The Peaceful Warrior

Some comments on the book

The Peaceful Warrior

By Dan Millman

1980

I recently came across an old award medal that I received back in the 60s. It was for winning the Intramural Gymnastics Championship at UC Berkeley while I was a graduate student there. At the time I supplemented my graduate studies with a heavy program of physical activity that included working out with the gym team (and trying to keep clear of the serious training the team members were engaged in). I remember that the competition was fun and that I won rather easily.

On an impulse I put a picture of the metal on Facebook (under the category of PG for Prior Glory). An old friend of mine from those times, Chris Perliberg, responded with a comment directing my attention to the book “The Peaceful Warrior” by Dan Millman. What a piece of serendipity. Dan was one of the gym team members that I had been working out with. He went on to have a very successful academic career that included coaching gymnastics. In 1980 he wrote the book referred to above. It took a while for the book to catch on, but when it did he followed it with other books and currently heads up a popular “Peaceful Warrior” many faceted personal growth program.

Dan’s guru “Socrates” will be instantly recognized as a recasting of “Don Juan”, the protagonist in the series of books by the Peruvian-American author Carlos Castañeda that started out with “The Teachings of Don Juan” in 1968. (That was the year that both Dan and I graduated from UC Berkeley.) One is tempted to draw parallels between the two series of books. However, the tone of the books and the lives of the authors could not be more different. Castaneda is dark and brooding and the stories are filled with hallucinogenic mushrooms, trances and out of body experiences, while Dan’s work is filled with light, openness and positive experiences. The story he relates is super clean-cut. No alcohol or sex, for example. The movie made from the book got very upbeat reviews.

“The Peaceful Warrior” also puts me in mind of other works like Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist” and “The Prophet” by Khalil Gibran. All of these works claim to present the reader with a path toward peace, happiness and deep understanding. They are heavily quoted. Like many others I have devoured the works all these authors, but have come away strangely unsatisfied. My personal growth has largely come from elsewhere.

So, I was skeptical as I started “The Peaceful Warrior”, but I enjoyed the writing and all the intimate descriptions of the Berkeley campus and surrounding town. Many of Dan’s experiences and observations were identical to ones that I had had. Still, as a scientist and skeptic, I found the recounting of various esthetic regimens bland and somewhat tedious.

That is, until I had an epiphany that is the motivation for this note. So here it is, the key to the central core of all these (and similar ones like TM) teachings. Why is it that there are so many, seemingly dissimilar, paths to enlightenment? You can equally well meditate on the tip of your nose for a week, fast for days, stand on one foot for hours, recite certain prayers or any one of dozens of paths to enlightenment. And they all work (or don’t) depending on the individual. What is actually happening? What is the common thread?

Don’t trust your response to this question unless you’ve “Been There and Done That.”

The way it looks to me is that each of these methods is simply a way of wresting control of your life away from your brain.  My experience (and there is a lot of supporting research) is that your brain charts out reality and presents it to you. That’s where stress, conflict and dysfunctionality come from. (Who would choose it?) Then most of us just go along for the ride.

All of the enlightenment methods do the same thing. They open the door a crack so that you can glimpse the possibility that there is another way, one where you actually make some of the decisions. I don’t remember exactly when it happened (I think it had something to do with sailing across oceans.), but the idea entered my mind: “Who is in charge here anyway?” At that point my life stopped short, turned 90 deg from its previous path, and has never been the same.

Burn Before Reading

This never happened. It’s just a silly story made up to link together some pedestrian actual events in a way so as to make a story out of it. There was actually a third party involved but, just for fun, I’ll pretend it was me.

In the middle 1970s I was employed at the University of California, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory as an independent nuclear research scientist. I loved my work and I was thinking about accepting an invitation to go abroad for a year, to Germany or maybe France. At the time I had just separated from my wife and was enjoying life as a newly minted middle aged bachelor. I was probably as physically fit as I had ever been in my life. I had just won the Intramural Gymnastics Championship at UC Berkeley, I was doing a lot of long distance running, running a circuit training course and doing some distance swimming almost every day. I went mountain climbing and skiing in the winter and I had just bought one of the first hang gliders. Clearly, I was itching for new challenges.

Just then, the phone rang. It was my brother, who is 5 years younger than me and who was working for the Air Force at Wright-Patterson Airbase in Ohio. About all I knew about his work was that it was highly classified. I think it was concerned with the liaison necessary to help contractors to gain access to secret information that they needed in order to design military defense systems.

His first words were, “What have you done now?” His boss had directed him to one of their conference rooms and told him to cooperate completely with the civilians who were waiting for him there. They never identified themselves but he guessed they were CIA. They wanted to talk about me, and the session lasted a couple of hours. He was told not to reveal any of the content of the meeting, or even that it had taken place. But brothers are brothers.

At the time I didn’t have a clue about what was going on but I was a little worried. Earlier I had been an officer in the Navy and I had had a few interesting assignments. My primary responsibilities had to do with nuclear weapons but I was also involved in communications security and cryptography. I had served as a courier in some situations where I was told that I would be on my own if anything went wrong. The Navy would just disown me. I never had a problem but you never know when things like that can come back to haunt you.

A couple weeks later I received a “form” letter whose stated purpose was to request that I update my contact information for the “Naval Reserve Officers Personnel Department”. The letter went on, in what appeared to be routine “boilerplate”, to remind me that I belonged to the US Navy and could be called on to serve if I was needed. Looked pretty routine. On the other hand, I had not had such a reminder in more than ten years, so a kind of sixth sense started to kick in. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it because it might be nothing, but I started to be a little more aware of my surroundings.

Somebody somewhere was apparently in a big hurry because two or three days later I had some visitors. No suits this time, but these guys were so clean cut it made my skin crawl. There were just two but I could see casual passers by on the street beyond that didn’t ring true. They said they represented the United States Government, presented identification and asked if they could come in. After some preliminary small talk aimed at establishing beyond a doubt that I was who I claimed to be, they got to the point. I was being asked to undertake an unprecedented mission somehow related to national security. They were not authorized to elaborate. A lot of time was spent emphasizing that it would be best if I entered this undertaking of my own free will, but there was an undercurrent in the conversation that suggested that I could be ordered to do it if necessary.
I wasn’t really reluctant since most of my “off the books” activities were interesting when I was on active duty in the Navy. None the less, I was tempted to drag my feet a bit just to see if I could learn more about the project. However, bravado won out over caution and even before they finished their spiel I interrupted with “Sure. No problem. What can I do for you?” At the time I suspected that it had something to do with the upcoming visit of a Russian colleague of mine, V. M.Strutinsky. Maybe they wanted me to plant a bug in his luggage or feed him “misinformation”.

They told me that some training (testing) would be required before the actual nature of the task could be revealed, and that I should put my affairs in order and prepare for about one month’s absence. They clearly had been anticipating my agreement because a lot of machinery was already in place. I was told to expect an invitation to visit a nuclear research center in Germany. I was to fast track it through the laboratory administration where I was working, make all my travel plans and fly to Germany.

When I got to the airport five days later I was met in the waiting area by another agent who asked to see my ticket and passport, which she kept! Then we boarded with the first class passengers. Things were looking up. Well, not exactly. Just before we entered the plane she spoke to one of the flight attendants, and we exited the ramp down the steep stairs that the ground attendants use and she passed me on to what looked like a baggage handler. He motioned me to join him on one of those small tractor like vehicles that are used to move baggage wagons, and off we went.

At this point it became clear that I had completely underestimated the upcoming assignment. I felt a wave of excitement and anticipation pass over me. In later life I came to associate this feeling with the decision to hoist a spinnaker even when there was clearly too much wind. I’d guess that “base jumping” must produce a similar effect.

Maybe this is a good time to backup a bit and look at how we came to this point. Most of what I’m about to recount leaked out during the training or I’ve made educated guesses. It all started when the Soviet Union launched a huge spy satellite with dangerously good photographic resolution capabilities. As often happens in these cases, we couldn’t complain about it without compromising our sources. Any attack on it would be an act of war and unthinkable. It was badly destabilizing and something had to be done. These are not easy decisions but it was finally decided to attempt a “stealth” attack that had a good chance going undetected but that would none the less render the satellite ineffective. Quite a bit was known about the design. For example, it was known that some of the critical components were shielded so that they could withstand micro-meteorite bombardment and even solar proton excursions. It would be difficult to disable. But it had a soft spot in that the security shields were concentrated on the earth facing side. The back of the satellite was undefended, so we could sneak up on it from above.

One of the NASA-DOD contractors had been developing an “anti-satellite”  defence system that utilized new and existing stealth technology and they were eager to give it a try on what looked like an easy target. It consisted of a “A Task Module” that was about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. The engineers called it “the bug”. There was a detachable “Manned Maneuvering Unit” for the pilot, and when it moved away the ATM looked more like a convertible Beetle with the top down.

