Melvyn Wartella was born in Southern California in the spring of 1939. World War Two was just beginning. His introduction to life was one of violence and suffering, in his community, family, and also worldwide. Most of his early memories were about wars, the talk of more wars, the constant threat of an atomic bomb attack and seeing directly the suffering of humankind.
This started him asking questions about the nature of humans that made them so violent and destructive. No one around him had any answers and all of them seemed as lost as he was. His family also had a difficult time being honest about anything. He was very outspoken and was always in trouble for bringing up things no one wanted to hear or face. So he kept most of his questions to himself and rarely talked to anyone about his real feelings.
When a child lives in a violent society, it is very difficult to keep from becoming violent, too. For the first many years he was able to keep from falling into the ways of those around him. However, not seeing any other possibility he became as violent as those who were always confronting him with anger and violence. It was a matter of survival; it was either get tough or die.
In his teens, he belonged to gangs. All of his friends were as afraid as he was but no one would dare show it. He got into trouble many times and came close to being killed far too often.
He also learned to not trust authorities. It seemed that all the adults he dealt with were liars. Except one, a probation officer that felt there was some real goodness in him and let him know that. He was the first to do so and the only one during his teen years.
To get away from the gangs and the town he lived in he joined the Army, hoping to find a better life. Three months before he went into the Army, he and a friend went to a dance in the next town to pick up his girlfriend, who had gone by herself because he was too shy to go to a public dance. When he and his friend walked up to the door of the dance hall, a policeman told them to get out of there. They walked away a few feet, and then he turned and went back. He tried to explain that he only wanted to pick up his girlfriend and that if he were not there when she came out she would not know where his car was parked. The cop made him turn against a wall as he searched him for weapons. Then handcuffed him and put him in the police car across the road. He was in the front seat and he could reach the door handle to get out, which is what he did when he saw the kids coming out of the dance hall. He walked to the cop and asked again if he could just be there to meet his girlfriend. The cop wanting to act tough started to beat him with his nightstick. Every time he was hit, he would call the cop a name. He did not want the cop to think he had power over him just because he could cause pain. The next thing he knew was when he woke up in jail the next day. He was badly bruised and in a great deal of pain. The cop had beaten him unconscious.
He was 17 when this happened and the police were supposed to notify the parents when they put kids in jail. They did not call his mother for two days. The cops said they were not going to press charges against him because he was going into the Army soon. When asked what he would have been charged with they said for verbally abusing an officer. It was all right for the cop to beat a teenager unconscious, but you had better not speak up about it.
Three months later he went into the Army. For the first three months, he did well. He found he had a knack for fighting and defending himself. He had thought he would make a career in the Army. He was treated better than at home, he ate better food, had better clothing, and in time would get to travel, plus he felt safer. However, this was not to be. After all the years of stress he had gone through, and the beating he had endured, he found himself emotionally falling apart. He became deeply depressed and could not get out of it. He was put in the hospital and after a few months was given a medical discharge and sent home.
In a short time, he was back in a gang again, still not healed and in deep depression. After awhile it became all too clear that if he did not change his life completely he would die. One year before this he had tried to end his life but failed. When he woke up the next morning after having passed out from taking a large bottle of aspirin, he felt there was some reason he had lived through what should have killed him. So, depression or not, he went on.
He got married at 19 thinking that would make him do what was right and help get away from the friends he had been running with for years. He was still an emotional mess and depressed. He did the best he could and somehow things started to get better.
His search for understanding had gone on all those years of being in hell. No matter how bad things got he was always trying to understand the reasons for it all. Then when he was about 24 he had a awakening and realized all was mind/consciousness. This was the first of many transformations he went through. It was the first to show him there was something beyond all the madness and violence he had known before.
When he was about 30, he experienced his first Satori, Enlightenment. It was very powerful but left him feeling that there was more to understand. For the next 8 years, he went deeper into the nature of reality.
In late summer of 1978 he had the most profound and life transforming experience of his life. He came to understand more in one day than all the years before that, compounded many times over. However, one question was not even asked at that time. The question of what is the ego and how did it develop. One can become deeply enlightened and still not have a totally clear understanding of the mechanics of the mind.
Two years after this awakening those questions were answered in a very profound way. It became absolutely clear how the ego developed and why and so much more it would take a book to start to express it clearly.
Ever since he first started to awaken, he has been open to help others see what the truth is. Back when he had little understanding it was easy to find people who wanted to go into these things. However, after he really understood, he has found very few that want to go into it at all. As long as what you are saying makes the ego feel good and a little more secure, you will find many that want to hear what you have to say. However, if you are pointing at the very core of the ego's insecurity, then few want to face that.
He does not claim to know it all, but what he does know, he knows well. One of the reasons he writes is to try to interest those who are better equipped by education to go beyond his understanding. Education alone will help very little. However, if one understands the way the conditioned mind keeps us blind and has a good education in psychology, psychiatry or the sciences dealing with the mind and its processes, one can be a great help in the transformation of the human mind.
