The Teachings of Don Juan Matus

The Teachings of Don Juan

Carlos Castaneda (25 December 1925 – 27 April 1998) was a Peruvian-born American author. Starting with The Teachings of Don Juan in 1968, Castaneda wrote a series of books that describe his purported training in traditional Mesoamerican shamanism. His 12 books have sold more than 8 million copies in 17 languages. The books and Castaneda, who rarely spoke in public about his work, have been controversial for many years. Supporters claim the books are either true or at least valuable works of philosophy and descriptions of practices which enable an increased awareness. Critics have tended to claim that the books are works of fiction, citing what they see as their internal contradictions and Castaneda's description of a peyote culture that, to them, did not exist.

In his books, Castaneda narrated in first person what he claimed were his experiences under the tutelage of a Yaqui shaman named Don Juan Matus whom he met in 1960. Castaneda wrote that he was identified by Don Juan Matus as having the energetic configuration of a "nagual", who, if the spirit chose, could become a leader of a party of seers. He also used the term "nagual" to signify that part of perception which is in the realm of the unknown yet still reachable by man, implying that, for his party of seers, don Juan was in some way a connection to that unknown. Castaneda often referred to this unknown realm as nonordinary reality, which indicated that this realm was indeed a reality, but radically different from the ordinary reality experienced by human beings who are well engaged in everyday activities as part of their social conditioning.

“To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our
lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other.”

"A warrior takes responsibility for his acts, for the most trivial of acts. An average man acts out his thoughts, and never takes responsibility
for what he does.”

“I wanted to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short
for witnessing all the marvels of it.”

“Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy and vain. To be a warrior one needs to be light and fluid.”

“The internal dialogue is what grounds people in the daily world. The world is such and such or so and so, only because we talk to ourselves about
its being such and such and so and so. The passageway into the world of shamans opens up after the warrior has learned to shut off his internal
dialogue.”

“The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and
calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men,
while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.”

“The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.”

“Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is
good. If it doesn't, it is of no use.”

“A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting.”

“Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge. A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and
challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.”

“A warrior never worries about his fear.”

“We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye.”

“All paths are the same, leading nowhere. Therefore, pick a path with heart!”

“The only thing that is real is the being in you that is going to die.”

“When a warrior learns to stop the internal dialogue, everything becomes possible; the most far-fetched schemes become attainable.”

“A warrior thinks of death when things become unclear. The idea of death is the only thing that tempers our spirit.”

“A warrior acts as if he knows what he is doing, when in effect he knows nothing.”

“A warrior seeks to act rather than talk.”

####################################################################

1. One of the concepts is saving energy. Most of our energy is spent in the daily routines of life. Just getting through another day is all that most of us have energy for. We waste energy in everyday routines, such as always getting ready for work each day, the same way. We spend a lot of energy believing in our own self importance, Ego, and then defending it. To break these and other routines, Stalking, frees up energy, and this extra energy can then be redirected towards a greater awareness. The Toltec’s say that if we save enough energy, a door will open to an unknown side of ourselves, The Nagaul, a side that it is not possible to think or verbalize about,

2. All that we know as humans, and can describe with words, The Tonal, is a very small part of what actually exists. It is an island upon which we pass the whole of life. What lies beyond the borders of this island? It is an unfathomable mystery that cannot be understood verbally, but it can be witnessed, and experienced by anyone with enough energy. This side of ourselves is called The Nagaul. By integrating the known, The Tonal, with the unknown, The Nagual, a wholeness of self occurs. When an individual becomes whole, they recognize that the reality of the world is merely a matter of perception; their perception changes. The need to rescue and reintegration this side of ourselves into an everyday reality constitutes one of the most commonly reoccurring themes in the works of Carlos Castaneda.

3. The Toltec's believe the body to be a field of energy constantly affected by other fields of energy. Be they great, like the sun or earth, or smaller like our fellow human beings, they affect us accordingly. Don Juan taught Carlos that pieces of foreign energy can be left in our bodies by those we encounter during our life, affecting us for years. It’s important to regain our own energy left in the bodies of others, and to rid ourselves of the foreign energy inside ourselves. This energy holds us back, holds us under some dark spell because it interferes with our daily living.

Recapitulation is an exercise to recall, review, release, and recharge energy. It rids a person of assumptions and preconceptions. It frees locked energy and restores balance. The Toltec's believe the body to be a field of energy constantly affected by other fields of energy. The idea is that all of your experiences have been stored inside your energy fields. Recapitulation is remembering or more precisely, reviving events and experiences. It happens naturally at the moment of death. Some describe it as our life passing before our eyes. To do this, body remembering, of or own volition, restores our energy field.

4. There are techniques designed to de-structure the ego as well as our ordinary view of the world. These techniques are called Not Doings. They are actions foreign to our ordinary description of how the world works. Examples of this are walking backwards, learning to be aware in dreams, and gazing at the shadows of things, instead of the things themselves. This suspends our normal perceptions; then the world truly becomes a magical place.

The Teachings of Don Juan

I am going to teach you the secrets that make up the lot of a man of knowledge. You will have to make a very deep commitment because the training is long and arduous.
A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war, wide awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake, and whoever makes it will live to regret his steps.
When a man has fulfilled those four requisites there are no mistakes for which he will have to account; under such conditions his acts lose the blundering quality of a fool's acts. If such a man fails, or suffers a defeat, he will have lost only a battle, and there will be no pitiful regrets over that.
* * *

A man of knowledge is one who has followed truthfully the hardships of learning, a man who has, without rushing or without faltering, gone as far as he can in unraveling the secrets of power and knowledge. To become a man of knowledge one must challenge and defeat his four natural enemies.
When a man starts to learn, he is never clear about his objectives. His purpose is faulty; his intent is vague. He hopes for rewards that will never materialize for he knows nothing of the hardships of learning.
He slowly begins to learn--bit by bit at first, then in big chunks. And his thoughts soon clash. What he learns is never what he pictured, or imagined, and so he begins to be afraid. Learning is never what one expects. Every step of learning is a new task, and the fear the man is experiencing begins to mount mercilessly, unyieldingly. His purpose becomes a battlefield.
And thus he has stumbled upon the first of his natural enemies: fear! A terrible enemy--treacherous, and difficult to overcome. It remains concealed at every turn of the way, prowling, waiting. And if the man, terrified in its presence, runs away, his enemy will have put an end to his quest and he will never learn. He will never become a man of knowledge. He will perhaps be a bully, or a harmless, scared man; at any rate, he will be a defeated man. His first enemy will have put an end to his cravings.
It is not possible for a man to abandon himself to fear for years, then finally conquer it. If he gives in to fear he will never conquer it, because he will shy away from learning and never try again. But if he tries to learn for years in the midst of his fear, he will eventually conquer it because he will never have really abandoned himself to it.

Therefore he must not run away. He must defy his fear, and in spite of it he must take the next step in learning, and the next, and the next. He must be fully afraid, and yet he must not stop. That is the rule! And a moment will come when his first enemy retreats. The man begins to feel sure of himself. His intent becomes stronger. Learning is no longer a terrifying task.
When this joyful moment comes, the man can say without hesitation that he has defeated his first natural enemy. It happens little by little, and yet the fear is vanquished suddenly and fast. Once a man has vanquished fear, he is free from it for the rest of his life because, instead of fear, he has acquired clarity--a clarity of mind which erases fear. By then a man knows his desires; he knows how to satisfy those desires. He can anticipate the new steps of learning and a sharp clarity surrounds everything. The man feels that nothing is concealed.

And thus he has encountered his second enemy: Clarity! That clarity of mind, which is so hard to obtain, dispels fear, but also blinds. It forces the man never to doubt himself. It gives him the assurance he can do anything he pleases, for he sees clearly into everything. And he is courageous because he is clear, and he stops at nothing because he is clear. But all that is a mistake; it is like something incomplete. If the man yields to this make-believe power, he has succumbed to his second enemy and will be patient when he should rush. And he will fumble with learning until he winds up incapable of learning anything more. His second enemy has just stopped him cold from trying to become a man of knowledge. Instead, the man may turn into a buoyant warrior, or a clown. Yet the clarity for which he has paid so dearly will never change to darkness and fear again. He will be clear as long as he lives, but he will no longer learn, or yearn for, anything.

He must do what he did with fear: he must defy his clarity and use it only to see, and wait patiently and measure carefully before taking new steps; he must think, above all, that his clarity is almost a mistake. And a moment will come when he will understand that his clarity was only a point before his eyes. And thus he will have overcome his second enemy, and will arrive at a position where nothing can harm him anymore. This will not be a mistake. It will not be only a point before his eyes. It will be true power.
He will know at this point that the power he has been pursuing for so long is finally his. He can do with it whatever he pleases. His ally is at his command. His wish is the rule. He sees all that is around him. But he has also come across his third enemy: Power!

Power is the strongest of all enemies. And naturally the easiest thing to do is to give in; after all, the man is truly invincible. He commands; he begins by taking calculated risks, and ends in making rules, because he is a master.
A man at this stage hardly notices his third enemy closing in on him. And suddenly, without knowing, he will certainly have lost the battle. His enemy will have turned him into a cruel, capricious man, but he will never lose his clarity or his power.

A man who is defeated by power dies without really knowing how to handle it. Power is only a burden upon his fate. Such a man has no command over himself, and cannot tell when or how to use his power.

Once one of these enemies overpowers a man there is nothing he can do. It is not possible, for instance, that a man who is defeated by power may see his error and mend his ways. Once a man gives in he is through. If, however, he is temporarily blinded by power, and then refuses it, his battle is still on.

That means he is still trying to become a man of knowledge. A man is defeated only when he no longer tries, and abandons himself.

He has to come to realize that the power he has seemingly conquered is in reality never his. He must keep himself in line at all times, handling carefully and faithfully all that he has learned. If he can see that clarity and power, without his control over himself, are worse than mistakes, he will reach a point where everything is held in check. He will know then when and how to use his power. And thus he will have defeated his third enemy.

The man will be, by then, at the end of his journey of learning, and almost without warning he will come upon the last of his enemies: Old age! This enemy is the cruelest of all, the one he won't be able to defeat completely, but only fight away.

This is the time when a man has no more fears, no more impatient clarity of mind--a time when all his power is in check, but also the time when he has an unyielding desire to rest. If he gives in totally to his desire to lie down and forget, if he soothes himself in tiredness, he will have lost his last round, and his enemy will cut him down into a feeble old creature. His desire to retreat will overrule all his clarity, his power, and his knowledge.

But if the man sloughs off his tiredness, and lives his fate though, he can then be called a man of knowledge, if only for the brief moment when he succeeds in fighting off his last, invincible enemy. That moment of clarity, power, and knowledge is enough.

Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life. Only then will you know that any path is only a path and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary.
This question is one that only a very old man asks. Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long long paths, but I am not anywhere. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

Before you embark on any path ask the question: Does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it, and then you must choose another path. The trouble is nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path. A path without a heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy; it does not make you work at liking it.
I have told you that to choose a path you must be free from fear and ambition. The desire to learn is not ambition. It is our lot as men to want to know.

The path without a heart will turn against men and destroy them. It does not take much to die, and to seek death is to seek nothing.

For me there is only the traveling on the paths that have a heart, on any path that may have a heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge for me is to traverse its full length. And there I travel--looking, looking, breathlessly.

A Separate Reality

One has to reduce to a minimum all that is unnecessary in one's life.

Once you decide something put all your petty fears away. Your decision should vanquish them. I will tell you time and time again, the most effective way to live is as a warrior. Worry and think before you make any decision, but once you make it, be on your way free from worries or thoughts; there will be a million other decisions still awaiting you. That's the warrior's way.
A warrior thinks of his death when things become unclear. The idea of death is the only thing that tempers our spirit.

To be a warrior you have to be crystal clear.

My acts are sincere but they are only the acts of an actor because everything I do is controlled folly. Everything I do in regard to myself and my fellow men is folly, because nothing matters.
Certain things in your life matter to you because they're important; your acts are certainly important to you, but for me, not a single thing is important any longer, neither my acts nor the acts of any of my fellow men. I go on living though, because I have my will . Because I have tempered my will throughout my life until it's neat and wholesome and now it doesn't matter to me that nothing matters. My will controls the folly of my life.

Once a man learns to see he finds himself alone in the world with nothing but folly. Your acts, as well as the acts of your fellow men in general, appear to be important to you because you have learned to think they are important.
We learn to think about everything, and then we train our eyes to look as we think about the things we look at. We look at ourselves already thinking that we are important. And therefore we've got to feel important! But then when a man learns to see , he realizes that he can no longer think about the things he looks at, and if he cannot think about what he looks at everything becomes unimportant. Everything is equal and therefore unimportant.
We need to look with our eyes to laugh. When our eyes see , everything is so equal that nothing is funny. My laughter, as well as everything I do is real but it also is controlled folly because it is useless; it changes nothing and yet I still do it.

One must always choose the path with heart in order to be at one's best, perhaps so one can always laugh.

You don't understand me now because of your habit of thinking as you look and thinking as you think. By "thinking" I mean the constant idea that we have of everything in the world. Seeing dispels that habit and until you learn to see you will not really understand what I mean.

Our lot as men is to learn. I have learned to see and I tell you that nothing really matters. A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting.

