If you wish to change you must cast off your self-image.

We come now to the second demand of Captain Life, namely, "You must not bring with you any clothing or shoes of any description, but you may clothe yourself in only a white cotton sheet." Quite simply, this means that you should cast off your old self-image and clothe yourself in natural simplicity.

The biggest bugbear in people's lives is that their self-image tends to trip them up again and again. Self-image is a complex thing, and it is made up of everything you believe about yourself, including your self-esteem, or the value you place upon yourself.

People tend to look upon themselves in terms of being, for example, a married woman who has a husband, children, a career as a school teacher, a hobby, a certain temperament, a particular talent or two and, of course, a name and a family lineage. But realise that all of these accessories, for that is exactly what these amount to, are only possible to have by virtue of the fact that we have physical bodies. How could you be a mother without a body? Or how could you express your talent, say for playing a musical instrument, without physical hands to do so? Likewise, your family lineage and name are purely dependent upon you having a physical presence. And yet, are you your body? Some people think they are! Others think they are their minds. Some think they are a combination of body, mind and spirit, or soul, or something equally vague and nebulous like that. And, of course, some just don't think at all!

What do you think? Have you ever thought about it? For myself, I can only say that I honestly do not know. However, what I do know is that I am not my body, or my emotions, or my mind, for I can control all of these, and the fact that I can control what I do, feel and think, suggests that somewhere behind all of this is a being that I am only slowly getting to know. That being, I realise, is my true self - a being that astounds me again and again, for on the one hand it is so vast, so mysterious and so highly complex, that often I stand in breathless wonder at the truly magical abilities of that inner creature we call man. And yet, that inner being is also simplicity itself and because of this, it is only by adopting a childlike (as opposed to childish) simplicity that we can begin to grasp our awesome potential as human beings. In other words, it is only when we put aside all of our endless clutter, and fall quiet, very quiet, that we can begin to sense who and what we really are.

So what then of self-image? The answer is really quite simple. If you are not your body, then stop feeling so terrible about yourself because you have thighs big enough to kick-start a Boeing, or because you have a face that looks like the backend of a bus. If you are not your emotions, then stop indulging in feeling so guilty because you have a violent temper. If you are not your mind, then stop feeling so stupid because you are not a computer boffin. And in short, if you are not your status as a married woman, a mother, a school teacher and whatever else, then stop fretting that you must be an awful person because your husband is having an affair, your son is homosexual and a drug addict, your teenage daughter is pregnant and half your students at school are failing their examinations. Rather get to know yourself, and then maybe you will begin to see why all these "terrible" things are happening in your life. But in order to do that you must first put aside all of this junk you carry around for baggage, and adopt a simple approach to life.

The simplest approach we can possibly take is a childlike approach and, as with any child, first things come first, and what makes them first is the fact that they are happening right here right now! So, I take a good look at myself, and what do I see? I see that I have a physical body, (never mind what it looks like), which is distinctly different to that of another person who, for some unknown reason, is called a woman. Now! There is woman and here is me, called a man, also for some unknown reason. But what does that mean? No child is really ever too worried about technical definitions, for they are far more interested in the "doings" of the thing being scrutinised. So the natural question is, what do men and women do?

From the little we have learned so far, we do at least know that the male is the hunter. But it is important to remember also that we all have an inner counterpart. Therefore, females have an inner male, just as males have an inner female. We also know that, as the hunter, the man knows that he needs to be in harmony with the world around him if he is going to be successful in tracking game and prey, and survive. This is irrespective of whether the prey happens to be a real animal or whether it is some other "animal", say in the form of a business venture. However, we now need to look somewhat more closely at exactly what is entailed here, and the first point is that we cannot afford to go hunting with a self-image that keeps tripping us up. "Hey, you lion! Who do you think you are growling at me?" "Oh! You slimy frog! Get your nasty little butt off my foot!" "Listen here, arsehole! I sell good green beans, so don't come in here telling me my beans are old!" "I beg your pardon, but can you please not paw my beautiful garments with your rather filthy hands!" If you are going to hunt down prey, you cannot afford to have an "attitude problem". But not to have an "attitude problem" means that you must be willing to detach yourself from your self-image or, better still, get rid of it altogether.

Remember that magical word - detach. It is your only defense against the debilitating traps set by your self-image. Whenever you are facing a potential challenge, remind yourself to detach from your self-image. If you don't, you will find yourself having all your buttons pushed and you will pounce upon your prey with huge abandon and an almighty scream, stabbing passionately with your spear! Until, eventually, you come to realize that you are stabbing at thin air, that your prey has slipped away unnoticed, and that the smell of blood everywhere is the smell of your own blood. Quite simply, you have stabbed yourself in the foot. Does this sound familiar? But, of course, what is even worse, is the fact that sometimes, when eventually you do come to your senses, you realise with horror that the little furry animal you tried to spear down so passionately has turned out to be a lion who is not at all impressed with your heroic hunting! Your boss at work? In such cases it is always painfully clear to see with hindsight that it would perhaps have been wiser to be more "in tune", to be more in harmony, with the world around you!



All awareness is relative - Terms such as male and female are not absolutes, but values we temporarily attach to a given state of awareness realtive to any other state of awareness.

