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BY ROY MASTERS
The entire world system is based on a lie, the lie that the relationship
between man and woman is one of "love." In reality, the so-called
"love" is nothing but an animal need that man calls "love" is the result
of his fall from what love really is. As long as he insists on calling it
"love," he strengthens the hold that his compulsive fixation has on him
and it becomes the breeding ground of terror, violence, and trouble
and woe of every description.
To help you understand the uncorrected female mindset better, here is an example: When a puppy was used in an electric shock experiment in which actual electricity was used, because you can't make a puppy yelp and howl without pain, only 54 per cent of male participants would administer a genuine
electric shock to the puppy. But 100 per cent of the female participants were
prepared to give the most severe shock to the howling and yelping puppy.
To most men, women ? even more than money ? are the root of all evil. They like
to think this, of course, because it constitutes a handy excuse for their own
weakness. But the more they think along these lines, the more fixated on women
they become. And the weaker they become as they loosen their contact with Him
who charged Adam to love and correct Eve. To this day, Adam uses Eve to
support his rebellion against the Creator, and he needs her so badly in this respect
that he grows ever more fixated to her, ravaging and plundering her for all she has,
needing her but certainly not loving her.
Love, whatever that is, he has long forgotten. All he knows now is the kind of
"love" that makes the world go ?round.
Marriage should be a holy institution, but it is not. A terrible and wordless intrigue
is playing itself out relentlessly and is quietly concealed under the lines and
gestures of the actors playing "mother" and "father."
Life could be a joyful game, of course, played correctly with love and honor under
God; but something has gone wrong. The actors in the marriage game are as
phony in their way as the hypocrites of the pulpit are in theirs. Dimly aware that
this is so (by the Light that refuses to be put out completely), we throw ourselves
into our parts with great zest. The better we play our roles, the more we are
admired and applauded by the friends who are caught in the same trap, and we all
draw comfort in the thought that "the play?s the thing!" What you are no longer
matters. It?s how you play the part that counts.
Actors on the stage are greatly
admired for their ability to portray courage and virtue. As long as we are observing
reasonable facsimiles in the framework of make-believe, we?re all for them, and we
root for the "good guys." Real virtue, in the framework of real life expression,
frightens us, however. Just as we give lip service to religious principles at the
"right" time and in the "right" place; i.e., on Sunday in Church, yet the physical
presence of the Prince of Peace or any real person embodying these principles in
his lifestyle would make us tremble in our boots. He would unmask our hypocrisy
simply by being himself.
Our reason for playing games is quite simple. It is one of the ways our vain nature
chooses in order to avoid and distract itself from an earnest commitment to God.
Games can be won. They are a challenge to our pride. But who could be proud of
being good, when to be good is to give up pride?
So we play the role of being right, and graciously accept the "respect" of those
who are taken in by our play-acting. And by a kind of gentlemen?s agreement we
accord the same respect to other actors. But under this blanket of respect we
continue to play our dirty little games, feeding the pride of others in exchange for
the "respectability" the offer us, doing our own thing and licensing others to do
their own thing, with never a trace of guilt.
A young mother can accept glory for her accomplishment only because she is
proud. The praise she receives makes her feel secure in her vanity. But she cannot
be honestly good because if she were, she could not then accept the praise that
her ego craves for its glorification. Furthermore, we are all dimly aware of the
contempt any hint of real goodness would arouse in those from whom we solicit
applause. So the young mother soon learns that "the play is the thing," and playing
it, she becomes lost in a web of self-deception.
When we play at being good, we receive the acceptance we crave ? we never
have to experience the humiliation of facing up to our mistakes. And so it is that
under cover of the applause our pride receives for its hypocrisy, it gets the
support it needs to do the things that nobody could condone if they were done
openly. (And seen clearly, of course, by a true light ? but who?s to see?)
Friends who play craps together are not really friends. They seem to be friends
because they encourage and justify one another, but secretly each is maneuvering
for the big advantage. Each person?s desire for advantage justifies the same desire
for advantage in others; and that?s how "buddies" are born. The wrong you decide
is all right for you to engage in is invariably justified by the people who take
pleasure in joining you in it; the shared wrong shows you to be of one mind
concerning a philosophy of life. If you are a band of cheats, your only use for an
honest man is to cheat him ? the thought of his joining the club is something else,
too odious to contemplate.
