The Joy of Autism and the Personal Unity
John L. Waters
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November 2, 2002
Revised November 12, 2002
Copyright 2002 by John L. Waters.
All Rights Reserved
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The joy of autism is experienced by inarticulate
children as they remain withdrawn from social contact
and repeat the same physical movements over and over.�
Other children find it difficult to engage in such
repetitive movements even though their lungs continue
moving repetitively while pumping air and their hearts
continue moving repetitively while pumping blood.� The
autistic child finds a certain movement that is
rewarding to repeat, and shows us this devotion and
joy associated with repetitive physical activity as do
the Hare Krishnas as they dance and chant for hours on
the sidewalk along some busy metropolitan street.
The joy of autism is intense and profound, as is the
joy of the Hare Krishnas.� How can we determine this?�
Well when a man dances for six hours to the beat of
drums, there's no one standing over him with a whip in
hand.� The man continues dancing because this activity
brings a sustained psychochemical reward.� The
autistic child who rocks on all fours for six hours a
day is also comforted, probably by exactly the same
"divine" process.� The physical body itself is its own
comforter and source of immense joy.
Is this a key to unlock the secret of what first makes
an infant autistic?� During infancy and for years
thereafter, the autistic child doesn't focus on
interacting with other people.� Instead, the autistic
child focuses on some cyclic-repetitive physical
activity other than social interaction.� For many
people this intense physical activity seems strange,
because most children choose to devote themselves to
social interaction and thoughts associated with social
interaction.� Even so, the autistic child shows us
that there is an intense joy to be found in other
activities besides playing the games of childhood
which include, of course, conversation.
Many children spend hours a day playing lively games
of pursuit or being pursued.� In addition to tagging
games, children play ball games and chase after the
ball.� Children play a great many different other
games of pursuit.� Conversationalists pursue various
topics of interest and tag other persons with their
ideas.� Whether serious or gay, language itself tags
activities, objects, and persons with names.� This
tagging and pursuit becomes the preoccupation of
normal children, but the autistic child isn't in
pursuit.� This is an important point. The autistic
child has found a certain contentment that he or she
keeps on experiencing by engaging in cyclic-repetitive
movement.� This contentment is difficult for the
autistic person to share, however.
Normal children and adults rush to and fro in pursuit
of this or that happiness.� The autistic person has
found happiness�inside of himself or herself...inside
of his or her own feedback-looping physiology.� This
happiness is easy to obtain�and doesn't require a wild
pursuit which often ends in intense disappointment.�
Social humans expend huge amounts of energy pursuing
this goal or that goal.� Just look at the fast cars
roaring and streaming along the superhighway.� But the
autistic child has discovered the inner joy, the
"divine" pleasure.� The autistic person has this
immense source of pleasure but can't express clearly
exactly what it is.� Consequently huge numbers of
people expend immense amounts of talent, time, money,
and energy pursuing this goal and that goal, and the
consumption of natural resources produces more and
more garbage...verbal and otherwise. Unable to access
the inner joy, social goal-oriented people are
literally burning up the Planet.
The autistic person doesn't speak and use gestures
effectively so most people don't pay serious attention
to an autistic person except to pity him or take care
of him.� In India certain speechless and
non-goal-oriented persons are regarded as holy and
divine.� They aren't expected to discuss current
events or debate philosophical issues.� Their joy is
immense and they project this joy outward from their
bodies so that a sensitive person can receive this
message of unity and joy directly from them without
speaking or thinking.� Even so, autistics aren't very
common, even in India. Instead, nearly all children
are taught to focus on developing sophisticated social
skills and language skills.
The autistic person is actually a teacher, but the
autistic person doesn't view himself in this way or
speak and write convincingly.� The autistic person
takes joy in repeating certain simple movements and
activities over and over.� The "divine" lesson is that
such movements are a source of pleasure and so a
person doesn't really need to be out stripping the
world and seeking to beat another person to the
punch.� This unusual and unfamiliar message is hard to
transmit, however, because children are so very
naturally sociable and sociable people just transmit
the familiar and ancient standards of the culture.�
The autistic person presents a new "divine" standard.
