Find advertising and ordering info at the following URL:

(Http://home.earthlink.net/~welive/)

(800) 266-5564 to order. $30 plus shipping, I think...

WE WANT TO LIVE: Volume One: Out of the Grips of Disease & Death (the
story) & Volume Two: Healthfully (the facts)  by Aujonous Vonderplanitz.
1997, Carnelian Bay Castle Press (a vanity press?).

As shown in the subtitle, the book is divided into two parts. The first is
the mother of all conversion/testimonial stories (125 pages worth). The
second starts with a 5-page intro by Ron Strauss and is followed by an
encyclopedic-like listing of foods and preparations (23 pages), then on to
90 pages of "food remedies" and then 10 pages of "health methodologies".
(The web page has the table of contents in more detail.)  Finally, there
are 33 pages of appendices (A-X) which are not labeled by topic but serve
largely as extended footnotes of material from the "testimonial section".

The "story" is told as first person narrative. The present-tense story
starts with a phone call notifying Aujonous (like humogenous w/o the hum)
that his long-estranged son was in a severe auto accident and because of
extensive head injuries is not expected to survive the next 24 hours. After
stocking up on Californian raw honey, butter, papayas, etc. Aujonous flies
out to stay with his son and by stealthfully replacing his son's
medications with raw food recipes (intitially a mixture of raw honey and
butter placed under his tongue while he is in a coma) eventually the brain
damage is miraculously repaired to a large degree. Along the way his
battles with the hospital admin and policies provide serio-comic relief. We
learn through extensive (and somewhat confusing) flashbacks of his own
recovery from cancer and of the recovery of others because of his (mostly)
successful nutritional counseling, and even an out-of-body near-death
experience (also part of his "conversion") where the tennis shoes he is
wearing melts onto the radiator. We are further privy to his conversion to
RAF (he _was_ a fruitarian/vegan). After being unsuccessfully coached on
the benefits of raw meat by Elk-of-the-Black-Moon (the spirit of Black Elk
himself?) at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation vision quest (this bit is
confined to an appendix for no apparent reason), it takes a pack of wild
coyotes to convert him: He has decided to fast to death in the desert
instead of returning to a diseased civilization (fruitarians _love_ stuff
like this, no? ;)) but the coyotes have other plans for him, eventually
killing and offering him a rabbit which he eats and is reborn.

This is just the tip of the story's iceburg though. We learn about his
troubled past--the "mandatory" health troubles, but also his teenage
parenthood and "divorce", and in general of his path from angry youth to
health-seeker to "raw is law". Highlights: a poison mushroom took him many
years to completely cure from, and an Electro Dermal Screening Device (???)
provided him ill-effects, including a most dramatic detox of bone epoxy
used on his skull during previous surgery for an injury. The bonding with
his estranged son, his interaction with the hospital staff, family and
friends (including half a "pick-up" story about a women in a health food
store which he never gets back to and finishes!) makes the narrative
surprisingly readable.

As I've said, this is the mother of all testimonial/conversion stories ever
put to print. Vonderplanitz's new age sensibilities lead to a high "aw,
come on!" reaction from a fellow like me, but it _is_ a whale of a tale,
and one suspects, mostly true or believed so by the author, who indeed
makes an endearing and humblehumble narrator on such a journey. (Highlight:
getting the yogis all revved up for the "pleasures of the flesh" by feeding
them a diet of avos and citrus.)

The section surveying foods, remedies, and therapies is much more
troubling, and perhaps ironically much more intriguing to me. I am reminded
of Dr. Henry G. Bieler's "Food is Your Best Medicine" (of which I don't
share Ric Lambert's favorable opinions), Shelton's "Fasting Can Save Your
Life", and most every new-age remedy book I've ever seen--all rolled into
one, and with an RAF slant to boot! Mr. Vonderplanitz does indeed seem to
have a cure/recipe for every affliction from cancer to athlete's foot, but
at the same time he is big on following your
intuition/craving/instinct--and that what works for one will not for
another. His "theoretical explanations" are at once intriguing and
head-slapping. Can you figure out which parts of the examples below are
which to this reviewer?

"The thought of delicious, heavily buttered garlic bread came to mind. I
knew it was instinct, my body telling me what is needed to raise my blood
pressure. I went back to into my apartment and ate a raw clove of garlic
with French bread and lots of unslated butter. Within moments I felt
better, satisfied. I decided from that moment on that at least 70% of my
diet would consist of raw foods." p.48

"Fat resins and residues from cooked or processed green foods first collect
in in the intestines, becoming impacted. Secondly, the collect as gummy
rsins in the glands (as in prostatitis, leading to prostate cancer), and
thirdly, they collect as gummy resins in the brain (as in Alzheimer's
disease).
	"The resins and residues from cooked or processed red fruits and
vegetables most often collect in the lymph and skin, causing acne, sickly
looking tongues, hard and brittle bones, and deep lesions in the skin when
the weather turns cold...
	"People who lack the enzyme-mutations for digesting, assimilating,
and utilizing cooked or processed yellow foods most oftain look pasty
around the nore and eyes, and have very slow digestion, especially after
eating a cooked or processes yellow or orange food.
	"People who lack enzyme-mutations for eating all three food
groups--cooked or processed green, red (including orange) and yellow
(including orange)--have a predisposition toward HIV positive." pp.136-7

"It is believed that whole raw eggs should not be eaten because albumin in
egg white binds with biotin (part of the B-complex) in the body, causing
side-effects. Egg yolk contains plenty of biotin to be utilized with
albumin in egg white. The albumin/biotin combination is helpful because it
helps to dissolve biocarbons and helps muscles retain carbohydrates. Whole
raw eggs contain a wonderful, natural balance when eaten in a normal diet
(whether the diet is raw or not).
	"In my experience with animals including human, who ate only the
yoke and not the white (along with other foods on a raw diet), metabolism
was considerably increased, usually with_out_ increasing energy. The side
effects were that often hunger increased to a frenzy and dispositions
tended to be irritable. It has been my experience in every case and
condition that eating the whole raw egg was more nourishing, and better for
metabolic and emotional balance." p.146

And so on. His theoretical explanations (ala Bieler's, and beyond!) seem
like wholesale additions to modern nutritional myth and folklore. The lack
of references (or intellectual humility, for that matter) severely limit
his explanations, to my mind. Yet, given the paucity of info/experience of
folks eating RAF over the long term, I am bound by curiosity to his
experiences consuming large amounts of RAF, and his "clients" doing the
same.

For anyone with the slightest interest in RAF, "We Want To Live" is almost
must reading, but I would hope that any reader would be skeptical of the
explanations (and further hope that you don't become a "raw butter mixed
with raw honey" junkie! though there are worse addictions in this world to
be sure ;). A non-instincto take on RAF is always interesting to someone
like me who is steeped in instincto lore. Schmid's "Native Nutrition" is
far more informative and well-written, but lacks any of the first-person
stuff in "We Want To Live". But in such a paltry arena as RAF, beggars
can't be choosers as far as the books they might read. And there are many
who prefer the testimonial approach much more than I do...

So buyer beware, but I hope to hear some opinions of other raw-fooders
regarding this book.

Cheers,
Kirt