London Lecture. May 2009 – by Tomio Kikuchi,
Translation – JMBorba
Transcription – Ritchie Tennant
Celebrating Darwin’s’ birthday, which I share, I’ve been interested in the drama of Darwin, and researched his challenges, now I am taking the opportunity to visit his land. Shrewsbury has a preserved and original feel and the surrounding nature touched me greatly.
We have limited time, so we must use precious time by deepening and broadening, but time will not allow us to get too deep or too wide!
Yesterday we went to Speakers Corner in Hyde Park, London, for a dialogue, for people who live in this terrible reality!
I was recently in Paris and visited Victor Hugo house, writer of Les Miserable, if he was born now he would be even more exasperated.
Personality before profession.
In Cambridge I checked out the style of students at Cambridge. I was horrified! They should be an example! But they will not graduate with reliable personalities. Only they will graduate profession not personality. They will learn to get money but not strengthen personalities. Therefore they are downgraded, deformed not formed. They are puppets of money, and that is the reality that envelops people. System overvaluing money, so they won’t develop, they will underdeveloped, they will be enveloped by the monetary system.
Especially young people who are the living ambulant future. Youngsters with no future are hopeless.
A Stolen Future – a book – the unforeseeable future, no-body knows the future that’s our responsibility. You can’t buy or sell the future, everyone running after money, accelerating, chasing money, lives are accelerated because of valuing money to excess.
Money and violence.
Even young people chase money; crime, killing, corruption all caused by money.
It’s not easy to live in a strategic way . Therefore I bought you an example. Brazil, Russia, China have a potential for controlling their future, but even these countries face the same crisis.
Here I show evidence of being a victim of the crisis. ( Shows photo ) . I was almost killed three months ago, my house was invaded by two guys carrying guns, I almost died. But it’s happening all the time, people are dying off like flies. I almost died, at the moment I was opening my door, I was unaware for one second, I didn’t check around, I usually do it but that Saturday I was busy and I lost awareness for one second and paid the price. Going in and coming out 5 times nothing happened but on the 6th time two bad guys pushed me into my house and beat me. I tried to react but the man said I’m going to kill you, I started react but they had a gun,
‘if you are not beaten by us we are going to kill you’.
Everything has a limit.
I noticed the limit I was beaten by the butt of the gun, punched and kicked until I was bleeding profusely. So I felt the danger and stopped reacting otherwise they would have shot me.
A few weeks ago a karate teachers car was invaded by two thieves, inside the garage he tried to position himself but he was shot and died. A friend of my sons, an Aikido enthusiast, went to the bank and took out some money, two thieves were waiting, when he realised he tried to escape but was killed on the spot. There are limits to things and even if you win it might happen worse afterwards. A karate teacher recently shot a couple of thieves in self defence, he was regaled as a hero.
So he said I’ll give you money, here, have my watch, but when the thieves got nearer he took the gun and killed the thieves. It was legitimate self-defence so the TV and radio praised him. But within two months there was a revenge killing and he died. In every place it is dangerous.
Independent healing.
This attack was very hard to recover from, I lost a lot of blood. In any other family you would go to hospital, I was very wounded, with weakness, breathing difficulty, anaemia. I didn’t spend a cent, because I had trained to heal myself independently. Life is an incident and many incidents will happen, they come like waves in the sea, threats that come inexorable, inexhaustibly that’s reality.
Those who face a crisis, they deserve it they have earned it it’s a privilege, so I have been privileged and I have to use these incidents because everything is useful to those that know how to use them, for those who notice the reason of the consequence.
Crisis is a privilege.
Everything that happens has a reason, it is ‘reason-able’. I was unaware for one second, I should have checked for strangers, then I could have gone around and come back. I normally do this but at this moment I had one second of carelessness. I admitted my own error. So for me these thieves were the best teachers, because the best teacher is the biggest challenger they were masters to me, calling my attention, you weren’t careful for that second, I am deeply grateful to these teachers.
Everything is reasonable.
