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heck is going on? Why do they permit - no, actually encourage - the crazy ideas about 10" planets or Galactic explosions or precessional clocks of world ages - when the simple truth is so evident? Reich proposed that the “adherence to the surface of phenomena” was related to “a certain connection with the structure of the human animal”. He thought that the function of seeking the truth must be somehow “buried” since the tendency to “evade the obvious” was so powerful. In this idea, we are, of course, reminded of Castaneda’s “Predator”. We have a predator that came from the depths of the cosmos and took over the rule of our lives. Human beings are its prisoners. [...] You have arrived, by your effort alone, to what the shamans of ancient Mexico called the topic of topics. | have been beating around the bush all this time, insinuating to you that something is holding us prisoner. Indeed we are held prisoner! This was an energetic fact for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico. [...] They took over because we are food for them, and they squeeze us mercilessly because we are their sustenance. Just as we rear chickens in chicken coops, the predators rear us in human coops. Therefore, their food is always available to them.' rod "T want to appeal to your analytical mind, ' don Juan said. ‘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. The predators' mind is baroque, contradictory, morose, filled with the fear of being discovered any minute now. [...] Through the mind, which, after all, is their mind, the predators inject into the lives of human beings whatever is convenient for them. [Castaneda, The Active Side of Infinity, 1998, pp. 213-220] Reich, of course, decided that the cause of “needless human erring” was due to the “pathological quality of human character. In fact, this fits quite well with what Castaneda has written. “The Predators gave us their mind”. Reich also pointed out, quite reasonably, that Religion, 401 High Strangeness — Part Four