Leonard Orr: Rebirthing and the 8 Biggies

Rebirthing is a tool for healing, personal growth, and spiritual awakening.

Conscious Breathing helps us to process our minds and emotions by supplying the energy and the power needed to transform ourselves, heal our emotions, and reach a greater inner balance. It is a safe, effective, and natural technique.

Rebirthing was created by Leonard Orr in 1974 and has since been practiced by millions of people worldwide. Some yogis have practiced the circular breathing rhythm used in Rebirthing for centuries. It is said in the Vedas (Indian Scriptures) that circular breathing leads to eternity.

The Biggest Biggie
By
Leonard D. Orr

In the 1970's I became internationally famous for listing and clarifying the major sources of human trauma. I called them the Biggies – the 8 major causes of human trauma – mental and physical illness.

They are:

Birth Trauma – including prenatal and infancy memories. Infancy memories stuck in the body are the basic cause of most terminal diseases. They are terminal only because we use wrong methods for attempting to heal them.

Parental Disapproval Syndrome – this is what most psychoanalysis is about.

Specific Negatives – misusing the tremendous power of the human mind to create our own trauma and negative experiences.

Unconscious Death Urge is rooted in the belief that death is inevitable and beyond our control, but usually works according to family tradition.

Karma from Past Lives – if we had some, and most people do. Conscious reincarnation is an alternative to physical immortality.

School Trauma – most people had their divine nature and creativity totally stifled and destroyed by school through emotional energy pollution and unnatural curriculum. Many people become zombies by their 20's, if not earlier.

Religion Trauma – few religions develop our natural divinity and teach mental practices that enable us to realize our potential.

Senility – senility and old age are not death sentences, but the beginning of the youthing process. But without mastering spiritual purification, the goal of the human civilization seems to make people zombies.

