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Chapter Three Let’s face it. We are in a prison guarded by sentries with the power of travel through space-time. They intervene in our world with the ease of a chicken farmer intervening in his chicken coop. They foment war, violence, famine, and natural disasters in the global level by playing us like virtuosos, while also using our emotions and intellect to create strife and discord in our daily lives. A very rich magician had a great many sheep. But at the same time this magician was very mean. He did not want to hire shepherds, nor did he want to erect a fence about the pasture where his sheep were grazing. The sheep consequently often wandered into the forest, fell into ravines, and so on, and above all they ran away, for they knew that the magician wanted their flesh and skins and this they did not like. At last the magician found a remedy. He hypnotized his sheep and suggested to them first of all that they were immortal and that no harm was being done to them when they were skinned. On the contrary, it would be very good for them and even pleasant. Secondly he suggested that the magician was a good master who loved his flock so much that he was ready to do anything in the world for them. In the third place he suggested to them that if anything at all were going to happen to them it was not going to happen just then, at any rate not that day, and therefore they had no need to think about it. Further, the 1 toad a4 - owe c magician suggested to his sheep that they were not sheep at all; to some of them he suggested that they were lions, to others that they were eagles, to others that they were men, and to others that they were magicians. And after this all his cares and worries about the sheep came to an end. They never ran away again but quietly awaited the time when the magician would require their flesh and skins. This allegory describes our situation perfectly. We are hypnotized to believe that we are safe so that our keepers can continue to shear us or flay us, that is, live off of the negative emotional energies that our suffering creates. The question is: What can we do about it? How do we go about unhypnotizing ourselves? Most “solutions” that are put forward involve proposals of means for changing this world. Some of these proposals are individual, others involve organizing the masses to overthrow the existing order and to In Part One of this book, I cited the story told by Gurdjieff about the Evil Magician. It bears repeating: