The Swindle this writing is about (the truly greatest Swindle of all time) is one that infects each and every one of us.
And the author does not exclude himself from the sweep of this broad statement.
Indeed, he specifically and emphatically includes himself within it.
As this writing attempts to communicate, we all have intimations of a clearer, truer and better reality than the one in which we find ourselves. And yet we all, to one degree or another, and each in our own way, insist upon avoiding, ignoring and even suppressing those intimations, thereby denying full (any?) validity to the benefits their underlying truths hold for us.
And the best personal example I have of this avoidance, suppression and denial (which is the mechanism by which the Great Swindle operates) is myself.
I was as deeply enmired in the Swindle as anyone can possibly be, prior to the first edition of this writing flooding through me and into a typewriter keyboard. *
And even after that first edition came into being, I remained enmired in my own version of the Swindle far more than I would prefer to have to acknowledge. (But I do have to acknowledge it, at least to myself, unless I prefer to choose to remain stuck in the Swindle at that same depth, which I do not).
Without going into the 'gory' (irrelevant? boring?) details of how and why I continued in my own self-Swindle, to the extent I did, despite the message of this writing having come through me and sitting right there in front of me, I will simply say that a line in a Kris Kristofferson song sums it up nicely - 'Taking every wrong direction on the lonely way back home'.
And even today, as I author this foreword to the now completed major revision of this writing in 2003, I am aware that I am still caught up in aspects of the Swindle this writing is about, in ways I am not fully clear on. I know it's happening. I'm just not clear on specifically where and in what manner. (By the way, this 'major' revision is not one of substance. The original concepts remain unchanged. Its only purposes are simply to make the presentation hopefully more 'readable', and to incorporate some relevant updates).
Why am I making this type of personal acknowledgements in the foreword to this particular writing?
Because, given the fundamental nature of the Great Swindle this writing is about, to fail to do so could easily lead to yet more of the very same Swindle it is intended to stop. (If this writing accomplishes its purpose, by the time you finish reading it you will understand what I mean by this).
And with that, I now cast the seeds of the message of this writing to the cosmic winds of cyberspace, and to whatever fertile patches of soil in which they may implant themselves.
* ('Flooding through me' is as good a description as any of how this came to be written. And because of that, and because of my understanding of what the ultimate source of such a manner of generation is, I lay no personal claim to this writing, or any benefits which may accompany it. As this writing itself will explain, its source is common to us all, and no one of us can make any personal claim to it, or its benefits, without, in the very act of making such a claim, directly engaging in the very Swindle this writing is about. I have copyrighted this writing, but only for the purpose of foreclosing the possibility of someone else making such a Swindlous personal claim to it.)