Judy Roberson wrote:
--------------------------------------
Hello All,
In DC last summer, Bert was calling this "Spirit-Mind," and "Mind-Spirit"
interchangeably.
What I saw that was new about the work he did was an additional
movement after the personal work was done. He asked the client to look
on beyond the person with whom the issue had been and see the greater
whole of which this was a small part. This seems like the Spirit.
Another clue from this day - my husband remembers Bert saying that
"everything that is has been thought." And this seems like the Mind.
I was confused then by the meaning of combining of Mind and Spirit but
hearing "Geist" means both I understand why.
Looking forward to hearing from those with more understanding of the
Germanic heart of the language.
================================
Dear Judy,
Many thanks for this information. I hadn't realized until you
mentioned it that Bert actually used that English hybrid-amalgam of
Spirit and Mind both ways to translate Geist.
And what you wrote actually inspired me to try a whole new realm of
constellation work, which I call for now "Philosophic Constellations."
They are structural in nature, and would probably have more in common
with Orgaizational Constellations than Family ones.
However, I'll leave that for the future to judge.
In wondering about the ancestry of Bert's hybrid translation of Geist
as "Spirit-Mind" and "Mind-Spirit," I realized that I had to put up a
few of his philosophical ancestors. Actually, it was quite easy
because they all have last names that begin with H.
I set up index cards for each one, putting Bert in the front facing
West and all these guys facing the same direction. In order of
ancestral rank, with dates and a capsule comment on their philosophy,
they went like this:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
.Bert Hellinger (1925- )-> Movement of the Spirit-Mind
(1) Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) -> Find the Being in Time! Dasein!
(2) Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) -> German-Jewish Father of Phenomenology
(3) Georg F. W. Hegel (1770-1831)-> Phaenomenologie des Geistes" (of
Spirit -Mind)
(4) Heraclitus (Heraklitos) (535-475 BC) -> Conflict (war) is the
father of everything"
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I then stood next to each index card on the floor representing these
"philosophical "ancestors" of Bert. Starting with Heidegger and
moving back to Husserl and to hegel, I kept feeling a pull on my back
to go back in time. That was not surprising. But then when I stood
next to Heraclitus' card, I immediately felt my knees buckle. I
crumpled down to the floor, falling forward, i.e. toward the "upline"
of the ancestry toward Bert.
Since this was a structural constellation, I realized that Heraclitus
was not dying or representing a dead one; rather, the crumpling
represented a clear indication that
(1) he did not belong in this line (the buckling and crumpling)
(2) someone needed to replace him (falling down forward toward the
others)
So I realized that the replacement had to be a German philosopher. And
it was clear to me who it was, someone whose name did not begin with
H, but with 2 of the next 3 letters of the alphabet, that is:
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) -- "Ding an sich" = "Thing in itself"
So now we have this updated line of purely German philosophic ancestry:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Bert Hellinger (1925- ) ->Movements of the Spirit-Mind
(1) Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) -> Find the Being in Time! Dasein!
(2) Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) -> German-Jewish Father of Phenomenology
(3) Georg F.W. Hegel (1770-1831) -> Phaenomenologie des Geistes" (of
Spirit -Mind)
(4) Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) -> "Ding an sich" = "Thing in itself"
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Here was a clear shift from a purely Philosophic Constellation to a
more Linguistic Constellation. For the only non-German in my original
line was the ancient Greek Heraclitus, who really is the pure
philosophical father of Bert, but in this constellation, my focus was
really on the German source of the translation of Geist as equally
Mind and equally Spirit.
At this point, I stopped the Constellation and felt I had to honor the
shift into the Germanic line of linguistic philosophic ancestry.
Therefore, I went out to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and
pulled out a bottle of beer that was closest to German. It was a
delightful bottle of Pilsner-Urquell from Czechoslovakia, close enough
to Germany for this honoring ritual.
But then I focused on the name of the beer and the word Urquell which
is a German word meaning "the Ultimate Source!!!!" Yes, by God or the
Greater field, (whoever the hell You are), I had indeed received a
full Spirit-Mind confirmation that Immanuel Kant was indeed the
"Urquell" i.e. the "Ultimate Source" of the Spirit-Mind fusion!!!
So, with beer glass in my right hand, I bowed to Bert and to each
philosopher in turn, and as I rose up from each bow, the glass
naturally went to my lips in one fluid motion, thus allowing me to
quaff a sacred portion of the beer. Amazingly, without stopping the
motion at all, having taken the sip, the glass moved down and I
naturally went into the next bow for the next philosopher.
(Anyway, I digress. I heartily recommend this honoring ritual at your
next constellation workshop: Bowing with Beer to Bert!)
So why is Immanuel Kant the "Ultimate Source" of Spirit-Mind? Because
Immanuel Kant came to the conclusion that our perception of the entire
Spiritual World and/or Physical Universe "out there" is really a
representation of our Mind "in here."
He said there is an objective world "out there," but we can't perceive
it "in itself," as it is (Ding an sich = Thing in Itself); we can only
perceive the processes of our own mental perception.
(You can see that this conviction of Kant is thoroughly
anti-phenomenological --- unless you allow for the phenomenology of
our thoughts, and inner feelings themselves. That's what drove the
following philosophers to focus so much on phenomenology because Kant
had removed it from the outer world we all experience together.)
So, for the first time in modern human history, in the evolution of
our Western consciousness, human beings reduced the Spirit World, even
the Physical Universe down to subjective mental processes. Or we could
say it the other way around: human beings expanded or inflated their
own mental processes to encompass the entire Spirit World or Physical
Universe.
Looking back at this now, from our 21st Century perspective, it is
clear that Kant put the spotlight on Mind as equal to Spirit. Clearly,
it is the beginning of narcissism, of Ultimate Self-Absorption, of
even megalomania, but such excesses would have to wait for the
invention of psychology with Freud, Jung and the rest of the Soul crowd.
Here in FC land, we are only concerned with the Spirit-Mind crowd, so
I hope that all of you professional psychologists out there can see
where Bert is coming from now with his Movements of the Spirit-Mind.
(I Kant hear you! Please speak louder!)
Whew, I'll have to end here and open another bottle of Urquell to
honor this post and the Constellation Talk forum.
Prosit and looking forward to Oktoberfest in less than a month in
Muenchen! (Alas, I won't be there physically, so I'll have to provide
a representation of the Oktoberfest "Beer-in-Itself" out here in
LA-LA Land.)
Tom
