truth is the bond that binds. When a wise friend provides the light of understanding needed in your hour of darkness, that to me is true love. And, really, what can be more beautiful?
     As Roy Masters well knows, it's a chancy business at best providing the avenue where precious few can find wisdom. There are risks involved. There are also several prerequisites demanded of the sincere seeker.
     Chanting a sanskrit mantra, fasting, or sitting cross-legged in the lotus position staring at your navel are not ~mg the requirements. What is necessary is to look at life without your rose-colored glasses.
     Some will find this impossible. The positive thinker would rather die than admit that everything is not beautiful. The multitude shun unadorned truth like the plague. Yet they give lip service to the immortal truism: "know the truth and the truth Shall Set you free."
     Still they go about living their lies and all the time wondering why God permits so much suffering. "Is there no justice?" they cry. "Why me? I try to do good, and yet I have all this pain."
     Lost souls, drowning in their personal agony, can be shown breathtaking sunsets by the score, handed the most fragrant bouquets, allowed to view nature's most superb handiwork, and yet, in the midst of such stunning sights, preoccupation with their problems renders them oblivious.
     Pull the shades down, throw away the flowers . . . but give them a lasting solution to their dilemma. Let them see how they can banish their pain and become whole (or holy) again. That's showing them beauty. That's loving them. And that's what this book is all about. In fact, that's what Roy Masters is all about.
     Wait a minute. Before rushing on to read this book it is vital that you have the ability to clearly comprehend all that is here. You recall I mentioned prerequisites.
     Unless you are utilizing the meditation - observation - concentration technique taught by the Foundation of Human Understanding, then the effect intended will not be experienced. One must bring objectivity, awareness, and right intent to the following pages.

     Remember the 3-D fad some years ago that required you to wear special glasses in order to perceive the full three-dimensional effect? If you didn't view the film or illustration through the special lens, only a part of the picture would be visible.
     I'm not suggesting you don gimmicky 3-D glasses. Quite the contrary. But the analogy makes a point. To get at the treasure waiting between the covers of this and any other Roy Masters books, something special is needed, and that something special is perception unencumbered by emotionalism.
     Of course, when you meditate, every book, motion picture, television program, and life situation will provide invaluable insight. Then you can really enjoy beauty and know what love is truly all about. And won't that be nice?

- William Wolf

motivation to act and be was not very far behind. Alas, the day you doubted yourself and believed that the selfish world was right, the moment you were tempted to do what was wrong, you fell away from that gracious way of moving and being and could not get back to where you were. Your nature adapted and you found yourself obliged to follow where you should not go. You also found that you needed to be motivated like an animal or you could not move. Your identity became a displaced, corrupted one, and the body that developed around it became more and more animal than human.
     You found yourself needing excitement to grow in the only way you knew how–like a beast. And at the same time, that excitement also served to help you to forget the truth of what was happening to you, to save the face of your pride, which was failing.
     It is clear that most people have never had much choice to be any different from what they are. They came into the world preceded by overwhelming pressures that compelled them to react. If you look very carefully at your emotional reactions, you will see that they represent a failing and a stranglehold on your life. By continuing to react, you edge a little closer to hell and you lose a little more real life while you gain a little more worldly identity with its brutish life. Inside, you are not yourself; you are something else!
     The closest you might have come to the truth is knowing about the way you were. You may remember knowing better but never doing any better. You may remember that long ago you doubted yourself, and then somehow you lost consciousness. For years you were cut off from Reality, you wandered through life in a dream state; but now the pain of this aimlessness is bringing you back to the truth you left behind.