In trying to work with our self-image, the first thing we need to get into its proper perspective is that the terms "man" and "woman" denote physical gender, whereas "male" and "female" denote the particular state of awareness that is constantly being used by both genders. We term this phenomenon the relative factor of awareness.

We also need to mention that all of awareness evolves through two main mediums: one, the universal law known as Harmony through Conflict; and two, the phenomenon we term the mirror concept. As strange as this may seem, it is only through conflict that we are able to evolve new knowledge, for where there is no conflict there is also no incentive, and neither is there any momentum, to uncover something new. In order to gain new knowledge, and thereby to evolve our awareness, we need to be challenged, and any challenge invariably gives rise to some sort of conflict, even if this is merely internal conflict, like, for example, when we think one thing but feel another. The mirror concept we have already discussed, although I urge you to read up on this all-important concept in my other books.

Because of people's low self-image, the Law of Harmony through Conflict is mostly ignored. Instead of men and women welcoming the challenges in their lives, they tend to bemoan their ill-luck at having so much conflict to cope with. Yet, as we have already pointed out, without conflict the evolution of awareness would cease, and life would rapidly become empty of all meaning and purpose. To understand this is really not very difficult, provided that we look at life with total honesty, for if we do, we quickly enough come to realise that any conflict situation is merely an opportunity to practise intelligent co-operation, either with another person, or simply with the world around us. Let us look at an example.

Say you take your car to the garage to be serviced, but when you get it back you find that the work has not been carried out to your satisfaction. Clearly, you have several options open to you. Firstly, you could say and do nothing, except go home to scream at your wife about the garage's bad workmanship. Secondly, you could send your wife back to the garage the following day to fight your battle for you, under the pretext that you are too busy and therefore don't have the time. Thirdly, you could phone your lawyer and ask him to fight your battle for you, in which case it will cost you! Fourthly, you could get your own low self-image to fight your battle for you, in which case you hand your control over to that little tyrant, and let rip at the staff of the garage, shouting and screaming and performing like a real arsehole, and ending up with threatening not to pay for the work. If you go that route, you will antagonise everyone, get no-one's co-operation, and most of the time you will leave, spitting mad and not really having got anywhere at all.

As an alternative, you could look at the situation in terms of it being a challenge to gain more knowledge through the medium of your own experience, in which case it will be empowering, in the sense of knowledge or power that you have yourself gained. Should you choose to go this route, then you must always bear in mind that the power lies in the moment, and therefore you must act immediately, or at least as soon as you possibly can. By taking action, all you need to do is to go straight to the manager and state your case, politely, but firmly, and make it quite clear that you find the workmanship unacceptable. It is as simple as that, and I have yet to see negative results from such an approach. Most people, if approached with an attitude of, "Look! We have a problem here. Can we please talk about it and resolve it," will do whatever it takes to please you. On the other hand, any person approached with an attitude of, "Look, here! You have made a bugger-up of my car," will immediately give in to his or her own low self-image, dig in his or her heels and become very unco-operative, to say the least.

In all these circumstances the important point to bear in mind is that people are not there to victimise us, but are in our lives in order to provide us with opportunity to gain, or hunt for, experience, knowledge and, of course, power, irrespective of whether the challenges they provide us with are positive or negative. In reality, every one of your acts is an act of hunting, no matter whether you are hunting for service, hunting for food, (as in shopping), hunting for warmth (as in friendship), hunting for a job, a better salary or extra leave.

If you remember that you are merely on a hunting expedition, then you will also remember that others also have their own baggage, fears, doubts and, above all, low self-images. Normally, if you are out trout fishing, or shooting, you will not get all upset and feel hard-done-by and victimised if the trout avoids your hook, or if the buck you encounter are so inconsiderate as to bolt the moment they set eyes on you. In this respect people are no different, for the simple reason that they know you are hunting them, just like they too are hunting someone or something else. So, if you want the buck to stand still so that you can shoot it, you are going to have to stalk it with care, and not just run up to it shouting that you cannot survive without food. Likewise, if you want your boss to grant you an increase in salary, then you are also going to have to stalk him with care, and not simply blunder into his office telling him that you cannot survive on such a low salary!

But what does it mean to stalk? Stalking is quite simply a type of manipulation that is carried out with the express purpose of getting the other person to do what you want him or her to do, but so that you will both benefit from that act. Ordinarily, plain manipulation means forcing another person into doing your bidding for your own self-centred gain, but at the other person's expense. However, stalking means getting the other person to cooperate with you intelligently, so that both of you can benefit and therefore win. The usual practice of manipulation is very much to do with playing the blame game, for it is always you and the world out there, and the world is never doing what it is you want it to do. But stalking has its basis, not in blame, but in inclusiveness, and the approach of inclusiveness is, "Everything that is happening right now is an opportunity for both myself and my opponent to gain in knowledge and in power." To see how this works, let us return to the example of having had a bad car service.

