We come now to a subject of immense importance: Psychopaths as “alien reaction machines,” which directly relates to what we have all been learning from the activities of Frank Scott, Vincent Bridges and others we will meet as the series progresses. As noted in the previous chapter: intolerance and cruelty are needed to guarantee the “cover-up.” A certain kind of “human being” acts on behalf of this cover-up; a certain kind of human who is a playing piece in the Secret Games of the Gods.
Allow me to bring your attention back to certain remarks of Gurdjieff that point out to us the danger, both from the activities of these “automatons,” as well as our own reactions to them:
“So that in the actual situation of humanity there is nothing that points to evolution proceeding. On the contrary when we compare humanity with a man, we quite clearly see a growth of personality at the cost of essence, that is, a growth of the artificial, the unreal, and what is foreign, at the cost of the natural, the real, and what is one’s own.
“Together with this, we see a growth of automatism. Contemporary cultures require automatons. […] One thing alone is certain, that man’s slavery grows and increases. Man is becoming a willing slave. He no longer needs chains. He begins to grow fond of his slavery, to be proud of it. And this is the most terrible thing that can happen to a man.” (Ouspensky, 1949; this author’s emphases)
In the process of coming to some understanding of how such individuals operate, based on the latest research, as well as our own experiences, I hope to clarify some of the “rules” they play by so that the reader will be better equipped to spot them and deal with them. It is clear from the correspondence we have been receiving that this sort of encounter is a lot more frequent than any of us would like to think, and it is only going to get worse in the coming years, as the reader will soon see.
But before we begin to analyze the playing pieces themselves, let me give a little outline of what seems to have been the emergence of “games” in the sense that we are coming to understand them: That they are part of the process of preventing humanity from having the knowledge needed to effectively deal with our reality, and that the moves of this game have been made over millennia in cyclic time-loops very likely via time-travel.
Shamanism, as we have noted in Secret History, seems to be the closest we can get to the clues about hypothesized archaic technology. We may be certain that it is corrupted by millennia of changes, and it is important to remember that they are only clues; we cannot take any of the activities at face value.
Let me try to give an example: In the myths of Hermes, we find a “god” who has sandals that enable him to fly. He also has a helmet of invisibility. The question we ought to ask is: Why would ancient peoples have suggested that a god needed to put something on his head to be invisible or something on his feet to fly?
Remember, other gods didn’t need these things — they were “gods,” after all, and could do as they liked. So, where the heck did these objects come from? That is not to say that we ought to think that sandals were what did it, nor a helmet. The point is, the myth tells us that some sort of object conferred the ability. It was technology.
I thought about that for a long time. The objects, as they were, didn’t make any sense; but what did make sense was that the concept of some sort of device was vaguely remembered and was being conveyed in these objects.
In reference to our Grail Hallows, we think of the sword/lance and the cup/platter. A sword is a death dealing instrument, right? Well, so is a gun. So is a “death ray.” A gun makes a big noise, so maybe guns or similar items that made noise and flashes of light were converted by ancient peoples who had lost their understanding of technology into lightning bolts or something noisy. But a sword, in the terms of the Grail Hallows, is obviously something different. In fact, a sword, a lance, and a shepherd’s crook, all somewhat resemble antennae. Just imagine Grandpa describing to the grandchild antennae that pick up signals and transmit them. “Well, Junior, it was a long narrow thing… it had a base… it was made of metal… sorta like that knife over there, only longer… well, like a sword.”
What about the dish? How about a satellite dish? Something that collects energy? A cup or cauldron? The oldest representations are “wells” and the “cauldron of regeneration.” How about a chamber into which the energy is directed which heals or rejuvenates or even enables one to travel in time?
How much plainer do the myths have to make it?
In the most ancient of tribal societies, postdiluvian we must assume, the shaman was an extremely important figure. He combined the function of diviner, medicine-man, and mediator between the worlds of humans and transcendental powers. What is important is the fact that the shaman held this position long before the creation of established priesthoods and colleges of “magical technicians,” such as astrologers, geomants, and augurs.
Another important thing to remember was that the shaman’s role was hereditary. There are more recent local variations, but the most ancient remnants of shamanism demonstrate that, in archaic times, it was wholly hereditary. There are examples of Siberian shamanism found throughout the world, including many examples of Native American shamanism being of the same type. The features include a separation from normal society and powers that enable the shaman to see beings and events beyond the boundaries of normal space and time.
In shamanic variations where inheritance is no longer of main importance, there is an element that gives us a small clue to the processes of corruption. In these types of shamanism, the shaman is “initiated,” instead of born. In most such instances, the prospective shaman is led up a local holy mountain or goes to some desolate place. At the appropriate place and time, he is given his clothing of office, drum, and stick, and then swears an oath to the elder shaman responsible for his instruction. The elder reveals to him the secrets of his shamanic calling, and teaches him rituals, and at the end, he is sprinkled with blood from a sacrificial animal, and often dons the skin of the flayed beast.
In the oldest and purest forms, there was no initiation. Shamanism was handed from father to son or mother to daughter, with instruction being given from birth. Initiation was of almost no importance, and bloodline was supreme. The Altai shamans received their “initiations” spontaneously from higher sources, without ceremony.
We also note the connection between this hereditary shamanism and the Vatis or “shaman-diviner” of Britain. Here, too, there was no initiation. Bards and Druids were initiated, the Bard being the recipient of transmitted discipleship, and the Druid being the recipient of transmitted priesthood. The Vatis, however, was outside this initiatory activity. The Vatis was “born.” He was not a traditionalist or a fundamentalist. He was a person who was open to everything new that might be worthwhile, and thereby improved and increased his art in response to the changing environment.
The shaman was also known to journey out of the body. These travels were said to be both physical as well as astral. In this way, he was able to become personally familiar with the many landscapes of the physical and ethereal worlds. While on these travels, the shaman was able to converse with the denizens of the non-material worlds and to gain knowledge and accumulate energies that were valuable to themselves and to the tribe. Because of his ability to travel “into the air,” so to say, the shaman was often represented as a bird. The bird symbolized the “out of body” experience or “flight.” We should note that among the most ancient depictions of the Mother Goddess are statuettes that portray her with the head of a bird.
The direct communication with other realms of existence is the oldest form of divination. It was later corrupted to formalized systems in an attempt to give the same “powers” to people who were not of the shamanic bloodline. Divination stands in an uneasy relationship with formalized religion as we know it. The reason for this is the fact that religions of our experience are based on the concept of Divine Providence and stability of our world. Divination cannot be tolerated by such a system because of its elements of uncertainty and the possibility of a result that contradicts the wishes of the priesthood.
As formal religion was established, divination was transferred from the bloodline seers of other realms to that of the Divine, accessible only by the approved priesthood. It was at this point that the grid, or checker board, became the symbol of the diviner. This grid is found in association with ancient representations of many gods and saints. The stag-gods of Mesopotamia, central Asia, and Europe, all represent the conversion from the hereditary shamanism to the priestly shaman as intermediary between the people and the god who, by this symbol of the grid, had dominion over space and time. The Urim and Thummim of ancient Judaism is a case in point.
Whether hereditary or priestly, divination assumes that hyperdimensional powers express themselves, or control our reality. This viewpoint was criticized as early as the first century AD, by the Roman statesman, Seneca, who wrote: “The difference between us and the Etruscans is the following: Whereas we believe lightning to be released as the result of the collision of clouds, they believe that clouds collide to release lightning; for as they attribute all to the deity, they are led to believe not that things have meaning in so far as they occur, but rather that they occur because they must have a meaning.”
The Cassiopaeans have given some fascinating clues about these matters, which I will insert at this point. I expect the reader will be able to make all kinds of connections.
06-21-97
Q: Change of subject: I am tracking the clues through the various languages and alphabets. I would like to know which of these alphabets — Runic, Greek, or Etruscan — preceded the others, and from which the others are derived?
A: Etruscan.
Q: Well, who were the Etruscans?
A: Templar carriers.
Q: What does that mean?
A: Seek and ye shall find.
Q: Well, how am I supposed to do that? I can’t find anything else on the Etruscans!
A: No.
Q: What do you mean “No”? You mean there is more out there on the Etruscans?
A: Yes.
Q: Okay. What are “Templar carriers”?
A: Penitent Avian Lords.
Q: What does that mean?
A: For your search. All is drawn from some more ancient form.
08-16-97
Q: We have the phoenix, cranes, herons, doves, ravens, and all are related somehow to speech or writing. Why are all these birds related this way?
A: Pass the test.
Q: What do you mean “Pass the test”?
A: Discover.
Q: Well, writing is related to the words for cutting and inscribing and even shearing and sharks. You called the Etruscans “Penitent Avian Lords,” who were also “Templar Carriers.” Is this related to these bird images? Then related to speech, writing, and shearing?
A: Pass the test.
Q: So, if you are writing, and you pass the test, then you can be a phoenix, dove, or whatever?
A: Discover.
Q: Ark suggested that the Etruscans may have gotten their alphabet as a mirror image. Could it be that they lived on the “other side” of the mirror?
A: Latter is closer.
We see in the above the amazing juxtaposition of “Avian” or “birdlike” with “Templar.” The Templars were designated in certain of the Grail legends as “Guardians of the Grail.” So again we find a connection between the Holy Grail and a thread that travels back in time to Central Asia and Stonehenge.
The flight of a bird was often seen as a shaman in an out-of-body state or as a guardian spirit in bird form. The myths of farseeing messenger birds have been preserved in many traditions, including the birds released by Noah and Odin’s ravens. The imagery of birds was later transferred to arrows, and from there to sticks or staves, and then to runes.
But coming back to Seneca’s negative view of hyperdimensional realities: He was critical of the idea that transcendental powers expressed themselves through bolts of lightning, storms, earthquakes, strange celestial phenomena, the flight of birds, or through human beings themselves. However, Seneca and many others were quite willing to accept the determination of meaning in life based on that which was pronounced as true by a formalized system of augury, such as a priesthood.
In the earliest shamanic practices, as we have seen, it seems that the people conceived of the gods as benevolent and communicative; interested and participatory in all aspects of their lives. The “adorable Maruts” as shamans “danced,” and the heavens delivered blessings. The god danced with the people, and there was peace and plenty.
Somewhere along the way, this changed drastically and the gods became fearsome and vengeful, and potentially very dangerous. At this point, the idea that a correct relationship between human beings and the hyperdimensional beings was important took an interesting turn. In the days of the old shamans, if there were dangerous gods, the shaman was empowered to fight them, to defeat them, and to protect the people from their depredations. However, at this point, the idea that the shaman could battle dark forces was replaced with the concept of propitiation via sacrifice. This coincided with the creation of shamans by external initiation, which then led to formalized priesthoods. With the coming of the priesthood the only propitiation was that effected by the priest according to well-defined rules and regulations. In this respect, the correct relationship was achieved when the prescribed rituals and taboos were observed at the appropriate places and times. We see the earliest example of this idea in the “star clocks” of the ancient Egyptians, which were observed so that the proper rituals could be performed at the right hour of the night.
The priest, or “chief of the observers,” was concerned with the observation and interpretation of signs in the heavens. These signs were observed from a location called a templum, which was an outdoor viewing mound. The sky was divided into squares viewed through a lituus, a ceremonial staff which, when held at arm’s length, divided the horizon into sections. By the use of this staff in relation to known direction markers on the horizon, the chief of the observers could determine in which section of the sky the observed phenomenon manifested itself. This was also related to the time of day or night, and the day of the lunar calendar. All of these provided the material by which the omen was to be interpreted, and we might guess that it very often suggested more sacrifices or gifts to the priesthood in order to propitiate the gods. The squares were later transferred to the ground, and divinatory methods were devised to take the place, or to augment, the observing of signs in the skies.
And so, with this brief review we come to the idea that the emergence of “games” or game boards, is a “sigil” of the dark, mechanical forces. Most of what we call “games” were originally developed as means of formalized divination by priests, as opposed to natural shamans. The chessboard originated as a “locator” in space time. The gods were known as “those who measure,” and we see this symbolism of the Secret Games of the Gods in the checkerboard floor of Masonic lodges, and in other “occult” lore.
What is less apparent is the identity of the players: The shamanic bloodline of the benevolent goddess vs. the ritual priesthood of the vengeful god. This brings us back to a comment I made in the previous chapter: What seems to have happened is that, through repeated cataclysms, man has been brought low, relegated to darkness regarding his history, and at the very point when he began to study and analyze his environment objectively, religion stepped in and put a period to such ideas.
Over and over again we come up against that little problem — religion and belief systems that have to be defended against objective evidence or the beliefs of others. “Why did man, through thousands of years, wherever he built scientific, philosophic, or religious systems, go astray with such persistence and with such catastrophic consequences? […] The answer lies somewhere in that area of our existence which has been so heavily obscured by organized religion and put out of our reach. Hence, it probably lies in the relation of the human being to the cosmic energy that governs him.” (Reich, 1949).
Please note Reich’s use of the term “catastrophic consequences.” Anyone familiar with the history of religion, and looking at the matter with objectivity, will affirm that the introduction of, the spreading of, the enforcing of, religion is the cause of nearly all the evils on our planet. It’s that simple. Jesus said: “By their fruits you shall know them.” That’s a pretty bitter fruit. Carlos Castaneda brings our attention to the very same matter in a far more direct way:
Think for a moment, and tell me how you would explain the contradiction between the intelligence of man the engineer and the stupidity of his systems of beliefs, or the stupidity of his contradictory behavior. Sorcerers believe that the predators have given us our systems of beliefs, our ideas of good and evil, our social mores. They are the ones who set up our hopes and expectations and dreams of success or failure. They have given us covetousness, greed, and cowardice. It is the predators who make us complacent, routinary, and egomaniacal.
