My reply to Professor Michael Grosso's blog post on the ecological crisis and the Self

 Hi Michael: I wrote my master's thesis on "radical ecology" and "sound-current nondualism" with music theory as a philosophy of science. My advisors included a music professor and a philosophy of religion - hermeneutics professor (actually a Jesuit theologian). They really didn't understand me and actually most of my master's degree was self-directed activist policy work. The University president even emailed me asking me not to go on "unlimited hunger strike" since I had "accomplished enough" already. hahaha.
So I finished my master's degree by doing intensive qigong meditation training to test out my music theory hypothesis - via the African Studies department. This led me to fasting for a week on just a half glass of water (the whole time not each day). This is called "bigu" in qigong traditional Chinese medicine meditation but this "bigu" is actually alchemy and it's also found in the South Indian Dravidian yoga tradition. I recently corresponded with a youtuber who had made the connection between sun-gazing and fasting and the creation of "ambrosia" in the alchemy tradition of South India. He was definitely interested in the bigu research conference held by professor Rustum Roy, a material chemistry researcher from India.
So one thing I discovered is that when I broke my fast salt tasted like poison! I knew I was in trouble then since salt is everywhere in our modern diet. But if you study our original human culture - DNA science now proves the "pygmies" split from the San Bushmen 225,000 years ago - and they did not eat salt traditionally (well maybe sometimes).
Similarly I am very sensitive to sugar - it creates an internal tingling sensation and causes anaerobic bacteria to go up the front of my body into my skull! hahahaha. Of course sugar is everywhere in the modern diet also - so I order organic ginger powder from India. I eat tons of ginger - in milk and lots in orange juice, etc.
In fact the famous yogi  Sri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas, author of "This House is on Fire" - or a memoir about him - in his travels of the U.S. - he could never find food pure enough for his body requirements!
As you know from your research on the Man Who Could Fly, Saint Joseph de Copertino ate mainly bitter greens as his main food source and he had what is called a "modified bigu" diet. The teacher I trained with also levitated up nine feet while he was in full lotus meditation - but he did this right after he finished a 28 day nonstop cave meditation in full lotus (around 1995).
So our modern left-brain dominant mentality has lost connection with our body emotional connection to diet on a subconscious level. In traditional Chinese medicine if the liver is blocked this causes anger - so that explains why a meat and alcohol diet causes so much rage in say German culture or Europe Yamnaya culture (that conquered around 2000-3000 BCE). Salt causes too much thinking - and sugar also - with the kidney and pancreas/spleen getting blocked just as too much caffeine causes fear. When the lungs are damaged from smoking this causes depression but Western medicine has yet to make this connection that I know of - between lung health and depression!!
I also learned that ghosts are real and the qigong master I trained with - Chunyi Lin - he even heals ghosts! But the Eastern guru tradition is part of the Royal tantric tradition of the Bronze age - and thus also relies on the spiritual ego of the patriarchy. So alchemy relies on storing up the energy with lust as "evil fire" of the heart. Of course Saint Joseph de Copertino, as your research describes, also had women chasing after him and he focused on the Mother of God for his worship - love as compassion instead of lust.
In my experience in psychic tantric healing there is a direct connection from female lust to love but as a male - the ejaculation spikes the cortisol stress as an addictive positive feedback escalation of violence. Meaning lust is dopamine bliss but with the sympathetic nervous system spike of ejaculation then cortisol stress follows - and this pattern makes the stress worse and worse. This is why every male in our original human culture was required to train in female bliss based on the right side vagus nerve (what later became known as tantra). The problem in psychic tantra is that the energy is still stuck in what Mahayana Buddhism calls the "realm of form." In Daoist yoga this is called "yin qi" as psychic energy in contrast to "yuan qi" as what is called Shakti in Indian yoga.
So what I'm describing now is a realm of reality that modern people know nothing about since it is experienced through the pineal gland and heart and small intestines - the central channel - as it interacts holographically with what science calls "protoconsciousness" as an "active information" from the future based on noncommutativity or asymmetric time-frequency (the truth of nonwestern music).
So our ecological crisis is based on a deep left-brain bias that created patriarchal religion as a closed symmetric logic (I am that I am) for God as Brahman (Abraham) Bull plow (rape) of Nature. This "Western civilization" spread disease through intensive animal domestication - around the world - with genocidal war - as detailed in Professor Alfred Crosby's book "Ecological Imperialism" - even Africa took up the "Hoe" as iron age Bantu farming based on polygamy of the females.
We got cut off from our original human culture that lived in the forest and relied on listening as our dominant perception used by the males in hunting. With a pastoral (Eden) domestication of animals and subsequent plow monocultural farming culture as 'civilization" - we created what Professor David F. Noble called "The Promised Land" - in his final book "Beyond the Promised Land" - a follow up to his classic "The Religion of Technology" (1996).
So I agree with you that a focus on the self is key and yet it is also quite the challenge.
thanks,
drew w. hempel