Untitled

Press, 19 October 1978, Page 5

By

ANGELA NEUSTATTER

Jane Arden, erstwhile big mama of the women’s movement has turned heretic. Once, her energy went into writing plays and tracts on woman’s degraded status, and holding open house to women wanting to talk out their feelings of being oppressed.

These days she is dismissive about the women's movement. Once shd believed it could be a dynamic, radical force for funamental change in society’s consciousness of women’s dignity.

“It’s been no more than a tiny squeak when you look at the results” she declares.

“Women have concentrated on fighting for a piece of the male cake when in fact it is a terrible, bum, cake which nobody should have to eat anyway. How many men feel the way that they live and work is utopian?

“1 see a lot of cross, unhappy women making masses of noise about the oppressor having all the goodies, the need for creches, battered wives’ homes, equal pay. They have dissipated all their energy battling for legislation which may cure a few of the inequalities in society but which has done " nothing to make women and men happier and more loving as people.”

So now she has buried polemic and passion in favour o'f a quiet struggle which she describes as the beginning of “the psychic revolution.” The doctrine is the writings of those gurus preoccupied with feelings and consciousness: Gurdjieff, Alan Watts, Bagwan and her action is therapy —

almost any kind you care to mention from encounter groups to dynamic meditation.

She’s in her 40s and her image fits the new thinking well. She wears

cheesecloth Indian trousers, and a disorganised hair-do Her room is decorated with the pickings from Eastern travels and while we talk she sits at ray feet, like some small, pbeisant animal.

It’s all very different from the strident days when she wrote that early women’s lib play “Vagina Rex” and the “Gas Oven,” or stormed around the Open Space theatre shouting “shit” because so

many people seem to have missed the point of her women’s theatre production “The Holocaust.”

Even her film, “The Other Side of the Underneath,” of which she is still proud, was born from a different energy.

She has been accused of selling out, of popularism adn a general weakening of the grey matter, but she is not daunted. She has replied with a new book: “You Don't Know What You Want, Do You?” a collection of prose-poetry thoughts designed to make us switch into reverse gear and stop allowing the supremacy of the rational mind to wreck our natural responses and instincts.

A film on a similar theme, about attempts to de-condition a young man from his past experiences is being cut now. She feels pleased to have written her book because she says, it is an important statement. “In the West we worship the mind. It is the thing we admire more than anything else. People are ashamed of autistic or rnongol children no matterhow much they have of the heart.

"We applaud people who work at high pressure, who lead severelydisciplined conformist lives far more than those who are contented, even though there is only death at the end.”

Throughout the book the rational mind is label-

led Rat and her beginning states:

"Rat’s life is controlled from cradle to grave, his infancy repeated and reflected in all activities and relationships. Rat needs constant affirmation to combat isolation. Rats go mad if they ars ignored."

There are exercises for defeating Rat. ‘‘Go alone to a deserted beach without any equipment; no swimsuits, cameras, surfboards, sailing boats, fishing tackle, picnics, binoculars, cigarettes, books or writing materials.” ‘‘Sit and watch the

“On your in-breath watch the sea. on your out-breath close your eyes and visualise darkness.” “Minimum time for this exercise — two hours.” “No drugs.”

Isn't it curious that she, a woman whose rationality and intellect have been a vital force in her work as a writer, should have adopted such an attitude?

“Not really. I may be working now and yes, using my intellect, but I am also devoting a great deal of time and energy to breaking down the mind worship. I have just returned from India where I spent three months in an Ashram.

“The fact that 1 was Jane Ard?n meant nothing to anyone and all the Western values 1 took were valueless. It was a tremendous experience during which 1 felt tru‘y calm; I felt real affection for people around and very aware of my deepest feelings. “As I see it, people getting in touch with their feelings this way — ar? the ones capable of living harmoniously in the world. The way Western society is going, sneering at this idea, can only lead to a ghastly holocaust.”

Back in London, where Ashrams are thin- on the ground, she has decided that therapies are the best way to continue the quest for consciousness.

And there are no half measures: “I believe in trying everything and anything. That’s my advice to everyone: explore all the possibilities for mobilising your energy.”

Then it is time to end our psychic prattle. A pretty girl in a fushcia boiler suit and Jack Bond. ’ friend and producer of her I films appear- hot from a ' trip to temporal Soho and ! we banish our rational minds in- a glass of red j wine.