The MMU was bigger than the maneuverable spacesuit outfits that you see photos of, because it wasn’t tethered and was designed for fairly long range independent activity. It was shaped sort of like a computer mouse. There was space for a pilot and folding arms for performing tasks requiring dexterity. Otherwise it was packed with computer and communications systems and fuel for the thrusters. Both of these components were distinguished by cutting edge stealth technology. The shapes that I have described suggest rounded egg like appearance, but actually they looked more like cut gemstones covered with facets. There was almost no metal used in the construction. They were made of plastic, fiberglass and various composite materials. I was told that they had almost no radar signature. What little return there was would be erratic and blend in with the background noise.

Since the astronaut program in the US was known to be infiltrated it was not going to be possible to assign one of the existing cadre of pilots to this project. Their absence would be noticed. So a search was mounted, using a number of government databases some of which don’t officially exist. They wanted someone from outside the system that had the necessary skills. One search was for a high enough level security clearance. At one point I had had a clearance that didn’t even have a name, so I showed up on that list. Another search was for someone, a PhD Physicist for example, who could understand and employ the flood of information involved in orbital dynamics. I was on that list. Then there was kinesthetic
awareness. Since I had competed in springboard diving, had trained with the Penn State gym team and had metals from tramboline competitions, I was on that list as well. There was another list having roughly to do with psychological factors deemed essential for the task. (I don’t want to go into it.) I was on that list. Finally, there was the fact that I could ordered to go on if I decided to back out.

Not to say that there weren’t many people on these lists. However, only a select few were on all the lists. In the final filtering things like physical and psychological fitness entered as did family considerations. I was really single at the time. And my brother had apparently painted a glowing picture of my abilities, along the lines of “the crazier the better”.

So back to the main thread of the story. We were on a baggage tractor at the airport. It ended up at a rather small unmarked private jet. Four or five hours later we landed at an airbase and taxied into a big hanger before unloading. I didn’t see much daylight for the next week or so. In fact I think that they twisted my time sense around so that I was sleeping during the day and most of the training took place at night. That meant that the normal operating crews at many of the facilities were unaware that the program was in progress.

The training was wonderful. I’ve never worked so hard in my life. I had people around me pushing all the time. Not like in boot camp, but friendly and supportive. I remember once being too tired to lift my arms to eat and someone had to make me something to drink. There was an interesting pattern. At the beginning of an exercise it was all physical but as I started to tire the level of decision making and problem solving went up and up. Finally, at the end, I’d burn out physically and mentally at about the same time.

The training was mostly physical. I already knew a lot of the physics, so the mental training had mostly to do with ATM and satellite familiarization and drills on emergency procedures designed to automate certain responses and reduce reaction times. We spent a lot of time on a specially equipped “vomit comet” and in a huge under water pool that was used to teach weightlessness.

Some of the insiders had misgivings about the brevity of the training, but there was a launch window that wouldn’t wait and a launch vehicle already sitting on the pad at Vandenberg.

Toward the end the training took on a dark feeling since we were practicing for end game strategies that would get the job done even in the event of unforeseen problems that would make it into a one way trip.

The big day arrived in a flash. I had breakfast in Texas (special no bulk no residue) and by the afternoon I was solidly locked in waiting for someone to push the …....5,4,3,2,1 button. No straps or belts, since the MMU was so small the “pilot cavity” had been formed by pouring in foam around a dummy with my dimensions. I didn’t move again for more than 12 hours.

The Russian satellite was in a relatively low polar orbit with an orbital period of about 1.5 hours. Because the earth is spinning along underneath these orbits there are roughly eight separate tracks that lie under the satellite and some of these pass over the US and can not be seen from Russia. It was our plan to insert the ATM above the satellite orbit and then let the satellite catch up. (The higher a satellite the slower is it’s ground speed.) There was a noisy phony satellite inserted at a lower altitude to justify the launch and divert attention.

It worked like a charm. We were basically invisible to Russian surveillance and the distance was slowly closing. I had visual contact at 5 miles, so I separated the MMU and went in for the kill. Pretty dramatic language for what actually happened.

It had been decided, at the last minute, that damage to the satellite would give us away. So my task was to degrade the satellite performance in some subtle way. The solution the “big brains” came up with was a stroke of genius in my opinion. The MMU was equipped with a little spray nozzle on the end of a thin flexible tube that I used to paint a thin film on each of the lenses of the cameras that were aimed down toward the earth. This film consisted of an organic substance that would slowly darken with time. It would be weeks before they noticed any change. The whole job took about 10 minutes so I had time to spare and since the MMU was filming everything I backed off and got some better camera angles. In retrospect, things might have gone quite a bit differently if I had just headed straight back to the ATM.

