Wim Hof

by Niklas Göransson

Dutch daredevil Wim Hof has twenty-six Guinness World Records to his name – we deliberate the scientific and esoteric merits of discoveries now challenging conventional wisdom about both body and mind.

This is an article from Bardo Methodology #6. The same issue also includes features with FUNERAL MIST, DEAD CAN DANCE, DEATHSPELL OMEGA, SUNN O))), MYSTICUM, ADORIOR, Metalion, Dave Haley, OFDRYKKJA, NECROS CHRISTOS, TEITANBLOOD, and Michael Denner.

Wim Hof is, in many respects, a most peculiar man. Besides his numerous record-breaking physical exploits, this life-long seeker speaks ten different languages and is well-versed in a number of esoteric systems and religious traditions. When Hof’s wife lost the battle against schizophrenia and took her own life in 1995, he immersed himself in his inner journey with renewed fervour whilst simultaneously raising four children on his own. After exploring a great many spiritual teachings and philosophies, it was in the crushing grip of the freezing cold he finally found a connection with the divine. Having already studied yoga and breathwork for many years, he began merging them with cold immersion and realised how oxygenating the body dramatically improves its ability to withstand extreme cold; a combination with the potential to heal both spirit and flesh. Wim had stumbled upon an entirely natural regimen capable of bestowing upon him seemingly superhuman abilities – a discovery he’s since devoted his life to raising awareness about. After forty years of field studies and unconquerable conviction, through decades of being mocked and dismissed as a charlatan, he does, by all accounts, appear to be standing on the verge of an epic vindication.

– All this lies in the power of the mind. Seen from the outside, modern humans appear to have the same skull, face, bone structure, whatever, as our ancestors from twenty generations ago – but inside it’s completely different, we’ve got ten times more neural activity within. We are now, as the first generation, able to influence cell structure and reach into our own DNA. Not that it was impossible before, you just had to meditate in a cave for twenty years. The cold has opened up a whole new chapter, beautiful.

This conversation took place in Przesieka, a small village in southwestern Poland close to the Czech border, during an early February 2019 training course in the foundations of Wim Hof’s methodology. The retreat offers five days geared towards teaching a basic understanding of his curriculum: breathing exercises, cold immersion training, and a mindset allowing for these skills to be incorporated into mundane life. We will not be delving into any breathing instructions here as all this and more is available free of charge from the Wim Hof Method website. Towards the end of the week, in order to put newly acquired skills to the test, one attempts to climb Mount Śnieżka – the highest point of the Silesian Ridge in the Karkonosze mountains – wearing nothing but shorts and hiking boots. During one of his Q&A sessions, Wim stated that modern humans use only a small part of their full brain capacity and suggested that mankind’s detachment from the elements of nature began with inventions such as clothing and the increased ability to manually regulate temperatures of homes and workplaces. As a result, Hof believes this has rendered our bodies under-stimulated and, consequently, numbed to age-old mechanisms and instincts pertaining to survival and functionality. He says it’s severed the connection to innate powers buried deep within dormant layers of our biology.

– This inner power becomes accessible to you once your physiology has been fully reawakened. We’ve lost control and must go back to being one with nature – appreciation and respect, harmony with the elements – which can only be accomplished by becoming more attuned to the natural world. We became insensitive to everything after over-indulging the neo-cortex, pre-frontal cortex; our sense of who we are, what we are, what we think the world is. Yet that is not the world, there’s more to all this than we think. However, we’re always… ‘Ah, it must be out there somewhere.’ No! It’s in there, inside you. The dominating strength we know the Western mind to be has contributed a lot of good, but it’s done a lot of bad too. Plenty of progress and innovations and technology, but also lots of bullshit and killing and domination. It’s not in control and through behaviour such as wearing clothes, getting more and more into the comfort zone, we’ve actually been slowly suffocating parts of our brains. They survived though, and we have to learn to liven them up, revive, and bring them under our wilful control. Disease is growing. Why? Because today we breathe too shallow, no longer going into the depths of the lymphatic system and, as a result, become acidic. Your body is always using up oxygen but when it needs more and there’s none available, it becomes non-aerobic.