The common denominator of all these sources of human debilitation is emotional energy pollution. We are inundated with Energy and information that we cannot digest. This emotional energy pollution is not transmitted verbally nor rationally, but by the contact of one person’s emotional body with another person’s emotional body. Emotional energy pollution is nonverbal. It is a basic undercurrent in all human interaction. We not only feel anger, fear, depression and illness from other people, we can also feel peace, happiness and health. We automatically pick up excess energy impregnated with information that doesn’t necessarily have any rational content. E.E.P. is also called psychic dirt, the pain body, stress and tension, habits, unconscious beliefs and feelings, sin or just memories. Sin is a meaningless word for most people. The Greek word for sin means to miss the mark. When you realize that the mark is the constant experience of Oneness, the word takes on rich meaning. We absorb emotional energy pollution when we are sitting in a meeting, bus, train or plane, or when we go to the supermarket or pass people on the street. It can be felt and even measured somewhat by spiritually sensitive persons. Most people are already inundated by so much E.E.P. that they don’t feel much – they are already zombies. These people are the chief polluters. But even relatively pure people who bathe twice per day, meditate, do spiritual purification with fire, breathing, good diet and exercise, also have some E.E.P. that we can feel. When I met a 2000-year old man, his presence felt like a feather. We don’t often meet people who are totally clear. If you look at the 8 biggies of human trauma, obviously only people who have survived old age and senility are basically clear and clean in their energy body. So we have to be victorious over the basic human condition to be actually spiritually enlightened. Otherwise, it is just a theory – a very valuable theory. But the theory of enlightenment has to be practiced and actualized. Most people don’t achieve much spiritually in this Life because they are overwhelmed by E.E.P. Three of my best friends died in the last few years of being trapped in the guru syndrome. I am pointing out to you that E.E.P. is probably the greatest killer. E.E.P. kills more people than eating meat, believing that death is inevitable and even automobiles. Eating meat is the basic cause of heart disease and cancer and all kinds of victim consciousness. And E.E.P. even kills people who believe in and strive for physical immortality. This is true because our diet is largely controlled by E.E.P. Emotional energy pollution is just energy that contains information. It doesn’t matter if the information is good or bad. All information that is not the knowledge of the Tree of Life is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and kills people if they eat it. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is the mind. The fruit of this tree is our thoughts, beliefs and feelings. The knowledge of the Tree of Life is the knowledge of the substantive qualities of Life Itself. These are the eternal qualities of our Divine Nature. People who are trapped in their own thoughts, beliefs, doctrines and feelings in a way that cuts them off from the Tree of Life, must die. Death is inevitable for them, but for people who are entering the Tree of Life, death is optional. Even the belief in physical immortality can kill us if we allow it to separate us from the Transcendental State. We have to Live in the Reality above the Mind – in the reality that is beyond reality and is the Source of Reality. Physical Immortality philosophy is not a substitute for Living in the Presence of God. We don’t have to do anything to be immortal. We are immortal by nature. We just have to remember this above all things: thoughts, beliefs, doctrines, memories, habits, attitudes and feelings. This is the Science of Life and Personal Aliveness. “For God (Spirit, Energy, Being) so loved the earth, air, water and fire (the world), that He gave us His Natural Divinity (His son) that whoever knows (believes in Him), his/her Divine Nature will not perish, but have Everlasting Life.” Our Divine Nature is Energy, thought and Form – the Holy Trinity, with nothing added. Our body is created by Thought and maintained by following the rules built into its health and aliveness. The physical body is created and maintained by the Energy Body and the emotional body – mind. Our body is the effect of our mind. Our body-mind includes our conditioning and this is E.E.P. - it includes thoughts, feelings, beliefs and unconscious energy concentrations – energy colored by thoughts and feelings of other people whether it is conscious or unconscious. It is positive or negative mental mass floating in their aura and ours. We can clean this stuff out of our aura with the basic spiritual purification practices of fasting, good diet, exercise (earth), conscious energy breathing (air), bathing twice per day (water purification), especially with the snorkel habit, and fire – sitting by an open flame. These basic Spiritual Purification habits can clean the mind faster than the mind can clean the mind. Knowing this is the supreme wisdom of the mind. Winning the spiritual purification game is what keeps us alive and enables us to defeat death. This is the teaching of Babaji from the beginning of creation and will be until the end. These are the rules for an immortal body. Eventually the practices allow us to experience our body as points of light – a light body – seen and experienced as physical – a hologram that can be perceived and touched by others. We can realize the Ideal Divine Body. When we are losing the spiritual purification game, we can see it through our symptoms – including stiffness; lack of flexibility in mind and body; feeling miserable, depressed or angry; and the guru belly phenomenon. Our death urge can get out of control. We tend to indulge in self-sabotaging behavior, become non-functional and unproductive, and sabotage relationships and our success in every area of our lives. We become zombies – walking dead people. The obvious solution for this condition is to do enough spiritual purification practices with earth, air, water and fire to get our joy of Life back. The deathist state is accelerated to the extent that we neglect the practices. Even though we do these practices, the guru syndrome can still kill us. When I work too much with other people, my guru belly exceeds 40 inches and the “noise” of others` E.E.P. destroys my quality and joy of Life so much that I feel like dying. Solitude works, especially when I do it with the earth, air, water and fire practices. The E.E.P. includes birth trauma, infancy atrophy, parental disapproval, eating habits, the death urge, heavy feelings and foggy emotions we absorbed from our family and schoolmates, past life karma, senile behaviors, physical weakness, faulty religious perceptions and excess noise that cripples our productivity and makes us non-functional and lazy. It is both – mental and physical paralysis. The best cure for this state is nothing – to do nothing but relax and wait on the Lord to enter our body and bring us back into abundant Aliveness and Health. And while we are waiting on the Lord, to sit or sleep with fire, bathe before sunrise and sunset, eat healthy food and fast, stay in good physical condition with hiking, manual labor or hatha yoga, and conscious energy breathing. Mantra japa also fuels all this with Divine Power and Love. The guru syndrome can keep us from doing all this. And we have to teach our students to do it, as well as teaching them to unravel the death urge which they learned from their family tradition, past lives, cultural and religious conditioning, etc. Babaji says very simply, “The wise do spiritual practices,” and he sets the example in all of His bodies on Earth. The practices do work! Fasting and fire purification can liberate our breathing. And people who only know and practice Rebirthing – conscious energy breathing – discover sometimes that it no longer works. Obviously, these people have to learn and add the practices with earth, fire and water. E.E.P. can be very dangerous. It has killed my friends. It could kill me if I am not aware of it and don’t watch it. It can make me very miserable, but the practices with earth, air, water and fire take it away. Earth, air, water and fire can clean the mind faster than the mind can clean the mind. This is the supreme wisdom of the mind. Jesus and all great saints died because of E.E.P. Even Babaji died of E.E.P. to teach us how it works. Energy plus information is mental mass. If you have an inch of dust on your floor, it won’t go away if you have beautiful thoughts about yourself or God. You have to get a broom and a dustpan and clean it up and throw it away. The same is true of E.E.P. We have to do the work and get rid of it. It takes as long as it takes. I wish the problem would go away, but Babaji once told me that earth, air, water and fire is the eternal Sadhana. The problem of E.E.P. and cleansing it with spiritual purification is built into the nature of Energy, thought and Form. It won’t go away, just as the process of cleaning our homes, dishes, clothes, etc, doesn’t go away. Our Energy Body is invincible; it even survives death over and over. However, we have to take care of it, if we desire for it to keep the physical body in great shape. There are two kinds of body types: the obese body and the stiff body. Without soaking in water, spending enough time with the fire and conscious energy breathing, even exercise can turn people into stiff zombies. People who depend on diet alone – even the best raw food diet – die because of lack of water, fire and air purification.

Breathing is the queen of yoga – pranayama. Thinking is the king of yoga – meditation. But even energy breathing and meditation together doesn’t work without earth and water. We have to consciously use all the four elements in balance. Together they produce victory over the greatest danger in this world – E.E.P.