The Censorship of Natural

One of the challenges in our modern philosophy lies in the difficulty of acknowledging right and wrong, good and bad. We've blurred the lines so much it's almost impossible to clarify this in any absolute way. An artist puts a glass of water on a shelf and calls it an oak tree, and defends that it's an oak tree because he says it is. And there's no argument to be used against his declaration because that would be intolerant, politically incorrect. Hate speech even in extreme cases. The pendulum has swung so far in this liberal direction that you have 50 something gender choices when signing up for a new Facebook account.

Now I'm certainly not advocating the cleaning out of the society of anyone who doesn't agree with the traditional view of things, but I also can't really see my way to endorsing any opinion whatsoever as the new normal.

Some will certainly say I'm a dinosaur stuck in the 1950s for expressing that. And that, I suggest, is exactly the problem.

Dare we try to approach this in our program today? Of course we do.

The Censorship of Natural today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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The Chaos of Evil

One of the things that's happened to me over the 18 plus years I've been in Brazil working with the science of Analytical Trilogy elaborated by Brazilian psychoanalyst and social scientist, Norberto Keppe, has been a gradual opening of the door to my spirituality. I still consider myself pretty "feet on the floor", which I guess is a nice way of saying materialistic, but there is a flicker of the flame of spiritual awareness that I can feel at times.

And that crack in the opening door has allowed some light of theology to enter my reluctant head, to the point where I now consider the catastrophic disaster awaiting us if we don't make radical changes to be emblematic of a spiritual battle on the planet - not a political or economic or even religious one. We are, in my evolving view, engaged in a battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil, and as I understand it, this is taking place at our earthly level fueled by thoughts and orientations from a transcendental level.

I hope we can bring some clarity to that today.

The Chaos of Evil, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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Looking After Our Eternal Assets

As we head into Christmas, we often take time to reflect on friends and family, on hopes and dreams, on plans and logistics. After all, we've got the trips to hometowns, the Christmas gift buying, the parking lot congestion to navigate. It's a time to reflect on what's happened, and how fast it's all gone by.

And in those times, we need the wisdom and dedication to commit our efforts to doing what's necessary, what we were put on this earth to do in this short time we've been granted on this planet.

But above all that, and widely forgotten in our modern, materialistic age, is the true reason for the celebration - the virgin birth that marks our western world. For believers or not, the undeniable fact remains that our civilization was, and is, formed by adherence to those Christian values that He brought a couple of millennia ago. Justice, tolerance, forgiveness, love for one's neighbour ... these are the true values that we all desire. And that's what He came to remind us of.

Looking After Our Eternal Assets, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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A Study of Temptation

Temptation. Like most religious words, that one's been banalized and reduced from its original meaning. It means literally a trial or a test. A moment in your life when you have a choice to be faithful or not.

Today, that's like faithful to a diet or a spouse, to a virtue or an ideal. But the original sense was to be tested in your faith to God. Something Job-ian - no matter what life throws at you, you stay the course.

But temptation is secondarily related to allurement or seduction to sin. And here we're into a less popular usage. Nobody likes to think in terms of "can't" and "don't" anymore, do they? "Who says I can't!", goes the language of modernity. "Who are you to tell me what's right and wrong?"

These are tricky waters. "You can't do that!" has been used to control and restrict by those wanting to remain in power, for sure. But is there something to this obligation aspect of temptation that deserves a more careful consideration?

A Study of Temptation, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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Seduction by Evil

"The idea of being a victim of evil is quite a comfortable one," writes Norberto Keppe in his book, Psychotherapy and Exorcism. "But what's really going on," he continues, "is that the human being actually selects the type of evil he wants in his life."

Well, that's sobering. I hope this happens unconsciously because the conscious choice for evil seems rather terrifying. Keppe's view that we summon evil contradicts the common idea that we are victimised by it. Even the exorcists, those most graphic of illustrations of possession by evil, show the possessed as being unwilling recipients of the accursed spiritual invasions.

What Keppe is trying to alert us to here is the very real presence of evil spirits in the human experience, and our considerable role in giving them so much freedom to run amok on our planet.

But there's another aspect at play in this process ... the subterfuge of the demons. And that's not a once-in-awhile thing. It's constant.

Seduction by Evil, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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Our Entangled Spiritual Reality

We are assailed in our modern world with all sorts of problems. There are money worries, health of ageing parents, stress and depression, crime and taxes. Coping with all of that can make us forget the beautiful things around us every day.

But there’s another influence no one talks about in our modern, number-crunching world, and that’s the very real influence from the spiritual world. That’s not the topic of dinner conversations these days. Well, actually, we don’t even have conversations anymore, do we? … everything being pushed into the digital world of email, chat and Instagram. Which emphasises the point – the deeper levels of the human experience are not being plumbed anymore – and to our great detriment. It’s like spirituality is something we feel at times, something we sense is important, but something we keep at arm’s length for fear of being branded weird or fanatic.

