Part One:  Know Your Enemy

Welcome to this week's edition of "Let's Get Metaphysical."  I'm your host,  
Malachi Constant.  Our guest this evening is Professor Ludwig von Helsing, 
whose latest book, "Dead But Not Tired", has just been published.  Welcome 
back, Professor!

Professor von Helsing:  Delighted as always, Malachi.

MC:  Professor, on your previous visits and in your writings you have 
attempted to explore the rational, philosophical basis behind the work of 
Carlos Castaneda and his cohorts.  I'm sure many of our listeners would agree 
with me that those writings are fascinating but often difficult to reconcile 
with the world as we know it.  For instance, the world at large considers 
preoccupation with our mortality as a sign of morbidity or mental 
instability, while the sorcerers suggest that focusing our attention on our 
death ultimately frees us...

PVH:  Have you ever considered the circumstances under which you might 
willingly surrender your life?  For instance, if you were forced to spend 
the rest of your time in physical agony?  And if not life itself, how much 
of your awareness would you trade in order to be free of the pain?  Morphine 
doesn't cure anything, doesn't slow the cancer one bit; it removes pain 
through illusion, by convincing your body that there is no reason for pain.  
Of course, the relief costs a great deal of conscious clarity. 

MC:  Terminal patients are forced to choose what level of pain they are 
willing to endure to preserve their clarity...

PVH:  There is a pain, an anxiety, a fear, a dread that compels human beings 
to trade our awareness for the balm of illusion.  The feature of our 
existence which gives rise to this compulsion is the knowledge of our 
inevitable demise.  We are all terminal.  Our culture, our belief systems, 
all of our illusions about the nature of reality serve the purpose of 
relieving or masking our fear.  

MC:  But any fan of Hollywood war movies knows that bravery is not the 
absence of fear, but rather doing what's necessary in the face of fear.  
We've seen it a thousand times:  the wise old veteran stiffens the spine of 
the trembling neophyte by admitting that he's scared, too...that everybody's 
scared.

PVH:  Yes, it is a curious paradox that banishing fear is not a sign of 
immense courage, but of cowardice.  The coward resorts to illusion to deny 
the source of anxiety, while the hero's illusion allows the danger to be 
faced in spite of fear.  In other words, individual courage, like most human 
traits, is a subtle matter of degree.  The hero and the coward both handle 
their fear, but while the coward's way suffers from blind desperation, the 
hero's is graceful and awe-inspiring.

MC:  Can we ever be truly fearless?

PVH:  In the context of a perilous and predatory Universe, fear has a useful 
purpose.  It is hard to imagine any of us surviving very long without it! We 
need fear, which is why we also need the ability to act in spite of it.  And 
because we need courage we also need equanimity, sobriety, because reckless 
bravery is also dangerous.  Think how often in your own experience you have 
seen fearlessness which is the result of ignorance, and the painful results 
that have often ensued.  

MC:  "The Fool" card in the Tarot deck depicts a young man walking blithely 
along smelling flowers in the sunshine, unaware of the precipice that yawns 
beneath his next step.  

PVH:  Yes, only a fool has no fear.  But an even greater fool lets that fear 
impose unexamined limits on their ability to live.  

MC:  Which makes us all fools, to more or less extent...

PVH:  Precisely!  Our fear causes us each to embrace some level of illusion 
to shield us from the source of our fear.

MC:  We close our eyes during the scary parts!

PVH:  Our level of illusion, the strength and nature of our shields, is not 
something ordained by nature, but instead is largely a product of individual 
past choices.  Or as the sorcerers might rephrase it, a matter of energy, of 
our personal power.  

MC:  The neuroscientist Terence McKenna said that the question faced by 
modern man was not whether or not to use drugs, but rather what level of drug 
use was appropriate.  His definition of drugs included not only the 
demonified illegal substances, but caffeine, sugar, alcohol, television, 
movies, consumerism, religion, patriotism, and so forth.  

