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Mumbai Murders and James Kim Family Tragedy: How Do We Explain/Understand Those Who Strike at The Hopeful and Already Heartbroken?

November 30th, 2008
By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist

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Tell me why, how.

I myself, run out of ideas, words, concepts when I try to understand the unrelieved ugly.

I came to my desk to write about two persons murdered in Mumbai, Alan Scherr and his daughter Naomi, age 13… he a meditation teacher and astrologer and his daughter an irrepressible, lively soul. They belonged to a group called Synchronicity Community, which seems an offshoot of transcendental meditation.

I’ve dear spiritual family in Mumbai for 30 some years now, and yet I have never been to India. When I looked at Mumbai tonight by satellite (how wondrous is that) I see it is an island in the shape of an open hand in the Arabian Sea, and at the wrist is the mouth of a Mother River, Ulhas. All this and more draws many seekers, finders, knowers, unknowers to Mumbai… somewhat as we here in the western states still have Rendezvous, gatherings of the tribes at a single place on these mountains and plains…

At Rendezvous, the tribes are all quite disparate in ritual and ideology, but all at root all believing in a straight heart… a credo all can praise regardless of differences.

Something like that in Mumbai too, a hub of a wheel with many tribal spokes, many imported from far away… but with a rooted love of sacred thought …that each can understand in the other, despite all differences.

…but also, something else rising up from the tragedy in Mumbai, besides men who murder, something else ugly and unredeemed, something that turns me away from writing an obituary about Alan and Naomi, and instead turning a phenomenon over and over, an ugly one, that has grown up around Alan and Naomi’s deaths… one that I think eerily portrays a holograph of ‘terrorist psychological motives and underlayments’ ….in microcosm.

Maybe you will see some useful parallels/ insights in comparing the larger world of mayhem, and this small world of mayhem I’m about to show you… I’d certainly like to hear what you think/ see.

As I began to write about Alan and Naomi being murdered in Mumbai, I found my way to the website the Synchronistic Community had lovingly set up for them, where people could leave comfort and remembrances for the surviving family.

I have to say, that this is not the first time I’ve seen this… perhaps you’ve seen it many times before also. Perhaps like me, it still leaves a why? in your mind, no matter how you turn it in your knowing heart.

Here, from the condolence site set up for Alan and Naomi’s memory:

Guest
2008-11-28
ALLAH
PRAISE BE TO ALLAH!!! ALLAH WANTS ALL AMERICANS DEAD. THE PROPHECIES WILL NOT BE REALIZED UNTIL ALL INFIDELS ARE SLAUGHTERED AND ALL MEN ARE BROUGHT UNDER THE HOLY LAW OF ALLAH WITH WOMEN AS THEIR FAITHFUL SERVANTS. NOBODY IS ENLIGHTENED UNTIL THEY ARE UNDER THE HOLY LAW OF ALLAH. AND NOT ALL WHO CLAIM TO BE MUSLIMS ARE MUSLIM, BUT RATHER INFIDELS WHO SHALL ALSO PERISH. PRAISE BE TO ALLAH FOR THIS GLORIOUS VICTORY OVER THE INFIDELS!

Aryeh
2008-11-28
From California
With deep love and tears, I honor Alan and Naomi. I was recently in Mumbai on a spiritual tour to India. I know that they would have been my best friends. May all beings be at peace. May all beings be free from suffering May the family be comforted.

Guest
2008-11-28
Sympathy
I am so sorry for your loss. I have been hearing the news of this tragedy and was especially touched with the death of the 13 year old girl. I have a 12 year old girl and know how I would feel if it happened to her. I will ask God to comfort you.

2008-11-28
To the crazy guy talking rubbish
Hey you. Allah is MY god. and i believe i know better than you. You are humiliating your own religion. Allah never asks any muslim to KILL innocents. and just for the record, I DOUBT THE TERRORISTS WERE EVEN MUSLIMS. so please stop. you are really making a fool of yourself. I am a muslim too and I agree that there is no god but Allah (Allahuakbar) but please, be a REAL muslim. and leave the Americans alone you racist.

