www.layogamagazine.com/issue24/departments/kramer.htm -
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Published on: 11/11/2007
Last Visited: 11/11/2007
Sitting Down With: Joel Kramer
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Joel Kramer is trained in philosophy and psychology, is a physical and mental yoga adept and a radical who's back after many years of self-imposed seclusion.He was a resident teacher at Esalen Institute from 1968 - 70 and a regular contributor to the Yoga Journal in the 80's.Kramer taught many of today's most famous teachers including Erich Schiffmann and David Swenson and he is the author of The Passionate Mind and, along with his partner Diana Alstad, The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power which is a comprehensive and detailed work exploring authoritarianism in religion, institutions, the family, sexual relations and addictions.At age 68, Kramer has decided to offer yoga again and to speak out on critical public issues.Why?
Kramer: I started talking again because of the state of the world.
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Kramer: I have no idea.I operate on a strange kind of evolutionary perspective, and from my point of view, things have to get worse in order to do the kind of transformation that is going to be necessary for viability.
Many years ago, when I was complaining to a very smart man who was actually Trudeau's energy minister about the state of the world, and he looked at me and said, "Look, if you are really interested in change then optimism is your best strategy;" intuitively, I knew he was correct.
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Kramer: Exactly.
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Kramer: The power that we have achieved through technology is forcing us to look at long-term implications, and we just do not know how to do that very well.
Julie: Why?
Kramer: Technology has moved faster than we have socially.
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Kramer: Descartes said, "I think, therefore, I am."I do it differently.I say, "We human beings are conscious, therefore, consciousness exists."The very fact that experience exists, let us take consciousness and spread it out wider; the capacity to experience is a miracle.
Julie: Your yoga practice, Joel, do you see it as a gateway to higher consciousness?
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Kramer: I have practiced yoga for thirty-eight years regularly, and the conclusion that I came to is that there are many doorways to consciousness, and yoga is potentially one of them, but it is not absolute.
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Kramer: Its great danger is that of self-absorption.
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Kramer: I am not posture oriented.
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Kramer: I do not think so.
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Kramer: That is the difference.
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Kramer: Because eastern thought systems, particularly Buddhism, are sophisticated psychologically.
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Kramer: ,to something more important.
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Kramer: I do not think so because that is a part of the nature of individuation.
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Kramer: Because we are social animals, I do not believe that real anarchy is possible.
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Kramer: The thing that I think we need, as an overriding system, is a global morality that deals with what is called the ,commons': common air, water, fuel and energy.
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Kramer: Okay, emotionally or at least idealistically you prefer cooperation.
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Kramer: That is one aspect of it.
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Kramer: ,or to compete in the race for alternate energy sources?
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Kramer: ,or to compete in a way that makes a social order viable.
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Kramer: Not necessarily, because you are dealing with a dialectic, and they are interwoven.
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Kramer: I do not think I am going to be hardly invited to any of them.
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Kramer: I tried it too when I was younger and I came to this conclusion: either there is something radically wrong with me or there is something radically wrong with the structure.
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Kramer: Yeah, but you see, I do not believe that ever happened.
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Kramer: The reason I do not believe that ever happened is that I believe the very nature of the individuation process has that as a core element.
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Kramer: People are grabbing desperately for what I call quick fixes or instant solutions, spirituality, this, that, and that is going one step too far.
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Kramer and Alstad's abortion and political papers are at www.rit.org in Editorials.Kramer will be at Lulu Bandha's in Ojai in May, 2006.
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