In recent decades there has been a fairly steep rise in the number of children diagnosed with ADHD and autism, at least in Western societies. ADHD is the most common diagnosis for a mental disorder among young in the US and has increased with 16% since 2007. According to the Center for Disease Control the diagnosis of autism has increased with as much as 30% in two years!! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism). I will not here discuss what may be the cause of these conditions, or the rise especially of autism, except than to say that the dominating neurological paradigm in medicine does not have a clue. Even so, it has become common practice to give afflicted children amphetamine-like drugs. There may have been partial improvements from this, but several studies have also indicated that these drugs have no long-term positive effects.

Such a pharmacological practice finds its origin in a materialist philosophy about the nature of mental disorders and the human mind in general, in which it is taken for granted that the mind is generated by chemical processes in the brain. Some have asserted that this philosophy is part of a war on consciousness. Regardless of if this is the case, we should recognize that if the belief is that the mind is a product of the brain then what modern doctors are doing is absolutely logical: they treat the brain with drugs in the hope that it will have some positive effects on the chemical processes they think underlie mind. The long-term benefits of this have however been questionable.

I am not here saying that such treatments should never be used. I cannot judge what may give relief to an individual family or improve the life experience of a child. What I am saying however is that the completely flawed understanding of the relationship between mind and brain that dominates modern medicine has blocked the discovery of possible alternative treatments. An interesting alternative way of treating children with autism or ADHD diagnoses has for instance been developed by the Swedish psychiatrist Harald Blomberg, who has been remarkably successful (http://www.blombergrmt.com/cv.htm). Not surprisingly, his work has been accused of being “unscientific” by the medical establishment in his country, because it does not fit into the materialist paradigm. Dr Blomberg begins his treatment of the children by changing their diet to gluten-free and seeks to remove heavy metals from their bodies. After this, he trains the children to do certain rhythmic bodily movements, notably involving the head, that for a variety of reasons today’s children may have missed out on in early childhood. In this way, it seems he has become successful at helping children with autism and ADHD without using drugs.

These two types of treatment, drugs vs rhythmic movements, reflect two different philosophies regarding the relationship between brain and mind. In one (drug treatment) you assume the mind is a product of the brain. In the other, and this is my own interpretation, you assume that the human mind is related to the four directions of the earth meaning that movements of the head in relation to those may have a healing effect. When the Egyptians some 5000 years ago began to download the global mind they recognized its origin in the four directions. In the same way a child living today must find a way of downloading the directions of the mind. This, I believe is why bodily movements may actually improve the condition of a child with autism or ADHD.

The reason I am bringing this up in the context of The Global Mind and the Rise of Civilization is to highlight that this book is not only about ancient civilizations. It also provides a theoretical understanding of the mind that I think will be of value in many different contexts. Hence, it proposes a solution to the age-old question about the origin and nature of the human mind. I believe we need to have certainty about this if we are to set the relationship between brain and mind straight. This is something that also has consequences for how we also if we deal with more tangible problems, such as for instance the treatment of mental disorders or more generally how to deal with traumas. Hence, the search for means to deal with such things will take entirely different directions if we believe that consciousness is primary to matter compared to if it we think it is a product of the brain. Hence, the actual evidence that the mind is not a product of our material reality– which this book provides– may provide significant insights to practitioners of the healing arts. In my own experience, speculations, intuitions or fantasies, even if they are correct, only take you so far and in the official view of society they mostly take you nowhere.

It is partially for this reason I have written The Global Mind and the Rise of Civilization. If we do not know what the mind is or where it comes from, will we really understand how it may change, in ourselves or in others? I believe that knowledge about the mind may aid us in healing ourselves as individuals and humanity as a collective and I hope many will engage in this inquiry.