As mentioned in the previous episode, we are continuing to provide some of the basic information that is imparted by the Higher Mind Training, which is a new personal growth program being prepared for release by the Better Angels Publishing Company. Its purpose is to help the normal, everyday person emerge from the prison of self-sabotage into the freedom of self-empowerment. The program probably won't be released until the middle of next year, but we want to give our podcast subscribers the information now, so you can begin using it right away, if you like.           To begin this episode, let's start out by taking a little detour in time and space back to August 13, 1865 to a sanitarium in Vienna, Austria, which is the date upon which one of its inmates named Ignatz Semmelweis died. He had suffered from a nervous breakdown and had been confined to the sanitarium a few months earlier. Outspoken, unruly, and constantly arguing that he was being held against his will, he suffered regular beatings from the guards. The cause of his death had been a gangrenous wound on his right hand, which was a probable result of one of these beatings.           Surprisingly, Semmelweis was a physician and scientist who had fallen into serious disrepute among the medical establishment of the capital city. He had been doing research on the mortality rates among women during childbirth and at one point, he had come up with a radical new idea that became extremely unpopular, primarily because there was absolutely no scientific basis for it. Even so, it seemed to make intuitive sense to him, so he began to institute it at Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic.           He documented the results of his unfounded and unaccepted new procedure and found that over several months, the maternal mortality rate in the obstetrical clinic dropped from 18% to 2%. Even though he still had no scientific theory upon which to base any medical hypothesis whatsoever, he still published a book about his findings in 1861, called "Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever."           Given the story so far, the next obvious question would be – what was this radical new idea that Dr. Semmelweis had come up with that had seemingly cut the maternity mortality rate by nearly ninety percent? Now remember, he had no scientific explanation for how or why his procedure worked and every medical professional who had heard about it was adamantly opposed to it.           Get ready. You will probably find this quite shocking. He proposed that all the health care workers in the hospital, the doctors, nurses, and midwives, should wash their hands before they performed any procedure on any patient. In fact, he felt they should wash their hands before they even touched anyone at all and he came up with a chlorinated lime solution to do the job.           He had absolutely no scientific reasoning to support his supposition and his outrageous idea was met with ridicule and universally condemned by the entire medical establishment. They were certain of their opinion because, in their highly educated minds, the concept made absolutely no sense. Why would washing your hands have anything to do whatsoever with protecting the health of mothers and babies during childbirth?           And on top of that, the doctors felt personally offended. Why should they have to wash their hands? Afterall, doctors were considered to be refined gentlemen and gentlemen never have to wash their hands. That was for laborers and other members of the lower classes.           Following his clashes with the medical establishment, Semmelweis got involved with some other societal and political battles as well, and was ridiculed, ostracized, and finally ruined. He suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to an asylum where he eventually died from the beatings he received from the guards.           All of this came from the audacity he had to suggest that medical professionals should wash their hands before treating patients. And don't forget, they weren't treating just anybody. This was the upper crust of Austrian society.  Many of the mothers and babies who died in the contaminated obstetrical hospitals were members of the aristocracy and royalty of Europe, who were being treated by the finest doctors of the day.           Many years after his death, because of his efforts to protect the maternity environment, he became widely known as the "Savior of Mothers." Of course, he wasn't the first savior to be crucified by his detractors and certainly not the last.           To put the story into historical perspective, Dr. Semmelweis had made his radical handwashing suggestion about twenty years before the general emergence of germ theory into the scientific world, which followed the work of Pasteur and Lister.   Back in 1860, they knew nothing about germs whatsoever. They had never even heard the term. They still believed that disease was caused by liquid "humors" in the body, a two-thousand-year-old concept that was concocted by ancient Greek and Roman doctors. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the standard accepted medical procedure of the day for treating disease was still simple bloodletting. And they felt that the state of their medical understanding was incredibly advanced.           As primitive as they may appear today, this has been the case with most cultures. Every society thinks they are incredibly advanced, and this conceit goes way back. When chariots were invented in about 1600 BC, they were all the rage. The Hittites took them to an unheard-of level of comfort and maneuverability, and eventually refined them for warfare. The most advanced military battle of its time was fought in 1274 BC with over five thousand chariots helping to boost the carnage. I'm sure the warriors were all proud of the level of modernity they had achieved.           