As I was splashing through the surf of the Dark Sea of Awareness, listening to my Walkman, I received the following transmission. It was only after I had transcribed this conversation that I discovered that I'd neglected to plug in the earphones..... Part I: THE CAGE OF REASON Good evening. I'm Malachi Constant. Our program this evening brings the return of Professor von Helsing, well-known scholar and author of such books as "The Warrior's Way: Off The Eaten Path" and "Why I Didn't Think Of That". I quote from the dust jacket of the latter: "From a very pragmatic perspective, the ultimate aim of stalking is to divorce action from thought--that is, to act from inner silence. This is not to say that a warrior doesn't think; on the contrary, a warrior needs to be a paragon of reason, a clear thinker. The key point is that for warriors thinking is not the ruling force in one's life." Welcome back, Professor. I think we can all agree that at some point in our lives, we have "acted without thinking." I think for most of us, however, this has most often led to unfortunate results! Yet you seem to be saying that warriors relish this state.... PROFESSOR VON HELSING: Thank you, Mr. Constant. Well, at the risk of riding in a horseless cart, the reason the average person's "acting without thinking" has regrettable results is that even though they may not have taken the time to formulate thoughts, they are still acting from a well-defined agenda; agendas which almost universally are meant to be self-serving, although, as the results of our actions often reveal, they seldom are. That is, the totality of our being is not served. To borrow syntax from the social scientists, these impulsive acts stem from our subconscious, or as warriors see it, from the edifice of Self which is created and sustained through the internal dialogue. This "Me" is the ruling force in the average person's life, and therefore all of one's acts are colored by it. If one's Self is petty, violent, and foolish, then one's impulsive acts will necessarily be so as well. MC: So the warrior's way is to transform one's Self into something that is not "petty, violent, and foolish"? PVH: Well, yes, but no. To be sure, a stalker aims to be ruthless, cunning, patient, and sweet... MC: The "Four Moods of Stalking"... PVH: Rather than being petty, a stalker is ruthless and patient. Instead of being violent, a stalker is patient and sweet. A stalker is not foolish, but cunning and patient. The energy that is required to reach these moods is freed up by reclaiming energy from the Self, by demoting it, by loosening its hold over us. However, the goal of stalking is to realize at the most fundamental level of our awareness that what we are is not dependent upon the Self, and that in fact we can change Selves as easily as we can change hats without changing our fundamental nature at all. MC: Wow! That's some goal! I have several questions, but first, I noticed that you linked each of the other three moods of stalking with patience. Is it a warrior's virtue? As Mom used to say, should we count to ten before following an angry impulse? PVH: Yes. "Acting without thinking" for a stalker is not the sort of impulsive behavior embraced by the average person. It is instead the act of acquiescing to Intent. Therefore a stalker patiently waits for Intent to provide cues. The stalker's forbearance prevents one from merely re-acting, until such cues appear. Timing is everything! Violence, of course, whether physical or just violence of the temper, is the acting out of that subconscious agenda the warrior is trying to subdue. It is the hallmark of the impulsive behavior that usually leads to unfortunate consequences. Violence empowers the Self, rather than weakens it. This is why the petty tyrants embrace violence so strongly. Thus a warrior is non-violent, not on moral grounds, but because violence is antithetical to one's aims. Warriors aim at dealing with the world and others gently, sweetly, and with infinite patience. MC: Perhaps this is what Jesus was getting at with "turn the other cheek"? PVH: I believe so, but that's another kettle of fish... And I'm afraid we're getting too far ahead of our Selves...shall we start at the beginning? MC: By all means! PVH: Sorcerers maintain that Reality is an interpretation we make. Sorcerers attempt to expand their perceptual abilities, in order to perceive other aspects of "whatever's out there" than we normally do or can. While there is definitely a Universe "out there", our perception of it is tempered by our perceptual equipment and ability. Both vary qualitatively from person to person, as the prevalence of eyeglasses clearly attests (in a very surface level way.) We don't have sonar like the bats do, we can't hear as well as dogs or possibly our next door neighbor. These "equipment" or "talent" variations are more or less fixed, and little can be done to alter them. At a more pragmatic and fundamental level, our ability to use whatever tools and talents we've been individually given is entirely dependent upon the energy we have at our disposal. Sorcerers maintain that the energy in question is a fixed amount for life--the only issue is how that energy is deployed. For sorcerers, all techniques have one aim--the reclamation of our energy from uses which do not