The human body constantly strives to maintain a healthy balance. Hormones, pH levels, and neurotransmitters are all regulated by our biological baseline which, in turn, reacts to a number of factors such as our emotional state or what we eat and drink. When our corporeal vessel finds itself either acidic or alkaline, it will immediately start working towards bringing its pH levels back into balance. People dealing with either stress or anxiety are prone to taking short breaths, which means they’re not fully exhaling the carbon dioxide from their lungs; a build-up which, over extended periods of time, makes the body acidic. Should this condition be, as it often is, combined with poor nutrition and a lack of exercise, getting back to neutral levels will be even harder. Lingering acidity can lead to fatigue, headaches, indigestion, difficulties focusing, and mood swings. Alkalinity, however, that’s the ticket – associated with significant increases in both sleep quality and waking energy, mental acuity and cognition, as well as improved cardiovascular health along with a mitigating influence on chronic diseases.

– The lymphatic system is our waste disposal service and, at certain points, it needs to be worked out. Never before have we known how to access it but, nowadays, we do. If you do these breathing techniques your lymphatic system becomes very alkaline and you’re able to flush out the garbage. Chemistry. These are techniques with the innate capacity of putting people on the right path in every sense – physical, mental, astral, causal – whatever you can come up with, all of it is right there. It’s never too late, the oldest person who went with me to Kilimanjaro the last time was seventy-six years old and had the disease of Lyme. Now he’s an instructor, putting the fire into people’s eyes, showing them the breathing and making them alkaline.

Back in January 2016, Wim brought eighteen individuals with little to no mountaineering experience up Mount Kilimanjaro in thirty-one hours and twenty-five minutes, claiming the Guinness World Record for group time. Beforehand, this undertaking was deemed both impossible and reckless by all manner of experts. Perhaps not entirely unreasonably so, given how the average success rate for trained expeditions of reaching the peak – which usually has temperatures around negative twenty degrees Celsius (-4°F) – is forty-one percent. The primary reason this is so impressive isn’t merely the physical achievement of ascending the 5,895 metres (19,341ft) in nothing but shorts and hiking boots without succumbing to hypothermia, but that they did so without any signs of altitude sickness. Usually setting in at around three thousand metres, the condition begins with headaches, vertigo, and confusion and gets much worse from there. Altitude adaption usually takes the typical mountaineer five to seven days, and several experienced climbers have died of pulmonary embolism following insufficient acclimatisation. After training with Wim, the expedition managed to stave off both elements and elevation using only breathing exercises. Until now, altitude sickness has been considered inescapable even with medication. Alongside the aforementioned gentleman with Lyme disease was American author Scott Carney who first came to Poland on a 2011 commission from Playboy Magazine, set to prove Wim a snake oil salesman. One could say Carney had a slight change of heart along the way as he went on to write the 2017 book What Doesn’t Kill Us: How Freezing Water, Extreme Altitude, and Environmental Conditioning Will Renew Our Lost Evolutionary Strength.

– Breathing deeply brings the mitochondrial activity; we’re able to filter a lot and, in an enhanced state, we create molecules capable of ridding our bodies of the wrong chemistry caused by external factors such as elevation. Deeper breathing – consciousness – you are in control. You change it. The breathing, the mindset, the neurology. You, not anyone or anything else, are the master of your mind.

Photo: Innerfire BV

When proofreading or editing articles without having slept properly, I’ll often get drowsy to the point where I can barely keep my eyes open. Fresh air, rinsing my face with cold water, and so on – nothing works short of taking a nap. However, if I receive an email or a phone-call with important or urgent news, it instantly clears the brain fog and renders me completely alert. I’ve never figured out how to induce this manually though, it appears to only be activated by something exterior and unexpected, so I wish to know if anything of the kind would be possible by employing Wim’s method.

– Yes. When a mail like that comes, the adrenal access is activated and works like a shot of cocaine to your system. But you are very able to ignite adrenaline through these practices of the breath. I could tell you, in the first study performed by Radboud University, people performing this breathing were monitored and they produced three times the amount of adrenaline compared to someone going into their first bungee jump.

