[EVA] How do you "activate" ATF? (was: A.T fields and satan)

[Vilhelm Sjöberg]

On Tue, Feb 01, Ebj wrote:

> > a.k.a. Projecting ATF's. The practicing point brings up another question,
> > how do the pilots form their ATF's in their Eva's?  Do they just
> > concentrate?
> 
> Yes, they do concentrate.

This seems like a relevant question - how _do_ they do it? We hear a lot
of "AT field, hashin!", but the actual mechanism is never explained. If
the pilots have to "concentrate", why did no-one explain that to Shinji
before sending him away him in the first episode? Can anybody do it,
just like that, without any prior training required? Consider those
ancient ninja fireball techniques (a close equivalent, imho :) - they
take years of devoted study to master.

In episode 23, Rei makes a comment and touches some form of control,
which is then followed by Maya's statement that the AT field has
reversed. That would seem to indicate that there is a "technical
component". (But it was a while since I saw the seen, so I might have got it
wrong).

Wandering off a bit, the Dummy Plug Proof seems to imply the the AT
field that surrounds the Eva does not even belong to the pilot, but to
the "extra" soul. That would make this concentration thing even more
problematic, perhaps.

An argument against the "just press the button" hypothesis would be that
the control center back at Nerv does not seem to have any control over
the fields, they simply announce them.

-- 
-Vilhelm Sjöberg   A monk asked Joshu: "Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?"
 vilhelm at home.se   Joshu answered: "Mu."