Buddhists of the Mahayana and Vajrayana Schools, or Tantra, as it is also called, keep alive the flames of a burning promise that a ‘treasure text’ will appear when Man is ready for its delivery.
The condition we have decided to call ‘Autism’ has been around for some time, longer than initially thought and we can safely substitute ‘Asperger Syndrome’ for the good old British term ‘Eccentric’. Today there appears to be numerous ‘experts’ out there on autism, although I can’t see how, given that nobody still understands conclusively what is the causation of the condition.
Back in 1999, along with my high-functioning autistic wife Avril, we produced a humble and quite sizeable website, ‘In the Beginning’. When its server Geocities vanished years afterwards, so did 90% of our site. What remains of it, hanging out there in cyberspace, you can now find salvaged here, untouched and presented in its original form.
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The 1999 website’s intro highlighted how Avril, as a person with autism, started work with a Care Company who provided care for individuals with autism. I thought this was revolutionary and a great breakthrough. Sadly, it ended in Court when the Company’s unprofessional and biased staff soon, disappointingly, began to discriminate against their staff member who had autism, much preferring to maintaining the ‘Them and Us’ gulf and status quo. We won a disability discrimination court case, having to accept an undisclosed settlement and the episode was kept out of the Press. In other employments afterwards, this discrimination and lack of respect would occasionally rear its ugly head in other similar workplaces.
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Since announcing that we had found a clear link between Buddhism and Autism back in 2000 in our book ‘Buddha and The Autist’ – an introductory and limited edition aimed solely at academics – and standing quite and bravely alone doing so, times have slowly changed and it appears that others are now slowly picking up our gauntlet and can see the essence of what we were was saying.
In this respect we may like to claim that we were the originators of this style of thought.
Later, in 2011, my article ‘Was Buddha autistic?’ was shared, in two consequent issues and parts, with the readers of the UK national monthly magazine ‘Paranormal’.
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And so... in a world where autistic births are clearly on the increase ( and we say that this ISN’T down to the single fact that there are greater opportunities for detection and diagnosis) and there are literally thousands of commentators on the subject both academic and lay alike, we will keep short what we would like to contribute to the subject of autism.
It goes rather like this; We reinforce and maintain our 1999 stance that autistic births are on the
increase because this is Evolution. There is an Evolution Revolution happening. EVERYTHING
changes given enough time, and so too is brain wiring. Academic research has estimated that in addition to an ‘old brain’ of over 30 million years ago, there arrived the ‘new brain’, some ten millions ago. It could well be that births with an alternative brain wiring are yet another ‘new brain’. Could we reach the point where almost every birth is somewhere on what we call the Autistic Spectrum?
Puzzled academics are concerned as they are failing to provide a clear explanation for what is going on globally. Under the belt attacks have included trying to smear the name of Hans Asperger branding him and his work with a Nazi association, and there is even talk of terminating imminent autistic births if they can be detected.
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We say the global pouring in of autistic births will continue and may outmode the Neuro-typical birthing process. Why, you will inevitably and naturally ask? I can only direct you back to liable Evolutionary change as it is not my remit to speak on behalf of how higher forms of life gradually arise out of lower.
Malcolm Jenson, England 2018