Vanity and the Feeling of Self-Importance
The world around us is very mysterious. It does not reveal its secrets so easily. We cannot really appreciate the world around us until we stop seeing ourselves as the most important thing in the world. Like a horse with blinders on, the only thing you see is yourself separated from everything else. The world is truly a mystery, and men are not any better than all the rest. The feeling of self-importance makes a person feel heavy, clumsy and vain. To be a man of knowledge means to be light and fluid. Such an attitude has to be abandoned, as well as personal history.
The Seers, old and new, are divided into two categories. The first comprises those who are willing to exercise self-control and are able to channel their activities to pragmatic goals that will benefit other seers and men in general. The other is formed by those who are not interested in self dominion, or any pragmatic goal. There is consensus among the Seers that the latter are unable to solve the problem of vanity.
Disguised in the middle of our four natural enemies: fear, clarity, power and old age, is vanity, our greatest enemy. Ponder it for a moment … what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and non doings of our fellow men. Our vanity can make us spend a good part of our lives offended by someone.
The new seers recommend that a great effort should be made to eradicate vanity in the lives of warriors. Vanity cannot be fought with delicacy. The warriors fight vanity as a question of strategy, and not of principle.
To not make
I will tell you something that is very simple, but very difficult to do; I will tell you about Not Making, despite the fact that there is no way to talk about it because it is the body that actually does this. Not Making is so difficult and so powerful that you should not even mention it. You can only do it when you have stopped the world’s attention first, and only then can you talk about it freely, if that’s what you want.
That stone sitting there is a stone because of Making. Making is what makes that stone a stone and a bush a bush. Making is what makes you yourself, and I me. Take that stone for example. To look at it is making, but to see it is Not Making. That stone is a stone because of all the things that you can do relating to it. This is called Making. A man of knowledge for example, knows that that stone is only a stone because of Making it so, in a way that, if he doesn’t want the stone to be a stone, he only has to Not Make.
The world is a world because you know the Making necessary to turn it into a world. If you did not know your Making, the world would be different. A warrior always tries to change the will of making, turning it into Not Making.
The average man cares about whether things are true or false, but not a warrior. An ordinary man proceeds in a specific way with things that he knows to be true and a different way with what he knows to be untrue. If one supposes that things are true, he acts and believes in what he does. But if things are supposedly false, he does not want to act, nor does he believe in what he does. A warrior, on the contrary, acts in both cases. If one supposes that things are true, he goes along with gusto. If one supposes that things are false, he acts with the same enthusiasm in Not Making. Understand what I’m saying?
Not Making is very simple, yet very difficult. It is not a question of understanding, but of dominating what’s in sight. To see, naturally, is a final realization of a Man of Knowledge, and seeing is only done when a person stops the known world through the technique of Not Making.
All this is a question of the struggle of a warrior; and you will continue to fight, if not under your own power, then under the impact of a valuable adversary, or with the assistance of a few allies, like those who are already following you.
Everything that I have taught you up until now is an aspect of Not Making. A warrior applies Not Making with everything in the world, and therefore I cannot say any more than I have already said about it.
At the time of our birth, each one of us brings along a little circle of power. This little circle is put into use almost immediately. So, since birth we are already bound and our circles of power are connected with everyone else’s. In other words, our circles of power are interconnected in all the making of the world which leads to the actual creation of the world around us.
For example, our circles of power, yours and mine, are joined at this moment in Making this knowledge. We are forming this awareness. Our circles of power are creating this knowledge at this very moment. The awareness that we are building is well preserved due to the strength of our circle of power.
Understand, each of us knows the conscious Making because one way or another we have spent a great part of our lives with them. A Man of Knowledge on the other hand, develops another circle of power. I call it the circle of Not Making, as it is bound to Not Making. With this circle, therefore, he can create an Other World.
The problem is that you have not yet developed your circle of extra power and your body does not know the Not Makings. We were all taught to agree on Making. You have no idea of the power that this agreement entails. But, fortunately, Not Making is just as miraculous and powerful. Your world is this one. You are a man of this world. And here in this world is the place where you hunt. There is no way to escape from our Making in this world, whereas, what a warrior does is turn his world into his own hunting ground. As a hunter, a warrior knows that the world is meant to be used. He therefore, uses every bit of it. A warrior is like a pirate who has no doubts about taking and using whatever he likes, only that the warrior does not care or feel insulted when he himself is caught and used.
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