So, you go to the manager of the garage, and you politely but firmly inform him that you are not satisfied with the service, and you tell him why you are not satisfied. Already you have manipulated this man, Rudi, not only into giving you his full attention, but also into taking action on your behalf. What's more, by not blaming Rudi, you are manipulating him out of becoming defensive, and into seeking co-operation with you to find a solution to the problem, which, of course, is not really a problem at all, but an opportunity for both of you to gain new knowledge through experience. Whatever happens after this point will depend very much on how carefully and skillfully you stalk Rudi! You can ask to be transported back to your office, or your home, whilst the problem is being sorted out, or you could get Rudi to give you a courtesy car to use in the meantime. But one way or the other, if you concentrate on getting Rudi to co-operate with you, you will get your car properly serviced at no extra cost or any real inconvenience to yourself. In addition, both you and Rudi will come away from this experience having gained a lot more knowledge than either of you had before, because otherwise there would have been no point in having the experience in the first place.

Although at this point you may have hundreds of questions about stalking, you only need to start trying to practise stalking to see that it is not really all that difficult. Any situation, irrespective of whether you are stalking your boss, your husband or your kids, always brings the principle of intelligent co-operation into being.

Therefore, if you feel as if you are being victimised, then take it as fact that you are not stalking anybody, but instead, playing the blame game. And because you are playing the blame game, your mirrors must reflect for you your own sense of blame. By trying to blame someone else for your challenge, you can be sure that either that same person, or another, will in turn blame you for something else, in which case, you will of course once again be the victim!

If you can remember here to approach life from the angle of seeking intelligent co-operation, you can never really lose, because if you seek co-operation you will get co-operation, and once you have that co-operation you can utilise even apparent "failures" to gain knowledge, and therefore power. However, in order to achieve intelligent co-operation, as opposed to just a reluctant or even a resentful co-operation, which never yields a satisfactory result, you must always bear in mind the relative factor of awareness which we will now look at in greater detail.



Intelligence gives rise to awareness, but all awareness has two polarities, one termed make because it is masculine in quality, and the other being feminine in quality, termed female.

We are so caught up in our social conditioning that we simply assume that being a man means that we must always be masculine, and that being a woman means that we must always be feminine. As a result, our self-images suffer terribly when we discover that our circumstances in life often demand that we play a role which is the opposite of our gender. For example, if you are a man working for a boss who is also a man, you will often feel emasculated because, in your eyes, he is not respecting you as a man. Worse still, if as a man you work for a female boss, you will more than likely feel extremely emasculated as a result of having to take orders from a woman. However, in both situations this is just a fact of life, and it has absolutely nothing to do with being less of a man because you are taking your orders from another man or from a woman.

All of life is relative. Since life revolves around awareness, and since awareness itself has two polarities, namely, male and female, life must always be relative to the awareness experienced in the moment. Therefore, in working for a man, you will be female relative to your boss, irrespective of your gender, and in working for a woman, you will still be female, no matter how good a male you may be. Likewise, if you go shopping, then you, as the client, are masculine relative to the shop owner, even if he is a man and you are a woman. The weekly maid who comes to work in your home, too, is female relative to you the housewife. And your children, irrespective of their genders, will all be female relative to you as the mother.

It is not really possible in this book to explain all the technical issues involved here, so let us simply say that whenever you take orders from someone you are in female mode, and whenever you give the orders you are in male mode. We say that the male provides the direction because he has a purpose to fulfil, whilst the female takes the male's lead in order to fulfil his purpose, and this invariably allows her to fulfil her purpose.

This should not be taken as implying that men are better than women, but simply that men and women are equal but different. In other words, men and women are equally important but they have different functions, and therefore have different roles to play in life. These functions and roles are derived entirely from the two polarities of awareness: male and female. We didn't invent these two polarities, but we have discovered how to work with them, in order to achieve harmony and co-existence.

Say you are a man and you need an income. You decide to go and work for someone who has a business, and therefore a purpose. If you want that job and if you wish to keep it, then you had better take your orders from that man and fulfil his purpose. Only in that way can you fulfil your own purpose, which is to have an income. If, on the other hand, you don't like taking orders from anyone, then stop complaining about having to take orders and become your own boss, in which case you can then give the orders. Likewise, if you are a woman and want a husband, rather than a little boy, then give him the pants to wear. If you don't, you may well have a marriage, but I can assure you that you will not have a husband in the true sense of the word. Instead you will be in mother mode and having a relationship with a little boy! If that is what you want, then by all means be a mother, but stop complaining about the fact that your husband is having an affair with the pretty little secretary at his office who is always so eager to take his lead.

Because of the two polarities, working with the different roles is bound to bring out conflict in one way or another, even if this is only in the sense of feeling threatened by masculinity or femininity. For example, how often as a woman do you not feel inferior to men? Or, as a man, how often do you not feel inadequate in the presence of women? But, as we have already noted, the purpose of conflict is to bring forth new knowledge, and so, if you are going to achieve intelligent co-operation with the world around you, then you must start to take careful note of the roles that you play in life. Therefore, when, irrespective of gender, are you required to provide the male lead, and when are you required to take the male's lead?

