Plastic Ono Band

My comments to Janov's Reflection:
Who Do We Lie To When We Tell Ourselves Not To Do ...


Plastic Ono Band/God

(“I don’t believe in Jesus, I don’t believe in Kennedy, etc., I just believe in me”.)

In an interview in 2000, about primal sessions with John Lennon in 1970, you are quoted to have said “people in pain usually seek out religion”. To that Lennon, according to you, answered, ”Oh, God is a concept with which we measure our pain”. If we go back 45 years, Lennon said: “Primal Therapy forced me to have done with the God shit… Most people channel their pain into God or masturbation or some dream of making it… Instead of facing up to the reality they always look for some kind of heaven.”

John Lennon’s “THIS IS IT” about Primal Therapy was, according to Vivian Janov, something Lennon said about everything, for which he felt. Vivian reportedly said that, Art may have represented the new brilliant father he never had. (By the way Vivan was the therapist who, at a retreat in Bern, Switzerland, helped me understand, and to do something about that I was living, pain-imprisoned, in a neurotic relationship.)

John Lennon was, within two years, back in the worst possible frame of mind, doing drugs, drinking. However, his interpretation of how imprinted pain propels all kinds of beliefs is, close to five decades later, still valid, not to say reinforced.

It feels like an unsteady step when Art now in 2015, somewhat ironically (“charming”) fumbles among excuses with God, or different Gods, to cover up neurotic pleasures among people he knows. I don’t think that Art needs to channel his remaining imprinted pain into a God. However, he must, unconsciously, be influenced by the fact that he is living in a country, where so many minds are controlled by God and the Commandments. Based on scientific studies, I have mentioned a few times that 88% of the US population think that evolution should only be taught if the creationist (Book of Genesis) alternative is mentioned simultaneously.

Every public speech by a president or official dignitary ends with “God Bless America”. In this way, they may consciously trigger the release of the hormone oxytocin in most of the listeners in order to reduce any national political disagreement within the American “family”. A recent president even used “God Bless America” to get a lie, to start a war, blessed.

As to the title of your Reflection, “Who do we lie to when we tell ourselves not to do it”, I would mention “Thou shalt not lie” is missing among the commandments!!! 

Jan Johnsson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu9GMFxvWiE&index=10&list=PL-02XgJl1g2S21cn2HmZgVhasEHkLYXS