pressure on his forehead, temples, and occiput, as if he were caught in the steel jaws of a vise. The tensions in his body also had a brutally mechanical quality; he imagined himself passing through a monstrous meat grinder or a giant press full of cogs and cylinders. The image of Charlie Chaplin victimized by the world of technology in Modern Times briefly flashed through his mind. Incredible amounts of energy seemed to be flowing through his entire body, condensing and releasing in explosive discharges.
He felt an amazing mixture of feelings; he was suffocated, frightened, and helpless, but also furious and strangely sexually aroused. Another important aspect of his experience was a sense of utter confusion. While he felt like an infant involved in a vicious struggle for survival and realized that what was about to happen was his birth, he was also experiencing himself as his delivering mother. He knew intellectually that being a man he could never give birth, yet he felt that he was somehow crossing that barrier and that the impossible was becoming a reality. There was no question that
he was connecting with something primordial—an ancient feminine archetype, that of the delivering mother. His body image included a large pregnant belly and female genitals with all the nuances of biological sensations. He felt frustrated by not being able to surrender to this elemental process—to give birth and be born, to let go and to let the baby out.
An enormous reservoir of murderous aggression emerged from the underworld of his psyche; it was as if an abscess of evil had suddenly been punctured by the cut of a cosmic surgeon. A werewolf or a berserk was taking him over; Dr. Jekyll was turning into Mr. Hyde. There were many images of the murderer and the victim as one person, just as earlier he could not distinguish between the child who was being born and the delivering mother. He was a merciless tyrant, the dictator exposing the subordinates to unimaginable cruelties, and he was also the revolutionary, leading the furious mob to overthrow the tyrant. He became the mobster who murders in cold blood and the policeman who kills the criminal in the name of law. At one point, he experienced the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. When he opened his eyes, he saw himself as an SS officer. He had a profound sense that he, the Nazi, and he, the Jew, were the same person. He could feel the Hitler and the Stalin in him and felt fully responsible for the atrocities in human history. He saw that humanity's problem is not the existence of vicious dictators, but this Hidden Killer that we each find within our own psyches, if we look deep enough.
Then the quality of the experience changed and reached mythological proportions; instead of the evil of human history, he sensed the atmosphere of witchcraft and the presence of demonic elements. His teeth were transformed into long fangs filled with some mysterious poison, and he found himself flying on large bat wings through the night like an ominous vampire. This changed soon into wild, intoxicating scenes of a witches' Sabbath. In this dark, sensuous ritual, all the usually forbidden and repressed impulses seemed to surface and were experienced and acted out. While the demonic quality gradually disappeared from his experience, he still felt tremendously erotic and was engaged in endless sequences of the most fantastic orgies and sexual fantasies, in which he played all roles. All through these experiences, he continued being simultaneously the child struggling through the birth canal and the mother delivering it. It became very clear to him that sex and birth were deeply connected and also that satanic forces had important links with the situation in the birth canal.
He struggled and fought in many different roles and against many different enemies. Sometimes he wondered if there would ever be an end to his misery. Then a new element entered his experience. His entire body
He felt an amazing mixture of feelings; he was suffocated, frightened, and helpless, but also furious and strangely sexually aroused. Another important aspect of his experience was a sense of utter confusion. While he felt like an infant involved in a vicious struggle for survival and realized that what was about to happen was his birth, he was also experiencing himself as his delivering mother. He knew intellectually that being a man he could never give birth, yet he felt that he was somehow crossing that barrier and that the impossible was becoming a reality. There was no question that
he was connecting with something primordial—an ancient feminine archetype, that of the delivering mother. His body image included a large pregnant belly and female genitals with all the nuances of biological sensations. He felt frustrated by not being able to surrender to this elemental process—to give birth and be born, to let go and to let the baby out.
An enormous reservoir of murderous aggression emerged from the underworld of his psyche; it was as if an abscess of evil had suddenly been punctured by the cut of a cosmic surgeon. A werewolf or a berserk was taking him over; Dr. Jekyll was turning into Mr. Hyde. There were many images of the murderer and the victim as one person, just as earlier he could not distinguish between the child who was being born and the delivering mother. He was a merciless tyrant, the dictator exposing the subordinates to unimaginable cruelties, and he was also the revolutionary, leading the furious mob to overthrow the tyrant. He became the mobster who murders in cold blood and the policeman who kills the criminal in the name of law. At one point, he experienced the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. When he opened his eyes, he saw himself as an SS officer. He had a profound sense that he, the Nazi, and he, the Jew, were the same person. He could feel the Hitler and the Stalin in him and felt fully responsible for the atrocities in human history. He saw that humanity's problem is not the existence of vicious dictators, but this Hidden Killer that we each find within our own psyches, if we look deep enough.
Then the quality of the experience changed and reached mythological proportions; instead of the evil of human history, he sensed the atmosphere of witchcraft and the presence of demonic elements. His teeth were transformed into long fangs filled with some mysterious poison, and he found himself flying on large bat wings through the night like an ominous vampire. This changed soon into wild, intoxicating scenes of a witches' Sabbath. In this dark, sensuous ritual, all the usually forbidden and repressed impulses seemed to surface and were experienced and acted out. While the demonic quality gradually disappeared from his experience, he still felt tremendously erotic and was engaged in endless sequences of the most fantastic orgies and sexual fantasies, in which he played all roles. All through these experiences, he continued being simultaneously the child struggling through the birth canal and the mother delivering it. It became very clear to him that sex and birth were deeply connected and also that satanic forces had important links with the situation in the birth canal.
He struggled and fought in many different roles and against many different enemies. Sometimes he wondered if there would ever be an end to his misery. Then a new element entered his experience. His entire body
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