A man of knowledge chooses a path with heart and follows it; and then he looks and rejoices and laughs; and then he sees and knows. He knows that his life will be over altogether too soon; he knows that he, as well as everybody else, is not going anywhere; he knows, because he sees , that nothing is more important than anything else. In other words, a man of knowledge has no honor, no dignity, no family, no name, no country, but only life to be lived, and under these circumstances his only tie to his fellow men is his controlled folly. Thus a man of knowledge endeavors, and sweats, and puffs, and if one looks at him he is just like any ordinary man, except that the folly of his life is under control. Nothing being more important than anything else, a man of knowledge chooses any act, and acts it out as if it matters to him. His controlled folly makes him say that what he does matters and makes him act as if it did, and yet he knows that it doesn't; so when he fulfills his acts he retreats in peace, and whether his acts were good or bad, or worked or didn't, is in no way part of his concern.
You think about your acts, therefore you have to believe your acts are as important as you think they are, when in reality nothing of what one does is important. Nothing! But then if nothing really matters, as you ask me, how can I go on living? It would be simple to die; that's what you say and believe, because you're thinking about life, just as you're thinking now what seeing would be like. You want me to describe it to you so you can begin to think about it, the way you do with everything else. In the case of seeing , however, thinking is not the issue at all, so I cannot tell you what it is like to see . Now you want me to describe the reasons for my controlled folly and I can only tell you that controlled folly is very much like seeing ; it is something you cannot think about.

Our lot as men is to learn and, as I've said, one goes to knowledge as one goes to war; with fear, with respect, aware that one is going to war, and with absolute confidence in oneself. Put your trust in yourself. There's no emptiness in the life of a man of knowledge, everything is filled to the brim and everything is equal. For me there is no victory, or defeat, or emptiness.

Everything is filled to the brim and everything is equal and my struggle is worth my while.

In order to become a man of knowledge one must be a warrior. One must strive without giving up, without a complaint, without flinching, until one sees , only to realize then that nothing matters. You're too concerned with liking people or with being liked yourself. A man of knowledge likes, that's all. He likes whatever or whoever he wants, but he uses his controlled folly to be unconcerned about it.

My controlled folly applies only to myself and to the acts I perform while in the company of my fellow men.

You must talk to the plants you're going to pick before you pick them. In order to see the plants you must talk to them personally, you must get to know them individually; then the plants can tell you anything you care to know about them.

You fail to understand that I am not joking. When a sorcerer attempts to see , he attempts to gain power.

You think everything in the world is simple to understand because everything you do is a routine that is simple to understand.

You have to have an unbending intent in order to become a man of knowledge.
* *

A warrior takes responsibility for his acts; for the most trivial of his acts. He waits patiently, knowing that he is waiting, and knowing what he is waiting for. That is the warrior's way.

What makes us unhappy is to want. Yet if we would learn to cut our wants to nothing, the smallest thing we'd get would be a true gift. To be poor or wanting is only a thought; and so is to hate, or to be hungry, or to be in pain. They are only thoughts for me now, I have accomplished that feat. The power to do that is all we have, mind you, to oppose the forces of our lives; without that power we are dregs, dust in the wind.
It is up to us as single individuals to oppose the forces of our lives. Only a warrior can survive. A warrior knows that he is waiting and what he is waiting for; and while he waits he wants nothing and thus whatever little thing he gets is more than he can take. If he needs to eat he finds a way, because he is not hungry; if something hurts his body he finds a way to stop it, because he is not in pain. To be hungry or to be in pain means that the man has abandoned himself and is no longer a warrior; and the forces of his hunger and pain will destroy him.
* * *

Will is something very special. It happens mysteriously. There is no real way of telling how one uses it, except that the results of using the will are astounding. Perhaps the first thing that one should do is to know that one can develop the will . A warrior knows that and proceeds to wait for it.

A warrior knows that he is waiting and knows what he is waiting for. It is very difficult, if not impossible, for the average man to know what he is waiting for. A warrior, however, has no problems; he knows that he is waiting for his will .

Will is something very clear and powerful which can direct our acts. Will is something a man uses, for instance, to win a battle which he, by all calculations, should lose. It is not what we call courage. Courage is something else. Men of courage are dependable men, noble men perennially surrounded by people who flock around them and admire them; yet very few men of courage have will . Usually they are fearless men who are given to performing daring common-sense acts; most of the time a courageous man is also fearsome and feared. Will , on the other hand, has to do with astonishing feats that defy our common sense. You may say that it is a kind of control.

Will is not what one calls "will power." Denying oneself certain things with "will power," is an indulgence and I don't recommend anything of the kind. The indulgence of denying is by far the worst; it forces us to believe we are doing great things, when in effect we are only fixed within ourselves.

Will is a power. And since it is a power it has to be controlled and tuned and that takes time. When I was your age I was as impulsive as you. Yet I have changed. Our will operates in spite of our indulgence. For example your will is already opening your gap, little by little.

There is a gap in us; like the soft spot on the head of a child which closes with age, this gap opens as one develops one's will . It's an opening. It allows a space for the will to shoot out, like an arrow. What a sorcerer calls will is a power within ourselves. It is not a thought, or an object, or a wish.

An act of "will power" is not will because such an act needs thinking and wishing. Will is what can make you succeed when your thoughts tell you that you're defeated. Will is a force which is the true link between men and the world.

The world is whatever we perceive, in any manner we may choose to perceive. Perceiving the world entails a process of apprehending whatever presents itself to us. This particular perceiving is done with our senses and with our will . Will is a relation between ourselves and the perceived world.
What the average man calls will is character and strong disposition. What a sorcerer calls will is a force that comes from within and attaches itself to the world out there. One can perceive the world with the senses as well as with the will .

An average man can "grab" the things of the world only with his hands, or his senses, but a sorcerer can grab them also with his will . I cannot really describe how it is done, but you yourself, for instance, cannot describe to me how you hear. It happens that I am also capable of hearing, so we can talk about what we hear, but not about how we hear. A sorcerer uses his will to perceive the world. That perceiving, however, is not like hearing. When we look at the world or when we hear it, we have the impression that it is out there and that it is real. When we perceive the world with our will we know that the world is not as "out there" or as "real" as we think.
Will is a force, a power. Seeing is not a force, but rather a way of getting through things. A sorcerer may have a very strong will and yet he may not see ; which means that only a man of knowledge perceives the world with his senses and with his will and also with his seeing .
Now you know you are waiting for your will . You still don't know what it is, or how it could happen to you. So watch carefully everything you do. The very thing that could help you develop your will is amidst all the little things you do.
* * *

When a man embarks on the paths of sorcery he becomes aware, in a gradual manner, that ordinary life has been forever left behind; that knowledge is indeed a frightening affair; that the means of the ordinary world are no longer a buffer for him; and that he must adopt a new way of life if he is going to survive. The first thing he ought to do, at that point, is to want to become a warrior. The frightening nature of knowledge leaves one no alternative but to become a warrior.
By the time knowledge becomes a frightening affair the man also realizes that death is the irreplaceable partner that sits next to him on the mat. Every bit of knowledge that becomes power has death as its central force. Death lends the ultimate touch and whatever is touched by death indeed becomes power.
A man who follows the paths of sorcery is confronted with imminent annihilation every turn of the way, and unavoidable he becomes keenly aware of his death. Without the awareness of death he would be only an ordinary man involved in ordinary acts. He would lack the necessary potency, the necessary concentration that transforms one's ordinary time on earth into magical power.
Thus to be a warrior a man has to be, first of all, and rightfully so, keenly aware of his own death. But to be concerned with death would force any one of us to focus on the self and that would be debilitating. So the next thing one needs to be a warrior is detachment. The idea of imminent death, instead of becoming an obsession, becomes an indifference.
Now you must detach yourself; detach yourself from everything. Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently detached so he is incapable of abandoning himself to anything. Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently detached so he can't deny himself anything. A man of that sort, however, does not crave, for he has acquired a silent lust for life and for all things of life. He knows his death is stalking him and won't give him time to cling to anything, so he tries, without craving, all of everything.
A detached man, who knows he has no possibility of fencing off his death, has only one thing to back himself with: the power of his decisions. He has to be, so to speak, the master of his choices. He must fully understand that his choice is his responsibility and once he makes it there is no longer time for regrets or recriminations. His decisions are final, simply because his death does not permit him time to cling to anything.
And thus with an awareness of his death, with his detachment, and with the power of his decisions a warrior sets his life in a strategical manner. The knowledge of his death guides him and makes him detached and silently lusty; the power of his final decisions makes him able to choose without regrets and what he chooses is always strategically the best; and so he performs everything he has to with gusto and lusty efficiency.
When a man behaves in such a manner one may rightfully say that he is a warrior and has acquired patience. When a warrior has acquired patience he is on his way to will . He knows how to wait. His death sits with him on his mat, they are friends. His death advises him, in mysterious ways, how to choose, how to live strategically. And the warrior waits! I would say that the warrior learns without any hurry because he knows he is waiting for his will ; and one day he succeeds in performing something ordinarily quite impossible to accomplish. He may not even notice his extraordinary deed. But as he keeps on performing impossible acts, or as impossible things keep on happening to him, he becomes aware that a sort of power is emerging. A power that comes out of his body as he progresses on the path of knowledge. He notices that he can actually touch anything he wants with a feeling that comes out of his body from a spot right below or right above his navel. That feeling is the will , and when he is capable of grabbing with it, one can rightfully say that the warrior is a sorcerer, and that he has acquired will .
A man can go still further than that; a man can learn to see . Upon learning to see he no longer needs to live like a warrior, nor be a sorcerer. Upon learning to see a man becomes everything by becoming nothing. He, so to speak, vanishes and yet he's there. I would say that this is the time when a man can be or can get anything he desires. But he desires nothing, and instead of playing with his fellow men like they were toys, he meets them in the midst of their folly. The only difference between them is that a man who sees controls his folly, while his fellow men can't. A man who sees has no longer an active interest in his fellow men. Seeing has already detached him from absolutely everything he knew before.
Don't let the idea of being detached from everything you know give you the chills. The thing which should give you the chills is not to have anything to look forward to but a lifetime of doing that which you have always done. Think of the man who plants corn year after year until he's too old and tired to get up, so he lies around like an old dog. His thoughts and feelings, the best of him, ramble aimlessly to the only things he has ever done, to plant corn. For me that is the most frightening waste there is.
We are men and our lot is to learn and to be hurled into inconceivable new worlds. Seeing is for impeccable men. Temper your spirit now, become a warrior, learn to see , and then you'll know that there is no end to the new worlds for our vision.

When you see there are no longer familiar features in the world. Everything is new. Everything has never happened before. The world is incredible! Everything you gaze at becomes nothing!
Things don't disappear they don't vanish, they simply became nothing and yet they are still there. Seeing makes one realize the unimportance of everything.

Seeing is learned by seeing.
* * *

A warrior treats everything with respect and does not trample on anything unless he has to. He does not abandon himself to anything, not even to his death. He is not a willing partner and not available, and if he involves himself with something, you can be sure that he is aware of what he is doing. For a warrior there is nothing out of control. Life for a warrior is an exercise in strategy. But you want to find the meaning of life. A warrior doesn't care about meanings. He would set his life strategically. Thus if he couldn't avoid an accident he would find means to offset his handicap, or avoid its consequences, or battle against them. He would be battling to the end.
A warrior is never available; never is he standing on the road waiting to be clobbered. Thus he cuts to a minimum his chances of the unforeseen.

A warrior is never idle and never in a hurry.
* * *

When a man learns to see , not a single thing he knows prevails. Not a single one. Nothing is known; nothing remains as we used to know it when we didn't see .