Suppose you decide, as a woman, to make full use of your beautiful body in order
to gain certain advantages from men. Now, the men who are drawn to you will not
see what it is you stand to gain from them, as they will be too preoccupied with
the pleasant prospect of all they expect to gain from you. As long as each has
hope of gain, the illusion of sweetness and light is practically perfect. Each takes
the other at "face value" and tacitly agrees to overlook the secret maneuvering
that is going on both sides. In fact, we are so good at overlooking our own
skullduggery that when something goes wrong, all we can see is the other person?s
part of the blame. When we get away with something, our very success proves us
right; but when we fail, it?s because that "dirty so-and-so" tricked us. His injustice
is immediately obvious to us ? not so, our own.
Whether we look at gamblers or at lovers, we can see the same principle in action.
Each justifies the other?s larceny, each is fair game, and each seems to like the
other just the way he is. But then the battle is joined, and the winner emerges
feeling glorious and perfectly justified in his victory, while the loser burns with the
judgment he pronounces on the winner. Neither sees his own mistakes, and
therefore, can learn nothing from them. The winner feels encouraged to win again,
and the loser burns to get even. Neither sees that in the game for selfish
advantage, the stakes are really health, sanity, and life itself, and that the winner
is also perforce the loser.
Wherever we encounter this uncorrected desire for power or selfish gain, to be
acquired through "love" or money, we also encounter a blind spot in respect to our
"friends," the people we become entangled with. The problems we all encounter in
life are evidence of the fact that we all have this blind spot, and until we learn our
lesson, trouble and woe will follow us the rest of our days.
All the intrigue in the world originates in the close "friendship" of man and woman.
In the delirium of this relationship we learn tricks that run the gamut of all that a
sick, fevered mind can conceive of. From the day we are violated, the day of our
birth, we are seeking to get even at the expense of the unwary. In marriage we
find our best, and bloodiest, battleground. Many men, frustrated to find that they
are losing their lives and advantage to their wives, become enraged and begin to
cheat their fellowmen, if only to win favor with their powerful wives. They justify
the game they start to play on the basis of getting even ? like the man who feels
justified in stealing because he himself has bee victimized by a thief. The
prevalence of this attitude may account for the apathy of most citizens toward
the law. They don?t really want honest law, or law enforcement, because it would
force everybody to be honest, and that would spoil their own little games.
To get back to marriage, the game we are playing (whether we know it or not) for
an empty jackpot called "despair," could it be that we are married to the right
person for the right reason? Theoretically, it could be, but chances are against it.
For one thing, you don?t really want a "right" person, because a right person would
hold a mirror to your real motives and expose you for what you are. No, you need
someone to make you feel right the way you are, complete with the uncorrected
selfish ego that you brought into this world, and that counterpart must be just like
you, philosophically speaking.
Many women enter into marriage with great ideals as to the sanctity of marriage,
and soon they are to be seen wringing their hands and wailing, "How could I have
been so blind? I thought he was such a wonderful man who would make a fine
father for my children, and now I see that all he was interested in was sex." Now,
depending on the turn their false idealism takes, they will either stick to their
bargain and play the part of "good wife," or they will run, clamping the lid shut on
the past by saying, "I loved you once, but it?s all over now. It wouldn?t be fair to
hold you back, so goodbye." Of course, this attitude reveals the fact that they
had no love to begin with, for love "suffereth long," is patient, endures all things,
and after everything else is gone, still stands. In other words, love is not a
"sometime" thing. But our idealistic woman magnanimously frees the man to marry
again, causing him to commit the sin of adultery and making sure that she will not
have to suffer the guilt of doing it first ? all in the name of "love."
The fact is that a truly honest man or woman can not possibly be deceived by
another human being. You don?t find an honest man in crap games or in false
churches. There is nothing in those places to appeal to him. He already has the
"advantage" he needs, and he is not seeking to take it from anyone else. He simply
cannot become involved with dishonest people. You cannot cheat an honest man.