Guest
2008-11-28
PRAISE BE TO ALLAH!!!!
ALLAH WANTS ALL AMERICANS DEAD. THE PROPHECIES WILL NOT BE REALIZED UNTIL ALL INFIDELS ARE SLAUGHTERED AND ALL MEN ARE BROUGHT UNDER THE HOLY LAW OF ALLAH WITH WOMEN AS THEIR FAITHFUL SERVANTS. DEATH TO AMERICA!!!!

A mother and wife
2008-11-28
sympathy
Dear Kia, As a mother and wife as well, I can only begin to know your pain. My heart goes out to you. The love you shared will never go away. It is a real and infinite gift. Trust in this. Lisa

Guest
2008-11-28
f—- muslims
hey, f— you towel-headed muslim we should f—ing kill all you f—ing muslims. at least we got a good start in iraq. GOD BLESS AMERICA

And it goes on. And it’s not about Muslims and non-Muslims. It’s not about Christians and non-Christians. It’s not about Meditators and non-Meditators. And, last I checked, the hearts were outnumbering the mindless by about 15 to 1 on this tiny site.

The internet sometimes seems to me as though the unconscious has suddenly ruptured and broken open, spilling its disorganized id all over the place. I sometimes see souls who write so unarmored or naively or wisely or wandering about in interesting ways, as well as minds that write in some odd version of seeming hate-mind.

About the last, I think about how rage can, if nursed long enough, act like a bacteria that cannot be mediated without effective antidote. Like infection, rage and its attractant, hatred, just grows more deeply, eating up good tissue that can then no longer perform other purposes.

I saw this same phenomenon of overlaying with what I’d call sort of a ‘psychological smearing’ atop the heartfelt words of others… and in spades when the Kim family went missing in the mountains of Oregon two years ago this week. James Kim was a beloved force at CNET; he wrote a wildly popular online column. Friends of the Kims, too, set up a forum for people to leave messages of hope and love while the search parties climbed through the Rogue River ravines looking for the father of this little family who’d taken a wrong turn and been stranded on a mountain for nine days, burning the car tires up to keep warm… The family became desperate, and slender Kim had left his wife and two small children to go for help.

On the Kim family site too, were several scabborous voices over and over, page after page who wrote evil unconscionable things, wishing the father dead, wishing the children to die, cursing the lives of the innocent. James Kim was found dead. He’d heroically walked the river in a thin little shirt and trousers trying to get help for his family. He’d gone eight miles in slick river rock country before he could go no more. The evil commenters crowed over James Kim’s death also.

Most of the time, I’ve learned to be of the ‘Note it, say something about it, then ignore it” school in these matters. Sometimes just “Glance at it, forget it immediately” school, especially since screed is actually most often boring and predictable in lexicon and epithetical formula.

But sometimes, very sometimes, I wish there was a way to stay and to see deeper into the person who writes such… see if anything can be done to help turn this infection toward even a modicum of healing… to stand in the invective and lay down some decent medicine, to see if there isn’t a small, young and frightened soul locked away in the back room somewhere, one that definitely might come forward if given even some modicum of reliable shelter

and yet though I know for a fact that that can be effective, I also know, sometimes not. I grew up in the back woods where packs of wild dogs ran, and if a feral dog contracted rabies… well, sometimes the creature became so maddened, the creature not only bit others, it viciously bit itself, sometimes literally killing itself by recklessly tearing open its own arteries. Reactive, yes. But more so, driven to extinct thought, weighing, consideration. And only functioning with whatever was left.

There is something in these kinds of angry attacks on others’ sacred gatherings, that strikes me as being an auto-attack on the screed-writer him or herself… not a death wish, but a rageful instruction ‘from somewhere’ to destroy oneself, to draw others who are not peace-bearing to do the screed-writer big harm in return.

Somewhere in here, there is a trope for how war continues, is fed by action and reaction, avenging and re-avenging. Over and over. Something striking that will not weigh, that will not consider more than an nth of an instant before striking… or else is somehow programmed to self-destruct….

Does this make some sense to you? I wonder about these things late tonight here in the Rockies. What can be put in place so that sacred space is left to those who created it? What rather than ignoring, or saying peace, or turning away, or battering right back?

