I was playing alone, for an hour or so, and then a group of tourists, two Japanese, an Indian, and two young French girls crowded the table.

         I nodded at a Pit Boss, to indicate I didn’t mind, and he let them be.

         I ordered vodka and orange juice, and a pack of King Edward cigars.

        I decided to stand on a sixteen, against the dealer’s ten.

        One of the French girls looked at me, and then nodded at my cards.

       ‘I thought you were supposed to hit a sixteen, if the dealer has a ten’ she asked.   

       “It all depends on what your sixteen is” I said “Yes, if you have a ten and a six, hit, but if it has either a four or five in it, you stand, mainly because you’ve already taken two cards out of play, that might have helped you, so you stand against a ten.  

       ‘Anytime you get a four or five, in a hand totaling sixteen, but not necessarily both together, you should stand against a dealer’s ten, but only a ten.

        “Basic Strategy is just that” I said “Basic, but you can tweak it, quite a lot, and get more out of it. For example, when the dealer has to stand on a soft seventeen, and deals six decks or less, you should hit a twelve against a dealer’s four, but Basic Strategy tells you to stand, if your twelve is made up of a seven and a five, eight and a four, or nine and a three, but if your twelve is a ten and a two, you should hit”

          “Why?” she asked.

          “Because, if you have, say, a seven and a five, the ten and the two might still be there to hurt you, and, as you already have the seven and five, which might have helped you, you stand, okay?”

Why do people fear death? Because the ego, the self, the little me, the alien entity, that has been in control of their lives for so long, and they have always believed to be who they are, is what is really dying, losing control, and it is afraid.

          Only the ego experiences loss, emotional pain, anxiety, and fear; the Self, the essential being does not. We weep at funerals, not for the person who has died; they know no more suffering, no loss; we weep for ourselves, because we have lost someone, and we fear our own death, not because it is the unknown but because it is the one time we lose everything, all at the same time, or, rather, the ego loses everything.

         Only the ego, which clings to things; possessions, desires, ambitions, past and future, and is the only cause of human suffering and misery, is afraid of death. The Self was never born, does not change, and will never die.

         The illusion of birth, change, and death, a physical body in a material world, and an apparently objective Universe, is simply a constantly sustained stream of images thrown by the mind on a screen we call reality, a reflection, in a broken mirror, of the fragmented nature of the mind.  

         We create the world in which we live, and it is pointless blaming whatever is in it for the way it is. It is the way it is because you are the way you are. You, alone, are responsible for the wars and conflict, the poverty and human suffering, all the ills of humanity and the injustice, as you, alone, are responsible for whatever happens when you dream.

         Wake up, and the dream ends, the people and events, good and bad, with which you populated your dream world, cease to be; they had no past, no future, no desires, no joys, no pain, no drama, until you endowed them with such things, and even the person you believed yourself to be, doing what you imagined you were doing, is seen as illusionary.

          Is it, then, so hard to believe what you have seemingly always seen as reality is no more than a creation of your own mind, a reflection of your own anxiety, stress, and fear?  

The French girl smiled at me, and sighed.

         ‘I’m always losing …’ she said.

         ‘It’s because you don’t play basic strategy properly …’ I told her ‘And, like most other folk, you bet the wrong amount at the wrong time.”

          ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

          ‘Let’s say three other players at the table are all dealt twenty, but you get a blackjack, and the dealer gets nineteen. Then, let’s say, you get a second blackjack, the other players, again get twenty, and the dealer gets another nineteen. Now, how much should you bet on the next hand?”

          “More?” she asked “Because I can afford it, and I might win the next hand too?”  

          “So, what if we reversed those two hands, and the dealer gives you two nineteen’s and he gets the two blackjacks instead? That means, you, along with the other players, have lost every hand so far, right? Should that make you bet any more or less on the third hand?”

           “Less ...” she said

           “Wrong” I said “Everybody’s confidence gets a little boost with a win, and comes down when they lose. They win a couple of hands, and bet more. They lose a few, they bet less. Its human nature, but noticing the cards they won or lost on, and much less all the other cards already in plain sight on the table, never seems to occur to them.

