Jürg Rohrer - ABC of Awareness (auf Englisch)

Surely this is worth striving for by everyone on earth? If you don’t believe that this is attainable would it not be sensible to develop in this direction , to at least try to get as close as possible to this goal?

In no other branch of industry are the needs of human beings so intensively investigated than in advertising. If it is known what the potential consumer group which purchases a given product or service really strives for, where these people set their highest priorities, it is possible to respond exactly to these needs in the advertising and hence earn lots of money!

The striving for harmony and happiness, for a life spent in love and peace is therefore frequently exploited in advertising: First we see a suffering person who has an affliction, an illness or a problem, then a product (pill, ointment, food, drink, car, washing powder, software, computer, telephone, holiday place etc.) and finally we see the same person who – thanks to the use of the product shown - is happy . Often too the happy person is shown together with the product. Just try sometime to deliberately observe how frequently the advertising messages are set up in this way regardless of the product on offer.

The suggestion is implanted in those watching that thanks to the use of this product you will be successful, beautiful, highly-regarded, rich or whatever – and this will (also) make you happy, your deepest longings will thereby be fulfilled.

Why does advertising promise us harmony and happiness? Why doesn’t advertising simply tell us the facts of the matter, why do they appeal to our feelings and longings? The answer is obvious: In each person there is a longing for the highest goal, for perpetual harmony, for the constant state of happiness. This longing can also be exploited to maximise financial profits, to achieve power, yes - even to manipulate other people. We will come back in this chapter to discuss these goals again.

If we consider the effort which drives certain people to feel the above mentioned feeling of happiness, if only briefly, it becomes clear that many of us – probably for a long time - have been searching for ways of achieving perpetual inner harmony, that is the top level of our needs. Here is just a small selection of the ways which are undertaken:

Overcoming the fear of death: People subject themselves to great danger in order to feel for a brief moment the indescribable feeling of happiness after surviving the situation. Thereby it is not usually very important whether this risk of death was objectively or only subjectively present. Examples of such activities are free climbing up a rock face (without safety gear), ski descents over vertical rock faces, diving into unknown water from a great height, white-water canoeing, boat trips over waterfalls, bungy-jumping, trips on certain types of ride in pleasure parks, as well as the playing of certain computer games.

Achieving high performance levels: To be the first, the best, the fastest or the most beautiful, in whatever we have done or are still doing, also leads – at least for a short time – to a feeling of happiness of the sort «I am the greatest or the best». In these activities the public often plays an important role. It is at best necessary to be able to see the respective person so as to be able to identify with him. In this way part of this brief feeling of happiness is also transferred to the spectators. Examples: Top sporting events of all kinds, Miss World or similar competitions, Guinness Book of Records etc.

As can be seen from the above examples, very many of us are – as a rule unconsciously – looking for ways of achieving personal harmony, the top step in the priority list of human needs. Something draws us, we want to «find ourselves», «experience something» often without really knowing ourselves what we mean by this.

Therefore the question is posed once again: What is your personal attitude to this: Would you like to have personal harmony, come close to a lasting feeling of love and happiness? Would you also like to be able to calmly accept all the influences and situations in your surroundings? Never get annoyed again and not have to put up with fears any longer?

If we deliberately plan for this goal, there must surely also be ways of getting close to it for a longer period than for just a few short seconds!

The observations in the next chapters should serve to discuss how we can bring this goal to reality and above all to show real possibilities for every one of us. It is entirely our own decision whether we strive for this goal and want to reach it or not. Nothing and no one can make us do this or prevent us from doing it!

Sooner or later – and at the latest shortly before death – everyone will ponder about why we are here, what keeps life going on the earth, how life started, what happens after death, why a plant grows from a seed, whether there are other «inhabited» planets etc. Perhaps we will also concern ourselves with the future of the earth and pose the question of how the many and diverse problems on our planet can ever be solved.

In order – at least to a small extent - to be able to answer such questions, it is important to know what is the actual basis for our being. The answer to this question is astonishingly simple:

The basis of all life on our planet is the equal right of all beings to live here, to develop here and to carry out their tasks here.

Does this make you rub your eyes? Are you not astonished that it isn’t a chemical formula or a physical process which is the basis of our being? Such processes are naturally an essential precondition for that which we call «life» on earth. The basis of our being however is significantly deeper. Let us therefore analyse this sentence step by step:

1 Every being on earth has the equal right to be here: Every person, every animal, every plant, every stone, every little pile of earth may be here. There are no individual people, plants or things which may not be here. There are no individual beings which are more important than the others – all are exactly as important as one another.

2 Every being has the equal right to develop. Every being may try to bring his personal goals, his needs to reality. There is no being, which has more right to a faster or a higher priority development than all the others. Nobody therefore may develop themselves at the expense of others.

3 Every being has the equal right to carry out his tasks. The „system earth“ only functions as it does thanks to the interplay of all the inhabitants. In a large cycle all beings work «hand in hand». There is no reason why the tasks of one being should have priority over the tasks of other beings. All the tasks must be carried out so that «the earth» can function. All tasks are necessary, they are consequently all equally important or equally unimportant.

The above statement is a so-called cosmic law, i.e. a law which is always valid everywhere in the whole cosmos. All beings have to fit in with this rule no matter whether they wish to or not. In this book we will only concentrate however on the consequences of this basic rule for our system on earth.

All other meaningful laws on the earth must be compatible with this basic rule and may not violate it. In the following we will simply refer to this law as «the basic rights of existence».

It is not possible for us as human beings to prove the validity of this law either by logic or certainly not by mathematics. It is simply true! Vice-versa however it is also not possible to prove that the basic rights of existence are not valid (which naturally also cannot be interpreted as proof of the validity). Especially in natural sciences and technology we have become accustomed to the fact that we cannot mathematically derive or prove the basic laws. It is true that we can test these basic laws by means of experiments – however this is certainly no real proof of their validity.