Now notice that my argument isn't for humans to stop
talking, writing, and thinking.� My argument is just
to study autistics and learn something important about
sustained pleasure from them.� Autistics have an
important lesson to teach humanity.� That lesson is
that there is a reservoir of pleasure inside of your
own body, and you can draw from this reservoir enough
pleasure to keep you satisfied in one place without
having to be out burning up the landscape or breaking
your back to get ahead.� And as human beings get more
and more numerous and spaces become more and more
limited, more and more persons are going to learn
about this reservoir of pleasure and be blessed by it.
November 2, 2002
There is all around about us, a world of providence
and beauty.� This is the world of the plants and the
animals, the skies, the rocks and the rivers, and all
the wild things that live in partnership with each
other and enable all of us humans to live.� In the
fullness of his or her "divine" sensitivity, the
autistic person is free to sense the beauty of nature,
but just can't share this immensity with other
people.� The autistic person is cut off from
sophisticated socializers and sophisticated
socializers are cut off from their own inner "divine"
sensitivity. This makes it very hard for
sophisticated persons to understand autism.
What cuts normal people off from the natural world
inside their bodies and outside their bodies is their
preoccupation in themselves, their familiar life,
their culture, and especially their refined language
and associated communication skills.� Their very
social interaction cuts them off from inarticulate
physical nature.� So today's highly cultured people
spend their whole lives intent upon their artificial
contrivances, their sophisticated tools and machines,
their stylish clothing, and their technical wordiness
and their polished nonverbal communication.� A naive
child is totally immersed in this conventional focus
no matter which culture he or she is born into.
Each child starts out naive, and has no way of seeing
the error in human ways.� The child wants to please
and be given what is desirable.� Natural human
instincts force the normal child to mostly pay
attention to the human face and to what comes out of
faces---funny noises, smiles, frowns, all the elements
of modern commercial drama.� Naive children are hooked
on the human drama and they don't study the drama of
spiders, the drama of trees, the drama of
grasshoppers, linnets, and mud-dauber wasps.� Yet in
reality there are thousands of different dramas going
on all the time around about us but we humans are
cultured to focus entirely on our own little lives.�
We are totally self-engrossed and self-centered.
This is our culture, the primitive culture of our
ancestors.
An autistic person comes from a different background.�
It would be wrong for you to conclude that every
autistic person is the same, and has the same
personal, physical, emotional, and mental history.�
Yet our language dumps tens of thousands of peculiar
children into the same trash bin of wordiness.� This
illustrates one serious problem in our wordiness. A
vast diversity of abilities and sensibilities gets
lumped under one term: "autistic," or "psychotic."!
An autistic person comes from outside the domain of
normally sophisticated language development and this
helps him see what is so flawed in culture and in the
wordiness a culture imprints upon every naive child.�
This imprint of wordiness makes a cultured person
label a person who is outside of the culture.� The
cultured person always has his or her "clique" of
close associates and the autistic person doesn't fit
into this narrow "clique."� The autistic person can
see the broad picture with all the plants and the
animals and with all the humans and their bloody
fighting and destructiveness as they run rampant over
the land killing many plants and animals without even
being conscious of what they are really doing!� Humans
are blinded by their culture and their cliquishness.�
But who can turn on the light and make people see this
clearly?� Normally cultured non-autistic social
leaders continue to train their followers and the
children of their followers in the same old way their
ancestors trained them...called "ethics," "morality,"
and "religion."
"There is a joy in autism that is profound."� I say
this from my own personal experience.� Of course I
might not be a "typical example" of an autistic
person.� But I see pictures of autistic children and I
read about autistic children and I witness accounts of
autistic behavior that is very similar to the autistic
behavior I exhibited when I was little.� Unlike many
autistic children, I did acquire some language.� But
my use of language wasn't good enough to enable me to
participate in the fast-paced social activities that
children enjoy.� These are games of tag and be-tagged,
of it and not-it in the use of words and the rapid
exchange of talker and listener roles.� As a
consequence, whenever I am with one single person I
can talk with them about certain subjects, but when a
third person comes and joins the group, usually the
talk goes way too fast and I can't keep up with the
fast pace of it and participate.� I just have always
had a handicap in social interaction.� But what I
sense and perceive is relevant to the peace issue and
the problems of modern humanity in a world of rapidly
dwindling genetic diversity and natural resources.