In order to keep us obedient and meek and weak, the predators engaged themselves in a stupendous maneuver — stupendous, of course, from the point of view of a fighting strategist. A horrendous maneuver from the point of view of those who suffer it. They gave us their mind! Do you hear me? The predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind. […] Through the mind, which, after all, is their mind, the predators inject into the lives of human beings whatever is convenient for them. (Castaneda, 1998; this author’s emphases)
In Book One of The Wave, I quoted the purported remarks of an entity that presented itself as a “demon,” but which gave strong indications of being similar to what we are calling “aliens.” This “creature” said something that was rather astonishing to me at the time I read it; but later, after I had learned so much more, I realized that it might in fact be true. I was so fascinated by this case that I contacted the author of the book to see if I could determine if any part of it was confabulated or sensationalized. What I learned was that, in fact, much of the more disturbing parts of the book had been cut by the editor. And, in fact, the author had suffered some serious psychic backlash when she insisted on leaving in the part I found so interesting. The creature was known as the “Lady,” and the individual who was interacting with her (in the same way that many abductees interact with cute little Gray aliens) was Ann Haywood. In an interview with a member of the press, Ann was trying to explain how the Lady transported her in time to distant places:
“She puts the robe around me and then my mind separates from my body. I can look back and see it lying there. Then we go up through the ceiling, pop out the roof, and fly into space. One night the Lady took me back in time. We were in a foreign country and the people wore old-fashioned clothes. The Lady took on the appearance of a beautiful woman in a blue robe. She performed miracles for them.”
Suddenly Ann’s face turned ashen and she asked to be excused. Her scream of pain was heard from the bathroom where she had taken refuge. When Ann came out, she was sniffling and holding her abdomen. The Lady had savagely attacked her for revealing that down through history, creatures like the Lady have taken the form of saints. They then use the gullibility of humankind to misguide and misinform people so that they believe they are seeing miracles performed. Ann begged the newsman to delete that portion of the interview. (Osborn, 1982)
The fact is, when we study religions, religious visions, the appearance of new religions, they nearly always occur in a context that is not much different from so-called “alien” interactions. This is what led Carl Jung to propose his ideas of UFOs as being representations of an archetype, and the clues to the creation or revivification of a grand myth of sorts.
However, since we also have the idea that the alien phenomenon is a hyperdimensional one, and that hyperdimensional capabilities include mastery of space and time (perhaps within certain limits, but we don’t know for sure), then it seems only logical to consider the possibility that any religion could be “created” by the appearance of such beings masquerading as benevolent performers of miracles.
And, in fact, that seems to be something that is suggested by Gurdjieff’s remarks about the so-called “Secret Masters” and whether or not they can or cannot help us.
“[T]he life of humanity to which we belong is governed by forces proceeding from two different sources: First, planetary influences which act entirely mechanically and are received by the human masses as well as by individual people quite involuntarily and unconsciously; and then, influences proceeding from inner circles of humanity whose existence and significance the vast majority of people do not suspect any more than they suspect planetary influences. […]
“Can it be that there is a conscious force which fights against the evolution of humanity?” [Ouspensky] asked.
“From a certain point of view it can be said,” said G[urdjieff].
“Instead of struggling against the mechanical forces there may, at certain moments, be a struggle against the intentional opposition of fairly powerful forces though they are not of course comparable with those which direct the evolutionary process. These opposing forces may sometimes even conquer. The reason for this consists in the fact that the forces guiding evolution have a more limited choice of means; in other words, they can only make use of certain means and certain methods. The opposing forces are not limited in their choice of means and they are able to make use of every means, even those which only give rise to a temporary success, and in the final result they destroy both evolution and involution at the point in question.” (Ouspensky, 1949; this author’s emphases)
This reminds us of the all-important point of free will. Those forces that guide evolution cannot violate free will. This seems to be the “limitation” that Gurdjieff intends in the above paragraph. However, we notice that the opposing forces, the forces of STS (Service to Self) or “darkness,” are not limited in their choice of means. Lying and tricks and miracles, and every kind of imitation of what is “positive” is not only allowed; it is considered to be a better “game” if they cheat and stack the cards in their own favor. When one considers the ideas of Machiavelli in the deepest sense, it is only logical — actually mandatory — that such forces would be behind the creation of religions.
“The humanity to which we belong, namely, the whole of historic and prehistoric humanity known to science and civilization, in reality constitutes only the outer circle of humanity, within which there are several other circles… consisting so to speak of several concentric circles.
“The inner circle is called the ‘esoteric’; this circle consists of people who have attained the highest development possible for man, each one of whom possesses individuality in the fullest degree, that is to say, an indivisible ‘I,’ all forms of consciousness possible for man, full control over these states of consciousness, the whole of knowledge possible for man, and a free and independent will. They cannot perform actions opposed to their understanding or have an understanding which is not expressed by actions. At the same time there can be no discords among them, no differences of understanding. Therefore their activity is entirely coordinated and leads to one common aim without any kind of compulsion because it is based upon a common and identical understanding.” (Ouspensky, 1949; this author’s emphasis)
In the paragraph above, we see that Gurdjieff was describing exactly what the Cassiopaeans talk about in terms of a “network” and “colinearity” of understanding. It also reminds us of their remarks about Stonehenge:
12-08-96
Q: (L) Well, we talked about Stonehenge before, that it was an energy transducer, so to speak. So, was Stonehenge put there because of the location, or did Stonehenge create…… (T) Why don’t you just ask what it is about Stonehenge? (L) Okay, what is it about Stonehenge?
A: Location attracted those spirit types on the proper frequency, who in turn, placed stones in proper location to receive the coded communications in code telepathically, in order not to have to chase around the countryside reading encoded pictographs.
Q: (L) What was the technique used within the circle to receive the information telepathically? [Planchette spiraled in, and spiraled out.]
A: Transcendent focused thought-wave separation. […] The spiral serves to translate message by slowing down the wave and focusing thought-wave transference energy. Utilizes/transduces electromagnetic waves, the conduit, by breaking down signal from universal language of intent into language of phonetic profile. This is for multiple-user necessity.
Q: (L) Multiple-user necessity implies that a number of people must do the spiral. Is that correct?
A: No. Must hear and feel and understand precisely the same thing. The molecular structure of the rock, when properly sculpted, sing to you.
Please note that most important remark: “Multiple user” means a number of people must “hear and feel and understand precisely the same thing.” That is exactly what Gurdjieff is talking about in his discussion of the inner circle of ascended masters.
“The next circle is called the ‘mesoteric,’ that is to say, the middle. People who belong to this circle possess all the qualities possessed by the members of the esoteric circle with the sole difference that their knowledge is of a more theoretical character. This refers, of course, to knowledge of a cosmic character. They know and understand many things which have not yet found expression in their actions. They know more than they do. But their understanding is precisely as exact as, and therefore precisely identical with, the understanding of the people of the esoteric circle. Between them there can be no discord, there can be no misunderstanding. One understands in the way they all understand, and all understand in the way one understands. But as was said before, this understanding compared with the understanding of the esoteric circle is somewhat more theoretical.
“The third circle is called the ‘exoteric,’ that is, the outer, because it is the outer circle of the inner part of humanity. The people who belong to this circle possess much of that which belongs to people of the esoteric and mesoteric circles but their cosmic knowledge is of a more philosophical character, that is to say, it is more abstract than the knowledge of the mesoteric circle. A member of the mesoteric circle calculates, a member of the exoteric circle contemplates. Their understanding may not be expressed in actions. But there cannot be differences in understanding between them. What one understands all the others understand.” (Ouspensky, 1949; this author’s emphases)
We see in the above paragraph what seems to be a description of what we might think are “ascended masters,” such as great yogis, saints, healers, and so on. Obviously, our understanding of such things is very limited.
“In literature which acknowledges the existence of esotericism humanity is usually divided into two circles only and the ‘exoteric circle’ as opposed to the ‘esoteric,’ is called ordinary life. In reality, as we see, the ‘exoteric circle’ is something very far from us and very high. For ordinary man this is already ‘esotericism.’
“The outer circle is the circle of mechanical humanity to which we belong and which alone we know. The first sign of this circle is that among people who belong to it there is not and there cannot be a common understanding. Everybody understands in his own way and all differently. This circle is sometimes called the circle of the ‘confusion of tongues,’ where no one understands another and takes no trouble to be understood. In this circle mutual understanding between people is impossible excepting in rare exceptional moments or in matters having no great significance, and which are confined to the limits of the given being. If people belonging to this circle become conscious of this general lack of understanding and acquire a desire to understand and to be understood, then it means they have an unconscious tendency towards the inner circle because mutual understanding begins only in the exoteric circle and is possible only there. But the consciousness of the lack of understanding usually comes to people in an altogether different form.
“So that the possibility for people to understand depends on the possibility of penetrating into the exoteric circle where understanding begins.” (Ouspensky, 1949; this author’s emphases)
In the following remarks, what Gurdjieff seems to be saying is that, in addition to the “three ways” whereby an individual can penetrate to the inner circles of humanity — from the outside in — there is something called the Fourth Way which, by implication, is the result of direct communication from the inner circle of masters to one or more individuals in the outer circle of general humanity — from the inside out, producing the necessary “work” that results in the finding of the gate.
“If we imagine humanity in the form of four concentric circles we can imagine four gates on the circumference of the third inner circle, that is, the exoteric circle, through which people of the mechanical circle can penetrate.
“These four gates correspond to the four ways.
“The first way is the way of the fakir, the way of people number one, the people of the physical body, instinctive-moving-sensory people without much mind and without much heart.
“The second way is the way of the monk, the religious way, the way of people number two, that is, of emotional people. The mind and the body should not be too strong.
“The third way is the way of the yogi. This is the way of the mind, the way of people number three. The heart and the body must not be particularly strong, otherwise they may be a hindrance on this way.
“Besides these three ways yet a fourth way exists by which can go those who cannot go by any of the first three ways.
“The fundamental difference between the first three ways, that is, the way of the fakir, the way of the monk, and the way of the yogi, and the fourth way consists in the fact that they are tied to permanent forms which have existed throughout long periods of history almost without change. At the basis of these institutions is religion. Where schools of yogis exist they differ little outwardly from religious schools. And in different periods of history various societies or orders of fakirs have existed in different countries and they still exist. These three traditional ways are permanent ways within the limits of our historical period.
“Two or three thousand years ago there were yet other ways which no longer exist and the ways now in existence were not so divided, they stood much closer to one another.
“The fourth way differs from the old and the new ways by the fact that it is never a permanent way. It has no definite forms and there are no institutions connected with it. It appears and disappears governed by some particular laws of its own.” (Ouspensky, 1949)
In this last remark, we find a reflection of the definition of the work of the Vatis, “having his degree under the privilege of genius; discipleship shall not be required in respect to him.” Strabo (IV, 4) quoting Poseidonius: “Among all the tribes, generally speaking, there are three classes of men held in special honor: the bards, the vates and the druids.”
“The fourth way is never without some work of a definite significance, is never without some undertaking around which and in connection with which it can alone exist. When this work is finished, that is to say, when the aim set before it has been accomplished, the fourth way disappears, that is, it disappears from the given place, disappears in its given form, continuing perhaps in another place in another form. Schools of the fourth way exist for the needs of the work which is being carried out in connection with the proposed undertaking. They never exist by themselves as schools for the purpose of education and instruction.” (Ouspensky, 1949)
As I read the above paragraph, I thought of the work of the now unknown man who lived in the Middle East, who did a great work for humanity, and whose true life has been obliterated by the myths of a man named Jesus, after the Egyptian religion. Right there I pause and consider the Secret Games of the Gods. When one side makes a move, the other moves in with full capabilities of cheating and deceiving. Never has that been more evident than in the myths compiled into that document we call the Bible.
“The work itself of schools of the fourth way can have very many forms and many meanings. In the midst of the ordinary conditions of life the only chance a man has of finding a ‘way’ is in the possibility of meeting with the beginning of work of this kind […]
But no matter what the fundamental aim of the work is, the schools continue to exist only while this work is going on. When the work is done the schools close. The people who began the work leave the stage. Those who have learned from them what was possible to learn and have reached the possibility of continuing on the way independently begin in one form or another their own personal work.
But it happens sometimes that when the school closes a number of people are left who were round about the work, who saw the outward aspect of it, and saw the whole of the work in this outward aspect. Having no doubts whatever of themselves or in the correctness of their conclusions and understanding they decide to continue the work. To continue this work they form new schools, teach people what they have themselves learned, and give them the same promises that they themselves received. All this naturally can only be outward imitation.” (Ouspensky, 1949; this author’s emphases)
Again I am reminded of the work of the original “Jesus”:
“When we look back over history it is almost impossible for us to distinguish where the real ends and where the imitation begins. Strictly speaking almost everything we know about various kinds of occult, Masonic, and alchemical schools refers to such imitation. We know practically nothing about real schools excepting the results of their work and even that only if we are able to distinguish the results of real work from counterfeits and imitations. […]
The idea of initiation, which reaches us through pseudo-esoteric systems, is also transmitted to us in a completely wrong from. The legends concerning the outward rites of initiation have been created out of the scraps of information we possess in regard to the ancient Mysteries. The Mysteries represented a special kind of way in which, side by side with a difficult and prolonged period of study, theatrical representations of a special kind were given which depicted in allegorical forms the whole path of the evolution of man and the world.
Transitions from one level of being to another were marked by ceremonies of presentation of a special kind, that is, initiation. But a change of being cannot be brought about by any rites. Rites can only mark an accomplished transition. And it is only in pseudo-esoteric systems in which there is nothing else except these rites, that they begin to attribute to the rites and independent meaning.
