Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) was a Russian anarchist and philosopher who believed that mutual aid—helping and cooperating with others—was the key to human progress. Unlike capitalism, which focuses on competition, Kropotkin argued that people thrive through solidarity and working together.
His famous book, *Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution* (1902), challenged the idea that only the strongest survive. Instead, he showed how cooperation exists in nature and human societies, proving that kindness and teamwork are just as important as strength.
Kropotkin’s ideas inspired labor movements, anarchists, and socialists in the 20th century. Even today, his message matters: in a world of inequality and isolation, building strong communities and sharing knowledge can create a fairer, better future.
By spreading compassion and working together, we can follow Kropotkin’s vision—a world where everyone supports each other, not just the powerful few.
In the death camp, they gave him a number: 119104.
But the thing they tried hardest to kill became the very thing that saved millions.
Vienna.
Viktor Frankl was 37 years old, a respected psychiatrist with a growing practice, a manuscript nearly complete, and a wife named Tilly whose laugh could fill a room.
He had a chance to escape to America. A visa. A way out.
But his elderly parents couldn’t come with him. So he stayed.
Within months, the Nazis came for them all.
Theresienstadt. Then Auschwitz. Then Dachau.
The manuscript he’d spent years writing—sewn carefully into the lining of his coat—was torn away within hours of arrival.
His life’s work. His purpose. Reduced to ash.
His clothes were taken. His hair shaved. His name erased.
On the intake form, there was only a number: 119104.
But here’s what the guards didn’t understand:
You can take a man’s manuscript. You can take his name. You can take everything he owns.
But you cannot take what he knows.
And Viktor Frankl knew something about the human mind that would keep him alive—and give birth to a revolution in psychology.
He noticed a pattern.
In the camps, men didn’t just die from starvation or disease.
They died from giving up.
The moment a prisoner lost his reason to survive—his why—his body would collapse within days. The doctors had a term for it: “give-up-itis.”
But the men who held onto something—a wife to find, a child to see again, a book to write, a debt to repay, a promise to keep—they endured unthinkable suffering.
The difference wasn’t physical strength.
It was meaning.
So Frankl began an experiment.
Not in a laboratory. In the barracks.
He would approach men on the edge of despair and whisper:
“Who is waiting for you?”
“What work is left unfinished?”
“What would you tell your son about surviving this?”
He couldn’t offer food. He couldn’t promise freedom. He had nothing material to give.
But he offered something the guards could never confiscate: a reason to see tomorrow.
One man remembered his daughter. He survived to find her.
Another remembered a scientific problem he’d been working on. He survived to solve it.
Frankl himself survived by mentally reconstructing his lost manuscript—page by page, paragraph by paragraph, in the darkness of the barracks.
April 1945. Liberation.
Viktor Frankl weighed 85 pounds. His ribs showed through his skin.
Tilly was gone. His mother—gone. His brother—gone.
Everything he’d loved had been murdered.
He had every reason to despair. Every reason to give up.
Instead, he sat down and began writing.
Nine days.
That’s how long it took him to recreate his manuscript from memory—the one the Nazis had destroyed three years earlier.
But now it contained something the original didn’t:
Proof.
Living, breathing, undeniable proof that his theory was true.
He called it Logotherapy—therapy through meaning.
The foundation was simple but revolutionary:
Humans can survive almost anything if they have a reason why.
“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” (He borrowed the words from Nietzsche, but he had proven them in hell.)
The book is published.
In German, the title was “…trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen”—”…Nevertheless Say Yes to Life.”
In English, it became “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
The world wasn’t ready for it. Publishers initially rejected it. “Too morbid,” they said. “Who wants to read about concentration camps?”
But slowly, quietly, it began to spread.
Therapists read it and wept.
Prisoners read it and found hope.
People facing divorce, disease, bankruptcy, depression—they read it and discovered that their suffering could have purpose.
The impact was seismic.
The book has now been translated into over 50 languages.
It’s sold more than 16 million copies.
The Library of Congress named it one of the ten most influential books in America.
But here’s what matters more than sales numbers:
Countless people—people whose names we’ll never know—have picked up this book in their darkest moment and found a reason to keep going.
Because Viktor Frankl proved something the Nazis tried to disprove:
You can strip away everything from a human being—freedom, family, food, future, hope—and there will still be one final freedom remaining:
The freedom to choose what it all means.
You cannot control what happens to you.
But you can always control what you make of what happens to you.
Today, Viktor Frankl is gone.
But in hospital rooms, in therapy offices, in prisons, in quiet moments when someone is deciding whether to give up or keep going—his words are still there:
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”
The Nazis gave him a number.
History gave him immortality.
Because the man who lost everything taught the world that meaning is the one thing no one can ever take away.
Prisoner 119104 didn’t just survive.
He turned suffering itself into a source of healing.
And somewhere tonight, someone who’s barely holding on will read his words and decide to hold on one more day.
Let me summarize a bit what has accumulated in my head. I was at a family constellations seminar recently, and the facilitator mentioned regression therapy, which prompted me to write this text.
Regression therapy is when you put a person into a trance, and they recall their past. In psychology, this refers to childhood traumas, while in esotericism, to past lives.
What I’ve understood is that there are two approaches to reincarnation: the first is linear (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), like a ray that has a beginning (Adam and Eve in Christianity) but no end. The end can be predicted end of times after Apocalypse. The other is non-linear (Hinduism and Buddhism), where you can be reborn in different eras, planets, and spaces.
They do not contradict each other; on the contrary, they complement each other.
In the linear approach, the lineage (family history) preserves memory; it has DNA. Like a life that originated with Adam and Eve and flowed through generations to present-day people – the energy of a family — for example, the tribes of Israel in the Old Testament. The lineage (family history) manifests like a water source in the subconscious, and by looking at a person’s associations with this source (e.g., muddy/clear), you can understand their attitude towards their family.
So, here’s the thing… is it possible to recall past incarnations, or is it just fantasy? I think regression therapy can be considered within the framework of the past that a person remembers. For instance, a grandmother was raped, and her granddaughter subconsciously avoids men. Or a girl grew up without a father and, in her adult life, subconsciously takes revenge on all men. Or working through the issue of a grandmother’s brother who was a criminal. Or a grandfather who hanged himself. All of this can be processed and released.
But when I hear stories about how someone was a queen or a witch in a past life (but never, for example, an ordinary housewife), I become skeptical. I also see this as fertile ground for charlatans to profit from a person’s desire for self-affirmation.
Family Constellations, Regression Therapy and Work with the Forgotten Past