From your own personal pedestal of camouflaged dishonesty, you may often have
observed the foibles of others and wondered how they could have been so blind as
to get caught up in their unsavory involvements. From your vantage point, you
can see how stupid they are, but they can?t see anything, because they have
been blinded by the "romance" of the prospect of "getting." You may try to warn
them, but they won?t listen, and when you try to help them they only take
advantage of you. They sense, perhaps, that you are seeking the advantage of
the glory of "saving" them, and this observation justifies them and hardens them in
their course. The only advice people seem to listen to is the advice that will show
them how to get even with their sparring partners. But what kind of person is it
that will give that kind of advice? Only a person seeking his own advantage, if only
to justify the follies of his own miserable existence by making you as wrong as he
is.
My dear idealistic friend, that contemptible man in your life was just what the
doctor ordered to wake you from your self-deception. Your life is not ruined ? your
virginity, perhaps ? but not your life.
Every person comes into this world egotistical and vain, and each of us must
discover for himself the meaning of egotism, and come to repent of that egotistical
nature that we cannot of ourselves change. When you were a child, your father
did not love and correct you properly. Perhaps he "loved you too much," spoiled
you to need the things he needed, and built up your ego, so that now you must
find a man to sustain the distorted image you have of yourself, and justify the
things you want. But your ego will still be dodging real love, real correction ? for
the love you will receive will be for being what you are ? neatly justifying what he
wants out of life.
Or perhaps you had a mean, contemptible father whom you secretly hated, so you
set about to find a man who could "love back into you" the image of a woman that
you lost by hating your father. Or you may determine to remain pure, to
differentiate yourself from the unprincipled parent you hated, but cannot admit to
having hated for fear of marring the image you have of yourself.
However you arrived at your worldly ideals, you were impelled by the desire to
maintain a sense of original purity that a doting parent, needing your approval,
imparted to you, or to regain the sense of purity that you lost at the hands of a
man as the result of a proud ambition that made you vulnerable. You did such a
beautiful job of looking like an angel from Heaven, and a man pleaser, that you
managed to frighten away all the honest men. And the love (lost advantage) you
needed so badly "perfectly" justified the sinner you got involved with. He did seem
to be a wonderful person ? otherwise, you would not have married him ? but so did
you. The "advantage" he gained from you went to his head ? it frightened and
frustrated him and made him do foolish things. The criteria you used in picking your
man were all based on superficial prejudice and unconscious need, the need you
had to use another person to lift your spirits or maintain the illusions you had
about yourself. And when you saw the one you needed, the kind of "love" you had
to give him, unmodified by the presence of God, helped to make him into the pig he
gradually became. If you are still married to one after forty years, you may still not
realize what a big nothing he is. He has appeared great only because your "love"
has supported him and made him into a "good" man ? to you, but a
good-for-nothing in the eyes of Reality. When death claims him, your life will be a
big, bottomless hole, and in that hole you will go around muttering about what a
good man he was (could you admit otherwise?), and friends will nod their wooden
heads in agreement. And all the while, the grave is waiting for you also. Take care
that you do not enter it as self-deceived as ever, having paid for the false
consolation of friends with a wasted life.
Marriage has become a giant "put-on." Of course, we all want to believe that there
is nothing in this life but boys and girls: girls for the boys, and boys for the girls. If
we did not believe this and encourage one another along these lines, we would find
ourselves alone with the truth that every ego seeks to avoid; namely, that there is
something in life other than boys and girls playing games together. We just don?t
want to know about it.
All we want to do, perhaps subconsciously, is to make life serve "our" purposes,
"our" goals. People who pride themselves on their rational approach to life are fond
of saying that there is no purpose or aim in life unless we make it ourselves and
then strive toward it. But then, to have the incentive to do so, boys need the
needling of girls, and girls need the strong backs of boys. So, willfully or
unwittingly, we all join the crap game of life in the time-honored tradition of "boy
meets girl." High on the ambition we generate in one another, we claim to be
"working together" for a "better world," but actually each is trying to outwit and
use the other, and we are not really as unconscious of what we are doing as we
like to pretend. Challenged, we?re right there with the excuse: "Why not? He would
have done it to me! That?s the way you play the game, isn?t it?"
For both sexes, it would appear that the game is everything, but there is
something about the way a woman plays it that is hard for a man to understand.