This then brings us straight back to the concept of intelligent co-operation, rather than begrudging cooperation, or behaving like a bull in a china shop. Life, and what you get out of life, is entirely dependent upon whether you co-operate with the world around you begrudgingly, or intelligently, or whether you behave like an insane bull. And all of this depends upon your self-image, how well you understand yourself, and how and what you feel about yourself as a result of that understanding. However, in order to get a better grasp on all of this, we must return to the concept of hunting, for clearly, it is very much a matter of hunting for understanding that we are considering here.



The Hunter, irrespective of gender, is masculine

People often have really strange ideas about why their relationships do not work, and this is primarily because they seem to believe that as long as they have a man's body, or a woman's body, then they are quite automatically male or female respectively. Although this should in theory be so, from what we have seen so far, it should be starting to become clear that in practice the male and female energies are factors of awareness and that they are relative to one another. Therefore, if your gender is masculine, then irrespective of the fact that your chest might resemble a woolly carpet, or that you may be better endowed than a horse, you still have to learn to materialise your masculine potential and thereby discover what it is to be truly male. Likewise, if your gender is feminine, then even if you wear the most exotically feminine perfume, paint your lips a bright red and have breasts that make the assets of Dolly Parton look like poached eggs in comparison, you will still drive every true male away from you if you insist upon telling him what to do, how to do it and when to do it, for, in spite of your attributes you have done nothing to materialise your true potential as a female.

To see this in action, take the example of you and your best friend deciding to go fishing. Your friend suggests that you go to a certain river, but although you know fishing is poor in that spot, you agree anyway. In such a case, no matter how hairy your chest is, you are female relative to your friend, because you are simply taking his lead. Likewise, if you invite your girlfriend out to dinner, but insist that she decides where you go, what wine to drink and what food to eat, then once again you will be female relative to her, for irrespective of your horselike endowments, you are still behaving like a little boy on an outing with his mother.

Clearly, if you are a man and you want to make use of your masculine potential by trying to be a true male, then even if you want to be polite to both your friend and your girlfriend, you must still provide the lead where necessary. In this way, if your friend suggests a poor fishing spot, you will provide the male lead by pointing out that fishing in that spot is poor, but at the same time you will also offer a few other suggestions. In this case you will be acting like a true male, in that you will be providing the lead, but you will also not be emasculating your friend, for although you are providing the lead, you are still allowing him to co-operate intelligently with you in deciding to which other spot you will be going. In other words, by not simply taking his lead, and yet also by allowing him to provide the lead in deciding which of the alternatives you suggested is going to be your destination, you make it possible for both of you to be male and you avoid bulldozing your friend into taking your lead.

Exactly the same is true of your girlfriend. By providing the lead in deciding which restaurant you should go to, you can still be polite by telling her beforehand where you intend going, and by asking her if she has an aversion to that particular place. If by any chance she does indeed dislike the place, then you could suggest another restaurant. The same goes for the wine you order. But in all these cases you will be the true male because you are providing the lead and, at the same time, intelligently initiating her co-operation, rather than negating her wishes or her feelings

From the angle of the woman, exactly the same principles apply. For example, if you wish to be courted by a particular man, then you must stalk him into doing so. In other words, you must hunt, not only him, but also the relationship. However, if you go about this in a masculine way, and if he is a true male, (otherwise why on earth would you want a relationship with him?), he will take one look at you and run a mile. If you want to hunt such a man, and hunt him you will have to, then you must hunt him by taking his lead in the sense of being as female as you possibly can. By being a true female, by seeking intelligent co-operation with him and by making it clear that you wish to take his lead, you will evoke in that man every bit of masculinity he has, and in no time at all the poor fellow will be so male that he will even ask you to marry him. Yet, realise that in having taken his lead in being female, you have in effect been as male as male can be, and not only that, but in hunting him, you have also been male. In other words, by being a true female, you have used your own inner male to do your hunting for you! This is true, even in the workplace, for if you are a female boss, and if you want your male employees to excel at their duties, then you should strive to evoke in them their masculine potential as true males, even though, relative to them, you are still very much male by virtue of being their boss.

Similarly, if a man wants to court you, he will allow his own inner female to tie you up into all sorts of little bows. By being utterly charming and open, he will not only hang onto your every word, but he will also be quite passionate in seeking your intelligent co-operation. Listening attentively to every word you say and to every wish you express, such a man will be deeply sensitive and, following his intuition, he will use his feelings to guide him into being the best male you have ever known. Yet, although such a man is being a true male in hunting you, he is nonetheless using his inner female to feel how best to evoke the female in you.

The important point to remember is that, regardless of your gender, it is the male who is the hunter. But also bear in mind that, in order to be able to track game successfully, the hunter must be clever enough to outwit his prey. However, to outwit one's prey implies stalking and, at the end of the day, any stalking manoeuvre is nothing other than intelligent co-operation, for, as we saw in the examples above, both men and women need to co-operate intelligently with their own inner counterparts in order to get the willing co-operation of the world around them. All of life is simply the product of intelligent co-operation firstly, between ourselves and our own inner counterparts; and secondly, between our masculine or feminine potential and the world around us.

So, if life is "good", it is because you are good at achieving intelligent co-operation. But if life is "bad", then this is because you lack the necessary skill in achieving that intelligent co-operation. If your life is not working, what this means is that, irrespective of your gender, it is the male in you that is not good at hunting. What does this really amount to?