It is supposed that a rite, in being transformed into a sacrament, transmits or communicates certain forces to the initiate. This again relates to the psychology of an imitation way. There is not, nor can there be, any outward initiation. In reality only self-initiation, self-presentation exist. Systems and schools can indicate methods and ways, but no system or school whatever can do for a man the work that he must do himself. Inner growth, a change of being, depend entirely upon the work which a man must do on himself.” (Ouspensky, 1949; this author’s emphases)
If we consider certain of the remarks of the Cassiopaeans that I have included in this series, in the context of what Gurdjieff has said above, we come to the idea that the Cassiopaean material is a work of the True Fourth Way. And, as such, it is naturally constrained by certain principles and understandings. However, we also realize that the forces of the “other side” are not so constrained. It is becoming more and more evident why I was kidnapped as a child in an attempt to install self-destruct programming and locks on knowledge, by an individual who was identified as being connected to an “economic legion.” We realize now why Frank Scott was sent to destroy and/or derail me, and why when he failed, an economist was sent to “scope me out”; and why, immediately thereafter, Vincent Bridges was sent in along with a supporting cast of players, to make the next move in the Secret Games of the Gods: Attempt to either destroy the Cassiopaean work, or us.
Now, let’s talk about Game Theory and what kinds of minds develop and operate with these “rules.” To me, that has been the most interesting question. What kind of person would think up something like that?
John von Neumann first wrote about Game Theory in the late 1920s. Since this issue of economics and its relation to Game Theory came up, I have been reading many of the original sources, and I was quite taken aback to read what Von Neumann actually proposed in his famous seminal work:
The purpose of this book is to present a discussion of some fundamental questions of economic theory which require a treatment different from that which they have found thus far in literature. … They have their origin in the attempts to find an exact description of the endeavor of the individual to obtain a maximum of utility, or … a maximum of profit. […]
We believe that it is necessary to know as much as possible about the behavior of the individual and about the simplest forms of exchange. […] It does not seem to us that these notions are qualitatively inferior to certain well established and indispensable notions in physics, like force, mass, charge, etc. That is, while they are in their immediate form merely definitions, they become subject to empirical control through the theories which are built upon them — and in no other way. […]
The individual who attempts to obtain these respective maxima is also said to act “rationally.” But it may safely be stated that there exists, at present, no satisfactory treatment of the question of rational behavior. There may, for example, exist several ways by which to reach the optimum position; they may depend upon the knowledge and understanding which the individual has and upon the paths of action open to him. […]
We hope, however, to obtain a real understanding of the problem of exchange by studying it from an altogether different angle; this is, from the perspective of a “game of strategy.” […] Let us look at the type of economy which is represented by the “Robinson Crusoe” model, that is an economy of an isolated single person or otherwise organized under a single will. […] The problem is to obtain a maximum satisfaction. […] Crusoe is given certain physical data (wants and commodities) and his task is to combine and apply them in such a fashion as to obtain a maximum resulting satisfaction. […] Thus Crusoe faces an ordinary maximum problem, the difficulties of which are of a purely technical — and not conceptual — nature. […]
Consider now a participant in a social exchange economy. His problem has, of course, many elements in common with a maximum problem. But it also contains some, very essential, elements of an entirely different nature. He too tries to obtain an optimum result. But in order to achieve this, he must enter into relations of exchange with others. If two or more persons exchange goods with each other, then the result for each one will depend in general not merely upon his own actions but on those of the others as well. Thus each participant attempts to maximize a function of which he does not control all variables. This is certainly no maximum problem, but a peculiar and disconcerting mixture of several conflicting maximum problems. Every participant is guided by another principle and neither determines all variables which affect his interest. […]
A particularly striking expression of the popular misunderstanding about this pseudo-maximum problem is the famous statement according to which the purpose of social effort is the “greatest possible good for the greatest possible number.” A guiding principle cannot be formulated by the requirement of maximizing two or more functions at once.
Such a principle, taken literally, is self-contradictory. […] The general theory must cover all these possibilities, all intermediary stages, and all their combinations. […] Every participant is allotted a set of variables, “his” variables, which together completely describe his actions, i.e. express precisely the manifestations of his will. (Von Neumann and Morgenstern, 1953; this author’s emphases)
In short, Game Theory as applied to economics is all about gaining control of the free will of others. It is, of course, “disguised” as “economics,” but as we all know, Money rules our world. As I continued to read, I couldn’t help but recall: “Also he compels all, both small and great, both the rich and the poor, both free and slave, to be marked with an inscription on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that no one will have power to buy or sell unless he bears the stamp of the beast or the number of his name.”
But isn’t that from the Bible? Isn’t that a prophecy of God? Isn’t that a warning from the “good guys”? The reader who is familiar with our book, Secret History, may already be formulating certain ideas. Others may have decided that even if we can analyze the Bible and determine how it was assembled and when, it doesn’t detract from their beliefs in God as presented in the Bible. After all, God is more than the Bible, right? And faith in God is not dependent on the Bible, right?
What if that Bible, that system of understanding, was planted via time travel as a strategic move in the Secret Games of the Gods? When we asked the question in the previous chapter about what a powerful elite under the control of mechanical forces would do if they discovered what Gurdjieff revealed to be the truth. Of course, covering it up comes immediately to mind. But, more than that, they would want to ensure that the “event” goes down in their favor. That means that they have to line up about six-billion other people and get them to behave in a certain way at a certain point in time.
But manipulating vast masses of people is not as simple as organizing a croquet game. What is more, it’s a one shot deal, and with that kind of money they can buy all the brains they need to figure out how to make it stick. And so, we come to time travel. You have to manipulate the past to control the future. That reminds me of something very significant that Gurdjieff said:
Shortly before his death, one of his students asked him: “Mr. Gurdjieff … the ‘I’ which I am trying to develop … is this the soul that survives after death?”
He waited a long time before he asked “How long have you been with me?”
“Almost two years.”
“Too short the time. You are not able yet to understand. Use the present to repair the past and prepare the future. Go on well; remember all I say.” (Patterson, 1998)
What would be the objective of time travel into the past in order to control the future? Well, the simplest way to do it would be to create a religion, do some miracles to make sure it “took,” and maybe help your new believers out in destroying the opposition. But there is a more insidious reason for creating religions, as we will see in the following description of certain mind control procedures. When I first read the following segment, I had a huge “aha!” moment in realizing that it was a model of how people are “driven” into the “religious fold” via hyperdimensional manipulation. Forget the use of religion for control by top secret organizations — that’s just the disinformation designed to distract our attention away from the hyperdimensional realities and blame everything on human agencies — and just think about the life pressures, the emotional manipulations from hyperdimensional beings, that can be brought to bear on a person to convince them that being “born again” is the answer and “faith” is the key. Read my own story, Amazing Grace, to see how these pressures were brought to bear on me, and how, at a certain point, I “followed the program”; only in my case, the inner nature of questioning brought me out of it on the other side, wiser for the experience. But how many people do not have the courage to escape such controls?
So, keeping in mind that it is very likely a disinformation model of hyperdimensional control agendas, have a look at how religion is used as a mind control, social programming tool:
1. The NSA’s behavioral modification process starts with identification and qualification of the subject. The NSA used to choose subjects based on the subject’s net present value to the agency in public visibility, financial resources, political clout, or other intelligence and counter-intelligence reasons. Additional considerations are given to minimizing security risks of exposure, the subject’s post-hypnotic suggestibility index, the subject’s intelligence and reasoning ability, moral and superstitious beliefs, and the subject’s social status and the weakness of the subject’s primary support groups (family). Now a recent report referenced in the March 26th Business section of the Orange County Register from the National Sleep Foundation reports that 40% of Americans are experiencing sleeping problems. This news could indicate that the NSA is broadening its influence to the greater public. As explained below in this document, the NSA always starts its behavioral modification process with REM Deprivation.
2. After selection, the subject is subjected to long periods of REM Sleep Deprivation and reinforced torturing post-hypnotic suggestions that will breakdown the subject’s will, confidence, self-reliance, and moral values. Meanwhile, the subject is increasingly isolated from their familiar and trusted peer groups causing the subject to experience depression, apathy, and ultimately social and financial failure.
3. Typical posthypnotic induced delusions reported by subjects are tingling in various areas of the body, which are thought to be resulting from microwave beams. Hearing ticks, thumps, or cracks from walls, ceilings, clocks, lights, etc. Beliefs that the subject’s neighbors are conspiring against them, or that the subject is being followed. Sometimes subjects believe that the various perceptions, feelings and experiences are the result of “Implants” in their body. It is important for the subjects to understand that the NSA controls this technology from nuclear hardened underground shelters and the neighbors next door have nothing to do with the subject’s experiences. Nobody has the time or inclination to follow a subject around with a microwave gun to tickle various parts of the body.
We are saturated with microwaves all the time from television stations, communication satellites, etc. and yet we do not have any symptoms because microwaves do not have the ability to trigger localized synaptic responses in our brains. Furthermore, when the subject is in a room surrounded by several people, and the subject is the only one experiencing the “thoughts,” tingling feelings, etc., then obviously a delivery method is being employed that affects only the subject; high-speed acoustic delivered hypnosis.
4. After a while, the subject has an emotional breakdown and a new support group is built around the subject. The new support group is typically a church with doctrines centered in the Bible but the NSA also uses cults and other social groups. The NSA prefers Christian churches because the doctrines allow “God or Jesus to speak directly to the subject” and the negative reinforcement can be attributed with Satan and the positive rewards can be considered to be blessings from God thereby masking the NSA’s technology and processes. When the NSA uses other relationships within which the subject experiences a religious awakening and “Gives their Life to Christ” and the NSA achieves total control of the subject.
5. The subject is slowly released from the damaging uncomfortable hypnosis and it is replaced with positive rewarding hypnosis as “God and Jesus works in their life.” Soon, the subject has complete loyalty to Jesus (AKA: NSA) and will do anything on command from Jesus (NSA).
6. The subject is required to give daily status reports in the form of prayers in the privacy of their home, office, or car where the NSA’s electronic surveillance system captures and sorts the prayers by “Keywords.” The NSA then delivers additional hypnosis in the form of punishments or rewards or directs the subject accordingly to “God’s will.” If the subject resists the NSA’s instructions, additional punishments are inflicted on the subject.
7. The subject is institutionalized in this system where any nonconformances committed by the subject are watched, critiqued, and reported on through prayer by other “Christians” to the NSA. Thus, the new church peer group acts as a behavioral reinforcing mechanism that will bring any of the subject’s problems to the NSA as they have been trained themselves (this is similar to the Nazi Gestapo of World War 2 and other fascist approaches).
8. A subject that has successfully completed the NSA’s behavioral modification program lives out the rest of their mediocre life in service to Jesus (NSA) and never causes any waves in the church or news media for fear of reprisal from the NSA. The subject’s lives are relatively unproductive because their focus is on their “Life after Death” and not what they accomplish while they are alive. They avoid “worldly activities,” and usually are confused and disjointed in rational thoughts and concepts. For instance, they don’t believe in anything that is not in the Bible, i.e. dinosaurs, evolution, space travel, even though they ride on airplanes and watch television both of which are not referenced in the Bible. (Bamford, 1982; this author’s emphasis)
If such information has been “allowed” to be leaked suggesting that religion is used by such groups, again using the rules of disinformation, we might think that the issue that is being concealed is that religions are created by hyperdimensional being via time travel. We cannot exclude the human factor as well.
At this point, I want to present a short and selective list of books and papers on Game Theory so that the reader will have some idea of how this theory is being used, by reading the titles of the articles. Keep in mind, this is only what is allowed to be published:
1928, John von Neumann: “Zur Theorie der Gesellschaftsspiele.”
1930, F. Zeuthen: “Problems of Monopoly and Economic Warfare.”
1944, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern: Theory of Games and Economic Behavior.
1950–53, John Nash wrote four papers: “Equilibrium Points in N- Person Games” (1950); “Non-cooperative Games” (1951); “The Bargaining Problem” (1950); and “Two-Person Cooperative Games” (1953).
1953, H. W. Kuhn: Extensive Games and the Problem of Information; includes the formulation of extensive form-games which allow the modeller to specify the exact order in which players have to make their decisions and formulate the assumptions about the information possessed by the players in all stages of the game.
1954, L. S. Shapley and M. Shubik: “A Method for Evaluating the Distribution of Power in a Committee System.” They use the Shapley value to determine the power of the members of the UN Security Council.
1954–55, “Problems of forming and solving military pursuit games.” Rand Corporation research memoranda, by Isaacs, RM-1391 (November 30, 1954), RM-1399 (November 30, 1954), RM-1411 (December 21, 1954), and RM-1486 (March 25, 1955); all entitled, in part, “Differential Games.”
1955, R. B. Braithwaite: “Theory of Games as a Tool for the Moral Philosopher.”
1959, Martin Shubik: “Strategy and Market Structure: Competition, Oligopoly, and the Theory of Games.”
1960, Thomas C. Schelling: The Strategy of Conflict.
1961, R. C. Lewontin: “Evolution and the Theory of Games.”
1962, D. Gale and L. Shapley: “College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage.”
1965, Rufus Isaacs: “Differential Games: A Mathematical Theory with Applications to Warfare and Pursuit, Control and Optimization.”
1966, John Harsanyi: A General Theory of Rational Behavior in Game Situations. A game is cooperative if commitments — agreements, promises, threats — are fully binding and enforceable. It is non-cooperative if commitments are not enforceable.
1967–68, John Harsanyi: Games with Incomplete Information Played by ‘Bayesian’ Players, Parts I, II and III. This laid the theoretical groundwork for information economics that has become one of the major themes of economics and Game Theory.
1972, John Maynard Smith: “Game Theory and The Evolution of Fighting.”
1973, John Maynard Smith and G. Price: The Logic of Animal Conflict.
1973, Gibbard: “Manipulation of Voting Schemes: A General Result.”
1974, R. J. Aumann and L. S. Shapley: Values of Non-Atomic Games. It deals with values for large games in which all the players are individually insignificant (non-atomic games).
1976, Robert Aumann: Agreeing to Disagree. An event is common knowledge among a set of agents if all know it and all know that they all know it and so on ad infinitum.
1981, R. J. Aumann: Survey of Repeated Games. This survey firstly proposed the idea of applying the notion of an automaton to describe a player in a repeated game.