Women are certainly a mystery, but part of the reason men cannot understand
them is that women have managed to keep the men asleep, perhaps compulsively,
prompted by that secret drive in women that has never been fully explained. It
seems reasonable to assume, at least, that women are more aware than men, as
they are more prone to guilt and anxiety feelings than men.
Most women understand the games they are all playing with the menfolk, even
though they never discuss the subject with one another openly ? and certainly not
with men. A guileful woman?s "security" and "advantage" lie in keeping her mouth
shut and playing her cards close to her chest. And she might as well, because if
she were to hand the truth to most men on a silver platter, they would prefer not
to believe it, and their own kind of women would back them up in their denial of
truth.
Fortunately, a small minority of men and women, by virtue of their true desire, do
not engage in the unspoken conspiracy of the game-playing multitude, but they
sense the difference between themselves and the vast majority of people. As a
result, they often suffer a kind of compulsive curiosity on the subject of that
difference. They cannot be so hypocritical as to join "the opposition," but they are
acutely aware of the loneliness of their position. These are the people who are
going to be greatly relieved by my letting the cat out of the bag once and for all.
When they see me saying what they have really always known, they will be able to
take a firmer grip on the courage of their convictions, realize that they have not
been left out of anything really worthwhile, and proceed with the business of living
happily ever after. For them, the war of the sexes will be over. And let me assure
you, until the war of the sexes is over, man will be at enmity with God.
Now, let us explore some of the dangerous psychophysiological "misconceptions"
current among men, such as 1) sex is love, 2) sex is manly, and 3) women like sex,
too.
We may start by asking what a woman is to a man. Is she the object of his love?
If she is, then what is "love?" Is love "sex?" If love is sex, then monkeys are better
lovers than men. To most men, a good woman (actually, a bad one) is
"cooperative." From her he may draw ego reassurance, relief, stimulation, pleasure.
She will do anything to keep him "happy," and when he makes a mistake, she will
be his scapegoat. She is servant to his lust and cheerleader to his ambition. She is
the necessary evil that his male ego thrives on, but he will "love" her only as long
as she continues to play her part and follow the script.
At the risk of laboring the point, I must repeat that a man?s "love" is not love at all,
but a demand that a woman be evil as a prerequisite to being "loved." If she does
"well" in his eyes, he "loves" (needs) her again. Meanwhile, his male need "justifies"
her existence as a fellow egotist, and if she fails to see through the charade, she
may become dependent on his being the way he is.
A man?s claim to "love" arises from one central need: the need to remain asleep to
the Truth. He is a veritable drug addict, dependent on Eve, "the pusher," his
source of supply. When a vain woman sees his ego helplessness and his strong
back ? well, the "pusher" sees that she has a pushover" and she gives him the
needle. His sexual overeagerness betrays his spiritual weakness, and his spiritual
weakness is just what she needs to make her dreams come true and give security
to her failing as an uncorrected person.
That is a fairly clear picture, at last, of the way ambitious women look at ambitious
men. They cheer the men on from the sidelines while the men go out and do the
dirty work ambition demands of them. The women derive a great feeling of security
from this arrangement, and they feel like queens as they bless their subjects and
nod their approval. They are the aristocracy, and the men are the peasants who
serve them in the fields and on the battlegrounds, bringing back the fruits of their
labor and the spoils of war and placing them in their lily white hands. For this, the
men are dubbed "superpatriots," which, freely translated, means "demented
nothings who will do anything at all to be considered important somethings."
But just let something go wrong or get out of hand, and the adoring subject does
a "double take." Suddenly, the beautiful queen becomes the wicked queen and
gets all the blame. Little children are especially familiar with this type of
relationship. Their friends are great pals while they are providing them with the
motivation to do something naughty, but if they get caught in the act, they put all
the blame on the erstwhile friend. "It?s all his fault; he made me do it," they
scream.
Of course, it does take two to tango. Eve didn?t hand Adam the fruit of desire
(ambition) because she thought it would be good for his health, but Adam "bit"
because he interpreted her act as a form of consideration for the condition of his
soul. In other words, he had already tempted her in a subtle way to light a fire
under him. He did not correct her when she did, and she knew that he would not.
She knew he wanted and needed to bite into the apple when she offered it to him.
