To provide education and counseling that
meets the United Nations manifesto
for environmentally sound personal growth and social justice.
Institute of Global Education
Project NatureConnect
An Educational Non-Profit Organization.
Special NGO consultant to the United Nations
Economic and Social Council.
FROM: Michael J. Cohen, Director
April 12, 2000
Co-publishing or Publishing Opportunity
To Whom it May Concern,
Recently, a citizen's organization received a grant for two million dollars to help create clean water in the Puget Sound area. The money was spent on a TV advertising blitz featuring a well known media personality. Since 85% of the public says they care about the welfare of people and the environment, I suggested, to no avail, that the same millions of dollars would have better been spent distributing in the area, 800,000 free copies of my new book Einstein's World .
My book contains a readily accessible and applicable mental health science that integrates Economics, Nature and Psychology with Peace, Wellness and Spirit. It empowers people to improve water quality and many other personal, social and environmental disorders. For this reason, acquainting people with the book's methodology is vital.
The World Peace University Press, a non-profit, educational, publisher now seeks a cooperative or co-publishing arrangement with a trade publisher or agency in regard to Einstein's World: Educating and Counseling With Nature. My book shows how an economically sound mental health process promotes peace by breathing wellness into people and the environment. No other book is like it.
OVERVIEW: The deteriorating state of the world demands we improve the health of people and ecosystems. To our loss, our problems continue because they have psychological roots that we do not address. We lack a practical psychology that enables us to reach our greatest hopes and goals. My book provides that psychology. It helps any individual or institution psychologically connect and think with the intelligence of nature's perfection.
"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the
'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He
experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as
something separated from the rest-a kind of optical
delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind
of prison for us, restricting us to our personal
desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison
by widening our circles of compassion to
embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature
in its beauty."-Albert Einstein
I am Michael J. Cohen, an Applied Ecopsychologist that founded and coordinates
Project NatureConnect and the Natural Systems Thinking Process. They are
online home study courses and degree programs at Greenwich University and
the Institute of 
Global Education, a special NGO consultant
to the United Nations Economic and Social Council. I direct the Department
of Applied Ecopsychology and Integrated Ecology on San Juan Island, Washington
where I also serve as adjunct faculty for the School of Extended Studies,
Portland State University.
For 45 years I have founded and directed psychologically based environmental outdoor education programs including the Trailside Country School and the National Audubon Society Expedition Institute at Lesley College. My seven books include the award winning Connecting With Nature: Creating Moments that let Earth Teach. I incorporated it into How Nature Works, (Stillpoint) Reconnecting With Nature (Ecopress) and Well Mind, Well Earth: 97 Environmentally Sensitive Activities for Stress Management, Spirit and Self-esteem (World Peace University Press.) I conceived the 1985 National Audubon International Symposium Conference "Is the Earth a Living Organism" and I am the recipient of the Distinguished World Citizen Award.
Thank you for taking the time to read this unusual inquiry and learn about the opportunity it presents.
I have a secret. I think I know what you think. You think you are conscious of the message you are reading as you see these words right now. However, you are only partially correct.
The deteriorating state of the world demonstrates that there is a significant, destructive, missing link in the way you and I have learned to think and know. For example, as you read these words you are conscious of each word, but not their individual letters. Yet, as children, it was l-e-t-t-e-r-s, not words, that caught our attention and were important. Now that I call the individual letters on this page to your attention, you register them. However, out of habit or psychological addiction, shortly you will only see words again.
The effects of the absence of letters as we read and think is not significant. Very significant, however, is that our habitual omission of other realities produces a destructive absence in our thinking with regard to how to live peacefully with Earth and other beings, including humanity. Just as we are born with the ability to sense the various forms of individual letters, as part of nature we are also born with the natural ability to think and live in a balance, like nature works. Every species inherits this intelligence. To our loss, our nature conquering society conditions us to ignore it. By thinking with this ability, other societies have lived in peace and environmental balance for 50,000 years.
Look closely and you may observe nature is not simply a competitive,
bloody, tooth and claw affair. It is an 
intelligent playground
that sustains its own survival. Note that everything in the playground helps
support everything else in a pure, consensual way. Nothing is left out;
through transformation everything belongs. Nothing there produces garbage
or is garbage. For this reason our destructive problems don't exist in unadulterated
nature. Einstein's World offers a natural, enjoyable, readily available
way for us to similarly relate in society. It enables us to add the way
nature works to our thinking and relationships, and teach others to do the
same.
We inherently contain the psychological knowledge of how to peacefully get along in the playground. The programmed absence of this knowledge in our thinking produces our greatest troubles and challenges. It leaves us thinking in our destructive ways. Sadly, we are so misled by our habitual thinking process that we think we need to use it more to solve the problems it causes. We seldom think we should use it in conjunction with how nature works. After all, we don't play with alphabet blocks, do we?
Einstein's World is a 112 page, non-fiction, novel that not only brings my Natural Systems Thinking Process (NSTP) into readers awareness, but into their competency, too. NSTP restores a missing psychological link to the way we learn to think. This sensory, nature-connected, means of knowing and interacting has proven effective in counseling, education and building responsible social and environmental relationships in most settings.
NSTP energizes a wise, healing, searchlight of psychological sunshine in nature's playground. The searchlight is naturally brilliant. It knows what dark areas within us need illumination. We choose to turn it on because it makes sense to do so. Its bright beam of natural intelligence bounces off the destructive walls of our thinking, returns to its origins in nature and comes back to the walls carrying with it exactly what is needed to help them become constructively participatory. The NSTP searchlight scientifically helps us gain enlightenment. It enables our intellect to think with our hands, heart and nature. In thanks for using it, the searchlight rewards us, our community, and the playground. It gives them spiritual support, wellness and peace. It supplements our disturbed, nature disconnected lives with potent, sensory, reconnections to nature, backyard or backcountry.