     A person who does not have a life centered in Reality is compelled to drain the emotions of friends and enemies; such an egocentric soul needs friends as well as enemies to fulfill his craving for life. A craving for vitality begins at the ego level and goes on to express itself in a variety of destructive ways. As long as you need people, you will hurt or be hurt by friends and lovers; you will also compel enemies to go on being enemies.
     Before the time of Grace, we obtain energy through many different debilitating love-hate relationships. Our ego thrives on environments of war and intrigue. Hoodlums degrade hapless victims and each other for "kicks." Overbearing parents and teachers do it to the children, who inherit the know-how to degrade one another to retrieve the life taken by those mindless and devastated authorities.
     When you respond in a wrong way to intimidation, you lose some of your life essence and at the same time you become initiated to worldliness; you become just like the people who "get to you." A social chain gang is formed; the big sinner preys on the weakness of the little sinner, who in turn lives at the expense of a lesser sinner, all the way down to babies and other defenseless persons. All of us have someone we can lord it over. Feeling secure and fulfilled from them, we can forget the painful fact that we are victims ourselves.
     You are probably unaware that your corrupted nature has acquired certain annoying patterns and mannerisms, quirks of behavior that are unconsciously timed to siphon the life out of those around you. Sarcasm, the tone or timbre of your voice could do the trick. If you say one thing but mean another, that upsets people and can make you feel good.

Impatience and nagging are common ways of getting high on people, the high being derived from the response and confusion of your victim. Excite others to be ambitious and you get their energy. Shock, embarrass and push your way in, ignore propriety and protocol and here again you can drain the life out of people and control them.
     Perhaps you have experienced the draining power of a sick person. The state of being very nervous and drained of energy can cause accelerated "movements" similar to the old-time Keystone Kop movies. A hyperexcitable state excites others unnaturally and, without realizing it, they surrender their energies–which can make you feel very much alive in the process of destroying them. Entertainers and the so-called "beautiful people" exist on energies elicited by their instant approval of the masses. They provide a better selfimage in exchange for money and emotional life. Look out for your own private charming personality; you would do well to remember the origin of the word "persona"–it means "mask."
     It is commonplace to be involved with personalities who, after giving us goals and feelings of worth, steal us blind. The tempter who aggravates the life out of you and the personality who gives you a better image of yourself are from the same source; they both enslave you to them. Resentment toward your master or idol always makes you a two-time loser. Either way, upset or put-on, you are leaking a precious vitality that somehow gratifies the tempter and makes him feel smug, strong and secure.
     The anxiety and guilt you feel for responding compels you to behave in one of two ways. You take it out of others, you force the innocent to become guilty, you make them react to extract the same satisfactions as those who still lord it over you.

The alternative to this is to seek solace in someone or something, in which case you go on losing without realizing the truth about it. Either way, a false confidence is obtained. If you take it out on people, you develop an animal type of aggressiveness, a vicious strength that becomes dependent on violating others for kicks. On the other hand, if you are inclined to go the solace route, your benefit is one of illusion rather than power, and, before you realize it, you will have traded some more of your energies for it.
     With the help of companions and things such as drugs and drink, the loser experiences a growing fear of facing life that drives him back to the tempter/comforter for assurance. Every time you lean toward ego reassurance, the pain of that need—as well as the excitement that cures it—prevents your being aware of the payment you must make. Your friends attach themselves to you to become a sort of psychic vampire. Because of their own involvement with you, it is difficult for them to realize the role you oblige them to play.
     For example, suppose that you are very close to your mother; you believe her to be an angel from heaven who loves you very much, yet in some mysterious fashion her love makes you very fearful of facing life without her. If this is the case, you can be sure she is living from you, providing you with larger doses of self-image, a false confidence that all is well that exists only as long as you remain close to her.
     If you cannot speak up to your "friends" it is because they have offered themselves to your ego. The false belief you have in yourself, the license for a wrong way of life has made them a base for your existence; you have given them power to give you that "freedom." To hold on to a sense of certainty about your life style, you are compelled to go on giving them power

to lie to you, as dictators do with people. When they begin taking liberties, you are dumbfounded; even then you find yourself going along with them for the sake of the illusion you need from them. Without the ego support, you feel the terror of facing the truth about yourself, and, the longer you delay, the harder it becomes to give them up. A politician cannot be honest with people for fear of losing his power.
     The love or hatred for your lord and master, be he a good one or bad one, drains you dry. Therefore, it is first wise to give up your resentment toward him and then your unrecognized "use" of the tempter—in that order.
     It often happens that, when you discover that you have been taken, you may try to get ahead of their use of you by using them for all they are worth. While you are using them, you are so high on either love or hate that for a brief spell you are unable to realize who is really going to end up with the greater "advantage." As the loser, the illusion is all you can hope to gain.
     Trying to get even, you burn with resentment; but it is only a booby prize compared with the purring, contented contempt your underworld lover feels for you. You see, all that secret resentment ever does for you is to pump you with an imagined superiority; it is the kind of judgment losers and weaklings enjoy against people who are much too powerful or charming to conquer. You simply form these secret judgments against your lord and master, which he usually knows nothing about. That secret judgment goes on giving them power—which you are compelled to give anyway—so the net result is that your master becomes much more wicked. This feeds your judgment, making you think that you are secretly superior to him.

