PIERRE WEIL

BIOGRAPHIC SUMMARY

Preparation of the Peace Educator

Life will prepare him, during a long period of superior studies about education and psychology, for a professional activity as a writer, as an educator and as a therapist and, a profound research about the meaning of existence, after an existential crisis, followed by a cancer, leads him to a complete and definitive dedication to Peace.

Having a Ph.D. in Psychology issued by the University of Paris VII, Pierre Weil was a pupil of famous psychologists and educators such as Léon Walther, Henri Piéron, Wallon, André Rey, Jean Piaget. Afterwards he receives a psycho-therapeutic formation from Igor Caruso, from Jacob Lévy Moreno, from Zerka Moreno and from Anne Ancelin Scutzemberger.

In the first period of his univeresity career he does research about the neuro-vegetative emotivity, about the cultural and educational factors of intelligence and about the different aspects of personality. He occupies a chair as a professor to teach social psychology at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, in Belo Horizonte and, by the end of his career, to teach transpersonal psychology, a discipline of which he is one of the pioneers in the world.

One of his books, addressed to the large public, about Human Relations, rapidly becomes a Best Seller, in 1958. This book has had, since then, 50 editions. Many other books of the same style, achieve also a great success, about communication in love relations, about the relations between parents and children and about body language.

Success without happiness leads him towards an existential crisis followed by a cancer and to the loss of the meaning of existence. He begins, then, to ask himself about existential questions regarding the meaning of life and death. This causes him to find answers, in a synthesis between East and West, between the practice of Yoga and that of Psycho-analysis. He was, in this respect, ahead in 20 years, in comparison to the UNESCO Venice Declaration, which recommends the complementary encounter between the right and the left brains and between East and West.

During this research he gets in touch with great Yoga masters such as Swami Chidananda, Muktananda and Tibet lamas such as Kanjur Rimpoché and Pemala Rimpoché, at the Himalayan Mountains.

In 1982, each day more concerned about the international tension and about the danger of a nuclear war, he hesitates between going for a retreat in Tibet during 3 years, in which he would take care of his internal peace or to join Bernard Benson, his close friend, and to support his movement for International Peace. He rapidly chooses the retreat, that is, to begin taking care of his internal peace. He follows, in this respect, the recommendations of the preamble of the UNESCO creation assembly, about peace in the spirit of men.

One can say that after this retreat he finds himself ready to fulfil his dream from the time of "maquis" , the dream of dedicating himself to the Education for Peace.