enhance perception, in order to make it available for that task. MC: But what is "what's out there"? PVH: A very bird's-eye, esoteric dreamers' view is that the nature of reality is not a set of discrete objects, as we commonly perceive it. Instead, everything is fundamentally energy... MC: Which is also what Einstein demonstrated with E=MC squared. PVH: This energy is not distributed uniformly throughout the Universe, but is involved in a perpetual flow. Like the waves and currents of an ocean, the flow expresses itself in many varieties of intensity. For dreamers, perception is dependent upon the position of the assemblage point. Dreaming is movement of the assemblage point off of its "normal position", the one which gives rise to the perception of the everyday world. As the assemblage point moves, it encounters other levels of intensity. Those that are easily reached by us are perceived as ordinary dreams, and have little of the cohesion, the concreteness, of everyday reality--thus dreams seems to us "less than real". Only with increased energy does the assemblage point typically move very far, into areas of intensity which do provide the same level of intensity and cohesion, and thus sense of reality, as our habitual position. And only with the sorcerers' discipline can the assemblage point be held in place at those new positions indefinitely--this is the art of stalking. Our normal dreams, full of fleeting, shifting images, are the result of random fluctuations of the assemblage point, which never remain fixed in one place long enough to acquire cohesion. MC: Then we are living a dream? Stalking one of many possible dreams with this level of intensity? PVH: Yes. The seers have discovered that we are wrong to privilege the "real world" with any sense of specialness. It is merely one of many places in "whatever's out there" where the level of intensity is such that the world our perception assembles does have cohesion, so much so that we can live and die there--and in fact, we forget that there are any other positions where we can exist. This is mankind's current state, to have forgotten that we are dreaming this world right now. MC: How do sorcerers go about "remembering" that this is a dream? PVH: By bringing to bear an art that is the yin to dreaming's yang, its complement--the art of stalking. And again, it is in one sense a task of remembering. Unbeknownst to us, we are all masterful stalkers. If we were not, we could not share this description of reality for our entire lives! But our problem is that we focus our attention on the doings of our Selves, so that our innate abilities to dream and stalk are as invisible to us as the beating of our hearts, our breathing. We simply don't give them the necessary attention. MC: So stalkers attempt to realize on a total bodily level (as opposed to just intellectually) that the world (any world) is a dream. As such, it has no more or less claim to "reality" than any other. PVH: For sorcerers, perception is neutral. Unfortunately, the average person, for energetic reasons, privileges this reality to the exclusion of all others. MC: Energetic reasons? PVH: Yes. The average person chooses to spend inordinate amounts of energy defending the edifice of the Self. It is very similar to the way the "superpowers" pour huge resources into their military defense, leaving other pressing problems wanting attention. The assemblage point can be looked upon as an "organ of Intending"--through it we Intend our world. Intending in this sense is the act of fleshing out our view of the world from the raw perceptual input we receive. It is not a conscious act. MC: So our perception of the world is not based upon an intellectual description... PVH: Just the opposite. We use our Reason to make what we have Intended understandable and navigable. Reason is a powerful tool. However, because we won't allocate our resources to the task of perceiving, of Intending, or, in most cases, of Reasoning, we instead take things for granted--we rely on what we "know", which is merely a quasi-rational inventory of the reality we've Intended. We "know" that trees have leaves-- and they do, because we've Intended it that way. Therefore our "well-reasoned" descriptions, our common sense, our knowledge, our inventories, become a cage. We don't bother to look, because we already know what we'll see. MC: So we also "know" what can't possibly be seen--what is outside the bounds of Reality. PVH: And lose by default. It is the old joke about the drunkard who is down on his knees under a streetlamp. A policeman comes along and asks him what he's looking for. "My keys," replies the drunk. So the policeman helps him search for the keys, but with no luck. He asks, "When did you last have your keys?" "Oh, I dropped them over in that alley a few minutes ago," replies the drunk. "Then why are you looking over here?!?" "Because the light is better!" MC: But sometimes even reaching the darkness outside the circle of lamplight seems unattainable. How can we escape the cage built by what we "know"? PVH: It is the simplest and therefore the hardest thing imaginable! We have only to stop preening in the mirror or gazing wistfully through the bars long enough to realize that the door to the cage was never locked! Next: Now That We've Shared All Of Mine...