Keeping language always secondary to such communication as is incidental to the observable fact of personal practice, also provides insurance against the sort of assertive, aggressive, and psychologically invasive lapses which could so easily vitiate or invalidate the remedy for both giver and taker. By the standards of the precepts, non-users are relatively un- or dis-oriented. And just such personalities are most vulnerable to a sort of contagion of conduct, whereas admonition will arouse, especially in persons pre-supposedly immature, rejection or outright opposition. Yet they alter themselves easily through unconscious imitation.
This method of procedure, which is probably preferable to verbal exposition and should certainly precede it, operates by a kind of implantation-and-cultivation. The seeds of integration are sought and nurtured in other persons, in such a manner as to stimulate their own unique potentials for growth in vision and maturity, but without dominating them. To help others achieve fruition and recognition in this way would most resemble the wise parent's treatment of a child. Exquisite care is taken never to enslave body or mind, damage emotional equipment, or to stultify the delicate, vulnerable personality. Self-reliance is increasingly inculcated until every vestige of dependency is dissipated. There is positive pleasure when the achievements or endowments of the other person surpass one's own; and extreme pains are taken not to infect the other, vulnerable mind with one's own whims, wants, and warps. Constant vigilance is needed to prevent gains and growth from being attributed to the teacher, which might produce false gratitude leading to some sort of psychological subjugation; each person is allowed to feel responsible for his own progress.
The reciprocity that is characteristic of all human relations (good or bad) will multiply the pleasures of this phase of applying the precepts.
Helping another to gain ease, self-respect, and a sense of importance "echoes" within one's-self. Lending decency and dignity to someone else earns an almost usurious return in the same coin. If the habit of doing these things is caught up and repeated by others, one is repaid again and again. So there can be communicated from one to another of us the mature, peaceful feeling of creative accomplishment we all crave even beyond bread, in a quiet, calming charade of deeds and demeanor. Actually, this method merely asserts control over an already existent and continuous process. All of us are unsuspecting teachers; to be observed is to influence. That ever-changing bundle of opinions, habits, gestures and mannerisms called personality are culled from the culture around us, or are reactions to it. The inimitable self so cherished as exclusively our own is, deflatingly, an accumulation of interplaying responses to innate hungers or pressures commingled with conditionings by our environment. We are each a resultant of social inheritance. Because this essentially communicative process is in continual flux, there is a tremendous possibility of our being able to steer or guide this inevitable modulation of human nature, by directing the preponderance of our own influences toward increasing a general conformity with the tenets. Again, our approach is congruent with a natural and inescapable process, since the sub-verbal predominates in both. So, through society's incessant imitational interaction, we can institute courses conducive to applying the remedy, and impede or deflect those contrary and pernicious. Accidental elements of human intercourse favorable to this program may be reinforced, and those that are harmful restrained, or at least not encouraged. As a minimum, we can consistently deplore the kind of conduct which in extension can kill us all, and give unstinting approbation to all that supplements or parallels our own efforts to keep man alive.
An important preliminary understanding to the prospective proponent of the remedy involves the possible use of physical force by others, whether against himself, or in any manner with his endorsement. The latter is easily disposed of by flatly stating that the remedy forbids it, whatever the reason. But the commonest demurer to any nonviolent ethic—usually implying the speaker would happily forego force, otherwise—is that the practitioner will be left defenseless. The precepts seem to provide no answer, since, as is the case with so many of their truths, it is transparently obvious after fully accepting them, but completely incomprehensible prior to doing so. Actually, a mature adult integrated around the tenets is at no man's mercy. His prime protection consists in placing an infinite valuation upon every other life, and little upon his own. His strength lies in a pig-headed, persistent refusal to do, or contribute to, wrong, and the placing of the requirements of the remedy paramount. Now, no prison can confine a refusal to act, nor can bullets destroy a negation. All human power is helpless against an "I won't" pursued to the ultimate, simply because violence can only, in extension, irreversibly sustain the point. The would-be dominator must destroy his raw material, or be smothered in its supine dead weight. The tenets forbid both fight and flight; for fighting is unthinkable in their terms, and flight invites pursuit or irritates the violent into triumphant excesses. But in reality, few of the persons disposed to use physical force can summon courage to attack anyone who so transcends their own limitations as neither to cower nor resist. Those who "agress" regardless will learn that the gift of fear, refused, remains the giver's still; the ostensible victim has won simply in reiterating-to-finality the superior valuations. Then, too, the possibility of conflict diminishes, if one refrains from insisting that others adopt his ideas; from justifying or defending his acts to other humans; or in short, if one sincerely practices even the superficial requirements of the remedy. Furthermore, force is invariably associated with attempts to gain, or maintain, position and possession. To the extent that both are eschewed (as the tenets command), all likelihood of intentional assault fades away; for if one sets store by nothing another person wants, the normal motives for attack disappear. If one prizes only the "remedy" itself, he is invulnerable; for when a self-constituted opponent succeeds in taking that, his antipathy and antagonism will evaporate. To be so vanquished is victory.
But there is protection for the precept-user beyond his stubborn adhesion to principle.
Granting the tenets are extracts of universal truth, then no opposition to them could possibly be; for truth is indivisible. The touchstone of the remedy is ultimate reality. If it is uniquely workable on net balance, any attempt to impede or evade it is foredoomed to frustration and failure. To trust in the precepts is to have in hand the irresistible tools of time and superior information; a person so equipped stands,—by contrast to those trapped in the narrower, circular, superficial modes of thinking outside the remedy,—upon a perspective-giving pinnacle of clear consciousness that makes easy the evasion of a putative attacker. The time, tears, and patience put into learning to follow the precepts creates a pedestal beyond the reach of any threat, about which the emotional environment almost automatically modulates to foil anyone who is so relatively befogged and misguided as to be destructive. By never acquiring power over other persons, we achieve a dispassion that gives enhanced scope to our insight into human situations. Through trying always to heal, and never to hurt, other people, patience becomes a handmaiden; and at the same time, swift certainty of decision is made our servant. All that the despoiler can make one do, is die. We shall all do so, in any case; but unless we apply the remedy, the race dies with us.
For the remedy to operate as promised, evil cannot be considered inevitable among men. Parallel with this thought is the emphasis throughout the tenets upon an unremitting all-encompassing forgiveness toward all other persons, whatever their transgressions. For this to be practical, or even possible, we have somehow to assume that no one does wrong out of an intact volition, and that what we term evil is the product of some hazy mental half-world of doubt, dread, and confusion. One can freely commiserate with the wrong-doer, still not condoning his deeds, by considering him to have been bound in blindness or fear, having no clear choice. Then, too, the burden of blame for an individual act sifts back upon every participant in a culture. So-called civilized behavior is essentially the constraint or channeling of first impulses. A society may be evaluated by its ability to teach its members this rejection or restraint of the primitive; and its instantaneous constituents have both the power and the authority to alter, extend, or amplify it. It surely is the sole vehicle for its own ethic; therefore it must share responsibility for the acts of any member. And every contemporary member must carry his fraction or fragment of the load. When, as in our culture, a deep cleavage splits the entire spiritual, political, economic profile,—in a sort of social schizophrenia,—no clear, cohesive ethic can be conveyed