I think and look out over the dark blue snow on the ground this now after midnight here; wet snow, the kind that makes really good snow angels. And it is cold as an Arctic flagpole, and the window glass looking out to the dark little lake I live on, is moist inside, thin old windows in this little low ceiling room, I need to caulk, well, what I mean to say, is get the old guy at the local Ace hardware to teach me how to caulk, soon…

and I’m thinking about how my people, and I think your people too, far back, but some even now, especially tribal people … at sacred rites, hold all to be peace and formality… somber, respectful.

But, at the accompanying festivals and dances afterward, these often have devils and demons, people dressed as such, who run through the festivities turning everything upside down and doing the opposite of what is most warranted; the Iroquois so-called ‘false face’ society cum masks, still functions, for instance.

There is a devil dance that’s part of the Conquista dance, and they are not clowns—they are portraying the bloodthirstiness of conquest and lust for gold and slaves. Sometimes the red masked devil in the old Magyar farm village spring rituals carried a floppy straw wand and switched people who didn’t get out of his way soon enough for his taste…. which was never soon enough. The farmer Magyars are a people over-run by every barbaric tribe riding over the Carpathians. Their ‘devil’ too, perhaps represents what some might call ‘generational memory’ of murderous times.

And the point of the devil dancers? scaring the scare-able, angering the anger-able, prompting concern about disruption of heart and peace? Maybe. But further perhaps, eliciting from the soulfully realistic, laughter… laughter from the majority… those who can see that its just one devil per many souls. Not the other way around.

Perspective. Something about perspective of heart and mind. Not to lose that, no matter what else has occurred. Even demons. Even death. Eventually, learning, in time, to refuse to be made dead by it all. To not allow marauders to add notches for making the living walk as though they are dead too. To push back with all the radiant life that’s in us. Ferociously if need be, gently if possible. Not war, Life.

I wonder if we traditionally include devils in the festivals so we can, in a sense, ritualize reality… in order that people remember such things again. Where to place the emphasis. Even in darkness. Maybe that’s the coded instruction to earthlings about taking up a far greater perspective…. some might say a divine one.

I’m not sure this explains more than just a few of the bones about devil and demonic behavior that gleefully tries to murder innocents, or tries to spread merde on freshly opened wounds. But, too, tonight, I’m not sure I can think of a better remembrance for this moment for the passing of innocent lives in Mumbai than to just hold the grieving souls until enough time passes and a good many will give somehow, somewhere, a big hearty sacred laugh… right back into the face of death.

…refusing to die to Life to please the demon.



This entry was posted on Sunday, November 30th, 2008 at 3:51 am and is filed under Psychology, Mass Murder, Death, A Lost Story, Mumbai, Language, Terrorism, India, War, Racism, Crime, Social Commentary, Blogging. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 10 Comments

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    In this world of duality, there is no limit on your goodness, Dr. Estes, and hence none on the ignorance, blindness and malice of others. It seems sad (but that's just another face of duality). Much as we would like only light in our picture, the darkness is as essential to the picture as is black in a black and white photo. Small consolation sometimes, when the darkness seems to fill the screen, but true nonetheless. Perhaps we can take hope that it's 15:1 and hope soon it's 50:1 or more, hearts to haters.

    Maybe as those who choose to heal take over from those who fan the flames of hatred, division, and tribalism in its many forms, we can advance the journey away from fear and hatred toward more loving, understanding and knowing.
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    • v
    perhaps like the Native American story of the two dogs fighting. . .the one that wins is the one being fed the most. . . have often wondered about what is being fed into these young lives as they throw fire and maim the innocent with weapons. . . or as in this situation fire thrown with words onto the most tender of injuries. . . I heard a teacher from the East say, "there is no greater sin than to purposely cause another to cry.". . .

    There is another ancient story that carries a similar theme as the Native story but goes deeper. . . know you could piece it together much deeper than i can Dr. E. but i sense some glimpses in the Indian Ramayan epic. . .hope i remember it correctly. . .