Our thinking is nature-disconnected 99.9% of the time so NSTP sounds
impossible. That's a challenge that Einstein's World helps readers
meet. NSTP is not impossible, rather, it is unusual and uncommon. In our
excessively nature-separated society it's become a foreigner, like individual
letters. For this reason alone, most people 
prejudicially
avoid turning on the searchlight. In turn, they, we, and Earth continue
to unnecessarily suffer.
Since 1959, my many books, articles and courses have validated the enjoyable NSTP searchlight and how to use it. It has made it possible for others and myself to create and sustain major, economically sound, accredited, degree granting, nature connected psychology and environmental education programs. They succeed because the NSTP adds environmentally supportive, ecopsychology dimensions to counseling, education and conflict resolution at home, work or school. You simply turn on the NSTP light and responsible interactions begin to develop that repair deteriorated relationships. Einstein, and many other geniuses profess that this process is how their mind worked to become ingenious. The book contains quotes by Einstein in this regard.
"The development of science and of the creative activities of the spirit in general requires still another kind of freedom, .... freedom of the spirit and thought..... from the restrictions of authoritarian and social prejudices as well as from unphilosophical routinizing and habit in general. This inward freedom is an infrequent gift of nature and a worthy object for the individual."
- Albert Einstein
Einstein's World is a painstaking blend of metaphor and reality. It shows how and where the NSTP searchlight can and should be used to reverse our destructiveness. It helps us dissolve the psychological bonds that lure us into our troubles and restore them as positive energies. The book offers samples of the process that the reader can immediately apply. It grounds itself in testimony and observations from the thousands of people who presently use NSTP. It contains references that provide additional skill development.
There are very few areas of contemporary life and thinking where Einstein's World will not make a valuable contribution. For this reason it has great economic potential.
One setting in Einstein's World is the 1999 "Battle of Seattle" protests against the World Trade Organization. WTO is an attempt to bypass environmentally and socially responsible economics. An excerpt from that Chapter captures the book's thrust:
"Dr. Charles Boyd, Chairman of the Global Trade Organization, believed what is good for corporate economics is good for everybody. The protests, however, forced him to get together with 42 representatives of the protest groups. After five hours' peaceful exploration of explosive issues with the protest representatives, Dr. Boyd concluded it was futile to continue. "Each party here is fervently attached to its own agenda, and our agendas are deeply at odds with each other," he told the group. "We must face up to our conflicting stories and beliefs. If the next environmental issue undercuts jobs or salaries, you in the labor movement will fight the environmentalists you vociferously side with now. Saving wild land today will produce tomorrow's anti-hunting, gun use and animal rights conflicts. The social justice or spiritual attachments for some groups will trigger wars against them by opposing groups and peaceful protests by still others. Affluence for some will impoverish others. World trade has a value, too. It may run up against your causes, but it should not be disregarded. Modified by NSTP, it could become a link we hold in common and thereby help unite the world peacefully......."
Unexpectedly, Dr. Boyd said, "Just because I'm not ready to use NSTP now at GTO doesn't mean its science doesn't make sense, especially for the varied causes of groups gathered here. Its use appears to offer a valuable way to achieve the global awareness and cohesiveness we need to reach sustainable, peaceful equilibrium on many fronts, including economics and mental health. No, NSTP is not something I can do at GTO, but it might be well worth consideration by you who protest GTO."
"No offense, Doc, but what is NSTP?" said the man in the turtle suit.
"It's a sensory, self-improvement, process that includes psychologically connecting with the natural environment when building relationships of any kind, including with yourself," Dr. Boyd responded knowledgeably. "Through NSTP you may readily reach the public, including GTO members and their families. That would help produce the many changes you seek. We all inherently have the environment and survival in common. Via the Internet and local training programs, NSTP enables you to attain an uncompromising unity amongst yourselves. They would help with what you're attempting to achieve here by protesting, too."
* * * *
"Dr. Cohen offers an environmentally sound, hands-on educational process that increases participation, catalyzes peace and promotes mental health. It fulfills our personal and economic needs, deeper ideals and spirit. His work deserves the attention of every person who seeks to reverse our troubles."
- Dr. Robert Muller
Assistant Secretary General Emeritus of the United Nations, Chancellor of the University for Peace, United Nations, recipient of the Albert Schweitzer Peace Prize and UNESCO prize for peace.
Would you be interested in publishing or co-publishing a trade edition of Einstein's World in cooperation with the Institute of Global Education and World Peace University Press? They have a grant-subsidized, public education edition planned for distribution. Wouldn't their edition produce greater desire, publicity and credibility for the trade edition as it invited people to buy it? Couldn't it be coordinated with a trade edition to reduce costs?
Thank you for considering this letter. Please contact me if you are interested in becoming involved this proposal and would like to see a sample copy of the book.
Owls and Howls,
Michael J. Cohen
References:
http://www.ecopsych.com/natpsych.html
http://www.pacificrim.net/~nature/survey.html
Einstein's World .Signature Edition, (116 pages, soft cover, spiral bound, illustrated ) is available on loan or by making a significant financial contribution towards its free distribution to individuals and organizations who want to improve the wellness of people and Earth.
Institute of Global Education
Special NGO consultant to the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
Project NatureConnnect
P. O. Box 1605,
Friday Harbor, WA 98250
1-888-285-4694 (toll free)
www.ecopsych.com
www.webstrings.org
nature@pacificrim.net
|
For previous
pages use the BACK or GO of your browser
..........ALTERNATIVES