Coming upon an alarming surprise, like spotting a dangerous animal in our immediate vicinity, will subject most of us to an instant physiological reaction such as either recoiling in horror or instinctively swatting at the beast. This response is facilitated by our nervous system. After processing visual information and identifying potential peril it dispatches a distress signal to the adrenal glands, freeing up glucose and flooding the veins with adrenaline, heightening our senses and acuity and increasing pain tolerance. We find ourselves physiologically primed to neutralise exterior threats through either fight or flight. Standing fully submerged inside a laboratory container filled with ice for a 2010 study at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands, Wim was chatting casually with the scientists monitoring him. Despite a proven track record of extreme achievements, the team were surprised to find him capable of modulating his core body temperature; hitherto considered impossible. Even so, they were still sceptical when he mentioned also being able to manually activate the adrenal glands and thusly regulate his immune system. Ever eager to disprove his naysayers, Wim asked if anyone at Radboud University would be able to measure such a demonstration and was referred to professor Peter Pickkers. Pickkers was, at first, equally incredulous but agreed to put Hof’s claims to the test and so subsequently injected him with an endotoxin which, by any logic, should’ve resulted in immediate flu-like symptoms. Instead, the team observed Wim’s adrenaline levels skyrocketing as he performed his breathing and meditation exercises and were then stunned to find him reporting nothing but a mild headache. The scientists eventually concluded that Hof had activated his hypothalamus – a part of the brain that produces hormones, controls body temperature, and governs the nervous system – and somehow consciously suppressed his immune system, preventing it from breaking out with sickness symptoms such as fever and shivering. Baffled, the Radboud team initially surmised that Wim was some manner of genetic freak. To find out if this was really the case, eighteen volunteers were recruited and then trained in his method.

– The volunteers, along with the Dutch doctors who monitored them, came here to Poland for four days. I told everyone we’d be able to infiltrate deeply into the autonomous nervous system as well as the endocrine and immune systems – at the time considered in science to be impossible. Hence the prevailing belief that we’re not able to tackle autoimmune diseases in a natural way. So, they came here to record these guys, every day at eight o’clock the doctors with measurement devices arrived.

The medical staff were initially doubtful that any of the volunteers would be able to, in a matter of days, master a technique Wim had spent decades honing. On the contrary, they were rather confident that most wouldn’t even last the entire training. Each and every one persevered and twelve of them were then randomly selected and brought to the university where they, together with twelve non-trained volunteers, were injected with the same dead E. coli bacteria Wim had been administered. Everyone in the control group reacted as predicted, as if they’d suffered an intense outbreak of the flu. After performing the breathwork in their hospital beds, Hof’s volunteers were shown to produce massive spikes in adrenaline and epinephrine – greatly increasing the production of anti-inflammatory mediators in their system. They reported either very light symptoms or none at all. Wim Hof had proven that it’s possible to, after a few days of training, teach someone with no prior experience to activate the autonomic nervous system and inhibit the response of their immune system. This could have a massive bearing over our understanding on the treatment of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, and similar ailments associated with an overactive immune system which, as a result of chronic inflammation, ends up harming the body through excessive attempts at repairing and healing already healthy tissue. What these findings clearly demonstrate is that such illnesses can be alleviated by consciously entering an adrenal state. The ability to self-regulate adrenaline flow simply by breathing, triggering bodily alarms on a hormonal level without experiencing subjective feelings of fear or distress, could prove a massive advantage in numerous scenarios – not least sports, which is why a number of elite athletes have trained under Wim. Besides alertness, adrenaline also exerts power over stress hormones; meaning, the technique could potentially be valuable for people suffering from emotional disorders such as PTSD, schizophrenia, or depression. These results were published in a 2014 edition of the highly respected and often-cited peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. After reading quite a few of these science papers whilst preparing for this conversation, I found myself wondering if any of the scientists ever try out these methods themselves.