     You could cover your resentment with a facade of pretentious loves so they cannot suspect what you are up to; with the energies you are obliged to give, you drive them out of their skulls with all manner of violence and wickedness they can't see as wrong. You can drive them to insanity, suicide or a criminal act—but then you will have conquered your master, for he is sick, dead, locked up, no longer lording it over you. Now it is your turn to lord it over him, or you are free to form new relationships, and the whole business of using and winding up being abused begins again. One moment you are in the driver's seat, the next moment you find yourself going along for the ride. Some of us are able to switch roles while the rest of us go through life as losers or "winners."
     Let me cite you a classic example of common, true-tolife home situation, where the corrupter is king and where the loser—the husband in this case—is destroyed by a guileful wife.
     He would not have married her were it not for the age-old weakness men have for a beautiful woman's assurance to boost their male ego. In the course of time, his wife's love began to bring out the worst from him. In this case, in order to compensate for his loss of masculine authority to her, he became overbearing, violent and cruel. In contrast, she began to appear kinder than he was, and, after he had cooled down and felt guilty for his behavior, she would welcome his need for her. She would comfort him in his failing and with her guileful love make a bigger beast of him.
     Naturally all the children were affected, but, for the most part, they blamed their violent, drinking cruel father. One of the boys in the family—a homosexual—rebelled against masculine authority and took refuge in the identity that his

mother gave him through the corrupting influence of her "shining example."
     He thought he loved his "Virgin Mary" mother very much, but in reality that love was really an unmanly need for identity reinforcement–courage to assuage the anxiety he felt in a war against his father, a cause his mother had set up for him to fight. In other words, she had tempted him into a life style that obligated him to return to her for reinforcement; it was she who was draining him dry, it was she who had given him his identity crisis–not his "devil" father, as he thought.
     Mother had set up his weak father as a hate object. It was mother's guile that tricked him to reject his father and to accept her as the authority. Because this relationship was sick, he could not stand alone without his "Florence Nightingale." It was guilt that drove him back to her again and again for reassurance. In this fashion, his vampirish mother was able to draw from him like a barmaid with a drunk, as she had done by aggravating the life out of his father. In this fiendish exchange, she drew from his male essence and gave him her identity.
     As long as he went on believing that his mother was an angel from heaven, and as long as he took ego comfort from her, he could not see where he was leaking, so he could not plug the holes and come to grips with the problem. The solution to his problem always appeared to be his mother's love–but that was the relationship that was causing his sickness.
     One of the daughters of this wretched woman, tormented by accepting her mother's phony love, was driven by resentment to have affairs with the most loathesome, bestial men she could find–those most unlike her mother. And

without realizing it, she found herself playing the same role as her mother with men.
     The seat of corruption in every family is the woman, but only because of the failure of her husband to be a man. The male child is corrupted and dehumanized by mother; whether she loves or hates him makes little difference. The boy grows up uncertain of his identity. The girl he marries must have the same spirit of his mother. What makes her so exciting to him is the fact that she is like his mother was to his father before she became dominant over him. Mothers, by dominating their sons, set them up to fall for female guile. Many times the enslavement is so complete that the son never leaves his mother's apron strings, and she lives like a blackwidow spider on her affectionate, dying, effeminate son. Some sons kill their mothers, and when they are delivered up to the penitentiary, their jailers also live on them.
     The alcohol or drug experience that lifts your spirit corrupts you at the same time; when discovered, it plunges you to new lows of despair. The female method of conquest is through surrender. In order to stay ahead of the anxiety that comes from realizing the Truth, the man goes on drinking and loving. Each comfort breeds a greater dissatisfaction, which leads back to stronger forms of temptations. Regardless of the hang-up, the story is the same. For a fleeting moment you reign supreme; you think all is well with you, and then you come down to earth with a jolt, and it hurts like the hell it is.
     Both the tempter and the tempted have their own way of losing. By siphoning off the energies of his victim, the considerate lover (or hatemonger) is obliged to reach down into his mental gut, closer to where hell is, for the carnal