During the last twenty years there's been an increased
popular awareness of autism and autistic persons but
from what I can see, the books written by autistic
persons tend to support the idea that an autistic
person truly needs to take certain anti-psychotic
medications and be more and more and more like a
normally cultured person and satisfy more and more the
expectations of normally social persons.� Western
society views autism as a "disorder" and a "disease"
rather than as a "divine" lesson to be learned.� In
other words, it shocks people to be told that an
autistic person has something important to teach
people who as naive children just swallowed the
language and culture idea hook, line, and sinker and
strove mightily to imitate older children and imitate
the teacher and the leader as in "Heil Hitler!"
Welll, maybe this is saying it a little too strongly.
But this is a good point. Certain individual teachers
are hailed as GREAT men or GREAT women because they
exemplify the cultural ideal.� Remember how Adolf
Hitler the great communicator appealed to his people.�
Other great leaders have appealed for the same
reason...they were great dramatic performers.� They
had been great soldiers.� They had great social
skills.� The problem was, though, that they were
simply well socialized and well cultured in their own
cliquish and exclusive culture.� Their sentiments were
archaic and provincial. As a consequence, they had no
knowledge of the wider world and the life-sustaining
providential partnerships in a living ecosystem.� This
life-sustaining ecosystem is presently being destroyed
by thoughtless, mindless, and successful men and women
who are following the ancient ideas of their ancestral
culture.� Warfare is just one consequence of this
socio-cultural blindness.
An autistic child is kept isolated by his peers
because children don't actively try and help an
autistic classmate.� When a child can't participate in
the fast give and take of sports and social games the
other children ignore the handicapped child or even
pick on him.� This mindless aggressiveness of normal
children drives the handicapped child even farther
away and gives him a chance to perceive the wider
view.� Of course a handicapped child may feel sorry
for himself.� If the atypical child can rise above
self-pity and observe all there is to observe, in due
time he will see the grand scheme.� The grand scheme
is ecological:� trees and shrubs are dependent upon
microbial fungal growth in the soil, as well as
sunlight, insect pollinators, and animal and other
distribution of seeds.� Animals themselves are
dependent upon the many kinds of plants that grow in
rich diversity in a natural setting.� Then the
cultured humans come and try and impose their ancient
provincial ideal over the whole landscape.� War is an
example of this.� One nation comes over another and
ravages the landscape without any awareness that there
is much more in the landscape than just human beings.�
The humans are just totally human centered and culture
centered.� This is the modern blindness that reflects
the ancient ancestral blindness.
Today there is a widespread fear that there will be
another global war whose destructiveness will be even
greater than the last world war.� Some people are also
worried about the rapid destruction of wild species of
plants and animals.� Other people are worried about
the gradual decline of the white race as men and women
of other races are becoming more and more numerous.�
And there is, of course, interracial tension amongst
people of the darker races.� There is this
socio-cultural blindness in every single ethnic group.
There is also the greenhouse effect.
An autistic person has two important lessons to teach
people.� The first is that there is a great reservoir
of pleasure inside the body and brain itself.� This
reservoir of blessedness is able to provide more
pleasure than most cultured humans are ever taught
about.� This should sound wonderful to hundreds of
millions of young people who today equate pleasure
with a food feast, a comedy show, beating a classmate
in some sport or some school test, or just making love
with a handsome peer.� These pleasures are
short-lived, though, and they are often followed by a
period of depression or boredom.� In many a young
person, if not in everyone, there is this potential to
experience the "divine" pleasure at every moment.
The second thing an autistic person has to teach is
the vast panorama that is just outside your door.� You
can just step out the door and explore the physical
world and see even more than Leonardo da Vinci ever
saw.� As you go exploring the many-splendored world
near at hand you will see children and adults engaged
in their games of furious pursuit and you will start
to laugh or weep.� The insanity of humanity will hit
you like a stiff breeze and blow your hat off.� In an
effort to regain what you just lost you may run after
that missing part of your wardrobe and then you will
be back in the fast pursuit game.� But if you just let
go you will soon be free of all your clothing.� You
will see fresh and you will feel the sunlight and the
breezes playing over every single hair and pore of
your body.� This will help revitalize some of your
infantile sensibility! You will soon be doing what I
do.