– Yes, they now love to do the cold showers and know how to apply the breathing in accordance to their needs. Cold showers are the best, they activate your internal transport system. Thus, the heart rate goes down which always means oxygenated energy and less stressful feelings. All the little muscles help the blood flow go through, so much better feeling. You’ve got the power now, with changing your neurology at will. Instant connection for you to deal with it, to turn everything around – not only present feelings but also past energies coming out. A cleansing.

Photo: Innerfire BV

Before attracting attention from the mainstream scientific community, let alone being taken even remotely serious, Wim would habitually perform a number of absolutely mental stunts in his attempts to bring to light these discoveries. He once hung from his middle finger between two hot-air balloons, six hundred metres (2000ft) up in the air. In the year 2000 he attempted to set a world record by swimming sixty-six metres (215ft) under ice, but the corneas in his eyes froze. Blinded and drowning, he had to be retrieved by a diver. Scorn defeat – Hof returned the next day, wearing goggles this time, and completed the swim. Following a Q&A session one evening during my stay, in order to prove a point about how the mind yields long before the body does, he spontaneously decided to set the world record for standing still barefoot in the snow. While cameras and timers were being rigged, he first finished his beer and then performed a breathing routine, emanated sounds reminiscent of Tibetan throat chanting, and headed outside to stand in horse stance for three hours. Furthermore, Wim has run a full marathon in the Namib desert without a drop of water and then rehydrated with cold lager. He did the same around the North Pole, wearing only shorts and running shoes. Also noteworthy is how both endeavours were undertaken without any prior training since he, and I quote, ‘doesn’t like running’. I think I’ve acquired a decent understanding of the science behind him self-modulating his body temperature, but I have not the foggiest idea how the hell anyone runs a marathon, forty kilometres (25 miles), without intense cardio training beforehand.

– It’s through the cold immersion, the cold trains your cardiovascular abilities. What you want is an improved connection with the vascular system so you’re able to control it – regardless of cold or heat – and even regulating the body’s liquid levels so they remain the same without drinking. This won’t stress the heart and you’ll be able to manually feed it oxygen and the right balance of fluids all over. It’s quite amazing, and very simple. So, doing the cardio without training is possible because you can control your vascular system by going into the cold; this made me able to enter into a marathon with no training, running in the desert without drinking, something which would normally stress out the heart enormously yet for me there was no stress whatsoever.

On a somewhat related note, have you read Magic and Mystery in Tibet by Alexandra David-Néel?

– Yes.

Born in 1868, Alexandra David-Néel was a Belgian-French mystic, explorer, and author. Among her many awe-inspiring accomplishments, the one she’s mostly known for is having made it into the forbidden Tibetan capital of Lhasa in 1924. She spent a total of fourteen years in Tibet, during a time when it was still off-limits to foreigners, beautifully chronicled in her books My Journey to Lhasa and Magic and Mystery in Tibet. David-Néel studied diligently a number of advanced Tibetan esoteric practices and would ultimately earn the title of Lady Lama, a venerated spiritual master. What’s interesting is how she, rather matter-of-factly, describes a number of seemingly supernatural abilities possessed by monks, ascetics, and hermits. This led many to challenge the accuracy of her claims, some even going so far as to question whether she even made it into Lhasa. One such practice is that of g-tummo, the discipline of monks who meditate naked in the Himalayan snow. She describes how adepts, sitting outside in freezing temperatures, are wrapped with blankets soaked in ice-water and then made to dry them using only the heat of their bodies; obviously widely deemed completely impossible. Now, besides Hof’s analogous achievements, this exact practice was documented at the remote Gebchak nunnery in Tibet for a 2013 study funded by the University of Singapore. Seeing as how David-Néel was obviously truthful in this account, it begs the question if not the same could be said about other observations such as those of the lung-gom-pa trance runners? These monks are said to have undergone intense spiritual training enabling them to run for forty-eight hours straight without stopping. The word ‘lung’ is typically used in both a physical and mental sense to describe energy, breath, air, and wind – it has a similar meaning to the yogic term prāṇa – and ‘gom’ means mental focus or meditation. In conclusion, a lung-gom-pa is one who seeks to liberate himself from physical restraints by amassing energy through meditative breathing. I was initially thinking that Wim’s marathon accolades could be connected to this.