knowledge with which to charm or antagonize the barn-boozled fool.
     The tempter's role is commonly played by a female; even when she is the underdog, she's really not. Her surface appearance may seem cool and controlled, but inside she screams in silent agony for salvation from men who are always too drunk on her to understand her real needs. When men tempt women, or one another, it is only because they have learned their lesson well and adopted the female guile. Such "men" as these go on to make "good" politicians and businessmen, getting high, thriving on energies derived from a debilitated populace. Both victor and victim feel their own form of anxiety, and, through mutual need, the cycle begins all over again. A sort of vampire-zombie relationship exists. The victim is guilty for using the debilitating but ego-assuring love offered by the vampire host, who is guilty for being that kind of lover.
     Whenever our security comes down to rest upon violating or plundering people for feelings of life, we are rarely able to see anything wrong with the arrangement. Because of a vampirish inhuman need to exist, our way of thinking becomes adjusted to viewing this need as a normal and proper way to live and have our being. Our victim is distracted from his failings, by the special effects we provide. Every zombie is a tempter to someone; a sort of hellish military chain of command exists with each one sucking the life out of one another in turn, all the way down to the top. Because this principle is the cornerstone of all social orders, from time to time this evokes revolution and bitter strife, and, in the end, the system goes to war, self-destructs, or simply decays.
     When the "beloved" discover that they are really victims, they cry out in vain for freedom. After the revolution, the former slaves take over the role of tyrants. All slaves are

potential masters, taking the identity of their masters through years of temptation and torture. Through their service they physically weaken those they serve. Because men on top are really high and unreasonable, revolution invariably succeeds.
     As a slave to a personality, you too can feel ambivalence. You can feel "love" and hate at the same time, sometimes alternately. The first blush of love is never true love: Always it is a terrible need. Our first love is mental need for ego recognition that is awakened by the temptation. From that fulfilled need arises a great anguish and a need to see our craven needs as true love.
     In extreme cases, people can be driven to destroy the ones that outraged them, eliminating the pain of "love" by eliminating them. While a slave may find a moment of pleasure through being "free," the tempter finds pleasure in killing his victim more slowly—degrading and browbeating to extract the power that comes from his slavish reactions.
     The tyrant can play the role of a victim of a disease, but then the real victim can learn how to turn the tables and help his boss die more quickly by catering to the sickness—giving his all! There is often a great deal of pleasure in what seems like kindness and pity for what appears as help for the not-so-helpless invalid. Children who die from diseases like leukemia are more often than not helpless victims of a doting vampirish mother loving them to death, tempting the child for life with what appears to worldly eyes as love and devotion. Sometimes children turn the tables and drain the parents.
     In the light of Reality we can recognize the "lover" as the enemy. The lover may not at first seem evil; he appears to be a heavenly usher standing at the gates of our paradise — a

beloved necessity inferior to our need to be God. All tempters are as unconcerned about their gleeful use of the sinner as a crocodile eating a goat–and why not?
     Every culture has its own form of insanity and is cursed by its own particular feudal system, each person falsely secure, living at the expense of someone he has put beneath him. To give up such security would be unthinkable, for that would bring with it a sense of terror; it would not allow continued "success." Tempters always justify their service to the fallen world through answering to their needs, interpreting their sick usefulness as a genuine contribution to "humanity." In no way can they see how detrimental their vile practices are to others as well as themselves. You know we always hurt the ones we love, the ones we shouldn't hurt at all. In their conformity–yes, even in their rebellion–our subjects drive us mad with power.
     So each culture is built out of corrupted families; a food chain of dependencies is formed as each person or group is made relatively happy on others dying to them. The victim, in turn, makes good his loss through tempting, finding the "pleasure of life" by exploiting those weaker than he. This way entire nations are kept "happy." Each member of the social pyramid fattening on a subordinate becomes a king on a smaller and smaller mountain, drunk and gratified by sick pleasure, completely oblivious to his own personal burning hell–his dying to "heaven above." ...

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