1985, J.-F. Mertens and S. Zamir: Formulation of Bayesian Analysis for Games with Incomplete Information. Shows that it is not possible to construct a situation for which there are no sets of types large enough to contain all the private information that players are supposed to have.
1988, Tan and Werlang: The Bayesian Foundations of Solution Concepts of Games. Formally discusses the assumptions about a player’s knowledge that lie behind the concepts of Nash equilibria and rationalizability.
As it happens, the economist who visited us, and who left with the Cassiopaean transcripts in hand, was an expert in Bayesian Logic.
Strategic behavior arises when two or more individuals interact, and each individual’s decision turns on what that individual expects the others to do. Incomplete information is the central problem in Game Theory. Control of what information is available and whether it is or is not utilized amounts to “stacking the cards” in favor of the one in control of the information. People make choices based on “pay-offs.” They are “rational” in the sense that they consistently prefer outcomes with higher pay-offs to those with lower pay-offs. People make decisions based on their beliefs about what others will do. When we come to the problem of beliefs, we begin to enter the arena that is controlled by what is known as Bayesian Logic. This solution builds on the idea of positing the knowledge and/or beliefs of the various players.
In Game Theory, the best way to know what knowledge or beliefs the players have or believe is most easily controlled by creating the beliefs that assist in the covering up of information that would assist the player in formulating a winning strategy.
It is as likely that those who are creating the New Age religion and/or running the New Age COINTELPRO operation are part of this Game Strategy of making sure that humanity is limited in terms of information, and are able to be manipulated in terms of belief. In such a way, the Control System can play their “Dominant Strategy” with assurance that the other players will respond in a very precise way.
Religion is the Devil’s greatest achievement. In the guise of religion he has pulled off his most audacious coup. He has flagrantly masqueraded as God. He has had us bow down and worship him. He has had us commit every type of evil in the name of holiness. He has passed off his bigotry as God’s opinions. He has had us segregate humanity into the “ins” and the “outs,” believers and non-believers, the saved and the damned. He has convinced us that God likes us but not them. And convinced them that God likes them but not us. And then, in a stroke of dark brilliance, he warns his faithful flock of sheep: “Be sure you do not pay heed to anyone but me, for the Devil is a wily wolf and he will surely trick you.” (Freke and Gandy, 2001)
World War II was known as the “scientists’ war.” After the Rockefeller and Bamberger money had set things up to make Princeton the center of the mathematical universe here on Earth, Princeton mathematicians were involved in ciphers and code breaking, the science of ballistics, statistical analysis of enemy positions, and so on. The scientists from Princeton made breakthroughs in radar, infrared detection, bomb-delivering airplanes, long-range rocketry, torpedoes and other instruments of destruction. Mathematicians were needed to evaluate assessment of the effectiveness of weapons, efficient use of weapons, how many tons of explosives were needed to kill the most people, and so on.
Then, of course, there was the A Bomb.
At the end of WW II, there was no longer any doubt in the minds of those running the American government that mathematics was the king of sciences. New theories and sophisticated math gave them the needed edge to win the war, and mathematicians — mainly those at Princeton — partook of the prosperity that followed. What’s more, mathematics was no longer the activity of gentlemen of leisure — it was a wide-open field for anyone with talent. Being Jewish, foreign, or from the streets of Brooklyn, no longer mattered. If you had talent, Princeton wanted you and would foot the bill. At this point, there was nothing they couldn’t get money for: topology, algebra, number theory, computer theory, operations research, and, of course, Game Theory.
Naturally, they wanted Nash. Again we ask, “Why?”
I read Sylvia Nasar’s well-researched biography of John Nash with enormous interest. What I found most fascinating was the section about his childhood. As far as I can tell from the reference notes, Ms. Nasar went to original sources — including Nash’s sister, teachers, childhood acquaintances, school records, local newspapers, and so on — for her information. She did an extremely thorough job of gathering the information, but made little attempt to interpret it. She was simply recounting what she was told and what she discovered. It was an excellent job of pure reporting. And, as I noted in the previous chapter, I realized that I was reading an almost verbatim description of the childhood of Frank Scott, as described to me by Frank himself.
Because of all of the recent research we had done on psychopathy (a.k.a “antisocial personality disorder”), as I read I recognized the psychopathic personality being described in detail in Nasar’s account, right down to Nash’s admission to another mathematician at MIT that, as a child, he “enjoyed torturing animals.”
By the time I had finished the book, I had the idea that psychopathy and “mind control” activity was a better explanation for Nash’s so-called “paranoid schizophrenia,” which was somewhat mysterious in terms of onset, symptoms and later remission. As I was reading, I kept thinking about another article I had read describing psychopaths as “alien reaction machines” (Horne, 2000). Several other connections were made, as the reader will see, and whether it is a conscious conspiracy or not, I will leave to the reader’s judgment. I just know that the picture that is being revealed is frightening.
Of course, I am not a psychiatrist nor a psychologist. I am a very good “technician” in terms of hypnotherapy, but I have always advocated following the therapeutic models of professional clinicians, which I studied, implemented and observed in order to come to some ideas about what did or did not work. And so, again, rather than just make a bold statement that “I think this is what the problem is,” since I am neither trained nor qualified to diagnose mental conditions, I will just present the information I have gathered on the subject and leave it to the reader to judge.
Based on the research I have read, the importance of psychopathy in the present day cannot be overstated. Simply put, it is a growing phenomenon and it is going to impact every single one of us individually and collectively in the not-too-distant future. It is also extremely important to understand psychopathy in order to be able to fully understand Game Theory and how it is the underlying dynamic being used at the present time to move all the pieces into place for the Secret Games of the Gods. There is so much literature on the subject, that what I am going to include here will only skim the surface. I will, however, urge every single reader to do their own research on this subject at the soonest possible opportunity. As the Cassiopaeans say, “Knowledge protects” — and the knowledge of the functional modes of the psychopath could save your life.
After reading through a slew of books and papers, reviewing in my mind the many experiences I have had with other people, searching for clues and assessing interactions, my personal preference is for the work of Dr. Robert Hare. Because of my own life experiences, it is my opinion that his professional opinion and presentation is the most concise and to the point, and also most realistic with practical hands-on understanding conveyed in simple language. One of the most important things about his work is the fact that he makes it quite clear that we cannot excuse psychopathy based on environment. The “Nature vs. Nurture” argument is overwhelmingly answered as “nature.” The implications this has for all of us are deep and profound. Something, or somebody, seems to have set things up so that these kinds of genes will propagate widely and produce many “offspring” at this point in our history. When we have a look at Nash, something of an “experiment” in their program, we will have a much better idea of what we are facing.
Psychopathy is a personality disorder defined by a distinctive cluster of behaviors and inferred personality traits, most of which society views as pejorative. It is therefore no light matter to diagnose an individual as a psychopath. Like any psychiatric disorder, diagnosis is based on the accumulation of evidence that an individual satisfies at least the minimal criteria for the disorder. (Hare, 1999)
Notice that Hare says that the only thing that can really be said about the psychology of psychopaths is inferred from a “cluster of behaviors.” This is one of the big problems of the subject. Psychopaths just simply do not ever consider that there is anything wrong with them, and as a result, they do not ever willingly seek psychiatric help — unless it is part of a plan to deceive or con someone, or if they are incarcerated and obliged one way or another to submit to psychiatric examination. Even then, because of the nature of the psychopath, it is highly questionable that what they reveal in such interviews is an accurate representation of what really goes on inside them. And so, having a real live psychopath turn himself in and tell the truth about what goes on in his head just isn’t part of the reality. However, there have been a number of recent studies of psychopathic prisoners, using advanced brain study technology, and this has helped to sort out the “real” from the “fake” to a great extent.
Many people think that all psychopaths are dangerous criminals like Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy, and this is due to the fact that the only psychopaths we know about are criminals. The important point to make here is that not all criminals are psychopaths, and it seems to be so that most psychopaths are not adjudicated criminals. The facts seem to be that the only ones who ever get studied are the ones who are “less successful,” shall we say, and who therefore get caught and incarcerated. The really good ones aren’t in prison. That ought to scare us to death! It is very difficult to estimate the numbers of true psychopaths in the population, but one thing seems certain: the numbers are increasing rapidly.
In spite of more than a century of clinical study and speculation and several decades of scientific research, the mystery of the psychopath still remains. Some recent developments have provided us with new insights into the nature of this disturbing disorder, and its borders are becoming more defined. But the fact is, compared with other major clinical disorders, little systematic research has been devoted to psychopathy, even though it is responsible for far more social distress and disruption than all other psychiatric disorders combined. (Hare, 1999)
That is a startling statement — that psychopaths have a more detrimental effect on our society than all other psychiatric disorders combined. So few people are even aware of this fact. They may know all about schizophrenia, or bipolar disorders, or ADHD, because all of those things can be medicated and controlled to one extent or another. Also, they are disabling to the individual. Conversely, the chief thing about psychopathy is that it is not disabling to the individual unless certain other factors are present. In general, psychopaths always manage to do very well for themselves. People ask: “Isn’t psychopathy maladaptive?” The terrifying answer is: It may be maladaptive for society, but it is adaptive for the psychopaths themselves.
The hallmark of the psychopath is a stunning lack of conscience and their objective of self-gratification at the expense of others. Psychopaths are possessed of a cold, calculating rationality combined with an inability to even conceive of others as thinking, feeling beings. To witness such incomprehensible behavior produces a feeling of bewilderment and helplessness. What is important, however, is that most of us never “witness” such an “inside” view, unless we have been burned a sufficient number of times to develop an acute awareness that all is not as it seems on the surface. To actually identify one of these people, we must become very, very aware, and make certain “tests” of the behavior — “systematic harassment,” as Don Juan calls it — of those we suspect may not have our best interests at heart because their acts don’t match their words. Through such tests, psychopaths can be “flushed out” into the open, fully displaying their true nature. However, even when in full display, most people simply cannot believe what they are seeing. Only the victims know the truth, and their insights are generally discounted, as we will see.
[G]ood people are rarely suspicious: they cannot imagine others doing the things they themselves are incapable of doing; usually they accept the undramatic solution as the correct one, and let matters rest there. Then too, the normal are inclined to visualize the [psychopath] as one who’s as monstrous in appearance as he is in mind, which is about as far from the truth as one could well get. […] These monsters of real life usually looked and behaved in a more normal manner than their actually normal brothers and sisters; they presented a more convincing picture of virtue than virtue presented of itself — just as the wax rosebud or the plastic peach seemed more perfect to the eye, more what the mind thought a rosebud or a peach should be, than the imperfect original from which it had been modeled. (William March, The Bad Seed, quoted by Hare, 1999)
Only by reading the literature on the subject can the average person truly begin to grasp the nightmare of living with or dealing with a true psychopath. Lying, deceiving, and manipulation are their natural talents. They have vivid imaginations that are focused entirely on themselves and getting what they want, and they are unbelievably unconcerned with the possibility — or, in some cases, the certainty — of being found out. When caught in a lie, or challenged with the truth, they are almost never embarrassed at all! They simply shift the attention of the questioner, change the story, or rework the facts to be more consistent with the original lie. The end result is that the listener is confused, and they are then vulnerable to being convinced that the confusion is their own fault!
Psychopaths also tell lies that are so liberally sprinkled with emotional trigger-words that the listener is completely taken in. Even sophisticated psychologists and psychiatrists are very often hornswoggled by psychopaths! One case cited by Hare is really funny in a horrible sort of way because the psychologist wrote such things about the subject as: “very impressive; sincere and forthright,” “possesses good interpersonal skills,” “intelligent and articulate,” and so on. He was later humiliated to discover that virtually none of what was told to him by the psychopath was true. He had fallen for every word — hook, line and sinker!
Studying the words used by psychopaths to convey emotion is revealing. As Sylvia Nasar wrote about John Nash:
But, as in so many other relationships in his life, Nash’s intentions weren’t always matched by the emotional means to carry them out satisfactorily. Even as he tried to draw his son closer, he said and did things that could only be called insensitive and alienating. […] [At present] the self-deprecating humor suggests greater self-awareness. The straight-from-the-heart talk with friends about sadness, pleasure and attachment suggests a wider range of emotional experiences. The daily effort to give others their due, and to recognize their right to ask this of him, bespeaks a very different man from the often cold and arrogant youth. (Nasar, 1998)
What we surmise from the above is that now that he is old and finds that he must look to others to survive, Nash has again “adapted” like the true psychopath. Psychopaths very often talk at great length about their “feelings” and they claim to experience strong emotions. However, a careful listener or interrogator will discover, if they are clever in their questioning, that the psychopath is unable to describe the subtleties of various emotional states. They will equate love with sexual arousal, or sadness with frustration. The conclusion of researchers is that the emotions of the psychopath are so shallow as to be little more than “proto-emotions,” or primitive responses to self-centered needs.
For “normal people,” it is our awareness of emotional consequences — fear of being hurt or of hurting someone else — that guides our choices of actions in life. The “inner voice” that tells us “how things are done” when one is involved with other beings who have rights and feelings is developed via a complex system of socialization. We can call this our “conscience.” It acts as a sort of “inner policeman” to regulate our behavior, even in the absence of external controls. It is a sort of inner self that presents a series of perceptions about what others expect of us, as well as what we expect of ourselves. Psychopaths do not seem to have this “inner guidance” system. They may calculate coldly what could or could not happen, but they act primarily based on achieving immediate satisfaction, pleasure, or relief of some sort.
Please note: The psychopath does not act based on a consideration of the rights and feelings of others. They do not have a conscience, and it is our conscience that makes us prey! It is our perception of them as human beings with feelings, that restrains our actions, that makes us “consider” them in the way we would like to be considered; but all the while, they are not so constrained! In terms of Game Theory, they have a Dominant Strategy that takes into account this very weakness of conscience that they know will prevent their victims from responding in kind.
