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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Man's Greatest Enemy

All of us, if we've lived a little, have had to contend with the lure of temptation. From the mundane, "Just one more piece of chocolate cake," to the come on of a cold beer when you've got a drinking problem, to the more serious attractions to violence and crime, we all know the experience of that voice in our ear.

Our modern scientific perspective prefers evidence-based interventions as solutions, leading us to explain away vice and bad habits as weakness, upbringing, chemical imbalance, even genetic disposition. We seldom in our modern world even think of putting temptation down to influence from nefarious spirits. Reason over superstition would read the promotional literature for the modern point of view.

But are we missing something in excluding the theological view? After all, Jesus warned us time and again of our unhealthy subservience to demons, and perhaps we should listen more carefully to that advice.

Man's Greatest Enemy, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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Certainty of the Divine

A belief in immaculate conception, overcoming death with resurrection, divine miracles of creation … modern thinkers complain these tenets suffer from a lack of evidence. “Faith is a great evil,” they say, “That leads gullible human beings to open their minds so much their brains fall out.”

I respectfully disagree. Faith has been shown in studies to mitigate symptoms of depression, spiritual beliefs can help us deal with loss, disease and death, and even aid recovery. We also know that it helps deal with addictions. Great things have been accomplished with perseverance in the face of impossible odds, even at the risk of loss of life, and what is that if not an act of faith?

So just dismissing conviction in something divine simply because there’s not scientific proof seems unintelligent to me. And anyway, if we just look around us at the intricate design of nature, the complex way natural processes mesh together perfectly, we really have to be slightly moronic to rule out divinity.

The Certainty of the Divine, today on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head.

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Human Resonance with Evil

The nature of good and evil. That’s a nice light topic for your next Sunday afternoon bbq! If I had a dollar for every time a friend wanted to discuss the nature of good and evil with me over the years, I’d have a cool … $3.00 in my bank account. Not a topic that comes up that often.

We’ve been considered victims of good and evil for much of our history. From the Biblical Job to history’s billions of casualties of some malfeasance or other, to the Vatican exorcists trying to free the soul of one invaded by demons, we’ve all had to suck it up in the face of circumstances we feel no control over.

A remarkable Brazilian philosopher, however, is trying to deepen our understanding of this. Norberto Keppe has proposed that evil exists, yes, but not as a natural occurrence. Rather, it is a choice. An unconscious one to be sure, and influenced by spiritual forces you have almost no knowledge of.

I know … still sounds like we’re victims, doesn’t it? Well, let’s talk.

Human Resonance with 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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True Co-Creation

I was walking down the streets of Vancouver a number of years ago after I'd been living away from the west coast for some time, and I bumped into an old acquaintance of mine in Kitsilano, the old hippy neighbourhood in the '70s.

"What are you doing these days?" I asked her. "Channeling yoga," came back the straight-faced reply.

Well, she was always a little out there, but it leads into what I wanted to talk about today. The field of spiritual growth has exploded over the past 50 years, maybe beginning with the Beatles and their Maharishi experience in India in the '60s. But it's a market with a lot of choices. From the more traditional, like church and prayer, to the more trendy, like Buddhism and meditation, to the downright weird, like, well, channeling yoga.

What to make of it all? In Dr. Norberto Keppe's Analytical Trilogy, he's united theology back into science to give us a more wholistic view. And that means some universal principles. True Co-Creation, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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Women and the Dark Side

A few hundred years ago, the notions of heaven and hell, of God and Lucifer, were respected themes for composers, poets, and painters. Milton's Paradise Lost contains the idea of Lucifer endeavoring to defeat Christ and regain his former position in paradise. Raphael captured the epic battle where the Archangel Michael vanquished Satan. Beethoven wrote of the desire of man to know God.


And then, somewhere along the way, the devil became largely erased as a factor in popular culture. Any modern educated person who considers the battle between the forces of dark and the forces of light as anything but a mythical allegory is considered ... well, not modern today.


