My childlessness is voluntary.

That I did not marry appears to be one result of World War II. I was nineteen and engaged when the war broke out. I would have married and borne children, but my fiance was drafted and went to war and I did not see him during the next six years (1939-1945). After Germany had been defeated, I had to wait another two years without knowing what had happened to him. However, I kept visiting his mother and told her that I knew he would come back one day. My fiance had been detained in a prisoner of war camp overseas and had no possibility to communicate that he was still alive. When I saw him again in 1947, he was different. He had become a homosexual, and we decided to stay friends.

Being in my late twenties, most eligible men were married already or had died in the war, so many women of my generation stayed unmarried. When I met another man who could have become the father of my children, I found out in time that he was already married. For a while, I considered raising a child as an unmarried mother, but I had become involved in work I liked and did not want to be a half-time mother.

At the same time, I also had gone through a hell of my own. The deprivations during the war and the bombing of the capital of Germany, Berlin, the city in which I had been born, were also times of spiritual awakening. We were thrown back to our resources. I had become the mother of dying solders. Sixteen-year-old boys, sometimes younger, had been drafted. Without much military training, most of them were mortally wounded in their first battle. They were in agony, they were crying for their mother. I volunteered in hospitals and became their mother, guiding them gently through the transition.

After the war, the world situation remained uncertain and there was the population explosion There were obviously too many people on the earth to be fed or food was unevenly distributed. Wasn't it irresponsible to put another human being into an increasingly overpopulated and unsafe world? Wasn't it more reasonable to direct my feelings toward the many who needed motherly love, understanding and assistance? There were and still are certainly more "children" than I physically can produce. So I decided to continue caring for the needy. I did not put a label on my actions, but, retrospectively, it looked like parenting.

I have not yet said anything about my "career." Originally, I had wanted to study chemistry and biology to conduct research on living organisms, but I had to fight my parents. They sent me to a commercial college. The moment I became twenty-one, I started to take acting lessons and, after having passed the necessary exams, became a professional actress. At that time, Hitler ruled in Germany and the complex political situation assisted in making this decision. We had to be very careful about what we said and did. On stage I was free, because I was using the words of an author. On stage, actors could give words additional meaning. For example, in the famous play by Schiller, "Don Carlos," Marquis Posa asks the King of Spain," Give liberty of thought!" The actor got a standing ovation.

My need and commitment to nurture seems to go back to my childhood. I remember longing for love and attention. So I created imaginary companions and learned early to provide myself what I needed. I experienced motherly feelings when I took care of plants and animals. I remember. when in the Labor Service, I worked in the country and, one day, a calf took me for his mother and started sucking vigorously on my left breast. This was very embarrassing. I am convinced that to mother is a need too. It is an inborn drive. When the giving is stored up, it needs an outlet, not to explode like a volcano.

Sometimes I get the feeling, people really don't want what I am trying to give. Isn't it rather arrogant to think that I am giving something. Most of the time we really don't know what people need. So the moment when I found out that I was satisfying my needs to mother, I also was very careful to find out what other people actually needed. I did not want to become the devouring mother who smothers her children. Love has to be freely given, without any expectations to receive something in return..

Remembering my reactions when other people tried to be kind to me, I found that a real mother recognizes when the needs of a child have changed. We encourage and nurse children and then let them go on their path. It is such a joy to see children, students, anybody, grow. Some may not be in contact with themselves. They do nor trust others and, most of all, they don't trust themselves. They appear to be half-hatched and take up much time. Like young trees, they need a staff not to be blown down by the wind. They need to grow up healthy, in a nourishing environment. Do teachers impose their will on students? Are wishes and aspirations of students neglected? When human beings start to bloom and have become tall enough to withstand the "wind," we have to take away the staff and no longer obstruct their growth. The most difficult part is to let go. It has to be the right moment. When we still want to mold them and have become fond of them, we have to release them and give them the opportunity to complete their maturation process by learning from their own mistakes.

I had strong motherly feelings when I was an actress on stage, and I also have strong motherly feelings when I am teaching. Actresses like mothers experience immediate satisfaction. They recognize what they have activated. They are the catalysts. They assist their audience to become whole human beings, on all levels of existence--physically, emotionally, intellectually, socially, and spiritually. In the twenty-first century, some levels may be neglected and people starve. There seem to be more crippled and wounded souls than ever. They need a mother. We have to teach them to live with their scars and give them an example how to go beyond self pity. This was the reason why I continued to fill my tool chest.

Trained in comparative religion and psychological anthropology, I got my Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley at the age of fifty-four. Before that time, life had asked for my undivided attention. In 1963, for example, I went back to Germany and became parent to my own parents. I nurtured them through their last years. My father died in 1965 and my mother in 1967. In 1968 I enrolled in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, with zero credits. No academic credits are given for fulfilling obligations to life. I finished my B,.A. in one year, taking one exam after the other. Through the six years of college, until the Ph.D. was awarded, I supported myself with work-study inside the university. Most of my professors were younger than I. I had to mother those who desperately tried to publish. When I looked for nourishment from my alma mater, I found I had to provide what was needed myself, but I knew already how to provide it for others.

My academic fields have many motherly aspects. Comparative religion explores the core of what we are, our needs and their fulfillment. The word "religion" comes from the Latin re-ligere, "to reconnect" with the Source. Anthropologists observe and attempt to understand others. First of all, anthropologists have to learn the differences among people. We begin with a blank slate, erase previous opinions and just watch and experience without reacting. We absorb. Similarities are obvious, but we need also to experience the differences and explore other states of being.

I worked with lames in Nepal and brahmin and holy men in India (Himacha Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Tamilnadu). I spent time in Thai monasteries for my dissertation research and probed the role Buddhism plays in the fabric of the Thai nation where Buddhism had been state religion for over thousand years. I got a Fulbright-Hays research grant to study shamans and mediums in Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. Many animist traditions had survived in the context of world religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity). In fact, the practice of local religions kept world religions alive. (I talk about this process more extensively in my books, Tham Khwan, How to Contain the Essence of Life; Shamans of the 20th Century; Trance and Healing in Southeast Asia Today; and The Nature and Function of Rituals-Fire from Heaven.)

I lived in Indonesia, i.e., with mystics on Java and Bali, and tribal people on Sumatra and Nias. I watched psychic surgeons in the Philippines and observed Taoist masters on Taiwan and in Hong Kong. In Communist China, religious expressions were discouraged at that time but continued underground. In Japan, I stayed with Zen monks and Shinto priests. Over all, it did no seem to matter whether I talked with a priest representing a world religion or a folk practitioner, the main themes always were nurturance and healing. During this time, I took up meditation, got myself an acupuncture license and a license in Chinese herbal medicine. I added, later in America, Reiki 1 and 2. It felt good to fill my tool chest with more techniques to improve the quality of life.

I must have been born with some knowledge already. I never met my maternal grandfather; he died twenty-six years before I was born. However, a synchronistic encounter taught me he had been a healer. As teenager I went through a distant village in West Prussia (which now is Poland), where some of my maternal relatives lived. An old woman came up to me and invited me into her house She said I looked like my grandfather. She had never seen me before and did not know that I would coming. She told me that my grandfather had helped her when she was a young woman. At the end of last century, deep in West Prussia, he held an administrative position on a princely estate. People would come to him for advice and healing. He had many "children" whose life took a turn for the better through his intervention. I could resonate with what she told me. He had used the energy we can learn to access and made it available to others.

Looking for ways to work on subtle levels, I started the :"Universal Dialogue" series in Berkeley and then, in 1984, I gave birth to the Annual International Conference on the Study of Shamanism and Alternative Modes of Healing on Labor Day weekend at the Santa Sabina Center, San Rafael, California. Shamanism is not a relic of the past. We needn't to copy old traditions, we can create traditions of our own. Since time immemorial, each generation of shamans has used elements known to their own culture and, with changing circumstances, they created new rituals Furthermore, shamans and mediums are interpreters and mediators between the sacred and the ordinary. They translate ineffable messages into secular language, using rituals and symbols. In 2004, we are holding the Annual International Conference on the Study of Shamanism and Alternative Modes of Healing for the 21st time. In addition to the nourishment, recognition and stimulation during the conference, proceedings disseminate the results afterwards to a larger audience..

I never had problems with visions, however, it is not easy to talk about them. Prophets seem to have the same problem. People are not ready to listen; we have to speak their language. Also psychologists think that most visionaries suffer from a kind of pathology. So many people resent when they have to listen to visions. First, they resent, that they themselves did not have any visions and, second, they believe that they can buy visions. When we say that everybody who is willing to transform and goes through the process, can visit other dimensions and will find visions, they get angry. We really need visions, and we need to talk about them.

Childbirth is one way to touch the mystery of life but there are many other ways to meet the Source. The breakthrough can come from the inside or the outside. Apostle Paulus was struck from his horse by a bolt of light. In the emotional desert of my childhood, the light found me when I, still of pre-school age, was standing at the beach of the Baltic Sea. I must have synchronized my breathing with the waves. All of the sudden, I became one with the waves, the sun, the wind. The universe and I were one. Afterwards, every time I felt lonely. I just recalled this surge of energy which swept through me and continues to carry me. Breakthroughs often come at the time of a trauma, when ordinary reality begins to crack and the boundaries between the sacred and the ordinary become transparent.

As an actress I experienced the same union. The expectations of the audience and my energy merged and we had a "wedding night." We conceived and gave birth every night. It is definitely a birthing process. Actors create and go through the birthing process each night. No matter how they personally feel. For example, I broke a tooth, my tax records were reviewed, I got a disgusting letter and somebody made a nasty remark. No matter how awful my day had been, the moment I stepped into the limelight I was reborn and able to invite the audience into a higher reality.

To tell you a secret, the miracle does not happen each time, you need it. So, during the first few minutes, a professional actor knows how to produce the experience. You never need to be technical for long, the universal energy will not fail to rise. The same happens with shamans. In Southeast Asia, I met shamans who "faked" themselves into the experience This method becomes only questionable when the entire performance is faked. In other words, techniques are useful when they help to start the event. Shamans and mediums evoke the "spirit" each time, because they consider themselves to be the vehicle not the "doer." One mark of greatness is humility. As a child I used to draw pictures where I offered my blood in a chalice so people could experience the wonders of the universe This sounds rather corny, but I was serious. We all can lead a more satisfactory life if we would interconnect and nurture each other. I am dancing in the middle of the stream and see the banks of the river floating by. Join me! You can be nourished and replenished by the Infinite Source!

We need clarification about who we really are and we have to make people aware of who and where they are, too. Some people just exist, conforming to something they don't even know, and they are not aware of what they are doing. We have to wake them up like a mother wakes up her children in the morning so that they won't be late for school. Actors do it on a larger scale. The audience is invited to wake up to the joys and sorrows of the universe. All they have to do is waking up to themselves.

We are looking for more ways to wake up people. Inertia is great and people are afraid of moving. They also resent rough awakenings. We have to create a symbolic language for the 21st century. We can use rituals to create a place outside of ordinary time where the unexpected can happen. This can be done when teaching, acting on stage, with any art form, and also drumming (sonic driving) We can use human touch. The experiences with Reiki are surprising. I don't call it light anymore, I call it universal energy

There are many childless people. Some of them want desperately children And, on the other side, there are many people in need. There are the homeless, There are lonely people at home and in the hospitals and old-age homes. There are abused children. The list seems to be endless. We can start with our friends and answer their needs. I stay in the middle ofthe stream and invite others. To drink they have to do it themselves.

Resources

Heinze, Ruth-Inge, Ph.D., 2321 Russell St. #3C, Berkeley, CA 94705-1959; (510) 849-3791. Ruth-Inge is an educator and author who, during the last sixty years, has conducted research on alternative modes of healing and different states of consciousness in Europe, America, and Asia. She initiated the "Universal Dialogue" series and the Annual International Conference on the Study of Shamanism and Alternative Modes of Healing. She is also a longtime meditator. She, furthermore, published six books and numerous essays in professional journals and is holding licenses in acupuncture, Reiki and Chinese herbal medicine.

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