The quintessence of masculinity is harmony, just as the quintessence of hunting is intelligent co-operation.

We have already seen that as the hunter the male knows the importance of having to be in harmony with the world around him. Living in harmony with the world around us is really a combination of several concepts that are all completely interrelated and interdependent. Let's look at what this means in practical terms.

First of all, in order to be able to track and to trap prey, the hunter must be intimately familiar with his world and yet remain detached from it. If you, for example, wish to make a business venture successful, then you must become one hundred percent familiar with the nature of your trade. Not to know all the ins and outs of that trade is to invite failure. Likewise, if your child is a drug addict and you want to help him, then it is vital for you to familiarise yourself fully with every facet of that problem - why the child chose the drug experience in the first place; what the drug is, and what both the short and the long term effects of using it are; what the relationship of that child is in relation to you as the parent, in relation to his peers and to the world in general. In short, unless you are so familiar with your child's drug problem that it could well be your own, you will never be able to help him, for merely to tell him to be a good boy and not do it again is not going to help!

However, being fully familiar with one's world creates its own lethal trap. A hunter can become so familiar with the animals he is stalking that, in time, he finds himself incapable of hunting them. Quite simply, the hunter has grown to love the animals so much that he cannot bring himself to kill them, much less eat them! How many times does it not happen that a man becomes so engrossed in his business that it becomes his everything at the cost of all else, including his family and his health? Similarly, how often do parents of drug addicts not take the required action because they love their children too much to be ruthless? And how often do partners in a romantic relationship not speak up because they are afraid they will hurt the other one's feelings? In all such cases the hunter has become so involved with his prey, whether this is his business, his problem child or his spouse, that his judgement has become impaired. Refusing to see the challenge for what it truly is, such a man or woman loses all objectivity, and instead of being the hunter, has become the hunted.

This is the reason why it is so very important to stand detached at all times. Being detached does not mean that you do not care - on the contrary, it means you care so deeply that you do not hesitate to be as ruthless as you need to be in order to fulfil your mission. If you are in business, but refuse to be ruthlessly competitive, you will fail. Likewise, if you are having to handle a child who is addicted to drugs, but if you refuse to take a ruthless approach, the drugs will win every time and your child will be destroyed. What then do you want? Do you love your business so much that you allow it to destroy your family and yourself? Do you love your fellow businessmen so much that you allow them to destroy you? Do you love your child so much that you allow the drugs to destroy him or her? What kind of love is that?

Real love is born of ruthlessness, which starts with detachment - a detachment that enables the hunter to hunt his prey successfully. The hunter is able to be ruthless and detached because he knows himself so well, and he knows for a fact that he does not plunder his world. This leads us to the second of the concepts.

The hunter cares very deeply for the world around him and, as a result, also respects it. Because of that caring and that respect, the hunter never plunders his world, but takes from it only what he truly needs. Never does the true hunter take just for the sake of taking, and never does he hunt just for the fun of it. If the truth be told, the true hunter never does like hunting, he just does it incredibly well. That's all! Although there are plenty of people in this world who have to face the challenge of child abuse, no true parent takes a delight in punishing his or her child. Likewise, although there are more than enough people in this world who have to learn the lessons of inflicting pain, the true surgeon does not cut open his patients upon an insane whim.

Think deeply about this for as long as you need to, in order to grasp the importance of what I am saying here. However, one final word of caution - do not take the world at face value. For example, consider a boss who sees the potential in a young employee who is loyal and hardworking. By offering him increases, promotions, etc., he will get that employee to work even harder, give even more of his time, his devotion and his enthusiasm, until finally the employee has become nothing more than a money-making machine for his boss. Having given up everything else in his life for the sake of his career, such an employee will go from being an enthusiastic free-thinking young man, into a miserable wretch who has traded all for greed and success. Yet the real culprit is his boss, who has not only enticed him, but also exploited his natural drive and enthusiasm. But by far the worst thing about all this is the fact that such an employee will normally be hugely grateful to his boss for having made all of this possible. How caring is such a boss? Similarly, how loving is any parent who manipulates his or her child into following a career that the child hates, and all in the name of what is good for the child?

The third concept is really an extension of the first, namely, that the hunter knows the routines of the game he is hunting. What this amounts to is that the hunter has to be something of a psychologist and understand through experience that the routine acts and predictable behaviour of both man and animal are the only traps he ever needs to set. It is only the inexperienced hunter who needs to set traps, because once you know the routines of, say, a rabbit, you simply need to lie in wait for it, and when it comes hopping round its favourite bush at its favourite time of the day, you simply pick it up by the ears! I am, of course, speaking about human rabbits. Animal rabbits have very good noses, and therefore are not quite so stupid and unsuspecting as humans tend to be!

That is the reason why it is so very important to study the game one is intending to hunt. For example, if you wish to have a better relationship with your boss at work, then you should get to know and understand his behaviour patterns for what they mean to him. As you do so you will quickly enough note what affects his moods, how certain mood swings can affect his thinking, as well as his actions, and how best to bring about in him a change of mood. Therefore, if you need to ask him for a raise in salary, you will be wise not to do something which you know will put him into a foul mood, but you should instead do everything that you know will make him feel secure, contented, happy and open-handed. In other words, by knowing the routine actions, emotions and thought patterns of a person, you can always use that knowledge to your advantage. This is after all what is meant by stalking!