But of course, it still persists. The rumors of rock stars making the Faustian bargain still abound, the Rolling Stones had dire repercussions to Sympathy for the Devil at Altamont, and many modern pageants have demonic idolatry built right into their ceremonies.


So I think it's still relevant. Women and the Dark Side, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.


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Big Sister is Watching

I’m Richard Lloyd Jones, and this is Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head. A quick word of warning right at the beginning of our program today … this is a delicate subject. In a world where speech is often paralyzed, not by an Orwelling Big Brother poised to punish us for deviations from the acceptable, but by our own individual and collective decisions as to what’s correct or now. Straying from the correct-speak causes raised eyebrows and pursed lips at best and outright shunning at worst.

It’s a politically correct world in the world, and the language has been sculpted and massaged and homogenized to remove any unwanted judgements or value statements in a total conviction that this is progress. Politically incorrect is simply not tolerated, a throwback to a time most consider downright evil.

But there’s a problem underneath all this. Unfortunately, not being able to say anything critical about anyone means real defects and problems don’t get pointed out anymore, and all this walking on eggshells means we can’t really develop. And this problem appears particularly formidable when we want to talk women’s pathology.

Big Sister is watching, today on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head.

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The Science of Real Problem Solving

I'm Richard Lloyd Jones and welcome to another episode of Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Read the literature about complex problem solving and you're in for a challenging read. System structure and dynamics, facets of intelligence, positive and negative dependencies. It's mind-numbing stuff that seeks to concretize often abstract what if scenarios so popular in corporate planning departments or government games theory laboratories.

The nub of the thing is this: you've got a goal you want to reach, and a lot of variables in the way of achieving it. What do you need to put in place to transform the state of your current reality into the desired reality?

It's analytical, logical and quantifiable for flow charts and computer programmers. And its focus on solutions proves that complex problem solving is the territory of those pragmatic Americans, raised as they are on the can-do philosophy of Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale.

But from the perspective of the leading edge thinking emerging from Norberto Keppe's International Society of Analytical Trilogy, it misses a huge point: to go forward, we first have to look backward.

The science of real problem solving, 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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Roots of Racism - Updated

I'm Richard Lloyd Jones and this is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Well, you don't have to look far these days, do you, to find signs of sickness. A young girl is stoned in Brazil by evangelical fanatics as she's on the way to a Candomble church. Boo Haram slaughtering Nigerians in an endeavor to create its own state. And now, 9 people dead in Charleston, S.C. after a gunman opened fire on a prayer meeting.

Isn't it hard to know what to say, beyond the normal words of sorrow and sadness? We lament the seeming deterioration in humanity and civilization but horrifyingly seem at a complete loss as to what to do about it. Obama called on Martin Luther King's words when King stated the need to question the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produces the murderers.

But we seem unable to collectively embark on that. It seems really that a piece is missing from our understanding of the human being and his society. Well, I believe that missing link is here in Norberto Keppe's science of Analytical Trilogy.

The Roots of Racism Updated, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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Going Beyond the Dogmas of Science

Dogma. A principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true. Meaning incapable of being questioned or doubted. In the 15 and 1600s, there was the beginning of a movement against dogma that burst forth from the scientific studies of such giants as Copernicus and Keppler, Newton and Galileo. Names we know well, even if we understand little of their proposals.

But this much we can understand: the scientists of the time were engaged in replacing untestable dogmas with scientific scrutiny and experimentation.

The dogmas they were opposing, or course, were from the religious institutions of the time. Large and powerful churches not opposed to burning or drowning those who disagreed with them. Scientific experimentation, then, was a good thing that helped move us from superstition and irrationality.

But there is a danger as well when experimental science is elaborated independently from the knowledge that was available in the past. It creates another intransigent dogma.

We'll go beyond the dogmas of modern science, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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The Sanity of Interiorizing our Lives

Welcome to Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Carl Gustav Jung proposed that everything that irritates us about others can lead us to understand ourselves. For him, others were a giant mirror into our own psyches. The great German writer, Hermann Hesse, suggested that disliking something in another is disliking something that we have, too.