Psychopaths consider the rules and expectations of society to be inconvenient and unreasonable impediments to what they want or need. But, as noted, they don’t always break the law so as to land in jail. They are generally too smart for that. Instead, they do things that are unethical, immoral and harmful to others, but in ways that are not illegal. The problem with behavior of this sort is that it is cruelly destructive to all around them, but almost impossible to document or explain to outsiders.
Obligations and commitments mean nothing to the psychopath. They don’t honor formal or implied commitments to people and organizations, or even principles. They are also irresponsible parents. They may insist that they love their children, but typically, they will leave them for extended periods of time either alone, or with unreliable or inappropriate people. The story of Nash’s behavior toward his mistress (with whom he had a child that he suggested she ought to “give up for adoption”), as well as his son by his wife (who went for a year without a name, and who was shuttled back and forth between his mother and his grandparents for most of his life), demonstrate clearly that Nash most definitely was not merely an “irresponsible parent” — he was cruelly neglectful. Of course, the excuse is made that he was “psychotic.” But it is most curious that his psychosis began just shortly before the birth of his second son and within a marriage, where societal expectations of care and responsibility would be most likely brought to bear on him. It was almost as if the very idea of actually being expected to give something of himself to another human being was sufficient to drive him to self-destruction.
Nash suggested to Eleanor that she give John David up for adoption. […] It was a cold-blooded suggestion, and it all but killed any remaining love Eleanor felt for Nash. One only hopes that among Nash’s considerations in putting it forward — apart from eliminating any financial responsibility he might face for his child, which prompted Eleanor to say that Nash “wanted everything for nothing” — might have been a genuine belief that John David’s chances in life would be greater with some middle-class couple than with his single, working mother. […] He doubtless behaved selfishly, even callously. His son and others later attributed his acknowledgment of paternity and desire to maintain a bond, even while failing to protect his child from poverty and periodic separation from his mother, to a pure narcissism. (Nasar, 1998)
We note above that Nash obviously was saying the words, but that those words were contradicted by his actions — one of the signs of the psychopath.
Psychopaths are extraordinarily successful in talking their way out of trouble. They will say over and over again, “I’ve learned my lesson,” or “You have my word that it won’t happen again,” or “It was all just a big misunderstanding, can’t we forget it and go forward?” Usually this works, and one wonders how many times it had worked for Nash before he found an instance in which it did not work and, in fact, ended in the withdrawal of his top-secret security clearance and loss of a lucrative consulting contract.
In 1950, Nash was hired as a consultant for RAND Corporation, a secretive civilian think-tank funded by the Air Force. This was where the big brains worked out problems of nuclear war and Game Theory. The RAND ideal was a militarized worship of the rational life, geopolitical obsession, paranoia and megalomania. Its mission was to apply rational analysis and the latest quantitative methods to the problem of how to use nuclear weapons most effectively — as instruments of destruction or deterrence. Nasar suggests that RAND may have been the model for Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series about hyper-rational social scientists or psycho-historians, who think it is their job to save the galaxy from chaos.
Nash was initiated into the secret world of RAND along with a host of other mathematicians. After World War II, many of the mathematicians and scientists recruited for the war continued to be employed by military research organizations. And, of all the ideas that had come along during the war, Game Theory was seen as the most sophisticated tool. RAND was privy to the military’s most highly guarded secrets.
Nash stood out as the oddest of the bunch at RAND. It seems that, on a number of occasions, the maintenance crew reported that Nash was observed to be “tiptoeing exaggeratedly along the avenue, stalking flocks of pigeons, and then suddenly rushing forward to try to kick them.”
Sounds like a real swell guy. Early cruelty to animals is almost a dead giveaway to the psychopathic personality. When they become adults, they may even tell others about their childhood cruelty as an “ordinary event” of growing up. They will describe it as having been “enjoyable,” and possibly assume that it is a common feature of maturation. The fact that Nash continued to regard living creatures as something to stalk and hurt is seriously disturbing.
In 1954, Nash was arrested in Palisades Park. He was charged with “indecent exposure.” Richard Best, RAND’s security manager, was informed of the arrest, and was reported to have said that Nash went into a public restroom and came on to another man by taking out his penis and masturbating; the only problem was, the man was a cop.
Nash had a top-secret security clearance. The security guidelines forbade anyone suspected of homosexual activity to hold a security clearance because, at the time, vulnerability to blackmail was an issue. Aside from that, the reckless nature of Nash’s act indicated poor judgment. When Best confronted Nash with the news that his security clearance had been canceled, that he would have to go right then — that very minute — Nash was neither shaken nor embarrassed. Another sign of the psychopath. They don’t have feelings, so they can never be embarrassed!
Nash didn’t take it all that hard. He denied that he had been trying to pick up the cop and tended to scoff at the notion that he could be a homosexual. “I’m not a homosexual,” Best quotes Nash as saying. “I like women.” He then did something that puzzled Best and shocked him a little: “He pulled a picture out of his wallet and showed us a picture of a woman and a little boy. ‘Here’s the woman I’m going to marry and our son’….”
Best ignored the obvious psychopathic ploy and asked Nash for his version of the “event.” Nash kept repeating that he was “merely observing behavioral characteristics.” Yeah, right. That and a buck will get you a cup of coffee!
Sylvia Nasar writes about the incident, asking questions about Nash’s possible internal reaction to this event. She asks:
What was going through Nash’s mind in that interval? Was he angry? Depressed? Frightened? […] Did he try to have RAND’s decision reversed? Generally, of course, people did not. Fearful of scandal and aware of the contempt with which any hint of homosexuality was viewed, people in Nash’s shoes were usually only too happy to slink away without murmur or protest.
In the end, Nash did what he had learned to do in less extreme circumstances. He acted, weirdly, as if nothing had happened. He played the observer of his own drama, as if it were all a game or some intriguing experiment in human behavior, focusing neither on the emotions of people around him nor on his own, but on moves and countermoves. […] At some point he told his parents he’d had trouble with his RAND security clearance, blaming it on the fact that his mentor at MIT, Norman Levinson, was a former communist who had been hauled before HUAC that year. (Nasar, 1998; this author’s emphasis)
A more typical description of the behavior and actions of a psychopath could hardly be imagined. But Nasar, like the rest of us, sought answers to Nash’s behavior by assuming that he was like other people. She wondered about him being afraid of scandal or contempt. She just didn’t get it that Nash did not have a conscience. Those things simply were not part of his make-up.
Conscience seems to depend on the ability to imagine consequences. But most “consequences” relate to pain in some way, and psychopaths really don’t understand pain in the emotional sense. They understand frustration of not getting what they want, and to them, that is pain. But the fact seems to be that they act based solely on a sort of Game Theory evaluation of a situation: What will they get out of it, and what will it cost? These “costs” have nothing to do with being humiliated, causing pain, sabotaging the future, or any of the other possibilities that normal people consider when making a choice. In short, it is almost impossible for normal people to even imagine the inner life of the psychopath.
This leads us to what psychopaths do have that is truly outstanding: An ability to give their undivided attention to something that interests them intensely. Some clinicians have compared this to the concentration with which a predator stalks his prey. This is useful if one is in an environment with few variables, but most real life situations require us to pay attention to a number of things at once. Psychopaths often pay so much attention to getting what they want that they fail to notice danger signals.
For example, some psychopaths earned reputations for being fearless fighter pilots during World War II, staying on their targets like terriers on an ankle. Yet, these pilots often failed to keep track of such unexciting details as fuel supply, altitude, location, and the position of other planes. Sometimes they became heroes, but more often, they were killed or became known as opportunists, loners, or hotshots who couldn’t be relied on — except to take care of themselves. (Hare, 1999)
Nash demonstrated this quality to an extreme degree in the field of mathematics. However, Nash wasn’t interested in mathematics for the sake of mathematics itself — the problem had to be important in the opinion of others, and thereby likely to garner attention and glory to himself. Nash wouldn’t work on a problem unless he was assured that it was sufficiently important to “deserve” his attention. But, once he had decided, his “attention” was prodigious.
His tolerance for solitude, great confidence in his own intuition, indifference to criticism — all detectable at a young age but now prominent and impermeable features of his personality — served him well. […] The most eloquent description of Nash’s single-minded attack on the problem comes from Moser:
The difficulty [that Levinson had pointed out], to anyone in his right mind, would have stopped them cold and caused them to abandon the problem. But Nash was different. If he had a hunch, conventional criticisms didn’t stop him. He had no background knowledge. It was totally uncanny. Nobody could understand how somebody like that could do it. He was the only person I ever saw with that kind of power, just brute mental power. (Nasar, 1998)
Again, it should be emphasized that psychopaths are interesting as all get out — even exciting! They exude a captivating energy that keeps their listeners on the edge of their seats. Even if some part of the normal person is shocked or repelled by what the psychopath says, they are like the mouse hypnotized by the torturing cat. Even if they have the chance to run away, they don’t. Many psychopaths “make their living” by using charm, deceit and manipulation to gain the confidence of their victims. Many of them can be found in white-collar professions, where they are aided in their evil by the fact that most people expect certain classes of people to be trustworthy because of their social or professional credentials. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, politicians, psychiatrists and psychologists, generally do not have to earn our trust because they have it by virtue of their positions. But the fact is, psychopaths are found in such lofty spheres also!
At the same time, psychopaths are good impostors. They have absolutely no hesitation about forging and brazenly using impressive credentials to adopt professional roles that bring prestige and power. They pick professions in which the requisite skills are easy to fake, the jargon is easy to learn, and the credentials are unlikely to be thoroughly checked. Psychopaths find it extremely easy to pose as financial consultants, ministers, psychological counselors and psychologists. That’s a scary thought.
Psychopaths make their way by conning people into doing things for them; obtaining money for them, prestige, power, or even standing up for them when others try to expose them. But that is their claim to fame. That’s what they do, and they do it very well. What’s more, the job is very easy because most people are gullible with an unshakable belief in the inherent goodness of man.
Manipulation is the key to the psychopath’s conquests. Initially, the psychopath will feign false emotions to create empathy, and many of them study the tricks that can be employed in the “empathy” technique. Psychopaths are often able to incite pity from people because they seem like “lost souls,” as Guggenbuhl-Craig writes. So the pity factor is one reason why victims often fall for these “poor” people.
Hare cites a famous case where a psychopath was “Man of the Year” and president of the Chamber of Commerce in his small town. (Remember that John Wayne Gacy was running for Jaycee President at the very time of his first murder conviction!) The man in question had claimed to have a Ph.D. from Berkeley. He ran for a position on the school board, which he then planned to parlay into a position on the county commission, which paid more.
At some point, a local reporter suddenly had the idea to check up on the guy — to see if his credentials were real. What the reporter found out was that the only thing that was true about this up-and-coming politician’s “faked bio” was the place and date of birth. Everything else was fictitious. Not only was the man a complete impostor, he had a long history of antisocial behavior, fraud, impersonation and imprisonment. His only contact with a university was a series of extension courses by mail that he took while in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. What is even more amazing is the fact that before he was a con-man, he was a “con-boy.” For two decades he had dodged his way across America one step ahead of those he had hoodwinked. Along the way he had married three women and had four children, and he didn’t even know what had happened to them. Now, he was on a roll! But darn that pesky reporter!
When he was exposed, he was completely unconcerned. “These trusting people will stand behind me. A good liar is a good judge of people,” he said. Amazingly, he was right. Far from being outraged at the fact that they had all been completely deceived and lied to from top to bottom, the local community he had conned so completely — in order to accrue benefits and honors to himself that he had not earned — rushed to his support!
I kid you not! It wasn’t just “token support.” The local Republican Party chairman wrote about him: “I assess his genuineness, integrity and devotion to duty to rank right alongside of President Abraham Lincoln.” As Hare dryly notes, this dimwit was easily swayed by words, but was blind to deeds.
We understand this phenomenon from direct personal experience. The above case is almost an item-by-item mirror of our interaction with Vincent Bridges. After questions were raised about his credentials —side by side with our observation of his many activities, including vociferously blaming the victims (us) for refusing to be further victimized — we became acutely aware of his capacity for lying. It was, in fact, his publicly posted lies, as well the lies of both him and others in his gang, witnessed by ourselves and many others, that clued us in to his true nature. Had he behaved otherwise, he would be well on his way to more and better con-jobs with our blessings, given out of ignorance. However, our observation of the deceitful nature of his written discourses — the endless lies stacked on lies — naturally led to the idea that maybe everything he said was a lie, including his credentials. This idea turned out to be correct, but it didn’t seem to matter. Surprisingly (to us, at least), there was no lack of people who were willing to compare Bridges to Abraham Lincoln because of his “genuineness, integrity and devotion to duty.” That factor, of course, is what contributes to the success of the psychopath.
We observed this for some months, shaking our head in wonder at how many people seem to want to be duped, to be made fools of, and that is partly why we undertook to study the phenomenon more deeply. We wanted to know what kind of psychological weaknesses drive people to prefer lies over truth.
This may have something to do with what is called “cognitive dissonance.” Leon Festinger developed the theory of cognitive dissonance in the 1950s when he apparently stumbled onto a UFO cult in the midwest. They were prophesying a coming world cataclysm and “alien rapture.” When no one was raptured and no cataclysm occurred, he studied the believers’ response and detailed it in his book, When Prophecy Fails. Festinger observed:
A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.
We have all experienced the futility of trying to change a strong conviction, especially if the convinced person has some investment in his belief. We are familiar with the variety of ingenious defenses with which people protect their convictions, managing to keep them unscathed through the most devastating attacks.
But man’s resourcefulness goes beyond simply protecting a belief. Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, that he has taken irrevocable actions because of it; finally, suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view. (Festinger, 1964)
It seems that part of the problem has to do with ego and the need to be “right.” People with a high need to be “right” or “perfect” seem to be unable to acknowledge that they have been conned. “There is no crime in the cynical American calendar more humiliating than to be a sucker.” People will go along with and support a psychopath, in the face of evidence that they are being conned, because their own ego structure depends on being right, and to admit an error of judgment would destroy their carefully constructed image of themselves.