    . . .It is the story of Rama (good King) and Ravana (demon=bad tendencies). . . Ravana cannot be killed because his soul has been removed from his body and kept in a glass container. . .and this is the reason no one can kill him. . .After endless battles Ravana continues to escape for he has many heads and arms and every time one is taken in battle another grows back. . .Finally Ravana's own brother comes forth and reveals his brother's weak spot. . .He tells Rama his brother cannot be killed by a blow to the head, heart, or neck or elswhere but can only be killed if Rama can hit the exact spot of the umbilicus. . .for then the life sustaining nectar would spill and Ravana would die. . .The next day Rama is able to bring the death to Ravana. . .then in the wonderful way of Eastern philosophy. . .Ravana is remembered for good deeds as well as his bad deeds. . .He is honored for his knowledge of scriptures and vedas. . .as as he dies he is passing rich knowledge of politics, statesmanship, sociology, and diplomacy for the betterment of others. . . I am not for sure the significance of the umbilical here. . .but wonder if it means Ravana was severed from what feeding the bad tendencies. . and also when he was severed from the umbilical cord then perhaps like a baby this is when the soul could take the first breath?. . . i think the ones throwing fire are infants that have not gathered first breath yet. . .and perhaps healing is not possible until they are severed from that which is feeding them?. . .Dr. isn't there a really scary character in Mexico that is called the Great Night, and he eats others souls because he does not have one himself?. . Sometimes when i experience energy like this i ask is it possible for a person to be without soul?. . .I hope not. . . .

    Sometimes Dr. E. i wonder about the collective unconscious in all of this. . .the one Tolle calls the pain body. . . could terrorism be the wounded masculine counterpart of what occurred in the 1980's and the RA phenomena that occurred in the psyche's of many Western women. . . the masculine with the tendency to act things out towards others rather than taking the journey inward?. . .maybe at some level all of this we see with terrorism is dark side of masculine wounding from the spirit of domination from the accumulated centuries?. . . I am sure there are people that would see me as crazy for saying this. . .but i know our collective history is within us. . . a number of years ago i delved into my own bi-racial innerness. . . for about seven years. . . ancient years of the oppression of the feminine soul, the eradication of the Native, and degradation of Mother Earth. . .It was all there. . .Tolle says we should not go into the pain body. . .but some do not have a choice, i believe. . . Maybe enough have to go into it in order for it to be released for the greater good?. . . if there is any validity about this in part being connected to the pain body. . .then i have profound hope. . . Maybe as horrible as the fire throwers. . . perhaps they are like dark angels that help others reach deeper for goodness by allowing us to see how ugly. . .ugly is. . .how very destructive and how unnecessary. . . . if the greater good can survive the transition then a gentler. . .kinder. . .sweeter world can and will come forth. . . .This i trust. . .and know you place your entire heart, mind and soul in the work of that which is greater and i thank you Dr. E. . . .
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    dear GreenDreams, thank you for your thoughts, I always appreciate how you look at things. And you pray really really good (see your prayer in your last para).

    dr.e
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    Dear River, it's a long discussion, isnt it. The mythological references you make are poignant parallels. And yes, in Nahua (aztec is the Euro word) culture, there are the thieves of soul, of potential, of stars, and also there are in all cultures 'the sin eaters,' which I wrote about in Women Who RUn... they are the just souls who balance or rebalance the dark with light.

    In my suddenly many decades on earth (it seems, the 'suddenly' part, that is...lol), i think often, that the cultural metaphors of light winning over darkness, might be frail... that rather it be trying to balance the overage of dead-dark with something that strives for far more consciousness...and Life.

    re your comment about soul, or lack of... I'd just mention many of the grandmothers in my father's family were what some nowadays would call 'folk healers'... just old women who had come from small villages and ministered to all persons' bodies, minds and hearts for decades They were convinced that some are born without that radiant guidance system some would call soul; that when one looks at the center of the body of such a one, it is dark instead of illumined

    As a shrink who has worked in federal and state prisons, I would say that that phenom is sometimes a reality-- an ungovernable (even by the person his or herself) hunger to destroy, dismember, crow over kills... a dark ho9le where there ought be a golden sun. The desire to murder the psychological, soulful, or physical is unrelenting, no matter what is said/done. It is truly arresting to behold.

    And yet, as GreenDreams points out, the ratios for people of conscience versus those who have none, are strong and good. We have a fighting chance. And usually it seems to me, by the time a person is 20 years on earth, the scar tissue to prove it. By 50, 60, 70 and 80 and 90, enough scar tissue to hold you up even if you momentarily sag inside. lol

    dr.e
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    Carl Jung pointed to "consciousness" when asked if there was any hope for humanity.

