Rüdiger Lutz:

"Spiritual Emergency" of a futurist

(personal account of the emerging paradigm inside Germanys psychiatric system of the 21^st century)

Prof.Rüdiger Lutz, Co-Founder of Future Lab/Zukunftswerkstatt and author of numerous books on futurology and systems-design worked with (just to name a few of his collegues and friends): Robert Jungk, Fritjof Capra, Gregory Bateson, Terence McKenna, Charlene Spretnak, Barbara Marx-Hubbard, Lenore Goldman, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, Cillie Rentmeister, Merete Mattem, C.West Churchman, H.W.J. Rittel, Richard L. Meier, Hazel Henderson, Rudolf Doernach, Hans Roericht. He conducted hundreds of future labs in Europe and the US, researching the ongoing paradigm-shift in culture and society. However, at the moment he is confined to psychiatric institutions in Germany and experiences the underside of psychiatry in real-time.

Because of the emergence of spiritual energy in 2004 he was brought into psychiatric hospitals and has now difficulties to get out of these inadequate homes for the mentally disturbed members of our societies. He learned that help in the sense of the existing "Spiritual Emergence Network" (SEN) is not as easy to get as he thought. Having to live with real "crazy" folks and not been given the free access to Institutes like he did before, e.g. Esalen or CIIS San Francisco, he is in need to reach out for help all over the world. The authorities are still holding him back - so he couldn't travel this year to the different future congresses and meetings, he is used to attend, for example the World Futures Studies Federations (WFSF) Conference in Budapest or the Millenium Congress in Tokyo.

Trying to network his way up to reasonable places and situations to be, he found out that the so called consciousness-raising paradigm-shift has not happened yet, regardless of all the yahoo and brahou of the media-circus of New Agers and postmaterialist yuppies. The system is still rerunning the traditional tune of hierarchites and termites - innovations are rare and revolutions unthinkable.
This cognitive dissonance in the globalized society of the 215t century is very disturbing, facing the crises and turbulences from hurricanes to drive-by-terrorism, tsunamis and eco-disasters worldwide.

But that is only the far side of the paradigm, very close and down to earth is the personal, subjective and wild side of this passage through the awakening of kundalini-energy in the inner self.
"I thought, I am pregnant" remembers Rüdiger Lutz the beginning of the real thing to happen in his body. Knowing abstractly, what it was, how consciousness-raising techniques, psycho-dynamics and psychedelics work is one thing, experiencing the whole process internally is a totally different ballgame.

For example: With psychedelics you can have a transpersonal experience like a dream, accompanied by a sitter in an optimal setting and in a limited period of time. Later you interpret your visions and talk about it. That can be a crash-course into the dimensions of hyperspace or a psychoanalytic session, in any case you are safe and in control and you return to normal space-time when you come down. Not-so in Real-Time, when the serpent and kundalini-energy are really biting your tail and grapping from toe to top your persona. The outer limits disperse and you cannot close the doors of perception any more, whatever comes, will come, you have to open up - it is "you and the other" as one, that is really wholistic. As Christina Grof (Stan's wife) explained "you are giving birth to your own inner being", but when I heard that, I thought that was meant for a wife giving birth to a child, because she was at that time also talking about her living "real" child - so to me, that was all women talk - not relevant for me as a man. Like her, R.L. consumed alcohol to reduce the symptoms of awakening spiritual energy "spirit against spirits", which is a totally inadequate answer to this kind of emergency, but in our western world the common, legal available drug to deal with all kind of problems. Living in western Europe and the US I consumed on travel, in hotels, at meetings and conferences, public and private gatherings these social drinks to normalize myself and not being hindered by uninvited spiritual visitors and surprises of the transpersonal and alternative dimensions of reality. Nevertheless the emergence was taking place, the energy was opening up the chakras and the awakening could not be ignored or reversed, stopped or dismissed. Even other people saw a change, an obvious affair going on with me and my environment. Mostly they just realized my alcohol-dependency and reduced everything to this aspect of "my problem".