PVH:  The metaphor certainly applies.  But here would be the place to 
identify a basic value judgment we are making.  And make no mistake, in this 
mysterious Universe we inhabit there are very few "self-evident truths"--so we 
are in fact making an assumption.  We are going to assume that it is better 
to be aware than to be deluded.  This assumption is going to lead us into 
areas of acting and thinking which are fundamentally opposed to the 
unexamined self-gratification and pain avoidance strategies of the majority 
of our fellows.  It implies that we should try to determine what level of 
illusion is appropriate for us.  It implies that we must examine and choose 
our illusions carefully.  And it implies that "gaining personal power" is the 
process of shedding and changing the nature of our illusions.  In other words, 
a warrior is someone who seeks to be an exceptionally aware being.  

MC:  Ok, Doc, if I'm tracking with you so far, you're saying that like Neo we 
should choose the reality pill, that each of us is responsible for deciding 
just how deluded we are...

PVH:  Rather than being in charge of the asylum, the lunatics are each in 
charge of their own course of treatment.

MC:  Are you implying that no one is totally free of delusion?  Does anyone 
have the courage to see the world as it truly is?

PVH:  For us the world is an interpretation we make of our perceptual input.  
In this sense, we are incapable of seeing the world "as it truly is."  The 
best sorcerers hope for is to base their lives on irreducible energetic 
facts, perceptions which may or may not be ultimate truth, but are as close 
to being true as it is humanly possible to determine.  This is the nature of 
the warrior's way, not that one always wins or always knows, but that one 
always does your best.

MC:  But what criteria do we have for choosing our illusions?

PVH:  We have to recognize that an illusion is merely a poorly lit meaning.  
It is our meanings which are precious to us, because knowing that our life 
has meaning allows us to deal with our mortality.  Meaning is the only way 
that a being aware that it is going to die can avoid the indifferent despair 
of nihilism.  The meanings we give to our existence, however ill-formed and 
unable to bear close scrutiny, are the hard-won bounty of our immortality 
project.  By which I mean our personal strategies for finding meaning for 
our lives.

Our individual affinity for a given meaning guides us into strategies for 
attaining that meaning--depending upon the meaning, these strategies rely more 
or less on illusion to support them.  Discovering which meanings we have true 
affinities for and learning to listen to those affinities is the romance with 
knowledge.  The romance with knowledge is where exceptionally aware beings 
satisfy our appetite for meaning.  The lack of God-given meaning inspires 
exceptionally aware beings to engage the world in positive ways. We not only 
discover our affinities, we act on them, and we are unsatisfied with giving 
anything less than our best.  Exceptionally aware beings build their own 
meanings.

MC:  Yet even an exceptionally aware being's strategies for finding that 
meaning will, as you've stated, rely more or less on illusion.  How much 
illusion is too much?

PVH:  The warrior's way is the path of enhanced awareness.  Which is 
another way of stating our value:  it is better to be aware than to be deluded.
Obviously, we want as little illusion in our strategy as possible.  Therefore 
the answer to the question of how much illusion I should lose is, "As much 
as I can stand."  Or stated differently, I want "As little as possible."

MC:  As Uncle Duke says in the Doonesbury cartoon, "Death before 
unconsciousness!"  But won't everyone have a different tolerance for 
disillusionment, depending on their personal power and life circumstances?

PVH:  Of course!  And the beauty of the warrior's way is that it has always 
recognized that each one's journey is totally their own responsibility, that 
we each stand alone in the face of awesome, mysterious, impersonal infinity.

MC:   Well, Professor, it will come as no surprise to you or to our listeners 
that such statements hold small comfort for the majority of the human race.  
If I may play the devil's advocate for a moment, why should I bother?  Why 
not stay comfortably snuggled down in the blanket of my illusions?

PVH:  Again, Malachi, it is important to remember that we are not talking 
about universal morality here, we are talking about the ramifications of our 
value judgment.  Others will indeed make different value judgments, leading 
to far different conclusions.  As a warrior, that is none of my concern.  I 
am not responsible for others' lives or beliefs.  I am totally responsible 
for my own.  

MC:  And that's a large enough helping for anyone's plate.  One of my 
favorite lines from Van Morrison goes, "You know I just can't free you 
now--that's not my job at all."

PVH:  For exceptionally aware beings, the far more interesting question is, 
"How can I enhance my awareness?"  And since we must live with illusion, at 
least until and unless we've reached some ideal state of awareness where we 
have no illusory shields between us and Infinity, this boils down to asking 
oneself:  

"What do I have to believe?"

Next:  For The Love of Folly