A warrior lives strategically and never carries loads he cannot handle.
* * *

Nothing is pending in the world, nothing is finished, yet nothing is unresolved.
* * *

The path of knowledge is a forced one. In order to learn we must be spurred. In the path of knowledge we are always fighting something, avoiding something, prepared for something; and that something is always inexplicable, greater, more powerful than us. The inexplicable forces will come to you. Later on it'll be your own ally, so there is nothing you can do now but to prepare yourself for the struggle.
The world is indeed full of frightening things and we are helpless creatures surrounded by forces that are inexplicable and unbending. The average man, in ignorance, believes that those forces can be explained or changed; he doesn't really know how to do that, but he expects that the actions of mankind will explain them or change them sooner or later. A sorcerer, on the other hand, does not think of explaining or changing them; instead, he learns to use such forces by redirecting himself and adapting to their direction. That's his trick. There is very little to sorcery once you find out its trick. A sorcerer, by opening himself to knowledge, falls prey to those forces and has only one means of balancing himself, his will ; thus he must feel and act like a warrior. I will repeat this once more: Only as a warrior can one survive the path of knowledge. What helps a sorcerer live a better life is the strength of being a warrior.
It is my commitment to teach you to see . I am compelled, therefore, to teach you to feel and act like a warrior. To see without first being a warrior would make you weak; it would give you a false meekness, a desire to retreat; your body would decay because you would become indifferent. It is my personal commitment to make you a warrior so you won't crumble.
A warrior should be prepared only to battle. His spirit is not geared to indulging and complaining, nor is it geared to winning or losing. The spirit of a warrior is geared only to struggle, and every struggle is a warrior's last battle on earth. Thus the outcome matters very little to him. In his last battle on earth a warrior lets his spirit flow free and clear. And as he wages his battle, knowing that his will is impeccable, a warrior laughs and laughs.
A warrior selects the items that make his world. He selects deliberately, for every item he chooses is a shield that protects him from the onslaughts of the forces he is striving to use. The average man who is equally surrounded by those inexplicable forces is oblivious to them because he has other kinds of special shields to protect himself.
People are busy doing that which people do. Those are their shields. Whenever a sorcerer has an encounter with any of those inexplicable and unbending forces we will talk about, his gap opens, making him more susceptible to his death than he ordinarily is. We die through that gap, therefore if it is open one should have his will ready to fill it; that is, if one is a warrior. If one is not a warrior, like yourself, then one has no other recourse but to use the activities of daily life to take one's mind away from the fright of the encounter and thus to allow one's gap to close.
Act like a warrior and select the items of your world. You cannot surround yourself with things helter-skelter any longer. I tell you this in a most serious vein. A warrior encounters those inexplicable and unbending forces because he is deliberately seeking them, thus he is always prepared for the encounter. The first thing you must do, then, is be prepared. A warrior takes the responsibility of protecting his life. Then if any of those forces tap him and open his gap, he must deliberately strive to close it by himself. For that purpose he must have a selected number of things that give him great peace and pleasure, things which he can deliberately use to take his thoughts from his fright and close his gap and make him solid.
In his day-to-day life a warrior chooses to follow the path with heart. It is the consistent choice of the path with heart which makes a warrior different from the average man. He knows that a path has heart when he is one with it, when he experiences a great peace and pleasure traversing its length. The things a warrior selects to make his shields are the items of a path with heart. You must surround yourself with the items of a path with heart and you must refuse the rest.
* * *

You must stop talking to yourself. Every one of us does that. We carry on an internal talk. We talk about our world. In fact we maintain our world with our internal talk. Whenever we finish talking to ourselves the world is always as it should be. We renew it, we kindle it with life, we uphold it with our internal talk. Not only that, but we also choose our paths as we talk to ourselves. Thus we repeat the same choices over and over until the day we die, because we keep on repeating the same internal talk over and over until the day we die.
A warrior is aware of this and strives to stop his talking. This is the last point you have to know if you want to live like a warrior.
First of all you must use your ears to take some of the burden from your eyes. We have been using our eyes to judge the world since the time we were born. We talk to others and to ourselves mainly about what we see. A warrior is aware of that and listens to the world; he listens to the sounds of the world. He is aware that the world will change as soon as he stops talking to himself and he must be prepared for that monumental jolt.
The world is such-and-such or so-and-so only because we tell ourselves that that is the way it is. If we stop telling ourselves that the world is so-and-so, the world will stop being so-and-so. You must start slowly to undo the world.
Your problem is that you confuse the world with what people do. The things people do are the shields against the forces that surround us; what we do as people gives us comfort and makes us feel safe; what people do is rightfully very important, but only as a shield. We never learn that the things we do as people are only shields and we let them dominate and topple our lives. In fact I could say that for mankind, what people do is greater and more important than the world itself.
The world is all that is encased here; life, death, people, the allies, and everything else that surrounds us. The world is incomprehensible. We won't ever understand it; we won't ever unravel its secrets. Thus we must treat it as it is, a sheer mystery!
An average man doesn't do this, though. The world is never a mystery for him, and when he arrives at old age he is convinced he has nothing more to live for. An old man has not exhausted the world. He has exhausted only what people do. But in his stupid confusion he believes that the world has no more mysteries for him. What a wretched price to pay for our shields!
A warrior is aware of this confusion and learns to treat things properly. The things that people do cannot under any conditions be more important than the world. And thus a warrior treats the world as an endless mystery and what people do as an endless folly.

Focus all your attention on listening to sounds and do your best to find the holes between the sounds. Stay in complete alertness.
Everything is meaningful for a sorcerer. The sounds have holes in them and so does everything around you. Ordinarily a man does not have the speed to catch the holes, and thus he goes through life without protection. The worms, the birds, the trees, all of them can tell us unimaginable things if only one could have the speed to grasp their message.

Fright is something one can never get over. A warrior cannot indulge, thus he cannot die of fright. Your difficulty is that you want to understand everything, and that is not possible. If you insist on understanding you're not considering your entire lot as a human being. Your stumbling block is intact.
Understanding is only a very small affair, so very small--yet sober understanding is vital.
* * *

Only by acting can one become a sorcerer.

You now have the need to live like a warrior.

Journet to Ixtlan

You think about yourself too much and that gives you a strange fatigue that makes you shut off the world around you and cling to your arguments.
A light and amenable disposition is needed in order to withstand the impact and the strangeness of the knowledge I am teaching you. Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy, and vain. To be a man of knowledge one needs to be light and fluid.

One has to reduce to a minimum all that is unnecessary in one's life.

Once you decide something put all your petty fears away. Your decision should vanquish them. I will tell you time and time again, the most effective way to live is as a warrior. Worry and think before you make any decision, but once you make it, be on your way free from worries or thoughts; there will be a million other decisions still awaiting you. That's the warrior's way.
A warrior thinks of his death when things become unclear. The idea of death is the only thing that tempers our spirit.

To be a warrior you have to be crystal clear.

My acts are sincere but they are only the acts of an actor because everything I do is controlled folly. Everything I do in regard to myself and my fellow men is folly, because nothing matters.
Certain things in your life matter to you because they're important; your acts are certainly important to you, but for me, not a single thing is important any longer, neither my acts nor the acts of any of my fellow men. I go on living though, because I have my will . Because I have tempered my will throughout my life until it's neat and wholesome and now it doesn't matter to me that nothing matters. My will controls the folly of my life.
Once a man learns to see he finds himself alone in the world with nothing but folly. Your acts, as well as the acts of your fellow men in general, appear to be important to you because you have learned to think they are important.
We learn to think about everything, and then we train our eyes to look as we think about the things we look at. We look at ourselves already thinking that we are important. And therefore we've got to feel important! But then when a man learns to see , he realizes that he can no longer think about the things he looks at, and if he cannot think about what he looks at everything becomes unimportant. Everything is equal and therefore unimportant.
We need to look with our eyes to laugh. When our eyes see , everything is so equal that nothing is funny. My laughter, as well as everything I do is real but it also is controlled folly because it is useless; it changes nothing and yet I still do it.
One must always choose the path with heart in order to be at one's best, perhaps so one can always laugh.
You don't understand me now because of your habit of thinking as you look and thinking as you think. By "thinking" I mean the constant idea that we have of everything in the world. Seeing dispels that habit and until you learn to see you will not really understand what I mean.
Our lot as men is to learn. I have learned to see and I tell you that nothing really matters. A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting. A man of knowledge chooses a path with heart and follows it; and then he looks and rejoices and laughs; and then he sees and knows. He knows that his life will be over altogether too soon; he knows that he, as well as everybody else, is not going anywhere; he knows, because he sees , that nothing is more important than anything else. In other words, a man of knowledge has no honor, no dignity, no family, no name, no country, but only life to be lived, and under these circumstances his only tie to his fellow men is his controlled folly. Thus a man of knowledge endeavors, and sweats, and puffs, and if one looks at him he is just like any ordinary man, except that the folly of his life is under control. Nothing being more important than anything else, a man of knowledge chooses any act, and acts it out as if it matters to him. His controlled folly makes him say that what he does matters and makes him act as if it did, and yet he knows that it doesn't; so when he fulfills his acts he retreats in peace, and whether his acts were good or bad, or worked or didn't, is in no way part of his concern.
You think about your acts, therefore you have to believe your acts are as important as you think they are, when in reality nothing of what one does is important. Nothing! But then if nothing really matters, as you ask me, how can I go on living? It would be simple to die; that's what you say and believe, because you're thinking about life, just as you're thinking now what seeing would be like. You want me to describe it to you so you can begin to think about it, the way you do with everything else. In the case of seeing , however, thinking is not the issue at all, so I cannot tell you what it is like to see . Now you want me to describe the reasons for my controlled folly and I can only tell you that controlled folly is very much like seeing ; it is something you cannot think about.
Our lot as men is to learn and, as I've said, one goes to knowledge as one goes to war; with fear, with respect, aware that one is going to war, and with absolute confidence in oneself. Put your trust in yourself. There's no emptiness in the life of a man of knowledge, everything is filled to the brim and everything is equal. For me there is no victory, or defeat, or emptiness. Everything is filled to the brim and everything is equal and my struggle is worth my while.
In order to become a man of knowledge one must be a warrior. One must strive without giving up, without a complaint, without flinching, until one sees , only to realize then that nothing matters. You're too concerned with liking people or with being liked yourself. A man of knowledge likes, that's all. He likes whatever or whoever he wants, but he uses his controlled folly to be unconcerned about it.
My controlled folly applies only to myself and to the acts I perform while in the company of my fellow men.

You must talk to the plants you're going to pick before you pick them. In order to see the plants you must talk to them personally, you must get to know them individually; then the plants can tell you anything you care to know about them.
You fail to understand that I am not joking. When a sorcerer attempts to see , he attempts to gain power.
You think everything in the world is simple to understand because everything you do is a routine that is simple to understand.

You have to have an unbending intent in order to become a man of knowledge.
* *
A warrior takes responsibility for his acts; for the most trivial of his acts. He waits patiently, knowing that he is waiting, and knowing what he is waiting for. That is the warrior's way.
What makes us unhappy is to want. Yet if we would learn to cut our wants to nothing, the smallest thing we'd get would be a true gift. To be poor or wanting is only a thought; and so is to hate, or to be hungry, or to be in pain. They are only thoughts for me now, I have accomplished that feat. The power to do that is all we have, mind you, to oppose the forces of our lives; without that power we are dregs, dust in the wind.
It is up to us as single individuals to oppose the forces of our lives. Only a warrior can survive. A warrior knows that he is waiting and what he is waiting for; and while he waits he wants nothing and thus whatever little thing he gets is more than he can take. If he needs to eat he finds a way, because he is not hungry; if something hurts his body he finds a way to stop it, because he is not in pain. To be hungry or to be in pain means that the man has abandoned himself and is no longer a warrior; and the forces of his hunger and pain will destroy him.
* * *

The countless paths one traverses in one's life are all equal. Oppressors and oppressed meet at the end, and the only thing that prevails is that life was altogether too short for both.

You must act like a warrior. One learns to act like a warrior by acting, not by talking. A warrior has only his will and his patience and with them he builds anything he wants. You have no more time for retreats or for regrets. You only have time to live like a warrior and work for patience and will .
Will is something very special. It happens mysteriously. There is no real way of telling how one uses it, except that the results of using the will are astounding. Perhaps the first thing that one should do is to know that one can develop the will . A warrior knows that and proceeds to wait for it.
A warrior knows that he is waiting and knows what he is waiting for. It is very difficult, if not impossible, for the average man to know what he is waiting for. A warrior, however, has no problems; he knows that he is waiting for his will .
Will is something very clear and powerful which can direct our acts. Will is something a man uses, for instance, to win a battle which he, by all calculations, should lose. It is not what we call courage. Courage is something else. Men of courage are dependable men, noble men perennially surrounded by people who flock around them and admire them; yet very few men of courage have will . Usually they are fearless men who are given to performing daring common-sense acts; most of the time a courageous man is also fearsome and feared. Will , on the other hand, has to do with astonishing feats that defy our common sense. You may say that it is a kind of control.
Will is not what one calls "will power." Denying oneself certain things with "will power," is an indulgence and I don't recommend anything of the kind. The indulgence of denying is by far the worst; it forces us to believe we are doing great things, when in effect we are only fixed within ourselves.
Will is a power. And since it is a power it has to be controlled and tuned and that takes time. When I was your age I was as impulsive as you. Yet I have changed. Our will operates in spite of our indulgence. For example your will is already opening your gap, little by little.
There is a gap in us; like the soft spot on the head of a child which closes with age, this gap opens as one develops one's will . It's an opening. It allows a space for the will to shoot out, like an arrow. What a sorcerer calls will is a power within ourselves. It is not a thought, or an object, or a wish. An act of "will power" is not will because such an act needs thinking and wishing. Will is what can make you succeed when your thoughts tell you that you're defeated. Will is a force which is the true link between men and the world.
The world is whatever we perceive, in any manner we may choose to perceive. Perceiving the world entails a process of apprehending whatever presents itself to us. This particular perceiving is done with our senses and with our will . Will is a relation between ourselves and the perceived world.
What the average man calls will is character and strong disposition. What a sorcerer calls will is a force that comes from within and attaches itself to the world out there. One can perceive the world with the senses as well as with the will .
An average man can "grab" the things of the world only with his hands, or his senses, but a sorcerer can grab them also with his will . I cannot really describe how it is done, but you yourself, for instance, cannot describe to me how you hear. It happens that I am also capable of hearing, so we can talk about what we hear, but not about how we hear. A sorcerer uses his will to perceive the world. That perceiving, however, is not like hearing. When we look at the world or when we hear it, we have the impression that it is out there and that it is real. When we perceive the world with our will we know that the world is not as "out there" or as "real" as we think.
Will is a force, a power. Seeing is not a force, but rather a way of getting through things. A sorcerer may have a very strong will and yet he may not see ; which means that only a man of knowledge perceives the world with his senses and with his will and also with his seeing .
Now you know you are waiting for your will . You still don't know what it is, or how it could happen to you. So watch carefully everything you do. The very thing that could help you develop your will is amidst all the little things you do.
* * *

Nothing is pending in the world, nothing is finished, yet nothing is unresolved.
* * *

Only by acting can one become a sorcerer.