– I do have prior experience with such running, yes. I was able to keep on running, running, running; you become free, your neurology changes and you are in charge. It’s like you become very light. But this is a different way than our Western approach, because our minds are so very different. This electrical neurology needed to do lama lung-gom-pa is much more difficult for us to enter into. Do you know how long it takes to access these altered states? Years.

In his book The Way of the White Clouds, renowned German-born Buddhist Lama Anagarika Govinda recalls a 1947 visit to Nyang-to Kyi-phug, one of two monasteries conducting lung-gom-pa training at the time. Govinda explains how the initiate must first sever every connection to his previous life, name and all, before being sealed inside a meditation hermitage. The adept’s meals are served through a hole in the wall, he has no human contact whatsoever for up to nine years. Note that in the Tibetan tradition, this in itself is nothing extraordinary at all – Alexandra David-Néel herself spent three years in a cave. The incarceration is spent mainly in meditation, performing breathing exercises, and chanting mantras. The monk sits cross-legged on the floor, inhales deeply and then leaps into the air with no help from his arms; repeating this endlessly for years on end leaves him in full mastery over the synergy of breath and physical action. After their prescribed time, the lung-gom-pa runners are summoned out from seclusion following which they’re said to move and carry themselves with paranormal lightness and speed. Three years after Govinda’s observations, the Chinese invaded Tibet and levelled most of its monasteries to the ground, spelling the end of the lung-gom-pa tradition along with much else from this once-magical realm.

– The contemporary Western mind has neither the time nor the patience, it doesn’t want to face reality and change its belief systems. Getting through to the Western mind is very difficult. We’ve been highly aggressive the last hundreds of years in expanding, colonising, going to the moon, and creating great technology but there’s still no control. It’s a very strong mind but now we found a way to bypass its limitations. This is the neurology of the soul, reaching the brain’s innermost depths previously considered inaccessible, where traditions and disciplines like lama lung-gom-pa, g-tummo, Mahimā-siddhi, Laghimā-siddhi, and all those things suddenly become possible. That’s what you need for g-tummo – bare-chested in the snow and cold, like we were yesterday. After discovering the breathing, they suddenly felt so much more energy and went up into the mountains. So not only is it a physical technique, you consciously breathe deeper and tap into the full power of the mind. The time has come to take it over, in conscious control. So, here I am, I know about the other disciplines and yogas of great ascetics: Nāropā, Tilopā, Milarepa, all those. But they did not bring the ability of getting into the deeper parts of the brain, breaking through the conditioning of our Western way of thinking.

Photo: Innerfire BV

Whilst writing, I’ll often use an alternate version of what Wim refers to as ‘power breathing’. I usually only have to take a few swift but deep breaths, inhale fully and then force air into my lungs by tensing up the sternum; what follows is a surge of cerebral energy, the distorted DMT crackling in my ears, followed by an absolutely horrific existential terror. If focus can be maintained throughout the panic, it results in a sort of blackout breakthrough where I briefly lose consciousness. I resume scribing as soon as the cobwebs clear, significantly more creative and inspired. It looks absolutely ridiculous though – fainting at the desk – so probably not something one should try in an office environment.

– When you perform this breathing, as you showed, I can see, ‘Ah, I know what he’s doing!’ You bring forth the electrical power through this technique. You’ve got a moment of feeling horrific but then you replenish with electrical power past your conditioning: the nervous system and the thyroid, this gives you a direct boost of inspiration. The thyroid gland is responsible for our speech and creativity – writers and artists deal with that – a lot of energy comes through there. It’s also about sexuality and the flow of the body. I can tell you, when we did the Radboud study here in Poland, some guys went so deep in their breathing that they passed out. The doctors were outraged, ‘This is not good!’, they came running with oxygen masks and stretchers and wanted to cancel the research program right away. But then they saw these volunteers coming back again, so nice and full of love.

