Kritik am Buch „The Shadow Of The Dalai Lama ... - Neues von Shi De

Bruno also mentions an indirect method of gaining influence, in which the lover does not know at all
that she is being manipulated. In this case, the manipulator makes use of “powerful invisible beings,
demons and heroes”, whom he conjures up with magic incantations (mantras) so as to achieve the
desired result with their help (Couliano, 1987, p. 88). We learn from the following quotation how
these invoked spirits work for the manipulator: They need “neither ears nor a voice nor a whisper,
rather they penetrate the inner senses [of the lover] as described. Thus they do not just produce
dreams and cause voices to be heard and all kinds of things to be seen, but they also force certain
thoughts upon the waking as the truth, which they can hardly recognize as deriving from
another” (Samsonow, 1995, p. 140). The lover thus believes she is acting in her own interests and
according to her own will, whilst she is in fact being steered and controlled through magic
blandishments.
The manipulator himself may not surrender to any emotional inclinations. Like a tantric yogi he must
keep his own feelings completely under control from start to finish. For this reason well-developed
egocentricity is a necessary characteristic for a good manipulator. He is permitted only one love:
narcissism (philautia), and according to Bruno only a tiny elite possesses the ability needed, because
the majority of people surrender to uncontrolled emotions. The manipulator has to completely bridle
and control his fantasy: “Be careful,” Bruno warns him, “not to change yourself from manipulator
into the tool of phantasms” (quoted by Couliano, 1987, p. 92). The real European magician must, like
his oriental colleague (the Siddha), be able “to arrange, to correct and to provide phantasy, to create
the different kinds at will” (Couliano, 1987, p. 92).
He must not develop any reciprocal feelings for the lover, but he has to pretend to have these, since,
as Bruno says, “the chains of love, friendship, goodwill, favor, lust, charity, compassion, desire,
passion, avarice, craving, and longing disappear easily if they are not based upon mutuality. Fom this
stems the saying: love dies without love” (quoted by Samsonow, 1995, p. 181). This statement is of
thoroughly cynical intent, then the manipulator is not interested in reciprocating the erotic love of the
lover, but rather in simulating such a reciprocity.
But for the deception to succeed the manipulator may not remain completely cold. He has to know
from his own experience the feelings that he evokes in the lover, but he may never surrender himself
to these: “He is even supposed to kindle in his phantasmic mechanism [his imagination] formidable
passions, provided these be sterile and that he be detached from them. For there is no way to bewitch
others than by experimenting in himself with what he wishes to produce in his victim” (Couliano,
1987, p. 102). The evocation of passions without falling prey to them is, as we know, almost a tantric
leitmotif.
Yet the most astonishing aspect of Bruno’s manipulation thesis is that, as in Vajrayana , he mentions
the retention of semen as a powerful instrument of control which the magician should command, since
“through the expulsion of the seed the chains [of love] are loosened, through the retention
tightened” (quoted by Samsonow, 1995, p. 175). In a further passage we can read: “If this [the semen
virile] is expelled by an appropriate part, the force of the chain is reduced correspondingly (quoted by
Samsonow, 1995, p. 175). Or the reverse: a person who reatins their semen, can thereby strengthen
the erotic bondage of the lover.
Bruno’s idea that there is a correspondence between erotic love and power is thus in accord with