06.029 If you are formless, the most penetrating spies...

[sonshi]

If you are formless, the most penetrating spies will not be able to discern you, or the wisest counsels will not be able to do calculations against you.

[BingFa]

And this stands to reason because if one's forces are formless, you are indiscernable and your presence and plans are are incalculable.

That said, it is exceedingly difficult to achieve perfect formlessness in the modern age.

For instance, it is possible to sit in a room thousands of miles away from a potential adversary and war game possible scenarios in a concerted effort to try and figure out the intentions of a potential adversary.

And these intentions and the enemies' likely courses of action (COA) can partly be surmised from the national interests of the potential adversary. Because when all is said and done, most nation states will act and react so as to further enhaance their national interests.

There are instances where through effective use of spying, one side may think they are formless but may in reality be anything but formless. The FBI's turncoat Robert Hansen and the CIA's Aldrich Ames and the Walker Brothers are two recent examples.

True formlessness is inversely proportional to the number of people in the know. Beyond a critical point, formlessness is lost as it gives rise to predictible patterns in human behaviour. Recognizing this, an old Chinese strategem takes advantage of this fact and suggests that the best place to hide something is right out in the open. ;)

BingFa:cool:

[Cardinal999]

If the opposition do not know of you. Then, they cannot see or heard of you. They do not know what you are preparing against them.

To becoming the sleeping dragon (shhhhhhhhhhhhhh), the wise strategist hides behind the shadows and sometimes in the Ninth Level of Heaven speaking softly to his team.

And he always carries a sharp sword.

[gonzo]

Maintain the ability to CHANGE. Set, solid objects can be probed and weaknesses can be found. Forces that are able to change are not.

Gonzo

[SunZulu]

Sun Tzu said, "If you are formless, the most penetrating spies will not be able to discern you, or the wisest counsels will not be able to do calculations against you."

An army that has no silhouette and leaves no foot prints can not be measured and its abilities can not be calculated. Like water it is solid, liquid and vapor. It can be unassuming as a cloud or as destructive as a typhoon.

[caliph]

Competitors gain major insight into your strategy either by what you announce in public, or through their spies in your organization or by looking at the pattern of your involvement. Now a formlessness can be achieved only by tricking the opposition with mutually conflicting and confusing moves which makes no sense at all to them. So while they take you lightly and think you as as madman, you know what they are up to.

[sifu Polderman]

Originally posted by sonshi
If you are formless, the most penetrating spies will not be able to discern you, or the wisest counsels will not be able to do calculations against you.

What being formless is about did I already point out in my other postings.

In this case Sun Tzu adds the variable of information gathering about your position by the opponent. Sun Tzu's stresses a lot on the importance of misleading the opponent. Never show your true position, your true strength, your true behaviour so your opponent will not be able to find the right strategy to fight you. Doing so, he will have to react every time you move, eventhough he doesn't understand why you move like that. (He must never understand why you do the things you do.)

Again it is about the sequence of positions, the process of Hsing, your opponent (and in most cases even your own organization) can only understand afterwards why you moved the way you did; afterwards they can see why you did win and the opponent did not.

[pawn11]

If you are formless, the most penetrating spies will not be able to discern you, or the wisest counsels will not be able to do calculations against you.

How does this apply in the world of work? I would think that it would mean not calling too much attention to yourself at work and not becoming intertwined in office politics.

I also think that it means not letting people know more about than they have lest it be used as a weapon against you. It's very tempting to play office politics games but my experience in this type of gambling has led me to believe that I must never risk what I cannot afford to lose. Ie: my job.

In a small town where jobs are scarce even poor ones. A person has too be both completely subseriant to the demands of the employ and always on the out look for something better. If only as a means of survival.

pawn11

[MonteChristo]

I am not quite sure if formless as explained by dictionaries is this what Sun Tzu thought about. Formless is explained by: having no physical existence or having no shape or lacking order.

I am more convinced that he thought about skills of being flexible, being able to adapt easily and most importantly to change quickly. If you can change quickly then the spies and counselors used to provide information about you have to deal with one challenge.

They might provide outdated information and counsel. The information has certain characteristics. Precision, cost and time when it was acquired are some of them. Even if the spies gathered the information you can make it worth much less if you have changed the formation of your army since then.

Preferably you would change the formation just before the strike when your opponent already made their planning and is committed to certain decisions.

Again we are back to one of the central points of Sun Tzu philosophy. Deception. You can use it to suggest certain formation before the battle and change it just before it. Obviously you would not do it every time the same way.

There are common maneuvers and uncommon. If uncommon maneuvers are used frequently then they become common ones, as they can be predicted.

[Truthseeker]

Originally posted by sonshi
If you are formless, the most penetrating spies will not be able to discern you, or the wisest counsels will not be able to do calculations against you.

Regardless of the extent of our enemy's plans for attacking us, his end result will be failure if our plan are indiscernible. As I pointed out in the last passage, if we offer nothing to attack how does our opponent gain victory over us? How does he even go about constructing a plan of attack?

[Bushranger]

If you are formless, the most penetrating spies will not be able to discern you, or the wisest counsels will not be able to do calculations against you.

Plot within plot ...

The Sage General does more than merely appear formless, the game is greater than that of mere deception. For deception implies underlying truth, and the most penetrating of spies may see this and the wisest of councels foresee it. Deception implies specific intent and this can be countered.

Thus, the Sage General becomes formless, it is neither act nor guise. The intent is to win, the position, capable of achieving this, yet adaption and adaptibility are part of the very structure of command, not mere ephemera.

Truly formless, aware of possibility and potential (of all that can be done), the Sage General is invisible to opponents and his plans unforeseen.

[dej2]

"If it is formless, then even the deepest spy cannot discern it or the wise make plans against it."

Again, the underlying purpose is to gain the element of surprise. To actually master being formless would not only encompass keeping your plans a secret but, If I could read in between the lines it would to be to, reveal false intentions. With misinformation a spy may not look further into investigating your real plans, with misinformation the wise cannot make effective plans against you.

While entering the field of battle you can divert the enemy's attention to other areas, dragging sticks behind a few horses to make the enemy believe your troops are traveling in a false direction, or having cooking fires burning while your men are positioning for attack. All acts of being formless.

[Vesting]

Originally posted by sonshi
If you are formless, the most penetrating spies will not be able to discern you, or the wisest counsels will not be able to do calculations against you.
When form and deceit change more quickly and dramatically than the enemy can comprehend, then even internal enemy spies won't able to figure out what's really going on, and neither will the wisest counsels be able to help the enemy's commander to plot his actions.

[Saro]

In order to entertain a thought about anything, you must first have some perception of it to consider. By denying opponents any knowledge of the existence of your plans or capabilities, you prevent them from even beginning to consider how to interrupt them.

It would be analogous to trying to prepare your home for a guest you didn't know was coming. Food, entertainment and sleeping quarters are all considerations that need a specific guest in mind to plan, as no two guests are the same.

[Bubishi]

Originally posted by sonshi
If you are formless, the most penetrating spies will not be able to discern you, or the wisest counsels will not be able to do calculations against you. '

If you master the Tao of deciet, then even the best spies will not be able to see through their deception. They will mearly have a vague idea of what is going on and report false and incorrect information.

Incorrect information can not be used, thus it is formless.

All you have to do to encourage defeat is to provide incorrect information

[Yin]

If you are formless, the most penetrating spies will not be able to discern you, or the wisest counsels will not be able to do calculations against you.

of course they cant

they cant see you