You now have the need to live like a warrior.

Tales of Power

To be sensitive is a natural condition of certain people. In the final analysis sensitivity matters very little. What matters is that a warrior be impeccable. What matters to a warrior is arriving at the totality of oneself.
* * *

It is not advisable for you to indulge in focusing your attention on past events. We may touch on them, but only in reference.
* * *

You can arrive at the sorcerers' explanation by accumulating personal power. Personal power will make you slide with great ease into the sorcerers' explanation.
* * *

The self-confidence of a warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to himself. You're after the self-confidence of the average man, when you should be after the humbleness of a warrior. The difference between the two is remarkable. Self-confidence entails knowing something for sure; humbleness entails being impeccable in one's actions and feelings.
* * *

You must push yourself beyond your limits, all the time. The only possible course that a warrior has is to act consistently and without reservations. You know enough of the warrior's way to act accordingly, but your old habits and routines stand in your way.
* * *

You say you've heard that the masters of Eastern esoteric doctrines demand absolute secrecy about their teachings. Perhaps those masters are just indulging in being masters. I'm not a master, I'm only a warrior. So I really don't know what a master feels like.
It doesn't matter what one reveals or what one keeps to oneself. Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. If we have enough of it, one word uttered to us might be sufficient to change the course of our lives. But if we don't have enough personal power, the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and that revelation won't make a damn bit of difference.
I'm going to utter perhaps the greatest piece of knowledge anyone can voice. Let me see what you can do with it.
Do you know that at this very moment you are surrounded by eternity? And do you know that you can use that eternity, if you so desire?
There! Eternity is there! All around! Do you know that you can extend yourself forever in any of the directions I have pointed to? Do you know that one moment can be eternity? This is not a riddle; it's a fact, but only if you mount that moment and use it to take the totality of yourself forever in any direction.
You didn't have this knowledge before, now you do. I have revealed it to you, but it doesn't make a bit of difference, because you don't have enough personal power to utilize my revelation. Yet if you did have enough power, my words alone would serve as the means for you to round up the totality of yourself and to get the crucial part of it out of the boundaries in which it is contained.
Your body is the boundary I'm talking about. One can get out of it. We are a feeling, an awareness encased here. We are luminous beings and for a luminous being only personal power matters.
* * *

Dreaming entails cultivating a peculiar control over one's dreams to the extent that the experiences undergone in them and those lived in one's waking hours acquire the same pragmatic valence. The sorcerers' allegation is that under the impact of dreaming the ordinary criteria to differentiate a dream from reality becomes inoperative.
The early stage of the preparatory facet, called setting up dreaming , consists of a deadly game that one's mind plays with itself. Some part of yourself is going to do everything it can to prevent the fulfillment of your task.
As soon as the sight of your hands begins to dissolve or change into something else, you have to shift your view from your hands to any other element in the surroundings of your dream.
Something in us is threatened by our activities in dreaming . Each warrior has his own way of dreaming . Each way is different. The only thing which we all have in common is that we play tricks in order to force ourselves to abandon the quest. The counter-measure is to persist in spite of all the barriers and disappointments.
The sorcerers' explanation of how to select a topic for dreaming , is that a warrior chooses the topic by deliberately holding an image in his mind while he shuts off his internal dialogue. If he is capable of not talking to himself for a moment and then holds the image or the thought of what he wants in dreaming , even if only for an instant, then the desired topic will come to him.
* * *

If one is to succeed in anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession.
* * *

You must learn how to stop your internal dialogue at will. At the beginning of our association I delineated another procedure: walking for long stretches without focusing the eyes on anything. My recommendation was to not look at anything directly but, by slightly crossing the eyes, to keep a peripheral view of everything that presented itself to the eyes. If one keeps one's unfocused eyes fixed at a point just above the horizon, it is possible to notice, at once, everything in almost the total 180-degree range in front of one's eyes. That exercise is the only way of shutting off the internal dialogue.
The internal dialogue is what grounds us. The world is such and such or so and so, only because we talk to ourselves about its being such and such or so and so. The passageway into the world of sorcerers opens up after the warrior has learned to shut off the internal dialogue.
To change our idea of the world is the crux of sorcery, and stopping the internal dialogue is the only way to accomplish it. The rest is just padding. Nothing of what we do, with the exception of stopping the internal dialogue, can by itself change anything in us, or in our idea of the world. The provision is, of course, that that change should not be deranged. Therefore a teacher doesn't clamp down on his apprentice. That would only breed obsession and morbidity.
* * *

A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, and accepts it in ultimate humbleness. He accepts in humbleness what he is, not as grounds for regret but as a living challenge.
The humbleness of a warrior is not the humbleness of a beggar. The warrior lowers his head to no one, but at the same time, he doesn't permit anyone to lower his head to him. I know only the humbleness of a warrior, and that will never permit me to be anyone's master.
* * *

Things are real only after one has learned to agree on their realness.
* * *

You're afraid of me, you say, of the awesomeness of my knowledge, that there is no solace for you, no haven to go to. I represent the warrior's freedom. Solace, haven, fear, all of them are moods that you have learned without ever questioning their value.
* * *

Seeing is a special capacity that one can develop which allows one to apprehend the ultimate nature of things.
* * *

The world had to conform to its description; that is, the description reflects itself. We have learned to relate ourselves to our description of the world in terms of what sorcerers call habits or intentionality, that is, the property of human consciousness whereby an object is referred to, or is intended.
Persist in acting like a warrior. The rest comes of itself and by itself. The rest is knowledge and power. Men of knowledge have both. And yet none of them could tell how they got to have them, except that they had kept on acting like warriors and at a given moment everything changed. A warrior must be calm and collected and must never lose his grip.
* * *

The flaw with words is that they always force us to feel enlightened, but when we turn around to face the world they always fail us and we end up facing the world as we always have, without enlightenment. For this reason, a sorcerer seeks to act rather than to talk and to this effect he gets a new description of the world--a new description where talking is not that important, and where new acts have new reflections.
We are luminous beings and everything we are or everything we feel shows in our fibers. Humans have a brightness peculiar only to them. That's the only way to tell them apart from other luminous living beings.
* * *

Seeing happens only when the warrior is capable of stopping the internal dialogue.
* * *

A warrior starts off with the certainty that his spirit is off balance; then by living in full control and awareness, but without hurry or compulsion, he does his ultimate best to gain this balance. In your case, as in the case of every man, your imbalance is due to the sum total of all your actions.
There is nothing in this world that a warrior cannot account for. You see, a warrior considers himself already dead, so there is nothing for him to lose. The worst has already happened to him, therefore he's clear and calm; judging him by his acts or by his words, one would never suspect that he has witnessed everything.
Knowledge is frightening, but if a warrior accepts the frightening nature of knowledge he cancels out its awesomeness. Knowledge is a most peculiar affair, especially for a warrior. Knowledge for a warrior is something that comes at once, engulfs him, and passes on.
* * *

I urge you to feel at ease and confident and trust your personal power.
* * *

Any thought that one holds in mind in a state of silence is properly a command, since there are no other thoughts to compete with it.
* * *

Feelings are the gauge that assesses the state of being of the subject you are seeing .
* * *

We are dealing with that immensity out there. To turn that magnificence out there into reasonableness doesn't do anything for you. Here, surrounding us, is eternity itself. To engage in reducing it to a manageable nonsense is petty and outright disastrous.
Whenever the internal dialogue stops, the world collapses and extraordinary facets of ourselves surface, as though they had been kept heavily guarded by our words. You are like you are, because you tell yourself that you are that way. You are too heavy and self-important. Let go!
* * *

I'm going to begin telling you about the "double" or the "Other." The double is the sorcerer himself developed thru his dreaming . The double is an act of power to a sorcerer but only a tale of power to you. The double is the self; that explanation should suffice. For a sorcerer who sees , the double is brighter.
Don't take things so seriously. I've told you time and time again that the world is unfathomable, and so are we, and so is every being that exists in this world. It is impossible, therefore, to reason out the double.
A sorcerer can double up, that's all one can say. No sorcerer knows where his Other is. A sorcerer has no notion that he is in two places at once. To be aware of that would be the equivalent of facing his double, and the sorcerer that finds himself face to face with himself is a dead sorcerer. That is the rule. That is the way power has set things up. No one knows why.
By the time a warrior has conquered dreaming and seeing and has developed a double, he must have also succeeded in erasing personal history, self-importance, and routines. So doing is the means for removing the impracticality of having a double in the ordinary world, by making the self and the world fluid, and by placing them outside the bounds of prediction.
A fluid warrior can no longer make the world chronological, and for him, the world and himself are no longer objects. He's a luminous being existing in a luminous world. The double is a simple affair for a sorcerer because he knows what he's doing.
A sorcerer may certainly notice afterwards that he has been in two places at once. But this is only bookkeeping and has no bearing on the fact that while he's acting he has no notion of his duality.
Think of this, the world doesn't yield to us directly, the description of the world stands in between. So, properly speaking, we are always one step removed and our experience of the world is always a recollection of the experience. We are perennially recollecting the instant that has just happened, just passed. We recollect, recollect, recollect.
If our entire experience of the world is recollection, then it's not so outlandish to conclude that a sorcerer can be in two places at once. This is not the case from the point of view of his own perception, because in order to experience the world, a sorcerer, like every other man, has to recollect the act he has just performed, the event he has just witnessed, the experience he has just lived. In his awareness there is only a single recollection. The sorcerer, however, recollects two separate single instants, because the glue of the description of time is no longer binding him. We're always one jump behind.
Does the double have corporealness? Certainly. Solidity, corporealness are memories. Therefore, like everything else we feel about the world, they are memories we accumulate, memories of the description.

The only way to counteract the devastating effect of the sorcerers' world is to laugh at it. It's your duty to put your mind at ease. Warriors do not win victories by beating their heads against walls but by overtaking the walls. Warriors jump over the walls; they don't demolish them.
There are three kinds of bad habits which we use over and over when confronted with unusual life situations. First, we may disregard what's happening or has happened and feel as if it had never occurred. That one is the bigot's way. Second, we may accept everything at its face value and feel as if we know what's going on. That's the pious man's way. Third, we may become obsessed with an event because either we cannot disregard it or we cannot accept it wholeheartedly. That's the fool's way. There is a fourth, the correct one, the warrior's way. A warrior acts as if nothing had ever happened, because he doesn't believe in anything, yet he accepts everything at its face value. He accepts without accepting and disregards without disregarding. He never feels as if he knows, neither does he feel as if nothing had ever happened. He acts as if he is in control, even though he might be shaking in his boots. To act in such a manner dissipates obsession.
You must cultivate the feeling that a warrior needs nothing. You have everything needed for the extravagant journey that is your life. I have tried to teach you that the real experience is to be a man, and that what counts is being alive; life is the little detour that we are taking now. Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete. A warrior understands this and lives accordingly; therefore, one may say without being presumptuous that the experience of experiences is being a warrior.
If a warrior needs solace, he simply chooses anyone and expresses to that person every detail of his turmoil. After all, the warrior is not seeking to be understood or helped; by talking he's merely relieving himself of his pressure. That is, providing that the warrior is given to talking; if he's not, he tells no one.
You indulge. You feel that indulging in doubts and tribulations is the sign of a sensitive man. Well, the truth of the matter is that you're the farthest thing from being sensitive. So why pretend? I've told you, a warrior accepts in humbleness what he is.
We confuse ourselves deliberately. All of us are aware of our doings. Our puny reason deliberately makes itself into the monster it fancies itself to be. It's too little for such a big mold, though.
No one develops a double. That's only a way of talking about it. All of us luminous beings have a double. All of us! A warrior learns to be aware of it, that's all. There are seemingly insurmountable barriers protecting that awareness. But that's expected; those barriers are what makes arriving at that awareness such a unique challenge. You are afraid of it because you're thinking that the double is what the word says. A double, or another you. I chose those words in order to describe it. The double is oneself and cannot be faced in any other way.
The double is not a matter of personal choice. Neither is it a matter of personal choice who is selected to learn the sorcerers' knowledge that leads to that awareness. Have you ever asked yourself, why you in particular? I don't mean that you should ask it as a question that begs an answer, but in the sense of a warrior's pondering on his great fortune, the fortune of having found a challenge.
To make it into an ordinary question is the device of a conceited ordinary man who wants to be either admired or pitied for it. I have no interest in that kind of question, because there is no way of answering it. The decision of picking you was a design of power; no one can discern the designs of power. Now that you've been selected, there is nothing that you can do to stop the fulfillment of that design.
A warrior is in the hands of power and his only freedom is to choose an impeccable life.
You're in a terrible spot. It's too late for you to retreat but too soon to act. All you can do is witness. For you there is only witnessing acts of power and listening to tales, tales of power.
The double is one of those tales. You know that, and that's why your reason is so taken by it. You are beating your head against a wall if you pretend to understand. All that I can say about it, by way of explanation, is that the double, although it is arrived at through dreaming , is as real as it can be. It is the self. It is the awareness of our state as luminous beings. It can do anything, and yet it chooses to be unobtrusive and gentle.
* * *

A man of knowledge cannot possibly act towards his fellow men in injurious terms.
* * *

A warrior is always ready for anything. To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born a reasonable being. We make ourselves into one or the other.
* * *

Jog on this spot, facing the west. The idea is to draw power from the impending twilight by raising one's arms to the sky with the fingers stretched, like a fan, and then clasp them forcefully when the arms are in the mid point between the horizon and the zenith.
* * *

I'm going to tell you about the dreamer and the dreamed. The double begins in dreaming . The double is a dream. I am referring to the first emergence of the awareness that we are luminous beings. Each one of us is different, and thus the details of our struggles are different.
The steps that we follow to arrive at the double are the same, though. Especially the beginning steps, which are muddled and uncertain. A dream in which one is watching oneself asleep is the time of the double. Rather than wasting power in wondering and asking questions, one should use the opportunity to act. When you have the chance you should be prepared.
* * *

A warrior never lets his guard down. What matters is what can you use as a shield? A warrior must use everything available to him to close his mortal gap once it opens. So, it's of no importance that you really don't like to be suspicious or ask questions. That's your only shield now.
There is no flaw it the warrior's way. Question without fear, without suspicion and without draining yourself. Assemble what you learn, without presumptuousness and without piousness.
The self dreams the double. Once it has learned to dream the double, the self arrives at this weird crossroad and a moment comes when one realizes that it is the double who dreams the self. Your double is dreaming you. No one knows how it happens. We only know that it does happen. That's the mystery of us as luminous beings. You can awaken in either one.