Even more amazing is the fact that when psychopaths do get exposed by someone who is not afraid to admit that they have been conned, the psychopath is a master at painting their victims as the “real culprits.” We have experienced this first hand also with both Frank Scott and Vincent Bridges, as well as others, as will be seen further along. We were, indeed, interested to discover that we weren’t the only ones. Hare cites a case of the third wife of a forty-year-old high-school teacher:
“For five years he cheated on me, kept me living in fear, and forged checks on my personal bank account. But everyone, including my doctor and lawyer and my friends, blamed me for the problem. He had them so convinced that he was a great guy and that I was going mad, I began to believe it myself. Even when he cleaned out my bank account and ran off with a seventeen-year-old student, a lot of people couldn’t believe it, and some wanted to know what I had done to make him act so strangely!”
Psychopaths just have what it takes to defraud and bilk others: they can be fast talkers, they can be charming, they can be self-assured and at ease in social situations; they are cool under pressure, unfazed by the possibility of being found out, and totally ruthless. And even when they are exposed, they can carry on as if nothing has happened, often making their accusers the targets of accusations of being victimized by them.
I was once dumbfounded by the logic of an inmate who described his murder victim as having benefited from the crime by learning “a hard lesson about life.” (Hare, 1999)
The victims keep asking: “How could I have been so stupid? How could I have fallen for that incredible line of baloney?” And, of course, if they don’t ask it of themselves, you can be sure that their friends and associates will ask: “How on earth could you have been taken in to that extent?” The usual answer — “You had to be there” — simply does not convey the whole thing. Hare writes:
What makes psychopaths different from all others is the remarkable ease with which they lie, the pervasiveness of their deception, and the callousness with which they carry it out.
But there is something else about the speech of psychopaths that is equally puzzling: their frequent use of contradictory and logically inconsistent statements that usually escape detection. Recent research on the language of psychopaths provides us with some important clues to this puzzle, as well as to the uncanny ability psychopaths have to move words — and people — around so easily. (Hare, 1999)
Here are some examples:
When asked if he had ever committed a violent offense, a man serving time for theft answered, “No, but I once had to kill someone.”
A woman with a staggering record of fraud, deceit, lies, and broken promises concluded a letter to the parole board with, “I’ve let a lot of people down.… One is only as good as her reputation and name. My word is as good as gold.”
A man serving a term for armed robbery replied to the testimony of an eyewitness, “He’s lying. I wasn’t there. I should have blown his fucking head off.” (Hare, 1999)
From an interview with serial killer Elmer Wayne Henley:
Interviewer: “You make it out that you’re the victim of a serial killer, but if you look at the record you’re a serial killer.”
Henley: “I’m not.”
I: “You’re not a serial killer?”
H: “I’m not a serial killer.”
I: You’re saying you’re not a serial killer now, but you’ve serially killed.”
H: “Well, yeah, that’s semantics.”
And so on. The point that the researchers noted was that psychopaths seem to have trouble monitoring their own speech. What is more, they often put things together in strange ways, such as this series of remarks from serial-killer Clifford Olson: “And then I had annual sex with her.” “Once a year?” “No. Annual. From behind.” “Oh. But she was dead!” “No, no. She was just unconscientious.” About his many experiences, Olson said, “I’ve got enough antidotes to fill five or six books — enough for a trilogy.” He was determined not to be an “escape goat” no matter what the “migrating facts.” (Hare, 1999)
Those of us who have had experiences with psychopaths know that the language of the psychopath is only two-dimensional. They are, as someone once said, as “deep as a thimble.” An analogy is given of the psychopath as a color-blind person who has learned how to function in the world of color by special strategies. They may tell you that they “stopped at a red light,” but what it really means to them is that they knew that the light at the top means “Stop,” and they stopped. They call it the “red” light like everyone else, but they have no experience of what “red” really is.
A person who is color-blind and has developed such coping mechanisms, is virtually undetectable from people who see colors. I was shocked when my brother told me, when we were in our thirties, that he had been refused certain flight-related training in the Navy because he was color-blind. All I could think of was the many model cars he assembled when we were kids, and how he carefully selected the colors to paint them; all the while he was saying to me, “Isn’t that a pretty red?” he had no idea what “red” really was. It was only in the Navy, when the tests were administered, that even he learned that he was color-blind. He still doesn’t know what “red” is, though we have discussed endlessly his perceptions of color.
Psychopaths use words about emotions the same way people who are color-blind use words about colors that they cannot perceive. Psychopaths not only learn to use the words more or less appropriately, they learn to pantomime the emotion. But they never have the emotion.
This quality of the mind of the psychopath has been extensively tested with word-association tests while the subjects are hooked up to an EEG. In normal individuals, words that have emotional content evoke larger brain responses than do neutral words, which is apparently a reflection of the large amount of information that can be packed into a word. For most of us, the word cancer can instantly bring to mind not only the description of the disease, but also fear, pain, concern, or whatever, depending upon our experiences with cancer, whether we or someone we love has had it, or if it had some impact on our lives, and so on. The same is true with many words in our collective and individual vocabularies. And, unless we had a traumatic experience with it, a word such as box or paper will be neutral.
Psychopaths respond to all emotional words as if they were neutral. It is as if they are permanently condemned to operate with a Juvenile Dictionary. Hare writes:
Earlier I discussed the role of “inner speech” in the development and operation of conscience. It is the emotionally charged thoughts, images, and internal dialogue that give the “bite” to conscience, account for its powerful control over behavior, and generate guilt and remorse for transgressions. This is something that psychopaths cannot understand. For them, conscience is little more than an intellectual awareness of rules others make up — empty words. The feelings needed to give clout to these rules are missing. (Hare, 1999; this author’s emphasis)
What is more, just as the color-blind individual may never know he is color-blind unless he is given a test to determine it, the psychopath is unable to even be aware of his own emotional poverty. They assume that their own perceptions are the same as everyone else’s. They assume that their own lack of feeling is the same for everyone else. Make no mistake about it: You can not hurt their feelings — because they don’t have any! They will pretend to have feelings if it suits their purposes or gets them what they want. They will verbalize remorse, but their actions will contradict their words. They know that “remorse” is important, and “apologies” are useful, and they will give them freely, though generally in words that amount to blaming the victim for needing to be apologized to.
This is why they are so good at using Game Theory, and unless we learn the rules of how they think, they will continue to use it on us with devastating results. Normal people hurt when treated cruelly and insensitively. Psychopaths can only feign being “hurt” in the way that most people experience it — because they can only perceive “hurt” as not getting what they wanted, and tried to get by manipulation!
In the book Violent Attachments, women and men have noted the particular stare of the psychopath: It is an intense, relentless gaze that seems to precede his destruction of his victim or target. Women, in particular, have reported this stare, which is related to the “predatorial” (reptilian) gaze; it is as if the psychopath is directing all of his intensity toward you through his eyes, a sensation that one woman reported as a feeling of “being eaten.” They tend to invade peoples’ space either by their sudden intrusions or intimidating look-overs (which some women confuse for sexuality).
Another extremely interesting study had to do with the way psychopaths move their hands when they speak. Hand movement can tell researchers a lot about what are called “thought units.” The studies indicate that psychopaths’ thoughts and ideas are organized into small mental packages. This is handy for lying, but makes dealing with an overall, coherent and integrated complex of deep thoughts virtually impossible.
Most people are able to combine ideas that have consistent thought themes, but psychopaths have great difficulty doing this. Again, this suggests a genetic restriction to what we have called the Juvenile Dictionary. Not only are they using extremely restricted definitions, they cannot, by virtue of the way their brains work, do otherwise. Virtually all of the research on psychopaths reveals an inner world that is banal, sophomoric, and devoid of the color and detail that generally exists in the inner world of normal people. This goes a long way to explain the inconsistencies and contradictions in their speech.
“The situation is analogous to a movie in which one scene is shot under cloudy conditions and the next scene — which supposedly takes place a few minutes later — is shot in brilliant sunshine. […] Some moviegoers — the victims of psychopaths — might not notice the discrepancy, particularly if they are engrossed in the action.” (Hare, 1999)
Psychopaths are notorious for not answering the questions asked them. They will answer something else, or in such a way that the direct question is never addressed. They also phrase things so that some parts of their narratives are difficult to understand. This is not careless speech, of which everyone is guilty at times, but an ongoing indication of the underlying condition, in which the organization of mental activity suggests something is wrong. It’s not what they say, but how they say it, that gives insight into their true nature.
But this again raises the question: If their speech is so odd, why do smart people get taken in by them? Why do we fail to pick up the inconsistencies?
Part of the answer is that the oddities are so subtle that our general listening mode will not normally pick up on them. But my own experience is that some of the “skipped,” oddly arranged words, or misused words are automatically reinterpreted by our brains in the same way we automatically “fill in the blank” space on a neon sign when one of the letters has gone out. We can be driving down the road at night and ahead see “M_tel,” and then mentally put the “o” in place and read “Motel.” Something like this happens between the psychopath and their victim. We fill in the “missing humanness” by filling in the blanks with our own assumptions, based on what we think, feel and mean. And, in this way, because there are these “blank” spots, we fill them in with what is inside us, and thus we are easily convinced that the psychopath is a great guy — because he is just like us! We have been conditioned to operate on trust, and we always try to give the “benefit of the doubt.” So, when there are blanks, we “give the benefit of the doubt,” and we are thereby hoisted on our own petard.
“Psychopaths view any social exchange as a ‘feeding opportunity,’ a contest or a test of wills in which there can be only one winner. Their motives are to manipulate and take, ruthlessly and without remorse” (Hare, 1999).
One psychopath interviewed by Hare’s team said quite frankly: “The first thing I do is I size you up. I look for an angle, an edge, figure out what you need and give it to you. Then it’s pay-back time, with interest. I tighten the screws.” Another psychopath admitted that he never targeted attractive women; he was only interested in those who were insecure and lonely. He claimed he could smell a needy person “the way a pig smells truffles.”
The callous use of the old, the lonely, the vulnerable, the disenfranchised, the marginalized, is a trademark of the psychopath. When any of these victims wake up to what is happening, they are generally too embarrassed to complain.
One of the chief ways psychopaths prey on others is to make use of the normal person’s need to find meaning or purpose in life. They will pose as grief counselors, or “experts” of various sorts that attract followings of people who are looking for answers. They are masters of recognizing the kind of “hang-ups” and self-doubts that most people experience, and they will brazenly pander to them to gain a “follower” to use later. Hare tells of a staff psychologist in a mental hospital whose life was destroyed by a psychopathic patient. He cleaned out her bank account, maxed out her credit cards, and then disappeared. How did he get to her? She said that her life had been “empty” and she had just simply succumbed to his sweet words and verbal caresses. As we already know, such words are cheap legal-tender to the psychopath. They can say “I’ll pray for you,” or “I love you,” just to create an impression. It really, really doesn’t mean a thing. But some people are so lonely and so desperate that even imitations are better than nothing.
Then, of course, there are people who are just simply so psychologically damaged themselves that the psychopath is the obvious choice for a partner. They may have a need to be treated badly, excited by danger, or to “rescue” or “fix” somebody whose soul is in obvious peril.
“In a book about Richard Ramirez, the Satan-worshipping ‘Night Stalker,’ the author described a young coed who sat through the pretrial hearings and sent love letters and photographs of herself to Ramirez. ‘I feel such compassion for him. When I look at him, I see a real handsome guy who just messed up his life because he never had anyone to guide him,’ she is reported to have said” (Hare, 1999).
Sadly, as we see, psychopaths have no lack of victims, because so many people are ready and willing to play the role. In many, many cases, the victim simply refuses to believe the evidence that they are being victimized. Psychological denial screens out knowledge that is painful, and persons with large investments in their fantasies are often unable to acknowledge that they are being deceived, because it is too painful. Most often, these are women who rigidly adhere to the traditional role of the female, with a strong sense of duty to be a “good wife.” She will believe that if she tries harder or simply waits it out, her husband will reform. When he ignores her, abuses her, cheats on her, or uses her, she can simply just decide to “try harder, put more energy into the relationship, and take better care of him.” She believes that if she does this, eventually he will notice and will see how valuable she is, and then he will fall on his knees in gratitude and treat her like a queen.
Dream on.
The fact is, such a woman, with her fierce commitment to such a man, her dedication to being a proper wife, has allowed such fairy tales to distort her sense of reality. The reality is that she is doomed to a lifetime of abuse and disappointment until “death do us part.”
One of the basic assumptions of psychotherapy is that the patient needs and wants help for distressing or painful psychological and emotional problems. The psychopath does not think that they have any psychological or emotional problems, and they see no reason to change their behavior to conform to standards with which they do not agree. They are well-satisfied with themselves and their inner landscape. They see nothing wrong with they way they think or act, and they never look back with regret or forward with concern. They perceive themselves as superior beings in a hostile world in which others are competitors for power and resources. They feel it is the optimum thing to do when they manipulate and deceive others in order to obtain what they want.
Most therapy programs only provide them with new excuses for their behavior, as well as new insights into the vulnerabilities of others. Through psychotherapy, they learn new and better ways of manipulating. What they do not do is make any effort to change their own views and attitudes.
One particular psychopath studied by Hare and his team of researchers was in a group-therapy program in a prison. The prison psychiatrist had written in his record: “He has made good progress.… He appears more concerned about others and to have lost much of his criminal thinking.”
Two years later, Hare’s staff member interviewed the man. At this point it ought to be made clear that, in order to make the research more accurate, the terms were that nothing said by the subjects to Hare or his staff could or would be repeated to the prison authorities; and they kept to their agreement in order to insure that the subjects felt free to talk to them. Psychopaths, if they know that they won’t be penalized for what they express, are very happy to boast about their prowess in deceiving others. The man, assessed above by his prison psychiatrist as having made such remarkable improvement, was described by Hare’s staffer as “the most terrifying” offender she had ever met and that he openly boasted about how he had conned the prison staff into thinking that he was well on the road to rehabilitation. “I can’t believe those guys,” he said. “Who gave them a license to practice? I wouldn’t let them psychoanalyze my dog! He’d shit all over them just like I did.”