I often employ a similar breathing pattern when preparing to meditate. Sitting cross-legged and inhaling fully, I gently apply pressure and then surrender physical control; the body starts shifting by itself – hips open up, spine straightens with audible pops, and my posture becomes far better than I can manage on my own.

– Once again, this is your neurology at work; most of it goes through and around the spine. These breathing techniques straighten the back and everything because of the electrical power within us – the potential. It then lifts up and straightens us out and all the surrounding areas around the bones and tendons are revitalised. It’s like water coming back to a plant, suddenly it begins to grow again.

Makes one wonder, given how central breathing is to its practice, if that could be how traditions such as yoga were originally developed. Meaning, early yogis entering an altered state and allowing neurology to guide their physical vessel into specific poses.

– Yes, that’s the way. They call it the thousand-petaled lotus, Sahasrara, Brahmarandhra, all names for the same. When you bring additional neurology, extra electricity, the power, you do that purposefully through consciousness and then use pressure manipulation in the body. The breathing causes a different chemistry and brings out the right electricity which is then dispersed along the natural path by going through all the extremities and all the body parts into the spine. So, yes, they found out by trial and error – by trying it out and then realising it’s very natural. The breath is obviously still very dear to these traditions. But now we have different minds and no time like the yogis; it’s all different. However, we’ve found a way to induce all this through these breathing techniques, activating the adrenal access and calibrating the body to its utmost functionality.

Does your method confirm esoteric concepts such as the chakra system and the nadis?

– Oh yeah. Absolutely. Only this is a shortcut, it goes directly. Once again – our minds are different from those of the yogis, etcetera, but when connected with the breath they’re very able to open up all the chakras and go into nirvana, Samadhi. Anything.

Wim often refers to the cold as his teacher; I’m curious if this is more in an intuitive sense or if he actually establishes some manner of correspondence with the sensation. Admittedly, the question might sound absurd but if one consumes botanical sacraments such as ceremonial cacti, the sacred mushroom, Salvia divinorum, and so on – the plant spirits will often communicate, each with a distinctly different personality.

– Mmm, I like it! The cold is indeed a teacher, merciless but righteous. Before, they had to consume plants like ayahuasca, iboga, psilocybin, peyote, San Pedro. All of those I know but you no longer need to microdose or take any kind of dose to get into a higher state of consciousness and deepen your knowing about the soul and all we are. It’s there, very simple and not so explosive as we think. This is where Dimethyltryptamine comes into play. Dreaming at night, we are brought out of waking consciousness to process and solve all kinds of matters occurring throughout the day. And at the time of death we are shown our life. For this we need DMT and its methalisation process. It’s all there – we call it names – I think it is time for humanity to stand up and awaken the full potential of spirit and soul.

N,N-Dimethyltryptamine is a chemical compound found both in the plant kingdom as well as the human body, where it’s hypothesised to serve a function related to neurotransmission. To most readers, DMT is probably known as a highly visual psychedelic agent – it’s either smoked as an extract or added to ayahuasca, an Amazonian brew in which the main ingredient is a vine that temporarily disables an enzyme in our gut which neutralises DMT on contact. Scientists believe our illustrious tryptamine to be what facilities dreaming at night. We’re also believed to experience heavy endogenous DMT releases both at birth and at the moment of death, which could potentially be what individuals with near-death experiences perceive as their ‘lives flashing before them’ and the classic tunnel of light. Wim’s breathing exercises can activate what would appear to be natural DMT emissions, noticeable by the often-reported closed-eye visuals. Many have remarked that the sensations of ‘power breathing’ and a low, non-breakthrough dose of smoked DMT have strong similarities. Wim has also demonstrated an ability to self-release opioids and cannabinoids in his brain, reportedly yielding comparable sensations to that of ingesting plants containing the same substances; hence his catchphrase of ‘getting high on one’s own supply’.

– There is three times more spirituality within us than what we normally see. And that’s the so-called subconscious. Until now it was thought of as impossible to tap into, but our minds have been growing and growing and growing and the neurology is now so vast and dense that we’re able to tap into the remaining seventy-five percent. We can call it names. Of course, it has a name because you yourself, with a quarter of control within the mind, you have a name. Then how about the remaining three quarters, it should also have a name – it’s you, for real, coming together from being dualistic into one being. Like the Yaqui Indians and their Mescalito, from the tonal to the nagual, from the consciousness into the subconscious and seizing control over more than three parts of our brain which were previously inaccessible.

