From Normal to Healthy

By Georg Kühlewind

Book Overview

How much practical time do we usually devote to the general art of being human? This practical guide to self-healing consciousness--it is both a spiritual psychology and a contemporary manual of the inner life--begins by laying out clearly the unhealthy, unfree nature of today's consciousness.

Methodical, self-observation leads to discovering the key to liberating consciousness from its habitual blind spots and automatisms--realization of the universal primacy of cognition and the universal availability of its ground, the free attention.

Through the use of attention, a person practicing the exercise given here begins to expand the range of one's possibilities to understand and act. The exercises--based on the Eightfold Path of the Buddha and the cognitive spiritual path of Rudolf Steiner--lead to a new life in which superconscious intuitions gradually replace superconscious formations.

This new life is a universal human life of improvising, living thinking--a life of presence and pure joy, which is health for a human being.

"I believe that our central problem is that we do not know what or who a human being really is. We lack this knowledge because we have no valid picture of the human WORD, no image of human language, of words in general. This is why we have such trouble with words, why we hit upon the right word so rarely. Everything we do to, for, and against each other is speech of some kind, or ought to be. Yet we are interested in anything but words, these very words by means of which we do everything else. Because we don't know what words are we don't know what humans are" (from the foreword).

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 094026210X
• ISBN13: 9780940262102
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: Lindisfarne Books
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.83 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

From Normal to Healthy

Georg Kühlewind begins with the premise that war, social injustice, pestilence, pollution, physical and soul illnesses, and natural disasters are a result of our "normal" consciousness. The way we think, feel, and will about things has created or contributed to the sickness and affliction of this world. Only a new consciousness can overcome this sickness. But what is consciousness? It is not something that can simply be given a definition and be captured in a concept. In FROM NORMAL TO HEALTHY Kühlewind says, "...only consciousness can discover itself as consciousness." He points out that what we find in consciousness initially is thinking and then draws our attention to the fact that, if we look within ourselves, most of us cannot remember ever thinking a new thought. Yet new thoughts--truly new thoughts--are what will develop a new consciousness and heal human and planetary problems. With this book he takes us on a path of discovery and development, to help us become aware of our consciousness as it exists now--what can be called normal--and to move forward from there to develop a healthy consciousness. This path through thinking encourages and empowers each of us to become healers of our world.

The greatest Self-Improvement book of all time!

This is the very first book that anyone who is interested in spirituality, psychology, anthroposophy, or self-improvement should read. Kuhlewind starts the book off analyzing speaking and thinking, describes why we should use our "superconscious" faculties more than out subconscious ones. Our subconscious faculties lie in the habitual, mechanical realm. In this state our thoughts simply bounce around, going from one association to the next. Association is not thinking, it is mechanical and animalistic. Superconscious abilities, on the other hand, are what we used as children. We were able to learn, see, and experience a great deal more as children than as adults simply because we used our superconscious abilities. Once these things have been learned through our superconscious, our energies used to learn and percieve gradually weaken, consciousness fades, dirt is thrown on our flame, and slowly all of our energies begin to come from the subconscious more and more (think of the first time you saw a particular place.. how rich, new and alive everything you encountered was. Then think of the second, third, fourth and so on, times that you saw this place. Not as powerful of an impression?) Kuhlewind then goes on to describe, in the greatest detail, particular excercises that help free energies from the subconscious where they can be properly used in the superconscious domain. Over time, our inner strength builds and consciousness grows. And he teaches all this on not just the theoretical level, but also an esoteric level where one can teach oneself. Reading the book is, in itself, a teriffic excercise, as it is incredibly demanding of the reader's attention. It is not a book that is difficult to understand, but because we are not used to dealing with concepts such as these, or with thinking in this way, or to exertion, it can be a bit challenging at times. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!