But spirits were not dismissed in the past. Shakespeare exploited the knowledge of them for great art. Let’s explore spiritual relevance more on our program.

Our Entangled Spiritual Reality, today on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head.

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Under Control of Evil

In Shakespeare's The Tempest, Ferdinand, in desperation at the terrible plight of ship and crew, cries out, "Hell is empty and all the devils are here!"

And looking around at our situation today, it wouldn't be difficult to reach the same conclusion. Except that our modern materialistic science doesn't allow for that conclusion. Oh, we might utter the words, but I doubt most of us would use words like "hell" and "devils" in anything more than an illustrative sense. We almost certainly wouldn't mean them literally.

But there is a very modern science emerging here in Brazil that does consider the power of spiritual influence to inspire the human being - both for good or for evil. And yes, I do mean a science. And what the scientist responsible for this view, Dr. Norberto Keppe, maintains is that the evil is winning as long as we don't have more consciousness of it. That means, reuniting theology and philosophy again with exact science, as used to be the case. So we can really understand our situation.

Under Control of Evil, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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Energy of Virtue

Welcome to Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. A couple of thousand years ago, a consideration of virtue was part of everyday, common discourse. The Greeks gave considerable attention to virtue, culminating in Aristotle's influential writings on moral and intellectual virtues. Before him, Confucius proposed personal virtue as the way to a good life. The Bible has hundreds of passages about the importance of virtue.

Today, public discourse is muted, and people lament the loss of the byproducts of virtue, like falling self-discipline and rising selfishness.

Not to mention the rampant corruption at all levels of modern society that makes us fear that virtue is, in fact, long gone. As a small indicator of this, a graph of the frequency of words occurring in books over time shows a rapid rise of the word "technology" in the past 40 years against a two-century slide in virtue.

In Norberto Keppe's Integral Psychoanalysis, though, virtue is essential for a healthy human being and society. So we'd like to go against the grain!

The Energy of Virtue, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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Evil in the Modern World

I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and this is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.


In the philosophy of religion, evil has always been a thorny issue. Is evil something inherent in the essence of man and nature? Or is it a willful act of ill-intentioned human beings?


And then there's the whole confusion of natural disasters - the presence of which have even caused some thinkers to deny the existence of a perfectly good God. If hurricanes exist, this argument goes, perfect goodness doesn't exist.


And I think it's also safe to say that the theological concept of the existence of a being of evil as described in Judeo-Christian scripture is also controversial. A rebellion in heaven led by one of God's brightest angels, Lucifer, is today treated mostly as allegorical or metaphorical - tales told to illustrate moral truth but not meant to be taken literally.


But in Norberto Keppe's deep science of Analytical Trilogy, spiritual influences in the myriad psycho-social crises we face today are considered. In fact, in Keppe's experience, the spiritual component is more necessary.


Evil in the Modern World, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.


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Towards a Universal Mentality

I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and this is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

In light of the Paris attacks in November of 2015, it's difficult to know the best thing to do. The French government, seemingly wanting to show off those decisive decision-making muscles so vaunted in our no nonsense, zero tolerance, "let's show 'em who's boss" business model of a society, wasted no time in declaring war.

Most of our western world commiserated concernedly and gave their approval.

Donald Trump said the French need more guns.

It's oh-so-easy to react in kind in this world. Far too simple to hit back when we've been violated, to see red and demand hard justice. That response we know well. From Travis Bickle's "You talkin' to me", to Dirty Harry's "Go ahead. Make my day" snarl, the world's full of these modern archetypes. Guys who don't back down, men and women who make sure they get even.

But is this the best response if we want to resolve this? Will this "brutality to match brutality" move us forward? Seems to me we need a different response. Something we can find in Norberto Keppe's science of Analytical Trilogy.

Towards a Universal Mentality, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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Healing Terrorism

I'm Richard Lloyd Jones and this is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. I moved to Brazil from New York in 2001, 2 1/2 months before 9/11.

Talk about timing.

But if it was timing, it was not anything conscious. My desire was to learn more about the work of an extraordinary scientist I'd become aware of a short time before moving here.

That scientist was Dr. Norberto Keppe. What Keppe proposes in his far-reaching science is, quite simply, a solution to the fundamental human problem, which is that we act in contradiction to our essence and, therefore, we act against life. This goes to the root of the issue. This Inversion is the cause of all our conflicts and crises today, so it's not a matter simply of protecting this or that species or saving this or that ecosystem or cutting our greenhouse gasses or resolving geo-political scheming. We're going to have to change virtually everything if we are to attain the well-being that we have a right to enjoy. The transformation must be basic. It must be total.

Today, we'll try to transform and transcend the mounting terrorism crisis on our planet.

Healing Terrorism, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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Bringing Theology and Philosophy Together with Science

I’m Richard Lloyd Jones, and this is TWSEH.

Oil and water. Black cats and white sweaters. Neckties and bowls of soup. Some things just aren’t made to go together. Like being given plastic cutlery at a Brazilian barbecue restaurant, they’re all a bit difficult to reconcile. Some more profound examples could include faith and doubt, humility and self-confidence. And what about God and science?

Today on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head, Bringing Together Theology and Science.

This is a prickly subject I’m embarking on here, I’m aware of that. But I feel I would be doing a dis-service if I didn’t address the subject. I say this because of the fundamental questions that can only be addressed if we wade into these controversial waters.

Questions like, what is the origin of life and the universe? What is the purpose of life anyway? And more existential even … why am I here? We can’t begin to tackle these questions without a consideration of today’s topic.

These questions don’t occupy our conversations much these days, if they ever did. The Facebook posts we read seldom broach the existential beyond the collective questioning we embark on after a tragedy occurs or a famous person dies. I was recently visiting my aging parents in Canada and their diminished quality of life has caused no small reflection on my own life and purpose. So there are times when we venture into the reverie that generates this discussion. Although it’s rare. Especially in recent years it appears. We’re not much for the deeper considerations in our materialistic and consumerist society of today, and I don’t think this has been positive. “What’s it all about, Alfie?” seems a faintly anachronistic and old-fashioned question today, doesn’t it?

Or is it that we’re just embarrassed to admit that we ponder those questions, admittedly late at night when no one’s watching? There’s precious little reflection of life’s mysteries in our modern art. The poets and song writers mostly seem intent on considering love only from the “how am I going to live without him or her?” position.

In that light, I just finished reading Leonard Cohen’s biography, and was touched by the deep yearning he has had over his long career to explore the profound and the profane, so I know it’s not completely uncool to pose the deeper questions.

Well, in fact, who cares if it’s uncool to be involved in understanding the human situation. I’m not sure when displaying profundity became unmodern, but I’m all for returning to a time when the artists considered they were conversing with the beyond and a human being wanted to consider his short life as fitting within some larger purpose and design.

In large part, I think what’s going on here is a result of the splitting of science from theology and philosophy over the past 500 years or so – culminating in our 20th Century position that there’s no way to marry the three. Science has become a strictly materialistic pursuit perfectly represented in Einstein’s famous formula – the most famous of the 20th Century – that E=mc2. In other words, no matter, no energy, making Einstein’s theory arguably one of the most materialistic in the history of science. I’m sure that wasn’t his intention, of course, but it’s hard to escape the stark materialism of his proposal.

It’s also difficult to distill a coherent spiritual philosophy from the Quantum Physics camp. Parallel realities. Alternate universes. Unlimited realities awaiting your choice to come into being. How to make sense of that in any practical way? I watched What the Bleep do we Know a couple of times and, I must confess, couldn’t make head or tails of it. It seems sexy to consider that universe a series of possibilities awaiting my choice before unfolding reality, but I somehow can’t quite conclude that reality actually bends to my will despite my wishing it so.

The Architect’s speech from Matrix Reloaded is a classic example of how confused we’ve become by this separation of science and theology. Critics call it “profound” but “confusing”. And it is that. Listen:

“The first matrix was perfect … flawless, sublime. A triumph equaled only by its monumental failure.”

What does that mean? And since when did confusing become profound? No, we need a better starting point than this. A starting place that can be found in the work of Norberto Keppe. His Analytical Trilogy is the synthesis of science, philosophy and theology that has been missing. Keppe considers philosophy to be the mother of science and theology the grandmother, and it’s very illuminating to look at reality through Analytical Trilogy eyes.

Let’s do that today … try to bring the incredible wisdom from 5000 years of theological and philosophical study back into science. Or at least, start the process of understanding that. Keppe’s books will fill out the knowledge. If you’re interested in more, write me at rich@richjonesvoice.com.

Bringing Together Theology and Science, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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Losing Our Religion

A reading of modern scientific and philosophical thought can be unnverving. Human beings, goes this materialistic scientific view, are the product of causes that are accidental and purposeless. All individual achievements are destined to extinction in the vast entropy of a universe relentlessly bound for ruin.

We are nothing but gigantic lumbering robots built by our genes as survival machines, asserts Richard Dawkins, a leading proponent of this modernist stance.

