The secrets of ultimate prowess in battle do not come from mastery of a machine but from a knowledge of the mind. We call ourselves MechWarriors, but the Warrior has always been and shall always be the heart and soul of the machine he guides in combat. If you would be victorious, learn to use the mind as the weapon it truly is. Over thousands of generations, the human race has sought to place Mankind on a special level, elevated above the animal kingdom and separated from it by the powers of speech and reason. Many would have us believe that the mind is a weapon by virtue of its ability to outwit or out-think an opponent. Does this mean that Galileo, Einstein, and Fuchida were our greatest Warriors? No. The soldier cannot rely on the power of pure reason if he is to survive on the field of battle. Nor can he depend entirely upon technology. The smartest Warrior in Human Space, equipped with the most sophisticated computer known to man, may yet be overpowered by a stupid brute armed with a heavy stone as he ponders the variables of a thousand complex equations before unleashing his most devastating weaponry. Brains are of little value to the Warrior if they are no longer contained within his broken skull. We must reject the opinion that Man's mind differs from that of the animals, for in accepting such an idea we say that reason is always good and instinct always a sign of inferiority. But pure instinct, like pure reason, cannot be the proper road for the Warrior. Our instincts are one with our emotions, and when we feel pain or fear or hate, we lose control over our judgement and knowledge. The animal may fight ferociously when the odds are impossible, never realizing the value of postponing the battle, or it may run in fright because instinct tells it to flee even though reason might find the way to turn defeat into success. One man may outfight a dozen animals by the application of rational thought to the problems of combat. The mind of Man is a coupling of instinct and reason. Trained in discipline and control, that mind can make conscious use of the abilities which make the animal dangerous. Call upon your mind, your spirit, and nothing need be denied to you. Combine the instinctive reactions that will give you speed and strength with the detached reasoning which is your heritage as Man and you shall be more than either alone could make you. This is the purpose of training the mind; to teach you to use allof your mental inheritance at once rather than in parts or at the behest of unreasoned emotion. Before you can master the Spirit, you must learn to master your own emotions. If you fear, or if you hate, you cloud your reason and lose your judgement. Remember this precept and your shall contain your emotion, pass through it, and emerge at the end with your mastery intact. In the QuickKill teachings used in the [New Avalon] Institute [of Science], the student learns to banish hatred through the repetition of litanies designed to cleanse the mind and bolster the spirit. The First Rejection of Hate is the simplest of these, saying: Hate blinds the Warrior to Opportunities; Anger is the Gateway to Impatience. Impatience is the Pathway to Defeat; Opportunity is the Stepping-Stone to Victory. The student learns others as well, so that Rejection becomes a matter of finding the right trigger and using it to maintain control when emotion threatens to overpower the mind. With practice you can learn to place this control on the level of instinct itself, responding to any threat with its counter without even being consciously aware of the threat itself. This is the Freedom of Reason. Second in the student's process of mastering the Inner Fire is the freeing of the instinct from the intellect. Once the Warrior can control emotional responses without thinking, he is ready to allow the animal within him to emerge and fight. With the banishment of harmful responses through inner balance, the animal instincts can be harnessed and made to perform at the command of the trained mind. This training links together the senses, the reactions, the agility and the coordination of the Warrior into a unified whole. He sees, understands, decides, movesand reacts with the fluid grace of the tiger making a spring. If the knowledge of his craft is as ingrained as his mental discipline, he draws on this as freely as on any of the others and so becomes the living embodiment of Death. Exercise the reactions and the senses, hone the body to the peak of physical performance, and feel the essence of the world around you to achieve the Freedom of Instinct. With these the student can be a powerful Warrior, yet with these alone the Warrior shall never be a true Adept of the Inner Fire. If you choose to strive for further mastery, further control, you shall ultimately achieve even greater powers of mind and body. For the body is only the servant of the mind; and what the mind envisions, the body can be made to do. Only the limits of understanding and belief will stand in the way of the Adept's aspirations. Thus can the Adept conquer pain and stimulate self-healing, and thus can he learn not only to control the emotions but to trigger and channel them at will in the single-minded rage of the berserker. Though it may take decades of study, though some may find it impossible to train their minds tothe levels of discipline thatwill achieve the mastery, still the powers are there for the taking. Seek them out it you desire the Freedom of Spirit, but learn to use them wisely if you set out to use them at all. [Editor's Note: Colonel Kuan is a Master in the art of Quick-Kill, the philosophical precepts of which he has outlined above. Despite this, the Colonel acknowledges that the "Freedom of Spirit" is something he himself has notyetfully achieved, so it is plain that the chances of the average Warrior to learn these pseudo-mystic powers of mental control (if they exist at all) are virtually nonexistent.] Back to BattleTechnology Table of Contents Back to BattleTechnology List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1987 by Pacific Rim Publishing. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. 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