Which brings us straight to the fourth concept. By knowing the routines of his prey, the hunter is clever enough to outwit his prey. Although this sounds so much like common sense, it is truly amazing how often people will abandon good old-fashioned common sense in favour of some truly harebrained scheme or plot! It's obvious that if a hunter were to set his traps in such a way that they were conspicuous, no animal would be crazy enough to walk into them, least of all that animal called your boss, your wayward spouse or your delinquent child. For this reason, the really good hunter will not necessarily reveal his real motive until the trap is sprung. Just think of stalking your boss into giving you a salary raise, or think about confronting your spouse about having an illicit affair, and you will see soon enough how this works.

And now, the final concept, and a very important one at that, is that the hunter is clever enough to know that just as he is a hunter hunting someone or something, so is everyone else also a hunter hunting him! Therefore, when your son suddenly tidies up his room, does all his schoolwork and the dishes without you having to goad him into doing it, then take it as fact he is stalking you for something. Likewise, when your boss suddenly comes to you with a bunch of roses, gives you an increase in salary, and gives you the afternoon off on top of it, don't become ecstatic. Instead become outwardly ecstatic, as you are expected to do, (this is only good stalking), but become inwardly hyper-alert. Above all, and no matter what your personal opinion of your boss may be, remember that he would not be your boss if his skills at stalking were not better than yours.

Clearly, if it is so easy for you to learn to pick up a rabbit by its ears because of its predictable routines, then as a hunter you would be extremely careless to be predictable yourself. A hunter will only ever behave in a predictable manner if he wants to be picked up - a very good ploy to use on someone who is already an accomplished hunter and therefore very unpredictable in his or her own routines. Consequently, if you don't want to be the next rabbit, then your own movements and actions must become unpredictable. For example, if your marriage is rocky, and you suspect that your husband may be having an affair with someone else, then it is just plain stupid always to go and play bridge on Thursday evenings from 18h00 to 23h00. If you do, you will just be inviting trouble. If, on the other hand, you vary your routines, there is much less chance of him having an affair, and the likelihood is that by having become unpredictable you will have eliminated the boredom in your marriage, which might well also turn out to be the cause of your problems. In any event, bear in mind that predictability means that you are not being fluid, and in not being fluid you will invariably be stubborn, forceful and domineering, opinionated and, above all, just plain boring! Who wants to remain faithful to such a jerk?



Only through conflict can new knowledge come into being.

People fear conflict instead of welcoming it. This does not mean that you must go around picking a fight with all and sundry, but it does mean that when conflict does arise of its own accord, then you should not run away from it, but face it, own it and use it to your advantage. To put this in a nutshell, "If your picture doesn't match my picture, then it means that somewhere we are both missing a connecting link", and that missing link is without fail new knowledge.

It is just plain stupid to keep on insisting that if your picture does not match my picture then one of us has to be wrong. Who says? Why can't we both be right? Or are you going to insist that if I am right then you must be "righter"?

Only by understanding this fact can conflict be used constructively by the true hunter, and provided that this is grasped by even just one of the people concerned, new knowledge will be uncovered. Remember that the person who understands this fact will not be working towards fuelling the conflict, but will instead be working towards using the conflict which is already there in order to uncover the new knowledge. But what is even more important, is the fact that by utilising the conflict to bring forth new knowledge, the hunter is in effect transmuting something which is negative into something that is positive, and herein lies the deeper meaning of achieving harmony through conflict.

The million dollar question here, is, "How do I achieve this?" The answer is quite simple, and we have already been discussing it, namely, intelligent cooperation. If you are now feeling perplexed and at a loss, you have been reading too fast and not paying proper attention. Therefore go back and reread the bit on intelligent co-operation, and you are bound to find the lights coming on!

We have already seen that all of awareness is relative and, as a result, men are not always in male mode and neither are women always in female mode. Let's look at this a little deeper. Consider a mother and her young son.

In guiding her children, a mother has no option other than to draw from her own experience in life which, of course, is her knowledge. This means that the mother measures her children's behaviour against what she knows to be good behaviour, that is, behaviour which is beneficial not only to the child, but also to the world around it. But realise that by acting in this way, the mother is working with the known which, as we know, is the function of the male.

The son, on the other hand, not yet having sufficient experience of life upon the physical plane, is facing the unknown, and therefore he automatically listens to his mother's guidance. Because he is taking her lead, he is female relative to his mother. This does not mean that such a boy thinks of himself as being a little girl. On the contrary, if he is really listening to his mother, he will even be learning from her how a man is supposed to function in the world. But the bottom line is still that any child, irrespective of gender, does not have the required experience of life, and therefore has to listen to its mother, whether he or she likes it or not. Only by listening to the mother, and then either by following her guidance, or by ignoring her guidance, does the boy begin to gather his own knowledge through experience. But either way, the child is female relative to his mother, for it does not matter whether he takes his mother's guidance in the sense of doing what he has been told, or whether he takes that guidance in the sense of finding out what is the result if he doesn't conform to it, the fact remains that he is taking her guidance in one form or another.