And to this very day men tempt women to tempt them by signaling their animal
needs, except that now they do it to maintain (not to originate) their pride. Like
Snow White, Adam fell asleep as a result of the evil queen?s charms, and his sons,
having inherited his stupor, will sleep on until they are awakened by Love?s first
kiss. There is quite a difference between the kiss of love and the kiss of death, or
eternal sleep, the one that is most familiar to us.
When the first man fell from Love, he literally lost control over his mind and body.
The woman, on the other hand, gained power through the increased physical
influence of her attractive body. The guileful woman is instinctively aware of this
power and makes the utmost use of it. If man were sufficiently awake and aware
to see how the woman is using sex to control him, he would be literally turned off
by her ugliness and her antics, but as long as he needs woman?s support for his
ego, the last thing he wants to be is awake and aware, so he tacitly insists that
she continue to play her quiet little games with him and never drop the bomb of an
honest word that would shatter the serenity of his "slumber room."
And yet, though man appears to give woman the upper hand by insisting that she
keep pulling the wool over his eyes, she would do well to remember that the pride
she feeds as a puppy will grow into a vicious dog that will not hesitate to bite the
hand that feeds it.
Occasionally, a woman comes along who seems to have been left out of Eve?s
secret, who is relatively guileless, and yet manages to attract a man by the sheer
beauty of her body. Starry-eyed and romantic, she sees her own ego need as a
large white canvas on which her man will paint a stunningly beautiful picture, warm
and rich in exquisite detail. What she gets, of course, is simple uncomplicated sex,
and this may be something of a shock to her. The realization of what he had in
mind all along comes to her slowly, like falling downstairs a bump at a time until she
hits bottom and discovers that, to Prince Charming, love is sex.
If you happen to be one of these "innocent" women, let me point out to you before
you allow yourself to get carried away with self-pity that you were not really
"innocent" enough. Had you been filled by the Light of God, you would not have
been carrying around that void, that ego need, that large white canvas waiting to
be completed. You would not have been right there to guide Adam, the
sleepwalker, back to bed so gently that wakefulness never for a moment
threatened to overtake him! It does behoove you not to hate Adam for taking
away the innocence that you never really had.
Usually, woman inherits a power over man that she is powerless to give up, but is
driven to exert compulsively, even as man is driven to give her that power and is
powerless to prevent her having it until he himself falls under the power of the
saving grace of God ? in other words, gets off her hook and begins to look to his
Creator for the impetus to live. Until that time, the power Eve has makes her feel
either beautiful or ugly, depending on the degree of her guile. If she is egocentric,
ambitious, and full of guile, the sexual needs of an ambitious male will excite her to
tempt him, and to feel like a million dollars while she does it (and before she
becomes aware how ugly she has become, she finds herself temporizing the
beast).
A seductive woman broadcasts two ideas: 1) Keep trying, and 2) Don?t worry
about sex ? it?s great. That is the image of woman that advertisers use to sell
everything from soup to speedboats. It?s the woman?s form you see on the
billboards, but it?s the men that put them there ? and without much objection from
women. Generally speaking, women identify with that high place of glory, whether
it?s a magazine ad, a poster, a billboard, or neon lights against the night sky. All
symbolize her omnipotence, her power, and superiority over men. The men,
however, see the picture from a different vantage point. They are delighted,
stirred to life, encouraged to strive in the ancient way of proud men, by the vision
of beautiful women they surround themselves with. Then too, they are the power
behind the throne; they can learn to "manage" women in their various roles of
seduction and reap profits from other men who need women.
Tyrants use the same principle when they see to it that their masses are
surrounded by blown-up portraits of themselves, like an environment, to justify the
people in their failings and keep them in line. And of course, tyrants are basically
"female" in their orientation toward, and dependency on, their subjects. But men
do not really look up to the dictator with love and respect any more than they
really look up to the women that they surround themselves with, much as tyrants
and women would like to believe otherwise. In reality, they are engaged in a giant
put-on. Hitler, like a larcenous female, made his countrymen feel like supermen and
superwomen on a grand scale; and as I mentioned above, dictators are always
female-exchanged males, men who have acquired and evolved the guile and the
ways of woman, usually their mother.
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