Freud, Kraepelin, Schopenhauer, those Germans opened the door to our psychological lies. And it was a shock at the time. Jung joked to Freud on their maiden journey to America that they were bringing the plague to American. And if you subscribe to the idea that hell comes from the others, as Sartre proposed, it is a little depressing to have to let go of that and point the finger back inside for the real source of our problems.

The consequences, however, of maintaining that outward blame are severe. From nuking plants with toxic chemicals to ethnic cleansing to executing the "evil" ones, we pay a big price for our naive exteriorization.

Let's go the other way. The Sanity of Interiorizing our Lives, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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Fathers of our Inverted Science, part 2

Our thinking, our philosophies of life, these are things we take for granted most of the time. "That's just the way it is," we say, and we step out confidently upon that premise. But what extensive research in clinical study from Brazil is showing us is that we would do well to investigate a little deeper. Our thinking, as it turns out, is not always our own.

I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and today in Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, Fathers of our Inverted Science, part 2.

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Fathers of our Inverted Science

The truth will set you free, it is written.

OK, good. But knowing what the truth is, recognizing it when it pulls up alongside, ah, that’s a little more difficult. Especially as our materialistic worldview would tell us that truth depends. And this idea of relative truth is a lie that comes to us from somebody else’s head.

Today on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head, the Fathers of the Lie.

If you’ve been tuned in to our program for awhile now, you’ll know that we’re based on the science of Analytical Trilogy, which is trilogical because of its union of philosophy, science and spirituality. And this spiritual part is an important aspect of science that was for all intents and purposes cut out of scientific consideration with the rise of positivistic science in the middle of the 19th century.

Auguste Comte, the father of Positivism, talked about the quest for truth going through 3 phases, with the theological being the first or, we could say, most primitive. The philosophical phase would be next, and the positivist the last, meaning the most mature. And this last phase states that we know the most when we base ourselves on actual sense experience.

Right away, we can find some flaws with this view in that we know many things without having experience. Recent studies at Yale and Berkley suggest that little babies have working knowledge of basic arithmetic and physics principles as well as a well developed moral sense. And all of this with with no previous sensory experience.

So, linking all our societal development to positivistic science bases us not on something superior, but inferior. And we desperately need the amalgamation again of science with philosophy and theology or spirituality, which is precisely what Keppe’s work of Analytical Trilogy does.

More about this expansive work can be found at our Trilogy portal, or write me by email for more information or observations or questions. Always great to hear from you.

Our program today will be the first of two parts exploring how the inferior sensory-based science got so entrenched in our academic institutions – and our society in general. It’s the result of a great lie perpetrated and followed by many great thinkers who were fooled into following the lie. And that lie has been inspired by the supreme liar in the Universe – Lucifer. And that’s why reintroducing the 5000-year wisdom from Judeo-Christian theology is so important. Keppe knows this, and that’s why I consider his science to be the most important science to be studied in the world today.

Cesar Soós, one of our great Keppean metaphysics scholars at the International Society of Analytical Trilogy, is my guest today for the first part of Fathers of the Lie.

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The Limitations of Selfishness

We are clearly living in a time of veneration of the individual in western society. In North America, it's part of our mythology. The strong, independent, self-sufficient person is admired, and you see this reinforced in every area. Paul Simon sang about being a rock, an island against all the rest. The Marlboro Man squints against the sun, confident in his capacity to tame that stallion and build that barn single-handed. Rambo wins the Vietnam War all on his own.

Anything that deep in our psyche commands there unchallenged. There's no option to consider since all other options get dismissed even before we really entertain them. We might flirt with alternatives like socialism and collectivism, but only when we're young and impressed by challenging the status quo.

Individualism - one man, one vote - the democracy of individual rights, obviously has its place as a worldview to govern our lives. But it can stimulate neurosis and even backwardness if not analyzed.

The Limitation of Selfishness, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.

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