Exactly the same is true amongst adults, especially in the workplace. Think of a man working for a male employer. Such an employee mostly never really knows enough about the company he is working for to provide the male lead, and neither is he required to do so. The only thing that should be clear to an employee, is the job description. In other words, he knows what his duties and his function in the company are, for these have been spelled out to him when he took on the job. But in fulfilling the requirements of his job description, he is automatically female relative to his employer, even though he may be the best male in the whole world.

This is a point that can never be stressed enough, for the simple reason that all too often, because of social conditioning, men feel emasculated as a result of not being able to provide the male lead in their working environment. Yet, this is so unnecessary, if only such men would understand that in spite of the fact that they will always be female relative to their employers, they can still be very much male by seeking and initiating intelligent co-operation, rather than moping around waiting to be given orders. In fact very few employers want male employees that are forever sulking because they have to take orders. Most employers welcome men who are masculine enough to think for themselves and take the initiative, provided of course that such an employee does not go into direct competition against the employer.

The real male knows for a fact that he is a good male, and because of this, does not feel threatened by having to take orders from a superior. It is always those men who for some reason or other doubt their own masculinity, that tend to be highly aggressive and defensive, and who also quickly feel insulted and emasculated when told what to do.

Exactly the same is true of women. The women who know the true meaning of being female never have a problem with taking the male lead. But those women who feel inferior, and therefore threatened by males in some way, will forever kick against taking the male lead, and will instead try to outdo the males in every possible way. You know that old song from "Annie Get Your Gun" - Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better? The end result of this is what I term a second-rate male, for although such a woman will be able to run a business, drive a truck and mow a lawn better than most men, she is still a woman who is not living up to her true potential, which is feminine, and therefore she can at best be second-rate.

But it is not only women who can become second-rate males, for if you look around, you will also see plenty of men who have become second-rate females. "Yes, dear. Anything you say, dear." "Yes, boss. Can I give your dog my breakfast, Sir." "Yes, pretty little Ms. Secretary. I'm very flattered that you should want a relationship with me. Do you want me to have you on the desk, or shall I rent a room in a hotel?" Such men are not providing the male lead, and in not living up to their masculine potential, they make very poor substitutes for the genuine female, who is by no means anybody's doormat. But then, if you don't believe in your own masculinity, it is also easy to associate your beard and hairy chest with a doormat!

So, what then is the bottom line in everything we have been looking at? The answer: intelligent co-operation, of course. Intelligent co-operation with who, with what? Ah! Now you ask the real million dollar question, and the answer is: before you can begin to co-operate with anything or anybody, let alone intelligently, you first need to come to grips with your own potential, for realise that it is very difficult to co-operate intelligently when you don't even know who and what you are. Consequently, if you are a second-rate male or a second-rate female, your idea of being intelligent will be how best to outdo the opposite sex, and your idea of co-operation will be how best to walk all over the opposite sex. True intelligent cooperation can only be achieved firstly, when you know what it is to be true to your gender; secondly, when you understand that in order to get to know your own potential, regardless of whether it is masculine or feminine, you need experience, that is, knowledge; and thirdly, that knowledge can only arise through conflict of sorts. For example, how often in this book have I not pushed your buttons? You see! Conflict! Yet if you are still reading, then you are well on your way to practicing intelligent co-operation and uncovering new knowledge. Remember what I explained at the beginning - intelligent co-operation means just that - co-operate intelligently! But to be intelligent about something does not mean you have to like it

To understand how this operates in practice let us review our previous examples. In the example of the mother and her son, what can we see? As we all know from experience, the son will have one way of looking at things, and his mother another. So the end result is conflict. But this conflict is good, in the sense that it is necessary. Therefore the boy is not a bad child, he is only trying to gain his own knowledge. Are you bad because you are reading this book? It just shows you how insane social conditioning can be! No! The boy can only possibly be a bad boy if he does not co-operate intelligently with his mother in trying to uncover his own knowledge through experience. But then, for that matter, so too will the mother be a bad mother if she refuses to co-operate intelligently with her son, if she sees him as a bad boy because he is not listening to her every word, and if she denies him the opportunity to acquire his own knowledge through experience.

In the example of employee and employer, the employee is not bad when he speaks up to his employer for what he believes in. He will only be bad when he is not living up to his masculine potential and thereby not practising intelligent co-operation with his employer. In such a case, the employee will do one of two things. Either he will behave like a doormat who simply carries out every order given to him without question or, because he feels threatened by his employer, he will constantly be trying to make his employer wrong, in which case he is again not practising intelligent co-operation.

Likewise with the employer. The employer will not be less of a male if he practises intelligent co-operation with his male employees by taking into account their experiences of what is taking place in the business. If, on the other hand, he flatly refuses to listen to his male employees, he will not be practising intelligent cooperation, and mainly because he himself feels threatened by other males.