Storing sufficient personal power will enable you to turn your will into a functioning unit. As I've said, will is a force that emanates from the umbilical region through an unseen opening below the navel, an opening called the gap . Will is cultivated only by sorcerers and gives them the capacity to perform extraordinary acts.
The will develops in a warrior in spite of every opposition of the reason. You are the one who's learning, therefore you yourself must claim knowledge as power. You must find out whether or not your will works. You must prove to yourself that you are in the position to claim knowledge as power. In other words, you yourself have to be convinced that you can exercise your will .
The body must be perfection before the will is a functioning unit.
* * *

You feel irked with yourself because you are so helpless, you say. There is nothing wrong with the feeling of being helpless. But to indulge in protesting and complaining is another matter.
* * *

What exactly is an ally? There is no way of saying, just as there is no way of saying what exactly a tree is. Just like in the case of a tree, the only way to know what an ally is, is by experiencing it.
Your reason cannot accept the possibility of such a thing to begin with. Fortunately, it is not the reason which puts ally together. It is the body. An ally is perceived in many degrees. Each of those perceptions is stored in one's body. The sum of those pieces is the ally. I don't know any other way of describing it.
Our reason is petty and it is always at odds with our body. This, of course, is only a way of talking, but the triumph of a man of knowledge is that he has joined the two together.
The ally is waiting for you, that's for sure. It is right here, or there, or in any other place. The ally is waiting for you, just like death is waiting for you, everywhere and nowhere. It's waiting for the same reason that death waits for you, because you were born. There is no possibility of explaining at this point what is meant by that. You must first experience the ally. You must perceive it in its full force.
The way one understands the ally is a personal matter. There's no need to be confused. Confusion is a mood one enters into, but one can also get out of it. At this point there is no way of clarifying anything. Later we'll consider these matters in detail. It's up to your personal power, so work for impeccability.
I've told you that the true art of a warrior is to balance terror and wonder. Power can be met only with power. The crux of sorcery is the internal dialogue; that is the key to everything. When a warrior learns to stop it, everything becomes possible; the most farfetched schemes become attainable. We are a feeling and what we call our body is a cluster of luminous fibers that have awareness. As long as you think that you are a solid body you cannot conceive what I am talking about.
Warriors keep controlled and aloof. They don't believe anything, but still act efficiently.
We are luminous beings. We are perceivers. We are an awareness; we are not objects; we have no solidity. We are boundless. The world of objects and solidity is a way of making our passage on earth convenient. It is only a description that was created to help us. We, or rather our reason , forget that the description is only a description and thus we entrap the totality of ourselves in a vicious circle from which we rarely emerge in our lifetime.
We are perceivers. The world that we perceive, though, was created by a description that was told to us since the moment we were born.
We, the luminous beings, are born with two rings of power, but we use only one to create the world. That ring, which is hooked very soon after we are born, is reason , and its companion is talking. Between the two they concoct and maintain the world. So, in essence, the world that your reason wants to sustain is the world created by a description and its dogmatic and inviolable rules, which the reason learns to accept and defend.
The secret of the luminous beings is that they have another ring of power which is never used, the will . The trick of the sorcerer is the same trick of the average man. Both have a description; one, the average man, upholds it with his reason ; the other, the sorcerer, upholds it with his will . Both descriptions have their rules and the rules are perceivable, but the advantage of the sorcerer is that will is more engulfing than reason . You must learn to let yourself perceive whether the description is upheld by your reason or by your will . That is the only way for you to use your daily world as a challenge and a vehicle to accumulate enough personal power in order to get to the totality of yourself.

Never dwell on past events except in reference. To emphasize them would mean to take away from the importance of what's taking place now. A warrior cannot possibly afford to do that.
Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge. A warrior cannot complain about, or regret, anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges. As is always the case in the doings and not-doings of warriors, personal power is the only thing that matters. The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes everything either as a blessing or as a curse.
A warrior must be fluid and must shift harmoniously with the world around him, whether it is the world of reason , or the world of will . The most dangerous aspect of that shifting comes forth every time the warrior finds that the world is neither one nor the other. I was told that the only way to succeed in that crucial shifting was by proceeding in one's actions as if one believed. In other words, the secret of a warrior is that he believes without believing. But obviously a warrior cannot just say he believes and let it go at that. That would be too easy. To just believe would exonerate him from examining his situation. A warrior, whenever he has to involve himself with believing, does it as a choice, as an expression of his innermost predilection. A warrior doesn't believe, a warrior has to believe.
* * *

It is not so difficult to let the spirit of man flow and take over; to sustain it, however, is something that only a warrior can do.
* * *

Having to believe means that you accept the facts of something, consider all possibilities and possible outcomes, and then choose to believe in accordance with your innermost predilection. Believing is a cinch. Having to believe is something else. If you have to believe, you must use all of an event, account for all possibilities, and consider everything. Before deciding that you believe one way you must consider that it may well be another way.
* * *

A warrior, or any man for that matter, cannot possibly wish he were somewhere else; a warrior because he lives by challenge, an ordinary man because he doesn't know where his death is going to find him.
* * *

Death is the indispensable ingredient in having to believe. Without the awareness of death everything is ordinary, trivial. It is only because death is stalking us that the world is an unfathomable mystery. Without an awareness of the presence of our death there is no power, no mystery.
Having to believe that the world is mysterious and unfathomable is the expression of a warrior's innermost predilection. Without it he has nothing.

You are aware of everything only when you think you should be; the condition of a warrior, however, is to be aware of everything at all times.
* * *

Now it's time to talk about the totality of oneself. Some of the things I am going to point out to you will probably never be clear. They are not supposed to be clear anyway. So don't be embarrassed or discouraged. All of us are dumb creatures when we join the world of sorcery, and to join it doesn't in any sense insure us that we will change. Some of us remain dumb until the very end. What I'm about to say is meant only to point out a direction.
I'm going to tell you about the tonal (pronounced, toh-na'hl) and the nagual (pronounced, nah-wa'hl). Every human being has two sides, two separate entities, two counterparts which become operative at the moment of birth; one is called the "tonal" and the other the "nagual."
The tonal is the social person. The tonal is, rightfully so, a protector, a guardian--a guardian that most of the time turns into a guard.
The tonal is the organizer of the world. Perhaps the best way of describing its monumental work is to say that on its shoulders rests the task of setting the chaos of the world in order. It is not farfetched to maintain, as sorcerers do, that everything we know and do as men is the work of the tonal . At this moment, for instance, what is engaged in trying to make sense out of our conversation is your tonal ; without it there would be only weird sounds and grimaces and you wouldn't understand a thing of what I'm saying.
I would say then that the tonal is a guardian that protects something priceless, our very being. Therefore, an inherent quality of the tonal is to be cagey and jealous of its doings. And since its doings are by far the most important part of our lives, it is no wonder that it eventually changes, in every one of us, from a guardian into a guard. A guardian is broad-minded and understanding. A guard, on the other hand, is a vigilante, narrow-minded and most of the time despotic. I say, then, that the tonal in all of us has been made into a petty and despotic guard when it should be a broad-minded guardian.
The tonal is everything we are. Anything we have a word for is the tonal . Since the tonal is its own doings, everything, obviously, has to fall under its domain.
Remember, I've said that there is no world at large but only a description of the world which we have learned to visualize and take for granted. The tonal is everything we know. I think this in itself is enough reason for the tonal to be such an overpowering affair.
The tonal is everything we know, and that includes not only us, as persons, but everything in our world. It can be said that the tonal is everything that meets the eye.
We begin to groom it at the moment of birth. The moment we take the first gasp of air we also breathe in power for the tonal . So, it is proper to say that the tonal of a human being is intimately tied to his birth.
You must remember this point. It is of great importance in understanding all this. The tonal begins at birth and ends at death.
The tonal is what makes the world. However, the tonal makes the world only in a manner of speaking. It cannot create or change anything, and yet is makes the world because its function is to judge, and assess, and witness. I say that the tonal makes the world because it witnesses and assesses it according to tonal rules. In a very strange manner the tonal is a creator that doesn't create a thing. In other words, the tonal makes up the rules by which it apprehends the world. So, in a manner of speaking, it creates the world.
The tonal is like the top of a table--an island. And on this island we have everything. This island is, in fact, the world.
There is a personal tonal for every one of us, and there is a collective one for all of us at any given time, which we can call the tonal of the times. It's like the rows of tables in a restaurant, every table has the same configuration. Certain items are present on all of them. They are, however, individually different from each other; some tables are more crowded than others; they have different food on them, different plates, different atmosphere, yet we have to admit that all the tables are very alike. The same thing happens with the tonal . We can say that the tonal of the times is what makes us alike, in the same way it makes all the tables in a restaurant alike. Each table separately, nevertheless, is an individual case, just like the personal tonal of each of us. But the important factor to keep in mind is that everything we know about ourselves and about our world is on the island of the tonal .
What, then, is the nagual ? The nagual is the part of us which we do not deal with at all. The nagual is the part of us for which there is no description--no words, no names, no feelings, no knowledge. It is not mind, it is not soul, it is not the thoughts of men, it is not a state of grace or Heaven or pure intellect, or psyche, or energy, or vital force, or immortality, or life principle, or the Supreme Being, the Almighty, God--all of these are items on the island of the tonal.
The tonal is, as I've already said, everything we think the world is composed of, including God, of course. God has no more importance other than being a part of the tonal of our time.
The nagual is at the service of the warrior. It can be witnessed, but it cannot be talked about. The nagual is there, surrounding the island of the tonal . There, where power hovers.
We sense, from the moment we are born, that there are two parts to us. At the time of birth, and for a while after, we are all nagual. We sense, then, that in order to function we need a counterpart to what we have. The tonal is missing and that gives us, from the very beginning, a feeling of incompleteness. Then the tonal starts to develop and it becomes utterly important to our functioning, so important that it opaques the shine of the nagual , it overwhelms it. From the moment we become all tonal we do nothing else but to increment that old feeling of incompleteness which accompanies us from the moment of our birth, and which tells us constantly that there is another part to give us completeness.
From the moment we become all tonal we begin making pairs. We sense our two sides, but we always represent them with items of the tonal. We say that the two parts of us are the soul and the body. Or mind and matter. Or good and evil. God and Satan. We never realize, however, that we are merely paring things on the island, very much like paring coffee and tea, or bread and tortillas, or chili and mustard. I tell you, we are weird animals. We get carried away and in our madness we believe ourselves to be making perfect sense.
What can one specifically find in that area beyond the island? There is no way of answering that. If I would say, Nothing, I would only make the nagual part of the tonal . All I can say is that there, beyond the island, one finds the nagual.
But then you say, when I call it the nagual , aren't I also placing it on the island? No. I named it only because I wanted to make you aware of it. I have named the tonal and the nagual as a true pair. That is all I have done.
We sense that there is another side to us. But when we try to pin down that other side the tonal gets hold of the baton, and as a director it is quite petty and jealous. It dazzles us with its cunningness and forces us to obliterate the slightest inkling of the other part of the true pair, the nagual.