Sickness is the same thing when you get sick you need to find the reason, all sickness is reasonable,.
Everything is a consequence all you have to do is to understand the reason. If you deserve to become sick good, but those who do not deserve to become sick and remain healthy will miss the opportunity of how to search for health. If you are not sick you don’t search for health. An illness is a well deserved opportunity to find out how to become better!
The existence of the worst thief, dressed in white, the dangerous ones, doctors are the worst robbers!! The most brilliant disciple of Socrates said lawyers, priests, doctors are the three biggest bandits, they commit abuse, they take advantage of the problems of the system to become rich. Of course not all of them but the majority, and this tendency will become worse and worse. So treatments that cost more money are said to be pathological. Medicine should be used as Hypocrites said. He suggested you must obey the order of nature whether it is inside or outside.
Not sickness but the sick person.
It’s not really the physicians that cure the disease it’s nature that cures but the doctor gets the money. Doctors can’t even cure simple things, we have to recover our regularity our immunity and our vitality in the blood, through the mouth. Because our organism is controlled by blood circulation, and not one of the 25 trillion cells can escape the contact and influence of blood, and because of this extraordinary action of the blood are vitality is sustained.
Blood is our vitality.
The function of blood happens 24/7, no holidays, it circulates so much, in 24 hours 6-7000 litres of blood circulate every day, it’s incredible. It’s so important, because to renew the cells and organs we need blood. So the medicine of Hypocrites was the medicine of the blood. He used to say that we have to control the humours of the organism, meaning humidity, which is the blood, hormone system and the mucous and especially the mouth which is the each persons barometer, the mouth is the oasis of our organism. People who have a tendency to dry mouth may easily transfer their body oasis into a bodily desert!
Saliva – our salvation!
The humidity of the mouth means the immunity and vitality of the human body. The body is controlled by the mouth, but the majority of people have a tendency to have a dry mouth and doctors suggest we should drink a lot of water 2-3 litres a day, so their heads are not functioning too well. You shouldn’t drink too much or too little water just a minimum as necessary. People who have a dry mouth drink too much water, but the issue is to avoid a dry mouth, it’s all a consequence of lifestyle. So everything depends on lifestyle, a lifestyle that provokes problems and a lifestyle that prevents problems.
Blood, decision, and destiny.
If you prevent you won’t feel the need for an excess of water, many people are drinking water like mad, this reveals a lifestyle that promotes a loss of vitality in the body and in the blood system.
If you eat whole meals, not disintegrated meals, then you will integrally not feel the need for anything else, because integrated meals means vitality and disintegrated meals mean de-vitality. The difference between whole grain is that it has life, it will grow, producing many others, in the whole grain you have the fundamental substances for life and to multiply into 100 or 200 seeds, that’s an example of nature, integrity is vitality. Also whole things have a lot of fire and many minerals so you have to chew, but refined things, un-integrated things, you don’t even have to chew. No need to chew therefore saliva glands not stimulated and that’s when you have lost the main function of the mouth. The main function of the mouth could be chewing but salivation is the fundamental reason, normally the secretion of saliva is 750ml per day, a lack of chewing means you have lost control of the blood. To regulate the blood you have to control the raw material of the blood and that goes through the mouth. Chewing and salivating.
Control what goes in your mouth!
Saliva contains many important enzymes, it is a catalyst if you chew well you secret necessary saliva and the immune strength of saliva is incredibly powerful, in any case it is also alkaline. So chewed food become alkaline and when it reaches the stomach it finds gastric acids, so if there is a lack of alkalinity in the swallowed food then the proportion of acid to alkali in the stomach you get an unbalanced proportion.
Unbalance is a necessity.
You have to be unbalanced, it should be more alkaline than acid. The problem with ‘macrobiotics’ which does not exist any more, it exists but only commercially because the teaching of macrobiotics says that we should learn a culinary art of balance, you should learn how to eat in a balanced way, this way you will balance your health. It sounds like disease is an unbalance and that health is balanced. Just like peace would be balanced and war would be unbalanced. This is the way people understand it but that’s an illusion because in our world we can’t find anything which is balanced, because balance has stopped.
