Getting the common man to reverse-project his masters' interests into his mind as his own and negating or retarding his own free will is the essence of controlling the mob. It is an essential tool of black magick. It is at its simplest called the power of suggestion. Ad-men and public relations experts practice it. It may be called NLP by salesmen and pickup artists. Aleister Crowley said “the slaves shall serve” and these words are true even taken out of Crowley's cynical almost Calvinistic context in The Book of the Law, Liber CCXX:
Yea! deem not of change: ye shall be as ye are, & not other. Therefore the kings of the earth shall be Kings for ever: the slaves shall serve. There is none that shall be cast down or lifted up: all is ever as it was. Yet there are masked ones my servants: it may be that yonder beggar is a King. A King may choose his garment as he will: there is no certain test: but a beggar cannot hide his poverty.
Chapter II Line 58
Crowley was saying that any human being who does not exercise his free will is a potential and deserving slave. One who considers himself a King will inevitably come and direct such a mindless being. People who are unable to determine who has directed them in their actions fall into this category. Hence, mindful contemplation of one's actions is a first step to freedom.
We like to believe we are free. And it is no easy task to be free. I like to believe my mind is free. But it is impossible in this world to be totally free. I assure you that exercising freedom makes other people and one's self uncomfortable more often than you might imagine. We have necessary obligations that constrain absolute freedom but we often assume obligations that are unnecessary. Some obligations are inflicted on a person by others or groups for their own selfish purposes, usually through the mode of fear; other obligations we take on out of love and faith. The first leads to Crowley's status of slavery, the second to freedom. Our difficult task is to identify and separate the two ways so we may correctly choose our path and be free of those who would use us.
An object of tantric yoga is to break the shackles that bind the mind through partaking in activities that are forbidden or bizarre. Tantric practices may involve free sex, eating taboo foods, or undergoing frightening initiations in graveyards involving corpses. This exposure to the unusual may or may not achieve the desired result (desire always muddies the waters). Often the individuals involved get addicted to these acts and they become aficionados of fetishes that bind the souls of those who originally desired spiritual freedom.
I was asked to write about the path I have traveled. Each of us takes a different course and each of us arrives in different places that afford varied points of view. I try to take advantage of those locations to observe as much as possible. When I think about the weights of Galton’s dialectic “nature versus nurture” in my makeup, I believe they are equal; but I also believe they are not the only components in the formula of persona. Is there a loose script for all this? Here are a few encounters and experiences of my early life that seemed of peculiar importance in loosening the bindings on thought.
The first mind-opening experience I can remember happened when I was five years old. I had been warned by my Italian grandmother that I should not go upstairs into a vacant apartment on the third floor of her three-decker house in Dorchester, Massachusetts. If I did go into the forbidden zone, a ghost named Mumuni would definitely snatch me up. This was as strong an attractant to a little boy as fresh bloody meat would be to a lion. I ascended the stairs the first time I was alone in the house for a few moments and thought I could get away with it. As I turned the corner of the flight of stairs, I saw a motley form at the top landing and I heard a low moan “Muuuumuuuuniiii.” I ran down the stairs and called for someone, anyone. No one was around. I went back up the stairs thinking it was someone playing a joke on me. No one was there. It could have been imagination; it could have been someone trying to frighten a child; it could have been something else.
Soon after that I was brought to the dentist for the first time. I had heard about the dentist from others and I was probably in a little fear. This was not yet the era of painless dentistry, but I was mostly fascinated by the scary prospect. As I was led into the dentist’s chair, I noticed a huge jug next to me almost full of pulled teeth still retaining blotches of dried blood. There were other similar jugs in the room. The man in the white coat, with a long mustache, seemed to leer at me expecting to smell fear. But I laughed at the absurdity of it all. I knew at that moment that the world was a very curious place. Years later, when I read Hamlet, these lines of Shakespeare vividly returned the memory to mind:
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
The first two stories told of things that happened; the next will be about a thing that did not happen. Two years later at the age of seven, I was in the midst of preparing as a Roman Catholic for first communion. I attended Catholic school and the nuns were very strict in those days. They inculcated in our brains a dreadful fear of the host and the necessity of treating it with the utmost respect. We were told stories of those who were struck dead by God for blaspheming the communion wafer. Only a priest was allowed to handle the consecrated host with his two specially blessed fingers. It was a Sunday morning mass and I was sitting in church next to another boy who was known as a hooligan. Neither of us had received first communion yet and it was that endless time during the mass when the sacrament was being distributed to the packed congregation and we had to remain on our knees for the duration. My friend suddenly turned to me and stated firmly, “Watch this.” Perhaps it was boredom or perhaps it was the devil that led him to the line of parishioners going for communion. No one noticed he was coming from the section reserved for the younger children. But he went and he received the wafer from the priest. He returned to the pew and I watched in fascination as he sat down and spit out the bread into his hand. He rolled it up in a ball and flicked it on the floor. I half expected a lightning bolt from the Lord to strike us both down: he for his sin and I for failing to inform the nuns. But nothing of the sort happened. From that time forward I never automatically believed anyone in authority again.
By the age of seven I learned that I could be influenced by others’ passionate stories. I determined that everyone has secret, ulterior motives for telling these stories. I understood that these secrets could be learned by paying more attention to the emotional and physical environments from which words emanate than the words themselves. I began to guess that most people secretly want you to learn their secrets, even, or especially, when their secrets are unknown to themselves. I later discovered that the most effective storytellers were perfectly aware they were using fictions.
Ransom Stoddard: “You’re not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?”
Maxwell Scott: “No Sir, This is the West, Sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
–The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
