to do something that
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I don’t like to do and to do something that I don’t see the purpose of.
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And in my adult life that’s been very helpful. Fantastic.
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How so? I mean, that’s very egotistical way to do things you like.
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No, it’s not the things I like, but the things I form my heart, I can see that are good and useful
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and good for everybody else and helpful, but not the things that are useless.
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I don’t mean it in an egotistical way, just from really from here.
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So, I couldn’t do that and then in the end they kicked me out.
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But my parents weren’t ready to give up, they were both academics.
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So they said, ‚Okay, there’s a possibility you can go to a private school‘.
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There was a private school in Düsseldorf, in my hometown that of course took me on
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to continue to do my high school diploma there.
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And there, one of the students in class got hit by a teacher with a big ruler, like a ruler like that, ‚Bam!‘
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And I stood up, I said to the guy, ‚If I ever see you do that again, I’m going to make sure that you will lose your job!‘
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You know.
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And I got up and I left. I never went back after that, to school.
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I just walked out, I just thought, I don’t see the point of this, this kind of education I’m not interested in.
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So, this is also degree of rebellious?
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Yeah.
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You smile.
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Where does this rebellious streak in you … Was that partly the zeitgeist at the time? I remember also.
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I think so.
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But how much was the zeitgeist, how is it your very character?
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Because it seems to me that this rebellious streak in you, which expressed itself back then and there,
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– and you smile still today with enjoyment, if not to say pride – it’s obviously still part of you. Where does it come from?
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Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s partly the zeitgeist, the time I grew up.
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The time I grew up in Germany there was lots of police presence. It was not a nice place to be.
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I remember there was a politician from the Liberal Party that lived kind of close to where I grew up
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and they had frequent police, what you call it, patrolling the streets and
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several times they put us against my own garage, like this with the machine gun in the back and frisking us and all that.
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And I thought, all I want is to get out of here. As far away as possible. I don’t like this place.
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And with that you meant already Germany or just the situation as such?
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I didn’t know anything other than Germany, but I knew that’s not what I want. I didn’t like it.
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I didn’t like the place. I just wanted to get away. And then one day I decided to run away from home.
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I was maybe 16, I suppose. So I had a backpack and something like, I don’t know, 20 Euros or something.
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How far you’re going to get with that, but you know how boys are in that age.
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I remember, yeah.
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I managed somehow.
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I thought the first night I would sleep in the meadows of the Rhine River in Düsseldorf, would be a nice place.
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So I had a sleeping bag.
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I slept there. The next morning I wanted to make my getaway, go somewhere and then hitchhike.
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I didn’t have any plan where to go.
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If you think about it now, it’s like, ‚Ha?! What’s going on with this boy?‘
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And I was running through the Rhine meadows and I fell down and ruptured my meniscus.
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And that was the end of that escape. So I ended up in hospital.
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At the time the meniscus surgery was not like today. But you were up for three weeks like that,
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laying on your back counting sheep all day and all night.
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And then I started to read.
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Before that I was just playing football all the time. Playing football, playing football, smoking lots of pot.
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Yes, I did and I enjoyed it.
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For the record.
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For the record, I don’t do it now. I’m not interested. I have my own intoxicant in there, here.
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But … That was the time when we did that.
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So, instead of running away I ended up in hospital. And then started to read.
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The literature at the time was Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings. We’re in 1976 now.
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Yes, correct.
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And Carlos Castaneda and this kind of things. And I started to think.
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Started to exercise not only my legs and my lungs from smoking, but started to exercise my brain and my heart.
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And I thought, oh wow!
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This was the first encounter …
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I’m seeing you in the hospital, your leg up there and you having all this time. Castaneda, Lord of the Rings, Tolkien.
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And that was the beginning when you started basically what one might call your spiritual journey?
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Exactly, exactly. And around the same time, because I had difficulties in school, I learned autogenic training.
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My parents sent me to a psychologist because obviously I was in trouble. I was rebelling.
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And I learned it and I’m doing it until today. Every day.
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Yeah, so this was the beginning. And then … after Castaneda, I think I found Gustav Meyrink. I don’t know if you know him.
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He was a mystic writer from, I don’t know if he was German or Austrian or something like that.
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With these mystical, very mystical stories. E.T.A. Hoffmann, some of his stories are very mystical.
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And then it evolved and evolved until one day I found a book on Zen Buddhism by Paul Reps. It’s still in print.
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It’s called ‚Zen Flesh, Zen Bones‘. And that really changed my life.
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It’s all about Zen stories, about the meetings between the master and the disciple and what occurs, you know,
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how they talk to each other, how enlightenment is happening and all that.
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And I thought, ‚Bhoa, man! One day I want to be like these guys. Like one of those that would be really cool. They are so cool.‘
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It was something so different from what I saw. And something that I wanted so much.
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Then I kept reading books on Zen Buddhism and at some point I decided I would escape.
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After, I was still thinking I would finish high school at the time.
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I would escape and after my education is finished, go to Japan, become a Zen monk and finish!
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And not come back. So that was the beginning.
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Thank you to our sponsors! This video depicts a segment of a four-day interview with Frank Arjava Petter.
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For all videos and the list of sponsors visit our website:
www.reiki-conciliation.org
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Translation: AI
Transcript: René Vögtli
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1:36 The seed for Arjava’s later search for … ‚purpose‘. (bridge between East and West as in A01 on 11:11.
7:32 The first encounter with …’spirituality‘ resulting – 9:36 – in the wish to escape and become a Zen monk.
General comment: Here and in many other videos I give a brief outlook into the world at large making historic references. The idea was that in the MF we could show clips of these events (end of Vietnam war, e.g. on 1:08). Maybe using Adriano’s idea of the curtain as a screen in the background.
4:27-5:08: The rebellion – and the pacifist – wants to run.
1:36 The seed for Arjava’s later search for … ‚purpose‘. (bridge between East and West as in A01 on 11:11.
7:32 The first encounter with …’spirituality‘ resulting – 9:36 – in the wish to escape and become a Zen monk.
General comment: Here and in many other videos I give a brief outlook into the world at large making historic references. The idea was that in the MF we could show clips of these events (end of Vietnam war, e.g. on 1:08). Maybe using Adriano’s idea of the curtain as a screen in the background.
4:27-5:08: The rebellion – and the pacifist – wants to run.