Psychopaths are not “fragile” individuals, as Robert Hare reminds us after years of research. What they think and do is produced from a “rock-solid personality structure that is extremely resistant to outside influences.” Many of them are protected for years from the consequences of their behavior by well-meaning family and friends. As long as their behavior remains unchecked or unpunished, they continue to go through life without too much inconvenience.
Some researchers think that psychopathy is the result of some attachment or bonding difficulty as an infant. Dr. Hare has turned that idea around, after all his years digging into the background of psychopaths: “In some children the very failure to bond is a symptom of psychopathy. It is likely that these children lack the capacity to bond readily, and that their lack of attachment is largely the result, not the cause, of psychopathy” (Hare, 1999). In other words: They are born that way and you can’t fix them.
To many people, the idea of a child psychopath is almost unthinkable. But the fact is, true psychopaths are born, not made. Oh, indeed, there are psychopaths that are “made,” but they are generally different from the “born psychopath” in a number of ways.
The fact is, clinical research clearly demonstrates that psychopathy does not spring into existence in adulthood, unannounced. The symptoms reveal themselves in early life. It seems to be true that parents of psychopaths know something is dreadfully wrong, even before the child starts school. Such children are stubbornly immune to socializing pressures. They are “different” from other children in inexplicable ways. They are more “difficult,” “willful,” or “aggressive,” or “hard to relate to.” They are difficult to get close to, cold and distant, and self-sufficient.
One mother said: “We were never able to get close to her even as an infant. She was always trying to have her own way, whether by being sweet, or by having a tantrum. She can put on a sweet and contrite act.…”
The fact is, childhood psychopathy is a stark reality, and failing to recognize it can lead to years of vain attempts to discover what is wrong with a child, and the parent blaming themselves. Hare writes:
As the signs of social breakdown grow more insistent, we no longer have the luxury of ignoring the presence of psychopathy in certain children. Half a century ago Hervey Cleckley and Robert Lindner warned us that our failure to acknowledge the psychopaths among us had already triggered a social crisis. Today our social institutions — our schools, courts, mental health clinics — confront the crisis every day in a thousand ways, and the blindfold against the reality of psychopathy is still in place. […]
The last decade has seen the emergence of an inescapable and terrifying reality: a dramatic surge of juvenile crime that threatens to overwhelm our social institutions. […] Children under the age of ten who are capable of the sort of mindless violence that once was reserved for hardened adult criminals. […] At this writing, a small town in a western state is frantically searching for ways to deal with a nine-year-old who allegedly rapes and molests other children at knife point. He is too young to be charged and cannot be taken into care because “such action may only be taken when the child is in danger, not his victims,” according to a child protection official. (Hare, 1999)
Why does it seem that we have a veritable epidemic of psychopaths? Sociobiologists are suggesting that increasing psychopathy is an expression of a particular genetically-based reproductive strategy. Simply put, most people have a couple of children and devote a lot of time and effort to their care. Psychopaths systematically mate with and abandon large numbers of women. They waste little of their energy raising children, and in this way, psychopathic genes are being propagated like wildfire. The sociobiologists aren’t saying that the sexual behavior of people is consciously directed, only that “nature” has made them a certain way so that it will happen effectively.
The behavior of female psychopaths reflects the same strategy. “I can always have another,” one female psychopath coldly replied, when questioned about an incident in which her two-year-old daughter was beaten to death by one of her many lovers. When asked why she would want to have another child (two had been taken into protective custody), she said “I love children.” Again we see that the expressed emotion is in contradiction to the behavior.
Cheating skills seem to have an adaptive value in our society. The fact is, psychopaths often end up on the top of the heap — John Forbes Nash, for example.
At the present time, there is something very scary going on in the metaphysical community: Talk about the so-called “Indigo Children.” One of the chief promoters of this idea, Wendy Chapman, writes:
Indigo Children are the current generation being born today and most of those who are eight years old or younger. They are different. They have very unique characteristics that set them apart from previous generations of children. […] These are the children who are often rebellious to authority, nonconformist, extremely emotionally and sometimes physically sensitive or fragile, highly talented or academically gifted and often metaphysically gifted as well, usually intuitive, very often labeled ADD, either very empathic and compassionate or very cold and callous, and are wise beyond their years. Does this sound like yourself or your child?
Indigos have come into this world with difficult challenges to overcome. Their extreme levels of sensitivity are hard to understand and appreciate by parents who don’t share this trait. Their giftedness is unusual in such high numbers. Their nonconformity to systems and to discipline will make it difficult to get through their childhood years and perhaps even their adult years. It is also what will help them accomplish big goals such as changing the educational system, for instance. Being an Indigo won’t be easy for any of them, but it foretells a mission. The Indigo Children are the ones who have come to raise the vibration of our planet! These are the primary ones who will bring us the enlightenment to ascend.
Sounds like a severe case of denial and wishful thinking, in my opinion. But, as we already understand, the psychological reality is merely a tool for the “theological reality.” I suspect that the reader already has jumped ahead of me here and realizes what a big snow-job this “Indigo Children” deal is. Ms. Chapman has kindly provided a check-list to determine an “Indigo Child.” After learning what we have about psychopaths, let’s have a look at her list:
Have strong self esteem, connection to source.
Know they belong here until they are told otherwise.
Have an obvious sense of self.
Have difficulty with discipline and authority.
Refuse to follow orders or directions.
Find it torture to wait in lines, lack patience.
Get frustrated by ritual-oriented systems that require little creativity.
Often see better ways of doing things at home and at school.
Are mostly nonconformists.
Do not respond to guilt trips, want good reasons.
Get bored rather easily with assigned tasks.
Are rather creative.
Are easily distractible, can do many things at once.
Display strong intuition.
Have strong empathy for others or no empathy.
Develop abstract thinking very young.
Are gifted and/or talented, highly intelligent.
Are often identified or suspected of having ADD or ADHD, but can focus when they want to.
Are talented daydreamers and visionaries.
Have very old, deep, wise-looking eyes.
Have spiritual intelligence and/or psychic skills.
Often express anger outwardly rather than inwardly and may have trouble with rage.
Need our support to discover themselves.
Are here to change the world, to help us live in greater harmony and peace with one another and to raise the vibration of the planet.
What we see above is a list that includes certain definitive psychopathic behaviors along with behaviors of gifted children. We have to wonder at the attempt to weave the two together.
Where did this idea of “Indigo Children” come from? The phrase “Indigo Child” was coined by Nancy Ann Tappe in her book, Understanding Your Life Through Color (1982), and refers to the color in these children’s auras. Ms. Tappe was interviewed by Jan Tober for her book The Indigo Children (1999), and said: “These young children — every one of them I’ve seen thus far who kill their schoolmates or parents — have been Indigos.”
That didn’t stop Tober from writing her book and declaring that these children are “Spiritual Masters, beings full of wisdom, here to teach us a new way of being.” The way the followers of her ideas justify the fact that “not all Indigo children are filled with unconditional love, tolerance and non-judgment,” is by declaring that they require “special” treatment, handling with kid gloves because they are so special and delicate and sensitive.
In a pig’s eye. They are psychopaths and they are here for an altogether different reason. Somehow, some force is trying to make sure that its offspring are well cared for, and that a lot of psychopaths grow up without being identified for what they are.
Nevertheless, there is no explaining the extremes that “true believers” will go to in order to find excuses for inexcusable things. Elizabeth Kirby, a businesswoman in southern California, who has “studied and practiced metaphysics for the last 21 years,” writes:
In hearing about the school shootings, I knew Indigo children were pulling the triggers. The Columbine High School shooting was so horrific it caught everyone’s attention. At the time my eldest daughter said to me, “Because they (Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold) were Indigos they wanted to do it, so they just did it. No remorse, no guilt, they just went ahead and shot all those people because they wanted to and felt they needed to.” Indigo children don’t have guilt to keep them in check and because they balk at authority they don’t believe they have to follow the rules.
Writers in mainstream America like Jonathan Kellerman are lumping the Indigo school shooters with the psychopaths; the dark entities who are bullies, con-men, stalkers, victimizers, serial killers and those who kill for thrills. I don’t believe these Indigo children who have taken weapons to school to harm other children are psychopaths. They have been bullied and teased and have an avenger attitude seeking justice for injuries inflicted on them. They aren’t killing just for the thrill of killing. These kids know changes have to be made within the school system and they chose violence to make their statement, to give us a wake up call. Some of these metaphysical Indigo children are not hesitant about using violence to bring about change, and to bring us to enlightenment.
Indigo violence is here and it will continue, at least with this present generation of Indigo children. We are seeing with the current Indigo violence how the school system needs to be changed and how imperative it is to address the issues of bullying and intimidation in school. As the Indigo children grow to adulthood, their agendas will move out of the school system into our other systems, our social, political and judicial systems. Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, is an Indigo.
Amazing, huh? Did you catch the remark, “Some of these metaphysical Indigo children are not hesitant about using violence to bring about change, and to bring us to enlightenment”? Don’t we find that just a tiny bit contradictory? Aren’t we stretching a bit? How about diving straight into denial?
Oy.
At the present moment in history, the appeal of the psychopath has never been greater. Movies about psychopaths are all the rage. Hare asks: “Why? What accounts for the terrific power that the personality without conscience has over our collective imagination?” One theorist proposes that people who admire, believe, or identify with psychopaths, are partly psychopathic themselves. By interacting with a psychopath, even peripherally, they are able to voyeuristically enjoy an inner state not dominated by the constraints of morality. Such people are enabled to enjoy aggressive and sexual pleasures at no cost.
For normal people, such movies may serve to remind them of the danger and destructiveness of the psychopath. They will shiver with the sense of something cold and dark having breathed on their neck. For others, people with poorly-developed inner selves, such movies and glorification of psychopathic behavior only serves as a role model for serious acts of violence and predation against others.
That brings us back to Nash. Remember Nash? Sylvia Nasar proposes some small rationalizations for Nash’s psychopathic behavior, suggesting that he was just an “inward looking child” who reacted to “intrusive adults by withdrawing further into his own private world.” Funny, I thought the same thing about Frank Scott. Nasar does admit that, based on the fact that there is no evidence of any trauma, any abuse, and only the most loving and educational environment, that Nash’s temperament must have been “one that he was born with.”
Well, no surprise there! However, the only difference that family background seems to make is how the psychopath expresses himself. A psychopath who grows up in a stable family and has access to positive social and educational resources might become a white-collar criminal, or perhaps a somewhat shady entrepreneur, politician, lawyer, judge or other professional. Another individual with the same traits and a deprived background, might become a common con-artist, a drifter, mercenary or violent criminal.
The point is, social factors and parenting practices only shape the expression of the disorder, but have no effect on the individual’s inability to feel empathy or to develop a conscience.
In Nash’s case, he became a mathematician. The story of how this happened is extremely interesting. I would like to suggest the exercise of reading Robert Hare’s book, Without Conscience, followed immediately by Sylvia Nasar’s book about John Nash. It will soon become apparent how a psychopath could make such a contribution to science and win a Nobel Prize in economics.
Robert Hare once submitted a paper to a scientific journal. The paper included EEGs of several groups of adult men performing a language task. The editor of the journal returned the paper saying, “Those EEGs couldn’t have come from real people.” But they did. They were the EEG’s of psychopaths.
Some people have compared psychopathy to schizophrenia. However, there is a crucial distinction, as we will see:
Schizophrenia and psychopathy are both characterized by impulsive, poorly planned behavior. This behavior may originate from a weak or poorly coordinated response inhibition system. We tested the hypothesis that schizophrenia and psychopathy are associated with abnormal neural processing during the suppression of inappropriate responses.
The participants were schizophrenic patients, non-psychotic psychopaths, and non-psychotic non-psychopathic control subjects (defined by the Hare “Psychopathy Checklist, Revised”), all incarcerated in a maximum security psychiatric facility. We recorded behavioral responses and event-related potentials (ERPs) during a Go/No-Go task.
Results: Schizophrenic patients made more errors of commission than did the non-psychopathic offenders. As expected, the non-psychopathic non-psychotic participants showed greater frontal ERP negativity (N275) to the No-Go stimuli than to the Go stimuli. This effect was small in the schizophrenic patients and absent in the psychopaths. For the non-psychopaths, the P375 ERP component was larger on Go than on No-Go trials, a difference that was absent in schizophrenic patients and in the opposite direction in psychopaths.
Conclusions: These findings support the hypothesis that the neural processes involved in response inhibition are abnormal in both schizophrenia and psychopathy; however, the nature of these processes appears to be different in the two disorders. (K. A. Kiehl, A. M. Smith, R. D. Hare, P. F. Liddle, “An event-related potential investigation of response inhibition in schizophrenia and psychopathy,” Biological Psychiatry, 2000, vol. 48, no 3, pp. 173-183 (2 p.), pp. 210-221. This author’s emphases)
“More and more data are leading to the conclusion that psychopathy has a biological basis and has many features of a disease,” says Sabine Herpertz, a psychiatrist at the RWTH-Aachen University in Germany (Nature, 410, March 15, 2001).
The brain imaging techniques of positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provide the opportunity to investigate psychopathy further. They might allow researchers to discover whether psychopaths’ physiological and emotional deficits can be pinned down to specific differences in the anatomy or activation of the brain.
Among researchers who are starting to explore this area, there are two main theories of psychopathy. One, championed by Adrian Raine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and supported by the work of Antonio Damasio of the University of Iowa, gives a starring role to a brain region called the orbitofrontal cortex. This is part of an area of the brain, known as the prefrontal cortex, involved in conscious decision-making.