It’s interesting how people look for things which don’t exist. Things that exist nobody wants. That’s a paradox of reality. But real existence is constantly unbalanced, so that we can constantly rebalance the unbalance, that’s how dynamic reality is, so you shouldn’t look for balance. Even the fundamental teaching of macrobiotics said that you should balance Yin and Yang, positive and negative should be balanced but that’s an illusion.
History.
The original Japanese teaching did not use the term macrobiotics, but because we decided to make an international expansion, the original word for the control of health through food was called “Shokuyojo”.
Also ‘Shokyuo’ but the words were very unattractive, so we looked around for a word for this traditional Japanese lifestyle, we found a doctor called Huefland, the doctor for the Prussian empire, a vegetarian, who first used the term macrobiotic – the art of gaining youth and longevity. So we chose this name in the 50’s, but something missing, so as there was a great popularity of Buddhism and Zen, so we called it zen macrobiotics, more attractive to intellectuals, and Sartre and philosophers, Zen was a boom in the western world the hippies liked it too, John Lennon was very interested, and macrobiotics spread round the world.
Flowers without roots.
But things weren’t linked to the original sense, because of this boom of Zen, so we had to relate to the root. Just nice flowers without a root don’t work.
So to say you get health peace love is very attractive, but these nice things they don’t last too long. Very beautiful flowers die very quickly too. So we need to look at the radical thing the root.
The radical root.
Some people criticised us and said you are too fanatical, but usually people who were opposed to this radical, to this root, were superficial. So we shouldn’t be too radical or too superficial always these two should be integrated., these antagonistic parts. Really macro attracts a lot of people but it doesn’t last long, nowadays only people who don’t know macrobiotics look for it. It’s clear that macro seekers are looking for a greater awareness of what they eat and don’t want to be involved with over-consumerism, so they get better but it doesn’t last long. Because they fall into a dogma, macro with a unilateral view saying that you only have to have balance, no unbalance. Equilibrium does not exist but rebalancing does exist, there’s no need to worry about the inexistence of balance, there is no balance in this world. What is the problem with balance not existing, but there is a rebalancing possibility, so you can always be rebalancing in the midst of constant unbalance, becoming unbalanced will strengthen your vitality, unbalancing means vitality and by balancing you tend to exhaust your vitality.
Examples of functioning unbalance.
There are plenty of examples, the best being ones self. Heart for example. The heart does not have a balanced shape, otherwise it would be round, but nothing is perfectly round, even the egg, with yolk and little vacuum at tip is very ‘unbalanced’. The heart has a smaller and a bigger part, the rhythm is not balanced like an engine, big beat/ little beat, this is a concrete example of unbalance we must check.
This is a wonderful example, by using the heart you strengthen the heart, but if you don’t use it enough you devitalise, that’s the marvel of organic systems they get stronger with use, whereas mechanical systems wear out!
Mouth is a key.
It is thanks to blood circulation that an organic system gets stronger. It is blood that is important, that’s why when you control the quantity and quality of blood through the raw material of blood which is what you eat. The mouth controls the regularity the immunity the quality of blood, it’s a key, the mouth.
Train the control of your mouth, then our organic system is out of danger, and our practical criteria can be used for anything.
Everything can be useful.
In this world there is nothing that is not useful, everything is useful if you know how to use it. Because everything has a reason and if you notice the reason, you can see that everything is usefully reasonable, but for that training you have to understand a little secret. The capacity to understand the secret is through training, keep training and you acquire this capacity and training is conditioning, becoming fit with conditioning, de-conditioning and reconditioning. Those are the conditions for the control of our ternary system.
Our ternary treasure.
Our organism has three systems, nervous system, circulatory system and the muscle system, these three systems support our physiology, and when one of the three is weakened then you have a symptom of ternary irregularity.