          “The fact is, how much you should bet has absolutely nothing to do with whether you’re winning or losing. Whether you had the two blackjacks, or the two nineteen’s, all those cards have come out of the same shoe, no matter who gets them, and that’s what affects what hands you get next.

          “In blackjack, high cards help the player and low cards help the dealer, because of the uneven rules of the game. You win three to two on a blackjack; the dealer wins even money on his. You get to double your bet after having already seen your first two cards, the dealer can't. You can split a pair of Aces for two elevens, and the dealer has to hit a soft twelve. The more high cards there are, the more these rules help you.

            “On the other hand, the dealer must hit a sixteen, even when you stand on a twelve” I said “The more small cards there are, the more hands he'll make for himself, and the cards that got eliminated on those first two rounds puts the players at a disadvantage. Their win or lose outcomes were purely incidental and had nothing to do with that. What started out as a half percent built-in house edge, if you play Basic Strategy properly, is now over two per cent, so raising your bet is wrong.

            “So, even if you can’t, or don’t want to, count cards, you really need to stop sizing your bets according to your wins or losses, and get tuned into noticing when lots of high or low cards have already been dealt, then you'll be moving your bets up and down according to something that actually matters” I looked at Amy “How hard is that to do? You can see the cards already on the table. That’s a good enough indicator of whether you should bet big or small, or even just walk away from the table, right?”      

Carl Jung once had a conversation with a Native American Chief who said that white people have tense faces, staring eyes, and a cruel demeanor.

          He said ‘They are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something. They are uneasy and restless. We don’t know what they want. We think they are mad’.

          You don’t know what you fucking want, either.

          You are all mad.

          Humans have slaughtered over one hundred million fellow human beings in the twentieth century alone, not to mention all the emotional and physical pain, cruelty and torture, poverty and misery, you inflict on each other, and on yourself, on a daily basis, and all based on the insane belief that the end justifies the means.

          Ideologies, religious beliefs, and political agendas, have been used to murder countless millions, and irrevocably damage the planet on which you depend for your survival, and that’s not fucking crazy?

         You are mentally ill, totally fucking insane.

         I don’t like you, and I certainly don’t fucking trust you; I’d be crazy, too, if I did, and you think I’m fucking mad. Of course you do, because I’m just a reflection of your own insanity.

         And, because you are fucking insane, you don’t want to change; in fact you hate change; it’s a threat, but you don’t know what, it’s fearful, but you don’t know why, its disturbing, but you don’t know how, and you’d much rather not be disturbed, not woken up.

         You discover who you are by finding out what you are not. You are not the body, you are not the mind, including the emotions, you are not the dysfunctional ego, the self, the little me, that has, so far, been in control, running your life, and, when all that has been settled, once and for all, who you are will simply be there, like the morning sun, in all its naked beauty.

         That’s all there is to it, as simple as that; just one question: Who Am I?

         There is nothing else to do, nothing to believe in, no faith needed, no philosophy to study, no religion to join, only this one idea, I am. Stay with this, and, sooner or later, the illusionary self will vanish, and the world, and all that is in it, and what happens, will reveal itself for what it is, simply a creation of the mind.     

The French girl had two Kings, against the dealer’s three up card.

           ‘Don’t even think about splitting them  ...’ I warned her.

            She stood, and the dealer got two sixes, then a seven, and busted.

           ‘Had you split, you would have caught those two sixes and probably busted, losing both hands, instead of winning one …’ I said, then ‘Now double your bet and play two spots ...’

          ‘Why?’ she asked.

          ‘Just do it …’ I told her ‘I’ll explain later …’

           She upped her five hundred rupee bet to one thousand rupees, on two spots, and got a blackjack on one spot, and a twenty on the other.

           The dealer got a seventeen, and stood.

           The girl squealed, and kissed me on the cheek         

           ‘Now bet the minimum ... on one spot’ I told her.

           She bet two hundred rupees.

           She got a six, against the dealer’s ten, then a Jack, then a seven, and busted.

           She looked at me.

          ‘How do you do that?’ she asked ‘Are you psychic or something?’

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