Realise that there will always be conflict of sorts, even if it is only at the level of "I don't see it your way." But every time this happens, it is always, but always, intelligent co-operation that is called for, because only in this way can new knowledge be brought forth. This knowledge is the only thing which is important - whether it is the knowledge a boy needs in order to know what it means to be a true male; whether it is the knowledge both employee and employer need in order to have a good working relationship; or whether it is the knowledge that is needed for a business to succeed. Conflict cannot be avoided, for it is necessary in order to learn how to practise intelligent co-operation, and it is only through practising intelligent co-operation that new knowledge can be acquired.

In co-operating with the opposite sex, the same principles come into play. Men are not the same as women, and their roles are not the same either. Therefore forget about trying to turn your wife into a second-rate version of yourself, and stop trying to turn your husband into a second-rate version of what you think women are all about. Just start from the point that as man and woman you are equal but different, in that your respective potentials are equal but opposite. If you remember that, then you will not expect each other to see things your way, but you will instead strive to see each other's point of view. By doing this you will both gain a far greater perspective than each of you had before, and soon you will begin to discover that intelligent cooperation, quite apart from being fun, is also truly intelligent!

For example, let's assume that a woman, Anna, says to her husband, Stan, "I don't know why I am saying this, but I feel that there is something wrong with our relationship." Normally what happens here is that the husband, feeling somehow accused, will quite angrily demand that his wife should explain herself. Yet, the fact is that she has already said she doesn't actually know what it is, and that it is just a feeling.

If Stan is a true male, he will not press Anna to explain to him what she is sensing. Instead he will compare what she is saying against his own database, which is what he already knows about his relationship with Anna, and which therefore constitutes what is for him part of the known. If, having done this, Stan can still not grasp what Anna is sensing, he will then try to get a feeling for what she is saying by questioning her, not in the sense of "Please explain yourself", but in the sense of "Try to tell me more." In other words, by being the male, and by initiating the act of intelligent co-operation, Stan is using his own inner female to guide both himself and Anna towards a better understanding of what it is she is sensing.

Taking Stan's lead in this respect, Anna will be using her inner male to try and make as much logical sense out of what she as a female has picked up from within the unknown. The end result of such intelligent co-operation between Stan and Anna, as well as between themselves and their own inner counterparts, is that when finally Stan does achieve a real feeling for what Anna is sensing, he will either be able to pinpoint exactly what is bothering his wife, or, by embarking upon a different line of questioning such as "Do you mean this?" or "Do you feel that?" it will not be long before Anna will be able to say, "That's it! That's exactly what I mean!"

From this example it should be becoming clear that in order to be a true male, it is vitally important for the man to learn to listen to his feelings which, in the final analysis, represent his own inner female. Likewise, for a woman to be a true female, she must also learn to listen to her feelings, but she must in addition allow her inner male to guide her towards making sense of what it is she is intuiting.

Do not ever forget that, although it is the male who is the hunter, and who has to make things work practically upon the physical plane, the male must also listen to his heart, that is, his feelings, in order to sense where best to hunt or plant his crops and when the best time for doing so will be. Until he has learned through practical experience, he has no other knowledge to work from, except his feelings. But once he has some knowledge, he will immediately start to build upon that knowledge by thinking about it rationally. Therefore, by comparing what he does not know with what he does know, he will always come up with a solution to the problem at hand.

This is equally true of the female, for since it is her task to tend to the hearth and the children, she simply has to search her inner unknown - her feelings - for the guidance she needs. Furthermore, in tending to the hearth and the children whilst her husband is out hunting, she has no option other than to turn those feelings about what she needs to do into action upon the physical plane, and because of this the female learns to think rationally. However, the difference between the two lies in the fact that because the female takes the male's lead, the woman will always search the unknown in the sense that she will try to feel what will best fulfil the purpose of the male. Therefore, if she is alone at home and she needs to act, she will invariably look at the situation in terms of "What would my husband do?" or alternatively, "If I do this, will it suit my husband?" This in no way means that the female is subservient to her husband, it simply means that she senses, or feels, that only by fulfilling his purpose can she fulfil her own purpose. Consequently, the true female will always prefer, if at all possible, to take her problems to her husband and let him come up with a solution

Looking at how men and women operate, we can see that both first need to listen to their feelings, and then think about how best to materialise those feelings into action or solutions to a challenge. Ironically, the true male will first listen to his heart, to his feelings, and it is only after he has gained that irrational perspective that he will compare it with his rational database in order to come up with a solution. In other words, the true male first feels, then thinks. The true female, on the other hand, will first think and then feel, in the sense of having taken the male's lead, she first compares her problem with what she knows to be the male's purpose, and then she endeavours to feel what she needs to do.

However, under the impact of social conditioning, men have been taught "Think, my boy! Think!" The sad end of this tale is that men are now too frightened to do something so silly as to feel, and instead they try desperately to be as rational as possible. Therefore when a man's wife tells him that she feels something is wrong with their relationship, he thinks frantically about it, but when he cannot find a rational reason why his wife should feel that anything is wrong, angrily demands that she should explain herself, rationally, of course! Women, on the other hand, as a result of being made to feel stupid for not being logical, also desperately try to please by becoming ever more rational, until finally they have become so logical that they too are out of touch with what they are really feeling.