Description
A terrible injustice is taking place on Earth right now. Many of those who resist are sitting in torture chambers belonging to the military, police and intelligence services. Right at this moment, there are hundreds of thousands of people there who are suffering the most unspeakable pain. And yet they continue. This is the standard that we must apply when speaking of global peace work today. Will the screams of the victims continue to go unheard – or will we create a world where there are no more victims?
With these introductory words, sociologist and psychoanalyst Dr. Dieter Duhm begins his book The Sacred Matrix. What follows are twelve clear chapters answering the question, “what can be done to stop global violence and start the globalization of peace?” In order to come to a comprehensive solution, many areas of human knowledge are included: insight from modern science, politics and history, from chaos theory, holography, ecology, as well as spirituality and spiritual healing. The result is a revelation. This writing comes from a human being who is, in the words of the philosopher Karl Jasper, “originally shaken.” He spends little time analyzing the current situation. He writes:
I will abstain from making a definition of evil. When I see how the civilian population is bombed in Chechnya and how hand grenades are thrown into the last basements where the sick and the old still live, then I do not need a definition of evil.
Rather, he needs and seeks a way to end the global madness of violence, whether in Chechnya or Palestine, in Europe or Latin America. Therefore, he must leave behind conventional ways of thinking and by overcoming the limits of normality, enter unknown mental terrain grounded in authentic experience and look into what is really there: into our most intimate longings, hidden deep inside the human psyche; into our universal structures that govern the reality surrounding us; into our past and the rise of patriarchal violence; and into the future, into an ever more concrete vision of a possible planetary peace culture.
Who or what will decide whether the Earth will end in a planetary Holocaust or whether we will be able to change for the better? The answer is the essence of this book – what is described by one chapter title as “The Archimedean Fulcrum” – and that is love. A humane world can only emerge from an open heart. But how can love be merged with the political power of realization? How can the relation between the forces of violence and peace be changed so that an Earth free of violence becomes a real possibility? In precise mental steps, the ideas in the book are woven together into the “Political Theory,” a path by which the seemingly impossible becomes both possible and clearly visible.
These are high-tech solutions for peace. The great dream of global peace is even now within our reach…
“It is one thing to criticise the existing system, but another to live from the principles of a new civilisation. This brilliant, inspiring and courageous book sets out a full agenda for doing so.”
Stephen Davis –
“The Sacred Matrix” by Dr. Dieter Duhm is a “must read” for anyone wanting a life of peace for themselves, their children, or their children’s children.
I have known Dr. Duhm for fifteen years, and I have the greatest respect and admiration for him and his efforts to create a new culture of peace on this planet. For more than thirty years he has worked tirelessly and with a steady focus to find a way for human beings to live in cooperation and harmony with each other, with animals, and with nature. His persistence and dedication are now paying off with the success of an intentional community in southern Portugal called “Tamera.”
In “The Sacred Matrix”, Dr. Duhm calls Tamera a “healing biotope” – a word most English-speaking people have never heard and may not understand. Literally translated, “biotope” simply means a place where life lives. Duhm, however, gives it several different twists, calling it a “greenhouse of trust,” “an acupuncture point of peace,” and “a self-sufficient future community.”
Essentially, “The Sacred Matrix” is the definitive summation of Dr. Duhm’s vision and a detailed explanation of his philosophy that forms the basis of life in a “healing biotope.” Sophisticated and thought-provoking, Duhm’s arguments include the necessity for community and an end to patriarchy if the world is going to survive.
As far as I am concerned, if Dr. Duhm had only uttered one sentence in his entire life, he would still qualify as one of the great thinkers of our time. That sentence: “We will never have peace between nations as long as there is war between man and woman.” There are many good men today preaching world peace – men with good hearts and good intentions, I’m sure – but who have never found a way to have a meaningful, lasting, and truly intimate relationship with a woman. Something’s wrong with that picture.
Dr. Duhm, however, doesn’t shy away from what he calls the “prime issues” that hold the key to a future of peace: love and sexuality. “There is an entelechial form of sexuality and sexual love, and of partnership and free love. and we must find this form in order to achieve healing. It is the form of “The Sacred Matrix”,” he says.
Dieter Duhm, Tamera, and “The Sacred Matrix” definitely take a different approach to life and living than the rest of the world. Nature loves diversity, and evolution requires it. It just might be that Tamera, and other healing biotopes like it to come, are the best hope for the future of the human race. That alone makes this book worth reading.