the commission asks him where the security are. The old demon says that they need no security because the people burning in the cauldron are Russian — all they need is a bottle of vodka sitting handy. But the second cauldron is supervised by a bunch of armed demons. “And that cauldron yonder is for the Jews,” the old demon explains. “If one makes it out, he’ll drag out all the others.” The third cauldron is totally unattended. In answer to the head’s silent question, the old demon says, “That one’s for the Ukrainians. If one tries to climb out, the others’ll pull him right back in by his feet.”

There’s some truth behind every joke, right? Here’s another one.

There were once two Ukrainian brothers, Taras and Gritsko. When the Soviets took over the country, Taras became a tractor driver on a collective farm, and Gritsko remained in their home village. When World War II broke out and the Germans invaded the country, Taras became a forest partisan, and Gritsko joined the polizei.The Soviets won the war, and Taras came back from the forest and jumped back in his tractor, and Gritsko went to Siberia to become a tree cutter. After a while Gritsko returned, but the villagers wouldn’t forgive him for his service as a polizei, so he moved to town and got a job as a mechanic. In no time, he was promoted to foreman and then to shift manager, to eventually land the position of chairman with the district branch of Agricultural Equipment. And his brother still was just a tractor driver. One day he went to town and dropped by Gritsko’s place. They sat down and had some vodka.

“I don’t get it, Gritsko. All my life I’ve worked my fingers to the bone, and I’m just a lousy tractor driver. And you, renegade, did your time in a camp but worked your up to become a manager.”

“That’s right. My job application says my brother is a hero partisan, and yours says your brother is a polizei.”

That’s why those believers who want to spiritually develop retire to a monastery or convent, a place where they develop fairly soon at the causal level, caring about one another. That way, they don’t waste their lives on their relatives, who often fail to relate to them spiritually and be grateful.

So the answer to the question who that track switcher is who cut off my oxygen supply and sewed my shirt to my pants is the jubilant cry in chorus, “WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE,

THE TEAM!”

But people are often envious and would, as the joke has it, poke their eyes out lest their neighbor has two.It‘d be funny if it weren’t so sad. From this perspective, puerile Christian dicta on the lines of “Love thy neighbor as thyself” seem different. Old hands can be cunning enough to go, in hordes, to priests and saints, asking them to “pray for them.” That is, it’s safe to say that for ordinary people, everyone around is the track switcher.

But there are other ways to switch Karma’s tracks.

Oddly enough, first of all it’s dreaming. It’s in a dream that you reach the collective subconscious where much of your destiny can be divined. But you might not know that your dreams are also dreams of others — generally, of your friends and family (first and foremost, your spouse).

That’s why gallantry to women finds so much favor and gentlemen are invariably lucky — what women’s dreams primarily do is shape men’s karma in real life.

That’s the law of the mirror, the world’s protection from those with too much balls. They can brandish their fists all they want, but the weak woman’s dream will mold the destinies and karma they deserve, both in this life and thereafter.

But for this protective mechanism, the most bad-ass man would get even more bad-ass, beating everyone around down ear-deep into the ground, and his kids would take after him, picking up on people no end. But in reality, nothing of the sort happens. That’s why all dictatorships and empires sooner or later come to an end; as soon as their karma at the causal level distorts, their properties go astray, and in one to two generations, they die out on their own. Precisely these mechanisms, unseen and uncontrolled, are what is called divine providence.

What do magicians and stalkers do with it? Magicians are able, first of all, to enter the state of conscious sleep they call trance and, in controlling events while asleep, to alter the outer destiny. But sleep has many facets to it, and the deeper you delve, the closer your departure from reality is, causing a backlash: “The dream slips through the magician’s hands.” This is the world’s second protective wall. It protects the world from magicians who are too wily.

But the way stalkers do it is different — they don’t try to change destiny through sleep. They understand what life is, knowing its ins and outs far better than budding magicians. Through scientific and practical experiments, they found out that human life is God’s dream in which we all “live”; that which seems real to us is in fact the dream of one big entity, which in turn is the reflection of the dream of many little consciousnesses it is composed of. Thus, instead of going into dream-trance to do magic as magicians, stalkers interact directly with God’s sleeping consciousness, perceived by everyone as reality.

But what’s the difference, I hear you ask. Well, the difference is that the dream is seen by someone whether you know it or not. And because God sees your life like a dream all the time, he molds it. If you play a part like an actor, following some rules, the dream (your reality) will change.

People who have a thing for theater know that while a play can touch a dozen story lines, the story determines the end of the plot played out in a certain way. Many despise actors, but, to