The Coming Race – From Buddha to Asperger

(Brief Excerpts)

Callum Jensen (pen name, Dan Green)

... I experienced one of the most calming and harmonic days of my life parallel to another in May 1994 at Samye-Ling when HH the Dalai Lama was paying a special visit before 20,000 attendees to consecrate the completed Temple that had been in construction since 1970. Being amidst Tibetan Buddhists and persons with autism, I found myself recognising a 'sameness' and similar deep vibe, and wondered why this could be so....

Key to Buddhist doctrine is the concept of impermanence, the continual changing nature of all beings and objects. Given this, we can ask a question - if Buddhism, instigated by the presence and investigations of one Gautama Buddha, - like all else must change, then into what? In September 2009, the National Health Service in England made a startling announcement, that one in every hundred adults in the country has autism, the neurological condition described as a complex developmental disability.... To quote [Leo] Kanner ..., we read, 'It whenever possible disregards, ignores, shuts out anything that comes to the child from outside.' Kanner went on to stress that the lack of contact he was describing was only in dealing with people whereas on the other hand objects might be acceptable. He chose his other defining feature as obsessive insistence on sameness, 'Most simply in the form of repetitive stereotyped movements and noises, additionally in the adoption of elaborate rituals and routines and lastly, the surfacing of strange, narrow preoccupations better expressed as highly focused intense fascinations and fixations.' ...

... Looking into the name of 'Leo Kanner', we find contained in anagram 'Koan' - the technique employed by the Zen Buddhist seeking paradox to transcend conceptual/logical thought as demonstrated in Asperger Syndrome!...

The term 'autistic' comes from Swiss psychiatrist Paul Eugen Bleuler, who in 1908 used the word from the Greek 'autos' meaning 'self', to describe the social withdrawal seen in adults with schizophrenia. Our foray in the world of the Far East strongly suggests that the origin of this word, and the species-to-be, far pre-dates 1908, for the Mother Tongue locates its origin in the Tibetan word 'Tsa-u-ma' - anagram 'autasm' - which refers to 'central channel', a further reference to a middle, to the Tibetan Lamas the major energy channel of what is known to them as the vajra body, visualised as a hollow tube of light in front of the spine. Tibetan mysticism tells us that this central channel connects vertically from the crown of the head to an area in front of the spinal base. At strategic points down this straight line are seven focal points referred to as 'energy wheels', a further notation implying the autistic fascination with spinning, commonly known today to all as chakras. The vajra body is a collective system of channels, energy winds (the energy serving as the mount for various dense and subtle states of consciousness) and drops (used in the generation of great bliss) that can be activated though yoga tantra. It is down the central channel that various bursts of energy can be directed outward, often misinterpreted as an autistic outburst, more correctly the overload energy of the PWA [person with Autism] referred to by the Chinese as Chi....

The conclusion of my long and personal investigation has brought me a greater cosmic understanding of the role of both Buddhist and PWA, a tangible connexion between various schools of the Eastern Buddhist's search for enlightenment and the unfolding and ongoing evolution of the autistic consciousness as evinced in the common aspiration of turning within, detachment and elaborate ritual. After two and a half thousand years it appears to me that the Buddhist is handing over the baton in a new style of race. The role of the person with autism and Aspergers and where it is destined to lead us, has now begun for earnest.

From:

http://ellisctaylor.homestead.com/cjthecomingrace.html

and:

http://ellisctaylor.homestead.com/cjthecomingrace2.html