The Cure for Murder on Campus
Leonard D. Orr
The Virginia Tech massacre has gotten more people talking than any of the other campus slayings for some reason. Many sources have tried to isolate the cause and in my opinion are overlooking the obvious.The belief that death is inevitable and beyond our control kills more people
than all other causes of death combined. In fact, it kills approximately 2% of the entire population on the planet every year.
And why is it that people lack imagination to the point that they can’t even conceive of an alternative? Why do people persist in victim mentality?
• Is it God that kills people?
• Is it murderers that kill people?
• Is it germs and diseases that kill people?
• Is it the unconscious death urge that kills people?
• Is it deathist mentality that kills people?
• Is it the devil that controls death?
• Is everyone responsible for his or her own death?
These are possible explanations.
Over one hundred years ago, Sigmund Freud wrote an essay on the unconscious death urge, 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle', which has been unequalled in the history of psychology and
philosophy until my own writings on the subject - for example, my books 'Healing the Death Urge' and 'Breaking the Death Habit'.
The unconscious death urge went back into the unconscious after Freud died. I have never met a psychoanalyst who understands the concept unless they have been influenced by my own writings.
Obviously, even intelligent and educated people are afraid to think about death rationally and deal with it practically. People would rather blame somebody for their death than be responsible for their death as a result of their diet and lifestyle choices. Most people get heart disease and cancer as a result of eating meat—dead animals—according to numerous medical science studies.
I was shocked when I found out from an economist that the average life of a fortune 500 company is only 40 years. Evidently, even hundreds of millions of dollars cannot protect the average, successful corporation from the death urge of the management, stockholders, and employees of a giant corporation. People are marching lockstep, without thinking or self-examination, to the grave.
Does the knowledge of deathist mentality or the unconscious death urge have practical significance? It obviously does.
Does this knowledge about the unconscious death urge have personal and practical significance concerning the mental and physical health of the individual? It definitely could! Could students and faculty prevent campus massacres if they actively discussed these subjects? Perhaps they could.
I have been a business consultant for over 40 years. During this time, I have counseled self-employed business people as well as business leaders and thousands of individuals about dealing with the unconscious death urge in an intelligent way. I have, in a few cases, diffused the death urge in an organization, whether it be social or business. I am the only business consultant I know of who has faced the problem head-on and dealt with it with any degree of success.
I became aware of my own unconscious death urge in 1967, after being suicidal for 2 years. My mother died in 1956 and my father in 1959. If I hadn’t had an elementary awareness of the concept of the unconscious death urge as a result of studying psychology in college, and if I hadn’t had some very enlightened spiritual teachers, I wouldn’t be alive today. In 1967 I realized that the unconscious death urge in my family tradition, which had killed both of my parents, was trying to kill me. I isolated the unconscious death urge in my mind and soul, and realized that I could survive without it. I spent 6 months of study and meditation and used various self improvement techniques to isolate and destroy the death urge. Obviously the process of doing this includes bringing the death urge out of the unconscious and becoming fully conscious of what it is and how it works. We cannot do this if our mind and personality is ruled by fear. This is a complex problem if the unconscious death urge is the source of most of our irrational fears in this life.
The death urge is defined as a psychic entity composed of all of our anti-life thoughts. These thoughts form a structure and a belief system. Since it is immersed in our Life Energy, this death
urge has a life urge and intelligence. This death urge—psychic entity—has enough intelligence to protect itself and to kill most people, even outsmarting people with advanced academic degrees.
It is an elementary psychic entity that can be isolated and changed or destroyed. We have only to direct our attention to it and consciously confront it to control it.
Thousands of individuals have liberated themselves from their personal death urge. The problem is: How do we get this knowledge into the curriculum of at least colleges and universities, if not secondary education, so that people can deal with it intelligently instead of becoming victims through ignorance of their own unconscious death urge? To keep this essay brief, I will only mention the idea of the death urge as a psychic entity composed of all of our anti-life thoughts. I have explained it in many books.
The belief system that death is inevitable and beyond our control is a key thought in this collection of victim consciousness. The alternative to this belief system is that death is optional and that everybody creates their own death by their self-chosen philosophies and lifestyles, even if the process seems to be unconscious.
Since I devoted 6 months of conscious work to healing my own death urge in 1967, my success in the world has proceeded almost effortlessly, not to mention my health and happiness. Releasing our death urge releases tremendous reserves of energy and creativity.
There is a process called the death process, which can enable anyone and everyone to know when and how and why they are going to die. We can predict our own death. We can also prevent it.
In fact, insurance companies are based upon the principle that each person dies at approximately the same age and of approximately the same symptoms as their parent of the same sex. This entire industry is based upon the predictability of physical death. According to the insurance industry, the death urge, or death itself, is fundamentally controlled by family tradition. This is generally true, but there are many exceptions to this rule.