The nagual has consciousness. It is aware of everything. In order to talk about it we must borrow from the island of the tonal , therefore it is more convenient not to explain it but to simply recount its effects.
Are the nagual and the tonal within ourselves? you ask. You yourself would say that they are within ourselves. I myself would say that they are not, but neither of us would be right. The tonal of your time calls for you to maintain that everything dealing with your feelings and thoughts takes place within yourself. The sorcerers' tonal says the opposite, everything is outside. Who's right? No one. Inside, outside, it doesn't really matter.
To explain all this is not that simple. No matter how clever the checkpoints of the tonal are the fact of the matter is that the nagual surfaces. Its coming to the surface is always inadvertent, though. The tonal 's great art is to suppress any manifestation of the nagual in such a manner that even if its presence should be the most obvious thing in the world, it is unnoticeable.
Let's say that the tonal , since it is keenly aware of how taxing it is to speak of itself, has created the terms "I," "myself," and so forth as a balance and thanks to them it can talk with other tonals , or with itself, about itself.
Now when I say that the tonal forces us to do something, I don't mean that there is a third party there. Obviously it forces itself to follow its own judgments.
On certain occasions, however, or under certain special circumstances, something in the tonal itself becomes aware that there is more to us. It is like a voice that comes from the depths, the voice of the nagual . You see, the totality of ourselves is a natural condition which the tonal cannot obliterate altogether, and there are moments, especially in the life of a warrior, when the totality becomes apparent. At those moments one can surmise and assess what we really are.
When we die, we die with the totality of ourselves. A sorcerer asks the question. "If we're going to die with the totality of ourselves, why not, then, live with that totality?"
* * *

A warrior treats his tonal in a very special manner. Life can be merciless with you if you are careless with your tonal .
To see a man as a tonal entails that one cease judging him in a moral sense, or excusing him on the grounds that he is like a leaf at the mercy of the wind. In other words, it entails seeing a man without thinking that he is hopeless or helpless. You know exactly what I am talking about. One can assess people without condemning or forgiving them.
Youth is in no way a barrier against the deterioration of the tonal . You say you think there might be a great many reasons for one's condition. I find that there is only one, our tonal . It is not that our tonal is weak because, for example, we drink; it is the other way around, one drinks because one's tonal is weak. That weakness forces one to be what he is. This happens to all of us, in one form or another.
But aren't I also justifying our behavior by saying that it's our tonal ? No, I'm giving you an explanation that you have never encountered before. It is not a justification or a condemnation, though. Our tonals are weak and timid. All of us are more or less in the same boat.
There is no need to treat the body in an awful manner, but the fact is that all of us have learned to perfection how to make our tonal weak. I have called that indulging. Only a warrior has a "proper tonal." The average man, at best, can have a "right tonal."
The nagual is not experience or intuition or consciousness. Those terms and everything else you may care to say are only items on the island of the tonal . The nagual , on the other hand, is only effect. The tonal begins at birth and ends at death, but the nagual never ends. The nagual has no limit. I've said that the nagual is where power hovers; that was only a way of alluding to it. By reasons of its effect, perhaps the nagual can be best understood in terms of power.
* * *

One of the acts of a warrior is never to let anything affect him. Thus, a warrior may be seeing the devil himself, but he won't let anyone know that. The control of a warrior has to be impeccable.
* * *
A proper tonal is a tonal that is just right, balanced and harmonious. There are, roughly speaking, two sides to every tonal. One is the outer part, the fringe, the surface of the island. That's the part related to action and acting, the rugged side. The other part is the decision and judgment, the inner tonal , softer, more delicate and more complex. The proper tonal is a tonal where the two levels are in perfect harmony and balance.
* * *
You say you are puzzled because I have never talked about women in relation to my knowledge. You're a man, therefore I use the masculine gender when I talk to you. That's all. The rest is the same.
* * *
For a proper tonal everything on the island of the tonal is a challenge. Another way of saying it is that for a warrior everything in this world is a challenge. The greatest challenge of all, of course, is his bid for power. But power comes from the nagual , and when a warrior finds himself at the edge of the day it means that the hour of the nagual is approaching, the warrior's hour of power.
One bids for power and that bidding is irreversible. I wouldn't say that at the time power comes, that one is about to fulfill his destiny, because there is no destiny. The only thing that can be said then is that, at that point, one is about to fulfill his power.
* * *
The best of us always comes out when we are against the wall, when we feel the sword dangling overhead. Personally, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Men are very frail creatures, who make themselves even more frail with their indulging.
* * *
Seeing must be direct, for a warrior can't use his time to unravel what he himself is seeing . Seeing is seeing because it cuts through all that nonsense. In the beginning seeing is confusing and it's easy to get lost in it. As the warrior gets tighter, however, his seeing becomes what it should be, a direct knowing. A warrior asks a question, and through his seeing he gets an answer, but the answer is simple.
A rule of thumb for a warrior is that he makes his decisions so carefully that nothing that may happen as a result of them can surprise him, much less drain his power.
To be a warrior means to be humble and alert. When you come to see me you should come prepared to die. If you come here ready to die, there shouldn't be any pitfalls, or any unwelcome surprises, or any unnecessary acts. Everything should gently fall into place because you're expecting nothing.
It's not that you have to live with all this. You are all this. A warrior doesn't ever leave the island of the tonal . He uses it. This is your world. You can't renounce it. It is useless to get angry and feel disappointed with oneself. All that that proves is that one's tonal is involved in an internal battle; a battle within one's tonal is one of the most inane contests I can think of. The tight life of a warrior is designed to end that struggle. From the beginning I have taught you to avoid wear and tear.
The warrior's way is harmony--the harmony between actions and decisions, at first, and then the harmony between tonal and nagual.
It is the tonal that has to relinquish control. The tonal is made to give up unnecessary things like self-importance and indulging, which only plunge it into boredom. The whole trouble is that the tonal clings to those things when it should be glad to rid itself of that crap. The task then is to convince the tonal to become free and fluid. That's what a sorcerer needs before anything else, a strong, free tonal . The stronger it gets the less it clings to its doings, and the easier it is to shrink it.
The tonal shrinks at given times, especially when it is embarrassed. Once the tonal has shrunk, the nagual , if it is already in motion, no matter how small that motion is, will take over and achieve extraordinary deeds.
The affairs of the nagual can be witnessed only with the body, not the reason.
We are fluid, luminous beings made out of fibers. The agreement that we are solid objects is the tonal 's doings. When the tonal shrinks, extraordinary things are possible. But they are only extraordinary for the tonal .
The nagual , once it learns to surface, may cause great damage to the tonal by coming out without any control. Your tonal has to be convinced about all of this with reasons, your nagual with actions, until one props the other. As I have told you, the tonal rules, and yet it is very vulnerable. The nagual , on the other hand, never, or almost never, acts out; but when it does, it terrifies the tonal .
The tonal must be protected at any cost. The crown has to be taken away from it, but it must remain as the protected overseer. Any threat to the tonal always results in its death. And if the tonal dies, so does the whole man. Because of its inherent weakness the tonal is easily destroyed, and thus one of the balancing arts of the warrior is to make the nagual emerge in order to prop up the tonal . I say it is an art, because sorcerers know that only by boosting the tonal can the nagual emerge. That boosting is called personal power.

My advantage over you at this moment is that I know how to get to the nagual , and you don't. But once I have gotten there I have no more advantage and no more knowledge than you.
* * *
In moments of great danger, fear, or stress, push your belly down by pushing the diaphragm down while taking four sharp gasps of air through the mouth, followed by four deep inhalations and exhalations through the nose. The gasps of air have to be felt as jolts in the middle part of the body. Keeping the hands tightly clasped, covering the navel, gives strength to the midsection and helps to control the gasps and the deep inhalations, which have to be held for a count of eight as one presses the diaphragm down. The exhalations are done twice through the nose and twice through the mouth in a slow or accelerated fashion, depending on one's preference.
* * *
The nagual is only for witnessing. When one is dealing with the nagual , one should never look into it directly. The only way to look at the nagual is as if it were a common affair. One must blink in order to break the fixation. Our eyes are the eyes of the tonal , or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that our eyes have been trained by the tonal , therefore the tonal claims them. One of the sources of an apprentice's bafflement and discomfort is that his tonal doesn't let go of his eyes. The day it does, his nagual will have won a great battle. Your obsession or, better yet, everyone's obsession is to arrange the world according to the tonal 's rules; so every time we are confronted with the nagual , we go out of our way to make our eyes stiff and intransigent. I must appeal to the part of your tonal which understands this dilemma and you must make an effort to free your eyes. The point is to convince the tonal that there are worlds that can pass in front of the same windows. Let your eyes be free; let them be true windows. The eyes can be the windows to peer into boredom or to peek into that infinity.
All you have to do is to set up your intent as a customs house. Whenever you are in the world of the tonal , you should be an impeccable tonal ; no time for irrational crap. But whenever you are in the world of the nagual , you should also be impeccable; no time for rational crap. For the warrior, intent is the gate in between. It closes completely behind him when he goes either way.
Another thing one should do when facing the nagual is to shift the line of the eyes from time to time, in order to break the spell of the nagual . Changing the position of the eyes always eases the burden of the tonal . This shifting should be done only as a relief, though, not as another way of palisading yourself to safeguard the order to the tonal .
* * *
If there are too many unnecessary items on your island you won't be able to sustain the encounter with the nagual .

The Second Ring of Power

Anything is possible if one wants it with unbending intent and you don't let your thoughts interfere.

Power comes only after we accept our fate without recriminations.
* * *
When one has nothing to lose, one becomes courageous. We are timid only when there is something we can still cling to.

A warrior doesn't seek anything for his solace, nor can he possibly leave anything to chance. A warrior actually affects the outcome of events by the force of his awareness and his unbending intent .
* * *
You must lose your human form. You don't yet know about the human mold and the human form. The human form is a force and the human mold is ... well ... a mold.
Everything has a particular mold. Plants have molds, animals have molds, worms have molds. Sorcerers have the avenue of their dreaming to lead them to the mold. The mold of men is definitely an entity, an entity which can be seen by some of us at certain times when we are imbued with power, and by all of us for sure at the moment of our death. The mold is the source, the origin of man, since, without the mold to group together the force of life, there is no way for that force to assemble itself into the shape of man.
The human form is a sticky force that makes us the people we are. The human form has no form. It's anything, but in spite of not having form, it possesses us during our lives and doesn't leave us until we die.
A warrior must drop the human form in order to change, to really change. Otherwise there is only talk about change. One cannot change one iota as long as one holds on to the human form. A warrior knows that he cannot change, and yet he makes it his business to try to change, even though he knows that he won't be able to. That's the only advantage a warrior has over the average man. The warrior is never disappointed when he fails to change.
The only thing that makes you think you are yourself is the form. Once it leaves, you are nothing. A warrior without form begins to see an eye. The formless warrior uses that eye to start dreaming . If you don't have a form, you don't have to go to sleep to do dreaming . The eye in front of you pulls you every time you want to go.
Everything has to be sifted through our human form. When we have no form, then nothing has form and yet everything is present.
* * *
The art of the dreamer is to hold the image of his dream . Our art as ordinary people is that we know how to hold the image of what we are looking at. We just do it; that is, our bodies do it. In dreaming we have to do the same thing, except that in dreaming we have to learn how to do it. We have to struggle not to look but merely to glance and yet hold the image.

Everything we say is a reflection of the world of people. You talk and act the way you do because you're clinging to the human form.
Everything in a warrior's world depends on personal power and personal power depends on impeccability. Part of being impeccable for a warrior is never to hinder others with his thoughts.
You indulge in not trying to change. That's as wrong as feeling disappointed with our failures. Warriors, must be impeccable in their effort to change, in order to scare the human form and shake it away. After years of impeccability a moment will come when the form cannot stand it any longer and it leaves.
* * *
The art of a sorcerer is to be inconspicuous even in the midst of people. Concentrate totally on trying not to be obvious. To learn to become unnoticeable in the middle of all this is to know the art of stalking .
* * *
Be calm and self-controlled and give others your undivided attention.
* * *
The whole issue of sorcery is perception. A warrior must notice everything, that's his trick, and there lies his advantage. * * *
It is an honor and a pleasure to be a warrior, and it is the warrior's fortune to do what he has to do.