And I'm not exaggerating the bleakness. Reading Dawkins or geneticist Steve Jones (no relation) or philosopher Bertrand Russell is a depressing journey that reduces Man's greatest imaginings to the garbage heap of cold, unforgiving material forces that care not a whit for such romantic notions as hopes and ideals.

It's all so very modern. No good and evil, no confusing purpose, just relentless survival over incomprehensible time periods.

Maybe there's something missing in it.

Losing our Religion, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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A Study of the Divine - Highlight Version

Welcome to our highlights version of the latest Thinking with Somebody Else's Head program, A Study of the Divine. A perfect answer to the annual debate about how we can be true to the spirit of Christmas. Here, in the midst of the running about, a reminder of that true spirit.

Click here to listen to this excerpt.

And a reminder, the full program is available through iTunes or on our site.

A Study of the Divine

Another Christmas season is upon us, and with it the annual debate in the hearts of the pensive: how to tap in to the true spirit of the time and not just get caught up in the shopping and seasonal festivities? This latter position firmly in the lead judging by the mad scramble for mall parking and the expanded line-ups at liquor store checkouts.

And since there is so much attention given in all the normal channels to this economic and convivial perspective, let me fill a gap by taking a stand for the true spirit of Christmas.

For the story, rich in lore and wonder and marvellous mystery, is a beautiful one that, even though largely ignored 11 1/2 months of the year, finally and necessarily demands to be heard and reflected upon. It is a time when we who feel this can venture forth our thoughts and feelings about this most sacred of times, and contemplate the mystical story that lies at the base of our December celebrations.

A Study of the Divine, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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A Call to a Life of Goodness, Truth and Beauty

On our program originating from the International Society of Analytical Trilogy in São Paulo, Brazil, we dig in every week to offer you our analysis of the world we live in. And especially we look at how we've gotten so off track - particularly over the past century.

This is not always comfortable consciousness we bring. It's a little harrowing to hear about the pit we've dug ourselves into. But we are hardly the first to shine the light on the decadence all around us. In 1917, three young Portuguese shepherds were visited over the course of 6 months by an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She, also, did not bring comforting news. What she did bring was a clear vision of what was going on in the world and what was required of us if we wanted to survive it.

And I think we would do well to heed her advice to humble ourselves and change our ways. And trust that goodness will triumph. We'll explore all of this today on our program. A Call to a Life of Goodness, Truth and Beauty, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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Sex, Lies and Real Deadly Sins

The feeding frenzy arising from the charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn stimulate analysis. How we in the public rise up in collective indignation at suggestions of sexual impropriety while hardly looking up from our breakfast cereal at revelations of the lies that pushed us to war! Not to diminish the charges in any way, but there's more going on here than first glance would tell us. Deeper explanations are needed ... and fast.

Especially when we consider Strauss-Kahn's prominent role in criticizing the global financial system while moving to reduce the importance of the dollar in IMF negotiations. How to look at this terrible situation with consciousness, humility and even wisdom? We'll conduct an Analytical Trilogy psycho-socio analysis of the DSK affair, and consider what real malfeasance goes on around us all the time unnoticed and even supported.

Join the conversation at joneshealing@gmail.com

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A Trilogical History of Religious Society

Ethics? Principles? Doing unto others? When did they become so old fashioned?

Nowadays we live in a world almost totally dominated by greed, getting something for nothing, and exploitation. Our premise today is that this goes directly against the foundations of our civilization, and our human essence. That’s serious stuff. Law and legislation are totally inadequate for forming a good society. We need the ancient values brought by all the world's great religions.

Join Richard Lloyd Jones and Dr. Claudia Bernhardt Pacheco on a journey through the Trilogical History of Religion and Society today on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head.

Comments welcome at joneshealing@gmail.com

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Living in a Universe of Spirits - Analytical Trilogy's Scientific Theology

There is a deep thirst inside us all for understanding of the most important part of the being – the metaphysical aspect. It is exactly this that differentiates us from animals, and if we do not consider our spiritual aspect, we are actually mutilating our understanding of ourselves.

But how to make heads or tails of spirituality, buried as it sometimes is under so many layers of dogma and fable? By looking at the universe of the spirits scientifically, which we’ll do today on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head.

Comments welcome at joneshealing@gmail.com

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Man’s Inverted Desire To Be a “god”

Dec. 1, 2010

We go deep to the source of humanity’s problems on our show today, which we can do thanks to the science of Norberto Keppe, who is a master of human psycho and socio pathology. Join host Richard Lloyd Jones and special guest, Dr. Claudia Bernhardt Pacheco in an expansive and thrilling discussion that looks at how the desire to be like gods manifests in every area from politics and business to the spiritual world. We’ll also have a special report from the field with Gilbert Gambucci discussing the true basis of civilization.

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