We are controlled by these three systems simultaneously. Intellect, the nervous system, emotions through the blood circulation and flexibility, vitality and decision by the muscular system, not one can be absent.
So if we are if we are focussed on these three systems simultaneously we can discover the way in which problems come about.
I had a result I was attacked and I was almost killed, but because I was training with the three systems, without depending on anybody, and spending no money I recovered and I’m meeting you here.
So you have to train in a ternary, three dimensional lifestyle. You have to learn the reason for everything, everything has a reason for being there and that’s how everything can become reasonably useful; everything is reason-able – everything has a reason. To sustain the force of mental, intellectual and spiritual brain this function needs to be sustained by a verbal nutrition because the words, the language we use and how we use it, have the power of nourishing the brain, the mind.
I doubt – therefore I am.
You have to stimulate the brain, just like the heart. But you have to have unbalance about that, you have to doubt about things. If you don’t doubt you never learn anything, because those that doubt are studious people.
You should especially doubt yourself, so if you have doubts and questions about yourself, you will find things broadly and deeply to perfect your personality. Everybody has doubts especially young people, young people are ambulant masses of doubt, but that’s normal that’s the way it should be.
Young people who have no doubts are not young people, a young person has an obligation to have doubts. They have the right to have doubts, because people who doubt can study. But it shouldn’t be accumulated doubt you have to have applied doubt.
Use your doubts
The majority of doubts of young people are accumulated, they don’t know how to apply doubts and they are accumulating more and more and accumulated doubts are dangerous, because an explosion or an implosion may occur, destruction, revenge that’s accumulation.
You shouldn’t let doubts become stagnant, you always apply your doubts in a dialogue form, by talking, so it costs nothing to ask, but young people nowadays don’t ask because its no use asking anyway, people can’t answer, so it’s a mutual problem. And when dialogue becomes exhausted the possibilities of relationship are finished.
Relationships need dialogue.
Especially old people, we need to dialogue with them, but nowadays it’s hard to find old people who can engage in dialogue because they are losing their memory, they are forgetting everything, they have powerful and interesting and valuable experiences, because of the long years they have lived with problems, so they do have an experience and they should share it with young people, and when young people are suffering with some doubtful thing, the aged person can notice immediately what it is.
‘You are suffering, what’s your problem? Oh I used to have that problem, and the reasons are like this and that and I can give you this advice and it will be very useful for you because it worked for me.’
Memory.
You can have a really useful dialogue with an old person with a good memory, and younger people can say wow this guy has a good memory, telling me in detail what I’m going through and explaining to me what’s happening. So old people with good memory who can promote dialogue, these people are living ambulant encyclopaedias. A living ambulant treasure, they answer with enthusiasm and satisfactorily to young people. This old person has a magnetic force, all the young people grab him and want to dialogue with him. But old people with good memories are few and far between too many have forgotten it all.
The main function of the brain is to memorise things, the focus of the mental force is memorisation, and when the brain function weakens then memory, the spiritual force, intellectual force weakens too. Nowadays the majority of old people have forgotten everything and that’s very sad. When you ask them they don’t know how to answer or give you a useless answer, like you are talking to a drunk guy, repeating the same thing over and over again, the older persons who cannot dialogue in a useful way, we call them living dejects, living garbage, they are useless it’s very sad. That’s why young people are disenchanted with these elderly persons, elderly people should assume their responsibility for the future of the youngsters, always giving them advice in an understandable way from their own valuable experiences, but forgotten experience in useless. The good thing would be if we could ask anything to an old person and they could answer correctly. Elderly people who cannot give good advice are really rotting away. A renewing ageing has a good memory, that’s our revitalising criterion that does not let old age weaken the function of memory. So young people don’t ask anymore, because they are right, it’s really hard to find elderly people who can promote dialogue.
Using problems.
The elderly experience has to be used, especially nowadays, there is no absolute harmony, when you have problems you have to use them you can step back or get near to them but when you have problems you have to use them. To face the problems, to use the problems, to know the problems, but not to try and organise a total lack of problems is reality because problems are always there and they have to be used and they are used by nature by everybody in order to promote vitality.