What is the art of stalking ? A hunter just hunts, a stalker stalks anything, including himself. An impeccable stalker can turn anything into prey. We can even stalk our own weaknesses. You do it in the same way you stalk prey. You figure out your routines until you know all the doing of your weaknesses and then you come upon them and pick them up like rabbits inside a cage.
Any habit is, in essence, a doing , and a doing needs all its parts in order to function. If some parts are missing, a doing is disassembled.
* * *
A warrior eats quietly, and slowly, and very little at a time.
* * *
The only deterrent to our despair is the awareness of our death, the key to the sorcerer's scheme of things. The awareness of our death is the only thing that can give us the strength to withstand the duress and pain of our lives and our fears of the unknown. Volition alone is the deciding factor; in other words, one has to make up one's mind to bring that awareness to bear witness to one's acts.
We are human creatures. Who knows what's waiting for us or what kind of power we may have.
* * *
It doesn't matter what anybody says or does. You must be an impeccable man yourself. The fight is right here in this chest. It takes all the time and all the energy we have to conquer the idiocy in us. And that's what matters. The rest is of no importance. To be an impeccable warrior will give you vigor and youth and power.
I have taught you to be dispassionate. The world of people goes up and down and people go up and down with their world; as sorcerers we have no business following them in their ups and downs. The art of sorcerers is to be outside everything and be unnoticeable. And more than anything else, the art of sorcerers is never to waste their power.
* * *
We hold the images of the world with our attention. Let your attention go from the images of the world. If you don't focus your attention on the world, the world collapses. Instead of fighting to focus, let go of the images by gazing fixedly at distant hills, or by gazing at water, like a river, or by gazing at the clouds.
If you gaze with your eyes open, you get dizzy and the eyes get tired, but if you half-close them and blink a lot and move them from mountain to mountain, or from cloud to cloud, you can look for hours.
As I've told you, the tonal and the nagual are two different worlds. In one you talk, in the other you act. At first all of us secretly do not want the world of the nagual . We are afraid and have second thoughts. Our unbending intent and our impeccability gets us thru that.
* * *
Everyone can see , and yet we choose not to remember what we see .
* * *
With our attention we can hold the images of a dream in the same way we hold the images of the world. The art of the dreamer is the art of attention.
* * *
Your reason is the demon that keeps you chained. You have to vanquish it if you want to achieve the realization of my teachings. The issue, therefore, has been how to vanquish your reason . By reason I don't mean the capacity for comprehending, inferring or thinking, in an orderly, rational way. To me reason means attention.
* * *
The core of our being is the act of perceiving, and the magic of our being is the act of awareness. Perception and awareness can be a single, functional, inextricable unit with two domains. The first one is the attention of the tonal ; that is to say, the capacity of average people to perceive and place their awareness on the ordinary world of everyday life: our first ring of power; our awesome but taken-for-granted ability to impart order to our perception of our daily world.
The second domain is the attention of the nagual ; the capacity to place our awareness on the nonordinary world. It's our second ring of power , or the altogether portentous ability all of us have, but only sorcerers use, to impart order to the nonordinary world.
What I have struggled to vanquish, or rather suppress in you, is not your reason as the capacity for rational thought, but your attention of the tonal , or your awareness of the world of common sense. The daily world exists because we know how to hold its images; consequently, if one drops the attention needed to maintain those images, the world collapses.
Practice is what counts. Once you get your attention on the images of your dream, your attention is hooked for good. In the end you can hold the images of any dream.
Our first ring of power is engaged very early in our lives and we live under the impression that that is all there is to us. Our second ring of power , the attention of the nagual , remains hidden for the immense majority of us, and only at the moment of our death is it revealed to us. There is a pathway to reach it, however, which is available to every one of us, but which only sorcerers take, and that pathway is through dreaming . Dreaming is in essence the transformation of ordinary dreams into affairs involving volition. Dreamers , by engaging their attention of the nagual and focusing it on the items and events of their ordinary dreams, change those dreams into dreaming.
There are no procedures to arrive at the attention of the nagual , only pointers. Finding your hands in your dreams is the first pointer; then the exercise of paying attention is elongated to finding objects, looking for specific features, such as buildings, streets and so on. From there the jump is to dream about specific places at specific times of the day. The final stage is drawing the attention of the nagual to focus on the total self.
That final stage is usually ushered in by a dream that many of us have had at one time or another, in which one is looking at oneself sleeping in bed. By the time a sorcerer has had such a dream, his attention has been developed to such a degree that instead of waking himself up, as most of us would do in a similar situation, he turns on his heels and engages himself in activity, as if he were acting in the world of everyday life.
From that moment on there is a breakage, a division of sorts in the otherwise unified personality. The result of engaging the attention of the nagual and developing it to the height and sophistication of our daily attention of the world is the other self, an identical being as oneself, but made in dreaming .
There are no definite standard steps for reaching that double, as there are no definite steps for us to reach our daily awareness. We simply do it by practicing. In the act of engaging our attention of the nagual , we find the steps. Practice dreaming without letting your fears make it into an encumbering production.
* * *
There is a crack between the worlds and it is more than a metaphor. It is rather the capacity to change levels of attention. Don't try to reason it out. Act like a warrior and follow what I've told you.
* * *
We choose only once. We choose either to be warriors or to be ordinary men. A second choice does not exist. Not on this earth.

The only freedom warriors have is to behave impeccably. Not only is impeccability freedom but it is the only way to scare away the human form.
The second attention, or the attention of the nagual , is reached only after warriors have swept the top of their tables, their islands of the tonal , clean. Reaching the second attention makes the two attentions into a single unit, and that unit is the totality of oneself.
Diligence in an impeccable life is the only way to lose the human form. Losing the human form is the essential requirement for unifying the two attentions.
The attention under the table is the key to everything sorcerers do. In order to reach that attention I have taught you dreaming .
Another way to learn how to do dreaming is by learning gazing. If you gaze at a pile of leaves for hours your thoughts get quiet. Without thoughts the attention of the tonal wanes and suddenly your second attention hooks onto the leaves and the leaves become something else. The moment when the second attention hooks onto something is called stopping the world .
The difficulty in gazing is to learn to quiet down the thoughts. Once you can stop the world you are a gazer. And the only way of stopping the world is by trying. Combine gazing at dry leaves and looking for our hands in dreaming . Once you have trapped your second attention with dry leaves, you do gazing and dreaming to enlarge it. And that's all there is to gazing. All we need to do in order to trap our second attention is to try and try.
Once dreamers know how to stop the world by gazing at leaves, they can gaze at other things; and finally when the dreamers lose their form altogether, they can gaze at anything.
First after leaves, gaze at small plants. Small plants are very dangerous. Their power is concentrated; they have a very intense light and they feel when dreamers are gazing at them; they immediately move their light and shoot it at the gazer. Dreamers have to choose one kind of plant to gaze at.
Next gaze at trees. Dreamers also have a particular kind of tree to gaze at. Next gaze at moving, living creatures. Small insects are by far the best subject. Their mobility makes them innocuous to the gazer, the opposite of plants which draw their light directly from the earth.
The next step is to gaze at rocks. Rocks are very old and powerful and have a specific light which is rather greenish in contrast with the white light of plants and the yellowish light of mobile, living beings. Rocks do not open up easily to gazers, but it is worthwhile for gazers to persist because rocks have special secrets concealed in their core, secrets that can aid sorcerers in their dreaming .
A second series in the order of gazing is to gaze at cyclic phenomena: rain and fog. Gazers can focus their second attention on the rain itself and move with it, or focus it on the background and use the rain as a magnifying glass of sorts to reveal hidden features. Places of power or places to be avoided are found by gazing through rain. Places of power are yellowish and places to be avoided are intensely green.
The position of the body is of great importance while one is gazing. One has to sit on the ground on a soft mat of leaves, or on a cushion made out of natural fibers. The back has to be propped against a tree, or a stump, or a flat rock. The body has to be thoroughly relaxed. The eyes are never fixed on the object, in order to avoid tiring them. The gaze consists in scanning very slowly the object gazed at, going counterclockwise but without moving the head. The idea is to let your perception play without analyzing it.
The effect you are after in gazing is to learn to stop the internal dialogue. To do that you can focus your view as gazers do or, as I've already told you, flood your awareness while walking by not focusing your sight on anything. That is, sort of feel with your eyes everything in the 180-degree range in front of you, while you keep your fixed and unfocused eyes just above the line of the horizon.
The essential feature of sorcery is shutting off the internal dialogue. Stopping the internal dialogue is an operational way of describing the act of disengaging the attention of the tonal .
Once we stop our internal dialogue we also stop the world . That is an operational description of the inconceivable process of focusing our second attention. Part of us is always kept under lock and key because we are afraid of it. And to our reason, that part of us is like an insane relative that we keep locked in a dungeon. That part is our second attention, and when it finally can focus on something the world stops. Since we, as average man, know only the attention of the tonal , it is not too farfetched to say that once that attention is canceled, the world indeed has to stop. The focusing of our wild, untrained second attention is, perforce, terrifying. The only way to keep that insane relative from bursting in on us is by shielding ourselves with our endless internal dialogue.
* * *
Dreamers can gaze in order to do dreaming and then they can look for their dreams in their gazing. For example you can gaze at the shadows of rocks and then, in your dreaming , you might find out that those shadows have light. You can then, while gazing, look for the light in the shadows until you find it. Gazing and dreaming go together.
* * *
A warrior has no compassion for anyone. To have compassion means that you wish the other person to be like you, to be in your shoes, and you lend a hand just for that purpose. The hardest thing in the world is for a warrior to let others be. The impeccability of a warrior is to let them be and to support them in what they are. That means, of course, that you trust them to be impeccable warriors themselves. If they are not then it's your duty to be impeccable yourself and not say a word. Only a sorcerer who sees and is formless can afford to help anyone. Every effort to help on our part is an arbitrary act guided by our own self-interest alone.
* * *
The problem for you as a challenge is whether or not you will be capable of developing your will , or the power of your second attention to focus indefinitely on anything you want.

The Eagle's Gift

Our total being consists of two perceivable segments. The first is the familiar physical body, which all of us can perceive; the second is the luminous body, which is a cocoon that only seers can perceive, a cocoon that gives us the appearance of giant luminous eggs.
One of the most important goals of sorcery is to reach the luminous cocoon; a goal which is fulfilled through the sophisticated use of dreaming and through a rigorous, systematic exertion called not-doing . I've defined not-doing as an unfamiliar act which engages our total being by forcing it to become conscious of its luminous segment.
To explain these concepts I've make a three-part, uneven division of our consciousness. The smallest, the first attention, or the consciousness that every normal person has developed in order to deal with the daily world, encompasses the awareness of the physical body. Another larger portion, the second attention, is the awareness we need in order to perceive our luminous cocoon and to act as luminous beings. The second attention is brought forth through deliberate training or by an accidental trauma, and it encompasses the awareness of the luminous body. The last portion, which is the largest, is the third attention. It's an immeasurable consciousness which engages undefinable aspects of the awareness of the physical and the luminous bodies. The battlefield of warriors is the second attention, which is something like a training ground for reaching the third attention.
* * *
The compulsion to possess and hold on to things is not unique. Everyone who wants to follow the warrior's path has to rid himself of this fixation in order not to focus our dreaming body on the weak face of the second attention.
The dreaming body , sometimes called the "double" or the "Other," because it is a perfect replica of the dreamer 's body, is inherently the energy of a luminous being, a whitish, phantomlike emanation, which is projected by the fixation of the second attention into a three-dimensional image of the body.
The dreaming body is as real as anything we deal with in the world. The second attention is unavoidably drawn to focus on our total being as a field of energy, and transforms that energy into anything suitable. The easiest thing is of course the image of the physical body, with which we are already thoroughly familiar from our daily lives and the use of our first attention. What channels the energy of our total being to produce anything that might be within the boundaries of possibility is known as will .
At the level of luminous beings the range is so broad that it is futile to try to establish limits--thus, the energy of a luminous being can be transformed through will into anything.
We are not merely whatever our common sense requires us to believe we are. We are in actuality luminous beings, capable of becoming aware of our luminosity. As luminous beings aware of our luminosity, we are capable of unraveling different facets of our awareness, or our attention. That unraveling could be brought about by a deliberate effort, as we are doing ourselves, or accidentally, through a bodily trauma.
The old sorcerers deliberately placed different facets of their attention on material objects. By unraveling another facet of our attention we might become receptors for the projections of ancient sorcerers' second attention. Those sorcerers were impeccable practitioners with no limit to what they could accomplish with the fixation of their second attention.

Be fluid, at ease in whatever situation you find yourself. Your challenge is to deal with people with ease regardless of what they do to you. Remember what I have said, that it is of no use to be sad and complain and feel justified in doing so, believing that someone is always doing something to us. Nobody is doing anything to anybody, much less to a warrior.
* * *
You must let go of your desire to cling. The very same thing happened to me. I held on to things, such as the food I liked, the mountains where I lived, the people I used to enjoy talking to. But most of all I clung to the desire to be liked. Those things are our barriers to losing our human form. Our attention is trained to focus doggedly. That is the way we maintain the world. Now is the time to let go of all that. In order to lose your human form you should let go of all that ballast.
* * *
Dissipating a mood through overanalyzing it wastes our power.

If you have the same vision in dreaming three times, pay extraordinary attention to it. When a dreamer dreams that he sees himself asleep he must avoid sudden jolts or surprises, and take everything with a grain of salt. The dreamer has to get involved in dispassionate experimentations. Rather than examining his sleeping body, the dreamer walks out of the room.
In dreaming what matters is volition, the corporeality of the body has no significance. It is simply a memory that slows down the dreamer . If you do not stare at things but only glance at them, just as you do in the daily world, you can arrange your perception. That is, by taking your dreaming for granted, you then can use the perceptual biases of your everyday life.
* * *
Wait before revealing a finding. Wait for the most appropriate time to let go of something that you hold.
* * *
Losing the human form brings the freedom to remember your self. Losing the human form is like a spiral. It gives you the freedom to remember and this in turn makes you even freer.

A warrior knows that he is waiting and knows also what he is waiting for, and while he waits he feasts his eyes on the world. The ultimate accomplishment of a warrior is joy.

Accept your fate in humbleness. The course of a warrior's destiny is unalterable. The challenge is how far he can go within those rigid bounds, how impeccable he can be within those rigid bounds. If there are obstacles in his path, the warrior strives impeccably to overcome them. If he finds unbearable hardship and pain on his path, he weeps, but all his tears put together could not move the line of his destiny the breadth of one hair. Fulfill your fate as a warrior not as a petty person.

Detachment does not automatically mean wisdom, but it is nonetheless, an advantage because it allows the warrior to pause momentarily to reassess situations, to reconsider positions. In order to use that extra moment consistently and correctly, however, a warrior has to struggle unyieldingly for a lifetime.
A warrior is someone who seeks freedom. Sadness is not freedom. We must snap out of it. Having a sense of detachment entails having a moment's pause to reassess situations.
Formlessness is, if anything, a detriment to sobriety and levelheadedness. An aspect of being detached, the capacity to become immersed in whatever one is doing, naturally extends to everything one does, including being inconsistent, and outright petty. The advantage of being formless is that it allows us a moment's pause, providing that we have the self-discipline and courage to utilize it.