As I turned away and began accelerating to move the orbit up there was a sudden sharp pain in the middle of my back that felt like someone had pushed a hot needle through me from behind. My first thought, since I had my back to the satellite, was that I had triggered some sort of bobby trap and I was being attacked. I hit the manual override and made a hard burn for home. No sense saving fuel if someone is shooting at you. A sweet female voice was giving me a list of medical options prominent among which were pain killers and coagulating agents. At first I thought I was going to make it but my reflexes were slowing down and the injected adrenaline and other uppers weren’t doing the job. The last thing I remember was the ATM approaching (probably too fast).

Apparently we came together hard but good enough to do the job. In the absence of any commands from me the ATM started the reentry profile. This was not a simple thing since we had to back away from the satellite and wait until we were not visable from Russia to initiate the reentry burn. 

I had not been informed ahead of time about the possibility of ground control helping because it was a delicate business and they didn’t want to have me yelling”Help!” But they were able check orbit parameters and figure out where I was going to come down. The original plan was to come down in the Caribbean where a fleet of US ships was (conveniently) conducting exercises. Because of the rough reentry I came down nearer to Flordia and even though there was a scramble to get under the ATM I ended up spending about half an hour in the water before being picked up by a Coast Guard buoy tender. Since they were not authorized to open the capsule another hour passed before a helicopter showed up to transfer the capsule to an aircraft carrier where there was a welcoming committee.

It was another 10 hours or so until they decided to wake me up. I had been put to sleep by the medical program once it decided that I wasn’t doing anything useful. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as beautiful as the battleship grey walls of that operating room, but I did feel bad that I had missed all the drama of the reentry prosess.


They were only able to find some tiny cinder like chips in the wound (and some plastic from the MMU shell.) The MMU canopy had a tiny clean hole melted through it, so the missile was probably a micro-meteorite that I just managed to get in the way of. The hole in me was a little bigger because they were hunting around for pieces. Subsequently I have been telling people, even my Dermatologist, that it was a melanoma and that I am lucky to be alive. Part of that is true. Even though the story is something that I just made up.

Visit to Krakow

One evening during a visit to Krakow I was strolling with a friend in the old town square. In the north east corner of the square is the St. Mary's Basilica, a Brick Gothic church built in the early 13th century, famous for the hourly trumpet signal played from the top of the taller of the two towers. We entered just as the service was concluding and stood in the entryway as people began streaming out. (There weren’t that many.) I thought to turn and go but something held me there as the echoing sounds of the departing parishioners began to fade.

The central part of the cathedral was dimly lit by large candles and, as we stood there, I could see that they were being extinguished one by one. Slowly the distant darkness moved in our direction. I tried again, but just as I mustered my resolve to turn and leave the soaring soprano sounds of a woman’s voice singing “Ave Maria” fixed me to the spot. I couldn’t tell where the sound was from other than the vast empty space of the nave that was becoming progressively darker.

As the singing came to an end, the last few candles were extinguished by an old bent over figure dressed in hooded medieval attire and carrying a snuffer on a wrought iron staff. (Perhaps my mind later added these embellishments. But, I swear that this is as I remember it.) He had a cord around his waist from which there hung an iron ring with a dozen or so ancient looking keys.

Without speaking he began to herd us toward the door. One candle remained in the entryway, and there was still a faint glow high up inside the church itself. As we started to back toward the door the first few bars of Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D” on the church organ echoed through the church and the low note at the end of the first passage shook the building and froze all three of us in our tracks. I’m not sure I was even breathing until after the music ended nine or ten minutes later and we were thrown back into the world of reality. We looked at each other. Had that really happened?

I don’t remember leaving the church or hearing the door close behind us or even if there were steps down to the street. All I can recall is that it was late, the square was empty and it was time to head back to the hotel.

The Eagle and the Kolea

It was sunny and warm and the old eagle had drifted off to sleep on a big branch high above the ground. He was big even for his species and a bit grey around the edges. He had had a long full life, he had done it all. There was no aspect of being an eagle that he had not accomplished with room to spare. Some of these accomplishments had accumulated over the years and some (acts of bravery, for example) were ancient history by now. So, a nap in the sun (while always nice) was feeling especially good on this particular day.

Startled awake by a chatter of chirps, he looked down on a cocky little kolea asserting her territorial prerogatives against a flock of little songbirds who, apparently, were unclear on the concept of territory. They would hop into the air at her headlong rush only to land again a few feet away. Finally, they wandered off seemingly at random.