The other theory, promoted by James Blair of University College London, holds that the fundamental dysfunction lies within the amygdala, a small almond-shaped structure that plays a critical role in processing emotion and mediating fear. Recently, using PET scanning, Blair has shown that activation of the amygdala in normal volunteers is involved in responding to the sadness and anger of others, and he hypothesizes that amygdala dysfunction could explain the lack of fear and empathy in psychopaths.
Blair points out that the two theories may not be mutually exclusive, as the orbitofrontal cortex, which does the “thinking”, and the amygdala, which does the “feeling,” are highly interconnected.
Following widespread concern that the criminal justice and mental health systems are failing to deal effectively with dangerous psychopaths, there is a movement in several countries to instigate fundamental legal reform. The most controversial suggestion is to make it possible for individuals who have severe personality disorders to be detained in secure mental institutions, even if they have been accused of no crime. Although these particular provisions have alarmed civil-liberties campaigners, the raft of measures also includes a major initiative within the prison service to improve the handling of those with Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD) — including psychopaths.
According to one individual who suffered at the hands of a psychopath: “The World has only one problem, Psychopaths. There are two basic types of Psychopaths, Social and Anti-Social. The essential feature of Psychopaths is a Pervasive, Obsessive-Compulsive desire to force their delusions on others. Psychopaths completely disregard and violate the Rights of others, particularly the Freedom of Association which includes the right not to associate and the Right to Love.”
We have come full circle. Over and over again we come up against that little problem: Religion and belief systems that have to be defended against objective evidence or the beliefs of others. We have to ask ourselves where these belief systems came from that so evidentially are catastrophic. Then, we have to think about the fact that now, in the present day, when many of these systems are breaking down and being replaced by others that similarly divert our attention away from what is, it becomes necessary to “enforce” a certain mode of thinking. That is what psychopaths do best.
Psychopaths dominate and set the standard for behavior in our society. We live in a world based on a psychopathic, energy-stealing food chain, because that’s just the way things are. Most people are so damaged they no longer have the capacity to even imagine a different system, based on a symbiotic network.
They are not only damaged by others, but also by the thousand little evils they have done to others to survive. For them to see the system for what it is would require them to see the part they have played in perpetuating it. That is a lot to ask of a fragile ego. Also, those who are not psychopaths, still want to make human connections but are afraid to, for fear of being taken advantage of and stolen from energetically speaking. [Thank you S.M. for such a clear explication!]
With the brief historical review we have examined, we are acutely aware that this is not a phenomenon confined to our present “time.” It is a trans-millennial program that, step by step, has brought us to our present position. What emerges in the present day is just Machiavellian diversion that focuses the attention of those who are easily deceived. This is reinforced by the “clappers” in the audience, and there seems to be an entire army of psychopaths among us whose job it is act as vectors of attention and direction. We hope that the readers of these pages will give themselves permission to imagine, research and implement a different way of being, and to stand up for themselves while doing it.
12-14-96
Q: (L) Along the lines of some of the things that I have been working on recently, I’d like to ask if there’s any more information you can give to us about the hypnotic-opener strobe-effect, and what it is preventing us from seeing. Is this one of the things that keeps us from expanding into the next density, in terms of awareness?
A: Not related to that. You see, the souls that are affected by all these “cloaking” techniques are vibrating on a low level anyway. The point is to block those who are blockable.
Q: (T) We’re not blockable? (L) Is there anything we can do to avoid this blocking? (T) We’re not being blocked.…
A: You are not blockable.
Q: (T) We are not being blocked. We’re beyond the blocking.
A: If you were, would you be doing this?
Q: (T) That type of blocking technique doesn’t work on us. There may be other blocking techniques, but that particular stuff doesn’t work. We either see or don’t see stuff, because we are either meant or not meant to see it. We don’t see UFOs anymore, because we don’t need to.
A: Not necessarily true.
Q: (L) OK, what is not necessarily true? Why don’t we see them any more?
A: “Don’t” does not equal “won’t.” If a Buick does not go by, you don’t see that, either! And if you are inside doing the laundry when Mr. Jones decides to take the old “Electra” for a spin, you do not see him, or his precious car, do you?
Q: (L) I don’t care, I’ve seen enough!
A: Oh, yes, you do care!!!
Q: (L) OK, yes, I care, but I’ve seen enough. I believe, I believe!!!
A: It is not up to you whether you want to see them or not. If they want you to see them, you will!
Q: (T) So, if they want us to see them, we’ll see them!
A: Yes, and they will, and you will!
Q: (T) They will and we will… yes, but, there’s a blocking technique being used on people to lower the vibrational frequency to prevent them from seeing them, right?
A: The blocking technique is for many things.
Q: (T) So that people do not understand what’s going on around them.
A: Yes. […] That is it, in a nutshell. See and know and think or… see, know and think that which is desired.
05-03-97
Q: The way I understood it is that a person can be an EM [electromagnetic] vector. Is that possible?
A: “Vector” means focuser of direction.
Q: Could that mean that EM waves can be vectored by a human being simply by their presence? I also noticed that several of us have been involved with persons and relationships that seem designed to confuse, defuse and otherwise distort our learning, as well as drain our energy. Basically, keeping us so stressed that we cannot fulfill our potential. Is there some significance to this observation?
A: That is elementary, my dear Knight! […]
Q: One of the things I have learned is that these individuals seem to attach via some sort of psychic hook that enters through our reactions of pity. Can you comment on the nature of pity?
A: Pity those who pity.
Q: But, the ones who are being pitied, who generate sensations of pity, do not really pity anybody but themselves.
A: Yes…?
Q: Then, is it true, as my son said, when you give pity, when you send love and light to those in darkness, or those who complain and want to be “saved” without effort on their own part, when you are kind in the face of abuse and manipulation, that you essentially are giving power to their further disintegration, or contraction into selfishness? That you are powering their descent into STS?
A: You know the answer!
Q: Yes. I have seen it over and over again. Were the individuals in our lives selected for the extremely subtle nature of their abilities to evoke pity, or were we programmed to respond to pity, so that we were blind to something that was obvious to other people?
A: Neither. You were selected to interact with those who would trigger a hypnotic response that would ultimately lead to a drain of energy.
Q: (T) Well, it is a fact, because my energy sure is drained. (L) What is the purpose of this draining of energy?
A: What do you think?
Q: (T) So you can’t concentrate or do anything. You can’t get anywhere with anything.
A: Or, at least not the important things. […]
Q: (L) Why is it that one of the primary things about us that seems to prevents us from acting against such situations, is our fear of hurting another person? […] Why are we so afraid of hurting someone’s feelings if they are hurting us?
A: Not correct concept. You do not need to “act against them,” you need to act in favor of your destiny.
Q: But, when you do that, these persons make you so completely miserable that there seems to be no other choice but a parting of the ways.
A: Yes, but that is not “acting against.” Quite the contrary. In fact, remember, it takes two to tango, and if you are both tangoing when the dance hall bursts into flames, you both get burned!!!
Q: Why is it that when one tries to extricate from such a “tango”… why is there is such violent resistance to letting you go when it is obvious, clearly obvious, that they do not have any feeling for you as a human being?
A: It is not “they.” We are talking about conduits of attack. […]
Q: Is it true that being in the presence of such people, that one is under the influence of an energy, an emanation from them physically, that befuddles the mind and makes it almost impossible to think one’s way out of the situation?
A: It is the draining of energy that befuddles the mind.
Q: Where does this energy drain to?
A: 4th density STS.
Q: They drain our energy from us, and 4th density STS harvests it from them?
A: “They” do nothing!!!! 4th density STS does it all through them!
Q: (T) Well, I would like to know what it is in us that makes us attracted to such people.
A: It was the idea of 4th density STS.
Q: That means that they can control your thoughts and emotions, put ideas into your head, and you think it is a good idea to “save” someone. You don’t know. It is taught in our religions and culture to give until it hurts, and, in fact, to give because it hurts. The whole situation is designed and controlled from another level. Any further comment on this subject?
A: Once you have truly learned the program, just plug it in.
Q: I guess once you have truly learned what is being said here, just plug it in.…
A: No. We mean that all you have to do is learn the patterns of behavior, the subtle signs, and you will always have the ability of avoiding it. Your own as well as others. […] Lesson number 1: Always expect attack. Lesson number 2: Know the modes of same. Lesson number 3: Know how to counteract same. […] When you are under attack, expect the unexpected, if it is going to cause problems. […] But, if you expect it, you learn how to “head it off,” thus neutralizing it. This is called vigilance, which is rooted in knowledge. And, what does knowledge do?
*
“Why did man, through thousands of years, wherever he built scientific, philosophic, or religious systems, go astray with such persistence and with such catastrophic consequences? […] The answer lies somewhere in that area of our existence which has been so heavily obscured by organized religion and put out of our reach. Hence, it probably lies in the relation of the human being to the cosmic energy that governs him.” (Reich, 1949)
*
“I want to appeal to your analytical mind…. Think for a moment, and tell me how you would explain the contradiction between the intelligence of man the engineer and the stupidity of his systems of beliefs, or the stupidity of his contradictory behavior. Sorcerers believe that the predators have given us our systems of beliefs, our ideas of good and evil, our social mores. They are the ones who set up our hopes and expectations and dreams of success or failure. They have given us covetousness, greed and cowardice. It is the predators who make us complacent, routinary, and egomaniacal.
“In order to keep us obedient and meek and weak, the predators engaged themselves in a stupendous maneuver — stupendous, of course, from the point of view of a fighting strategist. A horrendous maneuver from the point of view of those who suffer it. They gave us their mind! Do you hear me? The predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind. […] Through the mind, which, after all, is their mind, the predators inject into the lives of human beings whatever is convenient for them.” (Castaneda, 1998)
*
“So that in the actual situation of humanity there is nothing that points to evolution proceeding. On the contrary, when we compare humanity with a man, we quite clearly see a growth of personality at the cost of essence, that is, a growth of the artificial, the unreal, and what is foreign, at the cost of the natural, the real, and what is one’s own.
“Together with this, we see a growth of automatism. Contemporary culture requires automatons. […] One thing alone is certain, that man’s slavery grows and increases. Man is becoming a willing slave. He no longer needs chains. He begins to grow fond of his slavery, to be proud of it. And this is the most terrible thing that can happen to a man.” (Ouspensky, 1949)
*
Intolerance and cruelty are needed to guarantee the “cover-up.” As we’ve already repeated: A certain kind of “human being” acts on behalf of this cover-up. In this sense, psychopaths, as Alien Reaction Machines, are the playing pieces in the Secret Games of the Gods.
*
Note: Since writing the chapters on John Nash, we have discovered the work of Polish psychologist Andzrej Lobaczewski, author of Political Ponerology. According to Lobaczewski, Polish psychologists had a highly developed understanding of psychopathy that was suppressed and destroyed by the communist regime. A reading of his book shows that their understanding of psychopathy was way ahead of its time. They had already determined that psychopathy was an inherited (not behavioral, and thus not “curable”) personality type that shows itself in a spectrum. The obvious psychopaths (like those described by Cleckley and Hare) play a lesser role in mass social problems, while the “socially-compensated” psychopaths are much harder to identify. Their “masks of sanity” are more consistent. Just recently, Robert Hare and Paul Babiak wrote a book on this type, called Snakes in Suits.
This science also included an understanding of various different types of inherited “psychopathies.” These include various “personality disorders,” known to Westerners as “borderline,” “schizoid,” “obsessive-compulsive,” “histrionic,” “dependent,” etc. However, Lobaczewski points out that the Western “types” often overlap and are imprecise. As such, various disorders (like frontal brain damage) are often confused with psychopathy, which Lobaczewski calls “essential psychopathy.”
One such psychopathy is “schizoidal psychopathy,” which seems to better describe John Nash. Lobaczewski describes schizoidal psychopathy in the following terms (this author’s emphasis in italics):
From the beginning, [schizoidia, or schizoidal psychopathy] was treated as a lighter form of the same hereditary taint which is the cause of susceptibility to schizophrenia. However, this latter connection could neither be confirmed nor denied with the help of statistical analysis, and no biological test was then found which would have been able to solve this dilemma. […] Carriers of this anomaly are hypersensitive and distrustful, while, at the same time, pay little attention to the feelings of others. They tend to assume extreme positions, and are eager to retaliate for minor offenses. Sometimes they are eccentric and odd. Their poor sense of psychological situation and reality leads them to superimpose erroneous, pejorative interpretations upon other people’s intentions.
They easily become involved in activities which are ostensibly moral, but which actually inflict damage upon themselves and others. Their impoverished psychological worldview makes them typically pessimistic regarding human nature. We frequently find expressions of their characteristic attitudes in their statements and writings: “Human nature is so bad that order in human society can only be maintained by a strong power created by highly qualified individuals in the name of some higher idea.” Let us call this typical expression the “schizoid declaration.”
Human nature does in fact tend to be naughty, especially when the schizoids embitter other people’s lives. When they become wrapped up in situations of serious stress, however, the schizoid’s failings cause them to collapse easily. The capacity for thought is thereupon characteristically stifled, and frequently the schizoids fall into reactive psychotic states so similar in appearance to schizophrenia that they lead to misdiagnoses.
The common factor in the varieties of this anomaly is a dull pallor of emotion and lack of feeling for the psychological realities, an essential factor in basic intelligence. This can be attributed to some incomplete quality of the instinctive substratum, which works as though founded on shifting sand. Low emotional pressure enables them to develop proper speculative reasoning, which is useful in non-humanistic spheres of activity, but because of their one-sidedness, they tend to consider themselves intellectually superior to “ordinary” people. […]
A schizoid’s ponerological activity should be evaluated in two aspects. On the small scale, such people cause their families trouble, easily turn into tools of intrigue in the hands of clever and unscrupulous individuals, and generally do a poor job of raising children. Their tendency to see human reality in the doctrinaire and simplistic manner they consider “proper” — i.e. “black or white” — transforms their frequently good intentions into bad results. However, their ponerogenic role can have macrosocial implications if their attitude toward human reality and their tendency to invent great doctrines are put to paper and duplicated in large editions.
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