    Before I was conscious, I was not quite able to catch myself, sometimes gleefully, (no longer) making fun of blacks and homosexuals, sometimes with real hostility. It was 45 years ago, I was in my late teens/early 20's, and I repeated what was said around me, secure in my herd.

    Today, living in Denmark, they call the Arab, the Muslim, the "European nigger" for the type of racism and discrimination they must endure. These invectives sound most powerful when spoken/yelled by the downtrodden (like when poor whites attack poor blacks), but they are not hurled merely by them, but people in high places: police, politicians, Governmental leaders.

    It is a full time job (staying cons.) and I sometimes I am "out to lunch" such that something awful flies out of my mouth, and I have to go wash it out, forgive myself for having lost my awareness. I am getting better at it, but it requires vigilance.

    The whole western world is at war with the Middle East and a war is not fought by its foot soldiers and high tech bombardiers alone, but also by politicians, lawyers, cartoonists, Generals, actors, editors, commentators, etc, etc, and they all have a stake and the war is perpetual. There is front page war: Iraq vs USA and their is back page war: White on black/Men on Women or vice/versa depending on your point of view. There are elevated holocausts (Jewish) and denied holocausts (Rwanda). There are even fake or "light" wars like the war on drugs/poverty.

    I cannot say if all the generosity in my heart would be drained were I an Iraqi, but I suspect so. Imagine a society and all its history and remnants turned upside down and shaken senseless, the bodies of my raped and tortured relatives dumped in ditches, and still it is necessary to shame them time and again. There are few stories of leaders who emerged from decades of imprisonment without bitterness BUT they did not survive Guantanamo.

    It is also psychologically protective to hate so fully, that one can justify the taking of another's life. Apparently we, as humans suffer greatly when we do that, so, in order to do that, we have to train (brainwash) our young soldiers as to why it is necessary to kill that fellow over there. Of coarse none of it holds together. The American soldier today is coming home psychologically damaged, deeply injured in the soul. The hatred they were taught to spew in word and deed in Iraq has now been turned inward. They are killing themselves in large numbers. The shame and guilt and hostility all coming home to roost. What they did, what they saw done, and their inability to muster anything but helpless concordance.

    It's all coming and going around. The blacks of Africa, in certain countries are chasing out the white farmers, burning down their homes, sometimes killing who is there.

    It is very dark out there and sometimes in here, but I pray, I meditate, I read, all that I can do to stay in touch with the light.
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    http://www.truthout.org/112908Y for a review of Smith Ferri's poetry

    Through the uniquely equipped medium of poetry, Smith-Ferri delivers hard-earned insights and reflections that broaden our emotional framework for understanding Iraq, and lend heart-wrenching individuality to an otherwise undifferentiated mass of "irrational people / masked terrorist tribes, hands around throat s."

    It's 1999, and after nearly a decade of military and economic warfare, the nation is in bad shape. Sanctions have decimated Iraq's ability to provide clean water and a functioning medical system. Children are dying by the tens or hundreds of thousands from diarrhea and easily curable diseases. Smith-Ferri and his co-workers drift through pediatric wards that seem more like preludes to morgues than centers of healing. As the same contaminated waters that gurgle in the rivers outside pour from the faucets of hospital sinks, Smith-Ferri pauses to take stock of the situation in meditations that blur the genre lines between field notes and elegy:

    Daily, like a sorcerer, the sun warms Iraq's sewage-laden rivers,
    conjuring cholera and typhoid and E. coli
    that are killing children in this hospital ward,
    slowly draining juice from their tiny bodies.
    Here lies the desiccated fruit of a generation.

    Smith-Ferri and his delegation wander through a malignant landscape where bombings more routine than rain have stolen countless limbs, and fields of depleted uranium have created "nuclear children ... slowly roasting, / leukemia a fire in their bones and blood." Leaning over the deathbeds of these victims, Smith-Ferri and his fellow activists ask an Iraqi doctor - "a grim, tour-weary guide" - what he does to try to provide hope for the patients' parents. The doctor, helplessly flanked by his empty medicine cabinets, responds plainly, "like a metronome," as if bolstered by the authority of his incapacity, "There is no hope. This child will die ... That child will die ... They're all going to die."