Here follow some questions and answers from the floor.
Q. Michio and Aveline worked so hard they could not pay attention to their lifestyles.
A. Well that’s not entirely true, they were sucked into the consumerist American Style, they didn’t work so hard.
Q. ‘That not fare they helped me a great deal and I feel debt to them’
A. ‘They helped you temporarily, I may be critical but Michio Kushi and myself have a very strong friendship and I know him very well, for over 60 years! so sometimes the best friend has to be the most challenging enemy, to strengthen, but because we have short time I spoke very strongly. But Michio respects me, the worst enemy is the best friend really,
Q. ‘There is a lot of sickness in our society, he does not talk about total health’
A. I have the same age as he does and I feel responsible not to harm our activity, many people ask me, Micio got cancer how is this? …….
Q. ‘Did you make up Yin yang rang – what is balance this is the confusion.’
A. ‘Yes but it is a simultaneous thing you can’t understand balance if you don’t have unbalance at the same time, to understand something that happens simultaneously and antagonistically is hard. That’s why the third element comes in, if you have balance, you have unbalance because there is a third element come in, so the third element permits your question to be answered because it’s very difficult to understand something that is simultaneous and antagonistic at the same time. It’s like man and woman at the same time, it’s not easy. So if you relate to past and future it can make it even clearer, the past maybe balanced for example, the present is unbalanced, and the future is rebalancing, even if you are balanced unbalance comes again, and in the future you rebalance.
Balance, unbalance and rebalance.
Yesterday is the past, tomorrow is the future and this passage from yesterday to tomorrow in today is the process in which you have balance, and unbalance and rebalance. This gives the most fundamental clarification of the dynamic nature of this reality.
Q. ‘I was interested in what you said about Dr Huefland, he said medical practitioners look to prevent and cure illness, whereas the macrobiotic practitioner uses illness as the means to prolong life. Did Ohsawa study his writing in depth?
A. – ‘ Yes he did study in depth’
Q. ‘why did Ohsawa choose the version of Yin yang he did’
A. – ‘ he didn’t make it up he just used the teaching of Lao Tzu. For example one produces two and two produces three, and three produces everything, that is in Lao Tzus book, so everybody thought wow this is marvellous, but I had a lot of doubts, so I was going to check this and then I asked and where does this one come from? It comes from the universe, but what is the universe? In Chinese oriental language, universe means the infinite, but the universe is relative also and it means to unite the unified with the reverse, so it is also relative it is not just unified, so the issue is not just the antagonistic and complementary aspect of the relationship. For example you have found two forces positive and negative, if you don’t have a threat or a challenge to that relationship, they will weaken in their relationship, internally.
Q. ‘what about the use of supplements and enzymes’
Enzymes, supplements, transmutation.
A. – ‘An enzyme is a tool of the future, even in the genetic area they are using the strength of enzymes, and enzymes are catalysts, transformers, and maybe some of you know from the French scientists, in our organism we have biological transmutation, Kervan made some investigations with prisoners in Africa and later won the Nobel prize, it points out to any field that mentions the fact that friend and foe are always there, even inside our organism we can find enzymes in massive amounts that are always transforming things, when something is lacking inside our organism this something is produced independently without putting any supplements inside, using the internal enzymatic or enzyme functions.
In saliva itself there are about 20 enzymes, enzymes that can be miraculous and original, so enzymes are a research of the future, so it would be good if in the field of immunology really checked out how enzymes worked. Nowadays there are more and more books with information about enzymes, so you can follow the progress but we mustn’t forget that the most important enzymes are the ones that are inside our bodies, they are original and we can have them independently, our bodies are controlled by a marvellous quantity of enzymes both internally and externally.
Ritchie Tennant pointed out that we needed to stop as people had trains to catch etc, Prof. Kikuchi says there was no end to his lecture, he was just taking a break, we thanked him sincerely and convivially, and the many conversations erupted around the room, what joy!