Going back to the "Savior of Mothers" 1860 example, let's back up a little to 1830's, 40's and 50's, and consider the tremendously advanced water system that was set up to bring water into the White House. It was complete with steam driven pumps and cast-iron piping and the fact that water was delivered in this way to the White House was a marvel of the times.           Of course, no one knew anything about germ theory and although the piping system was ingenious, the water that it carried was severely contaminated, coming from wells that abutted wastewater dumps that were loaded with pathogens. It is now believed that Presidents Henry Harrison, James Polk and Zachary Taylor all died as a result of exposure to the water brought in by that otherwise innovative system.           And that's not to mention the tragic death of Abraham Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, who died from typhoid fever which was directly related to the putrid White House water.           So, due to their significant technological advances, they were able to distribute water in a more convenient way, but with their ignorance of germ theory, they just made it more convenient for people to get sick and die.           Of course, we've come a long way and hand sanitization has become almost universal, especially since the pandemic. But back then, they just didn't know what they didn't know. And guess what? Neither do we. No one ever does. I often find myself wondering what the people living a hundred and fifty years from now will think of us. Like all previous cultures, we believe we are incredibly advanced. But what critical factors don't we know now, that will be common knowledge throughout the world in 2175? With my lifelong focus on the evolution of human consciousness, my assumption as well as my hope is that it will have something to do with the way we use our minds. Because to put it simply, the way we use our minds is the basic root of all the major troubles that we face today. Look at it this way. We live in an extremely troubled world, nearly drowning in a sea of immense problems, and from what I've read, if you ask artificial intelligence to come up with a plan that would quickly and efficiently save the planet, it would simply respond, "Get rid of the human beings." Of course, it's a shocking response, and some AI experts find it deeply disturbing, but you can see the troubling logic behind it. And if we are the primary cause of the problems that are plaguing our world, what's wrong with us?  Again, the answer is dramatically simple. It's our mind. That's right. the most advanced biological evolution since the beginning of life on earth, and indeed the very factor that enabled us to emerge from the brutal tests of survival of the fittest, this miraculous organ is the very cause of all our issues. And it isn't really the mind itself that is the problem. It's the way we use it. Let's refine that statement a little. It's the unconscious way that we've been unconsciously trained to unconsciously use it that's creating the problem. We have a mind with nearly unfathomable intelligence, but we haven't learned how to use it in a human-centric way. We develop incredible technology, but we don't use it in a way that serves humanity or the rest of the planet.   And this lack of evolved consciousness is nothing new. Just look at our track record. It's pretty dismal. And that's not just in caring for the planet, it's also deeply troubling in taking care of ourselves. Here is a particularly disgusting example.  About 160,000 people die each week from starvation on earth. That means that close to 8,500,000 people literally starve to death each year. They die because they simply don't get enough food to eat.           Now, get this – in the United States alone, 119 billion pounds of food is wasted each year. That means that 130 billion meals, $408 billion in food or about 40% of the total food supply is simply thrown out. Discarded. Four hundred and eight billion dollars of food is wasted each year, while 8,500,000 people die of starvation.           We have the money and we have the technology. We just have a serious problem with the way we misuse our intelligence. And personally, I believe that if and when people 150 years from now look back on us, it will be the generally primitive level of our human consciousness that will be so shocking to them. Because when it comes to the overall state of our consciousness, basically, we're still living a glorified law of the jungle. You know the drill – I, me, mine. Dog eat dog, Winner takes all, and the countless variations of the same primitive, fear-based theme, which leads to the sad conclusion that in the entire world, we have no greater enemy than ourselves. No other creature or factor poses a greater threat to our survival than we do. If the human species is ever destroyed, there is a high probability that it will be a case of unconscious suicide.           So, there can be no doubt that the growth of our inner consciousness is critical to our survival as a species, and I'd like to offer two of my favorite quotes on the subject. Albert Einstein said, "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." And Dr. Carl Jung said, "The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved, but only outgrown."           So again, we must grow. And when it comes to inner growth, I'd like to suggest a "what if."  What if it's not all that hard? What if like the germs in the nineteenth century, there is something incredibly basic that we just don't know yet? And what if the key to our advancement is as simple as just washing your hands?           Well, this seems like a good place to stop. We'll go a couple of steps deeper in the coming episode, so keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let's get together in the next one.

Ver todos los episodios