We seek to better our family history economically, and in our marriage relationships, and to improve the way in which we raise our children—but very few people have even thought about improving the way we die. Science is now entering this arena at the University of Virginia. They have a department that has scientifically studied children who spontaneously remember previous lives, and have documented the idea of reincarnation. A friend of mine has written a book entitled How to Die Peacefully in which he discusses practical principles for how to die peacefully in our sleep.
Another friend of mine has pointed out that there is no difference between sleeping and death. Therefore, we die every night. The reports of people who died under traumatic circumstances and returned give vivid descriptions of what the process is like. Their descriptions of life out of the body, and the journeys in between bodies, support the reports of children who also describe their
experiences between bodies.
As a result of my own process and questions, I have researched actual immortal yogis, and met people who were over 2,000 years old. More people don’t know about these facts, simply because they are not asking the question.
We live in a deathist programmed society. Government is dominated by deathist mentality. Businesses are dominated by deathist mentality. Churches and religions are dominated by deathist mentality; and our schools and educational systems are dominated by deathist
mentality. This deathist mentality creates an atmosphere for tragedy.
How many campus massacres are we going to have to have before we question this deathist mentality?
Going beyond this, how are we going to construct a course in colleges and universities, and perhaps secondary schools, that teaches people how to deal with deathist mentality in a practical way that improves their life, their chances of success, and their mental and physical health? Religions are not going to solve the problem. They are locked into victim consciousness by their doctrines.
Thankfully, we now have an abundance of resources. The research has already been done, and there are now hundreds of books available on this subject that were not available to me in 1967. These books can be used to construct a very practical course on the subject, but who is going to do it? And the question is, have the campus massacres of the past and present provided an adequate motivation to do it?
I know of a whole private university system in Europe that is based-upon teaching the truth about the opportunity of physical immortality. If we value the lives of our students, and if we are sincere about preventing future disasters, then we will do something with this information. Is it controversial? Or is it just basic common sense? Only you can decide. The destiny of yourself and your body, as well as the people that you influence, is dependent upon what you decide.
We are now Living during the war on terrorism. But is it mostly waged between the Christians and the Muslims. This war is not new.
In Iraq, the war is waged almost daily between one Muslim sect and another.
This also is not new. The war between the Protestants and the Catholics has been going on for centuries and is barely over in Ireland.
If the Christians had studied the Koran over 1,000 years ago, the Protestant Reformation would never have happened. It would have been unnecessary.
We are now considering studying the Bible in the United States pubic schools. We should obviously also include the Koran, the Shiva Purana, and many other scriptures.
Once your eyes have been opened to victory over death, you will notice that the Jews have 4 heroes who conquered death: Enoch, Melchizadek, Moses, and Elijah. The Christians who ignore the Old Testament only recognize one immortal—Jesus Christ.
The Indian Scriptures cover millions of years of human history and have thousands of case histories of victory over death. And as a result, there are hundreds if not thousands of immortal yogis who still practice in the world today. We only have to go to a Khumba Mela festival to
meet many of them.
There is no way we can win the war against terrorism without doing something practical about popular belief systems around death. The fact is that this war is the third world war. It could be looked at as the war between deathist mentality and wholesome philosophies of life. What school massacres teach us is that this war is diffused in every society throughout the world. It definitely is a different kind of war, and it can only be won with new kinds of weapons—weapons that deal with the nature of mind and soul.
Since this issue has never been dealt with by religion, by any orthodox religion in a practical way, it doesn’t tread on the territory of freedom of religion—unless a religion is totally attached to deathist mentality. If this is the case, it is questionable whether or not that religion is wholesome and healthy for human beings. Indeed, victory over death is one of the stated goals of all religions. The search for victory over death is imbedded in the search of every person who sincerely seeks meaningful answers to life, to the troublesome questions of life.
Maybe it is time to initiate the scientific or at least free study of religion in our schools. Maybe this will help end local as well as international terrorism. Maybe it will help solve all kinds of personal, practical, and social problems. Maybe it will raise the quality of public education and the quality of Life and Aliveness in our civilization!
I have noticed that lightening our thought about death has enriched family relationships and gives us a whole new approach to senility and aging. Is Life beyond senility and old age possible? Have you ever asked yourself this question?
After opening a door in our minds to an alternative to physical death caused by the unconscious death urge, we have to then discover what actually heals the death urge???
As an introduction to this question, I recommend my book, 'Breaking the Death Habit'. Although I have learned from my immortal yogi friends that the solution is simple and pleasurable practices, we actually have to experiment with the practices to experience relief. A discussion of this is beyond the scope of this letter. See the “Two Powerful Words” essay for a summary.
I haven’t even mentioned teenage homicide and suicide using guns as well as automobiles for weapons. Obviously a common sense discussion of the unconscious death urge can alter these statistics as well.
Therefore, it is necessary to get this subject into public discussion. Anything you can do to contribute to this process will benefit everyone.
The campus murders are an obvious symbol that our deathist civilization is missing something.
We can look for answers that may actually work or we can go to sleep again. The answers to these questions are a matter of Life and death for us.
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