The terms tonal and nagual come from The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, the memoirs of Peruvian-American author and anthropologist Carlos Castaneda. Tonal refers to the physical existence whereas nagual is the non-material world; together, the two parallel realities comprise the known universe. Mescalito is the spirit of the peyote cactus, a revered teacher plant among the Yaquis. While Wim might not see the need for any exotic sacraments, I noticed during my stay that he’s an avid devotee of Europe’s oldest religious entheogen – beer.

– Sometimes I drink and other times I don’t. We’ve come upon all these answers after going into nature and enjoying life just like everybody else. Living the lifestyle of a monk? Nah, man, that’s not for me. Do whatever you want, just exercise control in doing so. You are the master of both your mind and body, so don’t be aggressive or act like an asshole because you have no control over your chemistry. There’s no one program for two persons alike. Here we drink, in the Arab countries they smoke. Everybody finds a way to intoxicate themselves, or learn how to become masters over their internal chemistry.

Pharmaceutical companies are presumably not among your biggest fans – have you seen any signs of them actively opposing you?

– ‘Actively’ is a very… how can you oppose something like breathing, you know? But it’s on – oh yes – it is on. The battle has begun and people try to drown this. Many people don’t want a natural method capable of erasing millions and trillions of euros, dollars, whatever in profits. We are giving everyone the power back and that’s threatening to those in control. It’s sick and disgusting to have gathered so much power that you’re afraid of natural methods. I sense their presence, absolutely, of drowning our studies. But I also see pharmaceutical directors coming to us, they’ve had enough of the business. Two weeks ago, we had here one such director who controls eighteen countries. He’s an executive but will be quitting; now he wants to become an instructor. Many industry people are like that, they come to us and several of them have told me stories. Because it doesn’t make money and is all natural, these corporations want control. Maybe they think about overpopulation and that it’s nice so they can keep supplying pills and making money.

I was actually getting to that – let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Wim is successful in healing the world from depression and sickness. Leaving moral dilemmas aside and focusing on practicality, one could argue that overpopulation is likely to swiftly become an issue.

– Yes, people tell me this. But right now, isn’t it already considered overpopulated? What’s happened is that people are growing older but also sicker. More disease. Once we’re within the coming paradigm shift, people will have natural lifespans and not artificially prolonged life with medicines and pills. The longer you are a client of an industry the more you serve, because this is what’s going on right now and that’s why we have to sort of worry about overpopulation. The population would be natural, all would be natural and making sense if we live according to how we’re meant to. Overpopulation means you have people living without purpose and in fear of dying because they haven’t lived their life. So, changing the paradigm will solve overpopulation and things will become harmonious and in the right balance. We’ve got all these simple answers yet they’re not being received widespread all over the world. This is where we are, what we will bring to the cause of universal justice. Just-ice.

So it’s not possible or even desirable to attain some manner of physical immortality?

– Well, it surely is possible yet there’s also a soul. How much time do you truly need to realise the soul? That’s the entire purpose of our human form; when you own a car, you use it to travel from point A to point B. Upon arrival you don’t stay in the vehicle, you leave it. Your body is the auto. Auto is from Greek – ‘gnothi seauton’, know yourself. We don’t know what the soul is, what home is, and thus we alienate it and think the body is our home. But it is not. Yet we’re able to extend life by prolonging the thalamus and our DNA, because we are in control. That’s all certainly possible yet it’s not desirable ‘cause when you are done, you’re done.

This is an article from Bardo Methodology #6. The same issue also includes features with FUNERAL MIST, DEAD CAN DANCE, DEATHSPELL OMEGA, SUNN O))), MYSTICUM, ADORIOR, Metalion, Dave Haley, OFDRYKKJA, NECROS CHRISTOS, TEITANBLOOD, and Michael Denner.