In the eagle’s mind a thought was forming, “Strictly speaking, my little friend, this isn’t your territory either.” Without thinking he rose up to his full height and flapped his wings hard while continuing to hold to the branch. The kolea didn’t even look up. Up he rose again, and took two solid strokes with his wings while still holding on. Still no response. A little piqued, he pushed off from the branch without thinking whether he would have the kolea for dinner or just give it a good scare.

A fraction of a second from impact she turned, saw him coming, smiled and winked.
The eagle braked hard to a stop 6-8 feet away and hovered for one extra stroke of his wings before gliding off looking for a thermal to lift him back to his branch in the tree.

He had just had a serious shock. “What the hell is going on?” he demanded of himself. What indeed? The old eagle had just experienced a rush of emotions that he had not felt in years. (If ever.) He was IN LOVE. In a situation where such feelings could hardly be more inappropriate.

It might have been a heart attack. Some of his friends were already gone. True, there was some pain around the place where his heart was, and his pulse was was up, but everything was dominated by a spreading warmth and a feeling of elation. He shook his head hard, trying to clear the cobwebs. Then again, also to no effect. He glanced around to see if this aberration of his was being observed and then looked down at the kolea who was absent mindedly puttering about doing whatever koleas do. Without moving a feather he felt as if an updraft had lifted him from his perch and sent him hurtling into the sky. Finally, he pushed off and headed for a nearby stream and after that he settled for the night into a dark corner of a small grove.

The next day he was back on his perch filled once again with the feelings of  the previous day and in addition a growing frustration over the fact that it was not likely that there was going to be much communication between him and this new friend of his. He did a lot of shifting from foot to foot and fluffing his feathers and letting them settle back. It was going to be a long day.

Then in the early afternoon the sky darkened and the clouds began to rumble with the impending arrival of a serious looking thunderstorm. Little bursts of cold wind began to build in intensity providing a taste of what was to come. Then a few sprinkles began to fall and the flash of lightning and crack of thunder ushered in a serious downpour. The kolea ran this way and that but there really was no place to hide. In contrast the eagle just hunkered down and tightened his feathers around him. Of course, an isolated branch on the tallest tree at the edge of a meadow was not the safest place to be in a lightning storm, but the eagle hadn’t given much thought to such things in the past and it didn’t occur to him to be concerned. But his heart went out to the kolea. What to do?

With a major effort of will (eagles are really uncomfortable on the ground) he pushed off his perch and hovered down to the meadow not far from the kolea, who was by now looking pretty sad and bedraggled. He stood as tall as he could and spread his wings. It took a few moments for it to sink in on her that this was the only shelter in sight, and a place to get in out of the rain.
With some serious hesitation (two steps forward one step back) she made her way under one of his wings being careful not to touch him. She was going to pretend that she hadn’t noticed that it was an eagle and that she might have mistaken him for a bush or a big leaf.

By this time the eagle was getting tired of standing so tall and he settled down a bit, and the kolea settled down, and the eagle settled down, and then just before the kolea nodded off to sleep she snuggled up against him for warmth and he pulled his wing tight around her.

The rain stopped during the night and a bright sunny morning found our unlikely couple beginning to stir. The kolea had slept straight through. The eagle had resolved to remain alert, but as a matter of fact, he had drifted off at some point. The eagle was first awake and despite the cold and stiffness in his old bones he was reluctant to disturb the kolea. He probably realized that this was as good as it was ever going to get.

And that is just the way it was. When the kolea woke with a start she bounded from the eagle’s side, never looked back, and began bustling around the meadow, doing whatever kolea do in the morning after a heavy rain. It took the eagle some minutes and considerable stomping about and wing flapping to get himself warmed up enough to get off the ground. Once in the air he found some lift and was circling back toward his perch when a cold, hard shudder passed through his body and his vision began to blur. The eagle was crying. Another circle in the sky took him higher still and he began to get control of himself. This was a lot of new stuff for an old guy to handle.

The kolea had forgotten instantly. The eagle would never forget. Another circle in the sky took him higher still. Finally he was just a speck in the sky, and then gone. Some say that the eagle slipped over a mountain pass into the next valley where he met up with others of his own kind and settled into a comfortable old age. Others maintain that this kind of love sets aside the usual laws of nature that have to do with space and time and that he is still circling slowly upward. Even now.

Some say that when rain falls from a cloudless sky, “It is the eagle’s tears.”