Excerpt from Dreams

Stars Influence But Do Not Compel (p. 379)

From chapter "Wisdom"

The book Sacred Possessions gave me a line that changed my life. It also changed my understanding of this book I am writing, of other sides, and of how this culture is killing the planet. Here is the line: “The external stimuli, like the stars, influence but do not compel.”This is how those on other sides normally work. This is how they normally interact with us. This is how we are normally supposed to interact with them, with each other, with all others. This is one reason indigenous humans sing to the salmon, dream to the bison. They welcome these others, ask questions of them, influence them and are influenced by them, help them and are helped by them. This is what we do for others and they do for us. This is what, believe it or not, nonabusive relationships are like. This is what nonsociopathological relationships are like. This is what living relationships—not the relationships of the living dead, the flesh-eating zombies—are like. “The external stimuli”— muses, dreamgivers, others on other sides—“like the stars, influence but do not compel.” Contrast that with the Gospel according to Richard Dawkins, the Gospel of the cult of the scientific, materialist, instrumentalist, mechanistic, managerial perspective, the Gospel of this culture. Do you see the cosmological problems such a statement—the notion that relationships are based on influence and not force—creates in a culture based on proof, in a culture based on an omnipotent God, Ruler of All, in a culture where truth is measured by one’s ability to make others jump through hoops on command, that is based on equations, that is based on control?

“The external stimuli, like the stars, influence but do not compel.”

This is a law—maybe the law—of life. Sure, I can pound metal into different shapes, but what else happens because of this? Sure, I can pound the world into pavement, but what else happens because of this? Sure, I can force matter and energy to jump through hoops on command, but what else happens because of this? The world is never so simple as me and you. I am not so simple as me, and you are not so simple as you. And the spaces and ties between us are never so simple as the spaces and ties between us. There is no such thing as an isolated incident. Life is indirect, and beyond, and there is meaning beneath meaning beneath meaning. And when the shaman from the Hunza Valley said that attempting to enslave others will “bite us in the arse,” he was right. If you make matter and energy jump through hoops on command, then there will be unintended consequences. And they will be severe.