Before you come down too hard on a naked or mostly
naked man standing in the town square or up at the
university quad just feeling the bright sun all over
his skin as he wiggles a large mirror and flashes
sunlight directly onto his face and into his eyes,
before you call the police on him because his autistic
behavior just doesn't conform to the sacred
socio-cultural norm, you really should consider his
life experiences, his intelligence, and his own
personal point of view.� That is to say, you can try
playing the "Leonardo Game" just a little.� You can
try stepping out the door of your own house, and your
own little cerebral sphere that is tucked back inside
of your skull behind your eyes, and start to sense the
wider world of the landscape all around you that so
many other cultured people just don't notice.� For
example, in many of the crannies of the walls there
are spiders living and catching insects that would be
noxious if thousands of spiders didn't kill one or two
of these critters every day.� Also, in other crannies
in these walls there are odynerus wasps whose
providential lives are vitally important to us as well
as to other creatures round about.� And if you've
never heard of an odynerus wasp, well, go look it up
on the Internet or in some other database.� Start to
open your mind to the wider world. The information
about Leonardo's wonder world is immense and growing
every second.
This opening up to the wider world is a great
treatment for chronic depression, boredom, and hate.�
When you open up to the wider world you are opening up
your senses to the reality that is all around you.�
Your sensitivity increases!� You see more!� You hear
more!� You notice more fragrances!� The wind blows
your cap off along with that chip on your adolescent
(or wanna be adolescent) shoulder.� Soon you are like
an autistic man walking through the streets of
ubiquitous but unknowing people.� The joy you feel is
unknowable to them because no one ever taught then
this "Leonardo Game."� They might have heard about
Leonardo or looked at some of his paintings, but the
paintings don't come out and tell you exactly what
inspired Leonardo.� In my writings I have called this
the "universal mind." Leonardo was a "genius."
The universal minded person loves to explore the
physical world, as well as the world of ideas,
thoughts, feelings, expressions, and cultures.� The
universal minded person moves from person to person,
from thought to thought, from idea to idea, and from
place to place and strives to sense, observe, and know
whatever there is at the moment.� Of course no one can
know everything!� But the universal minded person has
an open-minded, very youthful attitude.� This is the
mind of the little child who is still fresh and keen
on life, the way, the truth, and the life of the
"divine" person.
Leonardo spent quite a lot of time painting the life
of Christ, and Christ tried to teach people about the
universal mind.� But the language of Christ was
tailored to suit the provincial-mindedness of the
ancient Jews and the ancient Romans.� As you know,
languages and cultures change slowly through time.�
Leonardo himself had to appeal to the culture of Italy
in the 14th century...or was it the 15th century?�
Today, the language and the cultures have changed a
little since then, but the child spirit and the child
mind are still open to explore more and be led by a
teacher who is atypical and universal, and not a
representative of any provincial culture-ideal.
So these are two joys of autism which are important to
share.� Experiencing these joys helps a person
understand the human situation which is becoming more
and more precarious.� Furthermore, the young people of
high school and college age are still relatively close
to their own childhood so they can more easily pull
that state of mind back up from memory and apply it
more to be more open minded to what the Jewish Messiah
tried to teach the Jews and the Romans. It's easy,
though, for a teacher's message to be garbled by
followers who don't really understand the "divine."
Of course you might not want to believe what I say
about Jesus� Christ.� And I am not expecting you to
just accept everything I write hook, line, and
sinker.� But no matter what, you CAN step out the door
and venture beyond the closed room inside of your own
skull.� You CAN go into other classrooms and study new
subjects!� You CAN devote three hours each day to just
exploring in the landscape, and in the library, and in
the campus clubs, and you CAN find new subjects, new
persons, new teachers, and other novelties round
about!� And in your own mind and life, you CAN explore
more to discover new ideas from within our own self.�
Perhaps you will start writing poems, or songs, or
articles!� You will begin to become more Leonardo-Like
yourself.� This is because Leonardo was a great
explorer of both the natural world and the universal
mind within himself. Your own special talent will be
helped as you apply this drug-free mind-expanding
procedure to your own life.
8:30AM Saturday, November 2, 2002
Revised 11:15AM Tuesday, November 12, 2002
John L. Waters
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