We unwittingly focus on fear and distrust, as if those were the only possible options available to us, while all along we have the alternative of deliberately centering our attention on the opposite, the mystery, the wonder of what is happening to us.
* * *
There are no steps to anything a warrior does. There is only personal power.
* * *
In the final analysis every dreamer is different. There are, however, general states. Restful vigil is the preliminary state, a state in which the senses become dormant and yet one is aware.
The second state is dynamic vigil. In this state one is left looking at a scene, a tableau of sorts, which is static. One sees a three-dimensional picture, a frozen bit of something--a landscape, a street, a house, a person, a face, anything.
The third state is passive witnessing. In it the dreamer is no longer viewing a frozen bit of the world but is observing, eyewitnessing, an event as it occurs. It is as if the primacy of the visual and auditory senses makes this state of dreaming mainly an affair of the eyes and ears.
The fourth state is the one in which you are drawn to act. In it one is compelled to enterprise, to take steps, to make the most of one's time. This state is called dynamic initiative.
* * *
You have to look after someone and take care of them in a most selfish fashion--that is, as if they are your own self. Selfishness can be put to a grand use. To harness it is not impossible. The surest way to harness selfishness is through the daily activities of our lives.
You are efficient in whatever you do because you have no one to bug the devil out of you. It is no challenge to you to soar like an arrow by yourself. If you are given the task of taking care of someone else, however, your independent effectiveness will go to pieces, and in order to survive you will have to extend your selfish concern for yourself to include the one under your care. You must honor them regardless of what they do to you, and you must train your body, through your interaction with them, to feel at ease in the face of the most trying situations.
It is much easier to fare well under conditions of maximum stress than to be impeccable under normal circumstances, such as in the interplay with another under your care.
Further, then, you cannot under any circumstances get angry with them, because they are indeed your benefactor; only through them will you be capable of harnessing your selfishness.
You take care of them as a means of training yourself for the hardship of interaction with people. It is imperative that you internalize a mood of ease in the face of difficult social situations.
* * *
Dreaming begins as a unique state of awareness arrived at by focusing the residue of consciousness, which one still has when asleep, on the elements, or the features, of one's dreams.
The residue of consciousness, called the second attention, is brought into action, or is harnessed, through exercises of not-doing . The essential aid to dreaming is a state of mental quietness, called "stopping the internal dialogue," or the "not-doing of talking to oneself." To teach you how to master it, I've made you walk for miles with your eyes held fixed and out of focus at a level just above the horizon so as to emphasize the peripheral view. This method is effective on two counts. It allows you to stop your internal dialogue, and it trains your attention. By forcing you to concentrate on the peripheral view, I reinforced your capacity to concentrate for long periods of time on one single activity.
The best way to enter into dreaming is to concentrate on the area just at the tip of the sternum, at the top of the belly. The attention needed for dreaming stems from that area. The energy needed in order to move and to seek in dreaming stems from the area an inch or two below the belly button. That energy is the will , or the power to select, to assemble. In a woman both the attention and the energy for dreaming originate from the womb.
Anything may suffice as a not-doing to help dreaming , providing that it forces the attention to remain fixed. The attention one needs in the beginning of dreaming has to be forcibly made to stay on any given item in a dream. Only through immobilizing our attention can one turn an ordinary dream into dreaming.
In dreaming one has to use the same mechanisms of attention as in everyday life. Our first attention has been taught to focus on the items of the world with great force in order to turn the amorphous and chaotic realm of perception into the orderly world of awareness.
The second attention serves the function of a beckoner, a caller of chances. The more it is exercised, the greater the possibility of getting the desired result. But that is also the function of attention in general, a function so taken for granted in our daily life that it has become unnoticeable; if we encounter a fortuitous occurrence we talk about it in terms of accident or coincidence, rather than in terms of our attention having beckoned the event.
* * *
The only thing that really counts in making the shift into the dreaming body is anchoring the second attention. Attention is what makes the world. What is important is to store attention in dreaming.
The first attention, the attention that makes the world, can never be completely overcome; it can only be turned off for a moment and replaced with the second attention, providing that the body had stored enough of it. Dreaming is naturally a way of storing the second attention. In order to shift into your dreaming body when awake you have to practice dreaming until it comes out your ears.
I have given you three tasks to train your second attention. First, to find your hands in dreaming . Next, to choose a locale, focus your attention on it, and then do daytime dreaming and find out if you can really go there. I've suggested that you place someone you know at the site in order to do two things: first to check subtle changes that might indicate that you were there in dreaming , and second, to isolate unobtrusive detail, which would be precisely what your second attention would zero in on.
The most serious problem the dreamer has in this respect is the unbending fixation of the second attention on detail that would be thoroughly undetected by the attention of everyday life, creating in this manner a nearly insurmountable obstacle to validation. What one seeks in dreaming is not what one would pay attention to in everyday life.
One strives to immobilize the second attention only in the learning period. After that, one has to fight the almost invincible pull of the second attention and give only cursory glances at everything. In dreaming one has to be satisfied with the briefest possible views of everything. As soon as one focuses on anything, one loses control.
The last generalized task I gave you to train your second attention was to get out of your body. This task begins with a dream in which you find yourself looking at yourself asleep.
To elucidate the control of the second attention, I've presented the idea of will . Will can be described as the maximum control of the luminosity of the body as a field of energy; or it can be described as a level of proficiency, as a state of being that comes abruptly into the daily life of a warrior at any given time. It is experienced as a force that radiates out of the middle part of the body following a moment of the most absolute silence, or a moment of sheer terror, or profound sadness. Those things afford the warrior the concentration needed to use the luminosity of the body and turn it into silence.
For a human being sadness is as powerful as terror. Both can bring the moment of silence. Or the silence comes of itself, because the warrior tries for it throughout his life. It is a moment of blackness, a moment still more silent than the moment of shutting off the internal dialogue. That blackness, that silence, gives rise to the intent to direct the second attention, to command it, to make it do things. This is why it's called will . The intent and the effect are will ; they are tied together.
We don't feel our will because we think that it should be something we know for sure that we are doing or feeling, like getting angry, for instance. Will is very quiet, unnoticeable. Will belongs to the other self. We are in our other selves when we do dreaming .
Will is such a complete control of the second attention that it is called the other self.
* * *
Intent is present everywhere. Intent is what makes the world. People, and all other living creatures for that matter, are the slaves of intent . We are in its clutches. It makes us do whatever it wants. It makes us act in the world. It even makes us die. When we become warriors, though, intent becomes our friend. It lets us be free for a moment; at times it even comes to us, as if it had been waiting around for us.

Again, human beings are divided in two. The right side, which is called the tonal , encompasses everything the intellect can conceive of. The left side, called the nagual , is a realm of indescribable features: a realm impossible to contain in words. The left side is perhaps comprehended, if comprehension is what takes place, with the total body; thus its resistance to conceptualization. All the faculties, possibilities, and accomplishments of sorcery, from the simplest to the most astounding, are in the human body itself.
* * *
The power that governs the destiny of all living beings is called the Eagle or the Indescribable Force . Providing the luminous shell that comprises one's humanness has been broken, it is possible to find in the Indescribable Force the faint reflection of man. The Indescribable Force 's irrevocable dictums can then be apprehended by seers, properly interpreted by them, and accumulated in the form of a governing body. Thus the rule was formed.
The rule is not a tale. The rule states that every living thing has been granted the power, if it so desires, to seek an opening to freedom and to go through it.
To cross over to freedom does not mean eternal life as eternity is commonly understood--that is, as living forever. What the rule states is that one can keep the awareness which is ordinarily relinquished at the moment of dying. I cannot explain what it means to keep that awareness. My benefactor told me that at the moment of crossing, one enters into the third attention, and the body in its entirety is kindled with knowledge. Every cell at once becomes aware of itself, and also aware of the totality of the body.
This kind of awareness is meaningless to our compartmentalized minds. Therefore the crux of the warrior's struggle is not so much to realize that the crossing over stated in the rule means crossing to the third attention, but rather to conceive that there exists such an awareness at all.
There is a common error, that of overestimating the left-side awareness, of becoming dazzled by its clarity and power. To be in the left-side awareness does not mean that one is immediately liberated from one's folly--it only means an extended capacity for perceiving, and above all, a greater ability to forget.

One has to be utterly humble and carry nothing to defend, not even one's person. One's person should be protected, but not defended.
It takes a very long time to clean out the garbage that a luminous being picks up in the world. We are so stiff and feel so self-important.
* * *
Stalkers deal with people, with the world of ordinary affairs. Stalkers are the practitioners of controlled folly as the dreamers are the practitioners of dreaming . Controlled folly is the basis for stalking , as dreams are the basis for dreaming . Generally speaking, a warrior's greatest accomplishment in the second attention is dreaming , and in the first attention his greatest accomplishment is stalking.
In the absence of self-importance, a warrior's only way of dealing with the social milieu is in terms of controlled folly.

Deal with the world exclusively in terms of controlled folly.
* * *
A warrior never loses his mind under any circumstances.
* * *
A warrior is never under siege. To be under siege implies that one has personal possessions that could be blockaded. A warrior has nothing in the world except his impeccability, and impeccability cannot be threatened. Nonetheless, in a battle for one's life a warrior should strategically use every means available.
* * *
We must live our lives impeccably for no other reason than to be impeccable.
* * *
Although human beings appear to a seer as luminous eggs, the egglike shape is an external cocoon, a shell of luminosity that houses a most intriguing, haunting, mesmeric core made up of concentric circles of yellowish luminosity, the color of a candle's flame.
Losing the human form is the only means of breaking that shell, the only means of liberating that haunting luminous core. To break the shell means remembering the other self, and arriving at the totality of oneself.
* * *
An unconquerable pessimism overtakes a warrior at a certain point on his path. A sense of defeat, or perhaps more accurately, a sense of unworthiness, comes upon him almost unawares. A warrior's resolution to live impeccably in spite of everything cannot be approached as a strategy to ensure success.
The warrior enters into a state of unsurpassed humility; when the true poverty of his human resources becomes undeniable, the warrior has no recourse but to step back and lower his head.
It is monstrous to think that the world is understandable or that we ourselves are understandable. What we are perceiving is an enigma, a mystery that one can only accept in humbleness and awe. The two sides of a human being are totally separate and it takes great discipline and determination to break that seal and go from one side to the other. We have been put together by forces incomprehensible to our reason. The only thing we do not have is time. Every minute might be our last; therefore, it has to be lived with the spirit.

Perception suffers a profound jolt when we are placed in states of quietude in darkness. Our hearing takes the lead then, and the signals from all the living and existing entities around us can be detected--not with our hearing only, but with a combination of the auditory and visual senses, in that order. In darkness the eyes become subsidiary to the ears.
* * *
Power spots are actual holes in a sort of canopy that prevents the world from losing its shape. A power spot can be utilized as long as one has gathered enough strength in the second attention. The key to withstanding the Indescribable Force 's presence is the potency of one's intent . Without intent there is nothing.

Be impeccable and practice meticulously whatever you learn, and above all, be careful and deliberate in your actions so as not to exhaust your life force in vain.
The prerequisite for entrance into any of the three stages of attention is the possession of life force, because without it warriors cannot have direction and purpose. Upon dying our awareness also enters into the third attention; but only for an instant, as a purging action, just before the Indescribable Force devours it.
* * *
Stalkers become lighthearted and jovial and enjoy their lives.
* * *
The second attention belongs to the luminous body, as the first attention belongs to the physical body.
Dreaming is in fact a rational state. In dreaming , the right side, the rational awareness, is wrapped up inside the left side awareness in order to give the dreamer a sense of sobriety and rationality; but the influence of rationality has to be minimal and used only as an inhibiting mechanism to protect the dreamer from excesses and bizarre undertakings.
Our first attention is hooked to the emanations of the earth, while our second attention is hooked to the emanations of the universe. A dreamer by definition is outside the boundaries of the concerns of everyday life.
The dreamers ' power to focus on their second attention makes them into living slingshots. The stronger and the more impeccable the dreamers are, the farther they can project their second attention into the unknown and the longer their dreaming projection will last.
Dreaming is no illusion. It's a step toward the control of the second attention; in other words, you are learning the perceptual bias of that other realm.

There is no way on earth that we can order anyone or ourselves to rally knowledge. It is rather a slow affair; the body, at the right time and under the proper circumstances of impeccability, rallies its knowledge without the intervention of desire.
* * *
The first principle of the art of stalking is that warriors choose their battleground. A warrior never goes into battle without knowing what the surroundings are.
To discard everything that is unnecessary is the second principle of the art of stalking .
Warriors don't have the world to cushion them, so they must have the rule. Yet the rule of stalkers applies to everyone.
The first precept of the rule is that everything that surrounds us is an unfathomable mystery.
The second precept of the rule is that we must try to unravel these mysteries, but without ever hoping to accomplish this.
The third, that a warrior, aware of the unfathomable mystery that surrounds him and aware of his duty to try to unravel it, takes his rightful place among mysteries and regards himself as one. Consequently, for a warrior there is no end to the mystery of being, whether being means being a pebble, or an ant, or oneself. That is a warrior's humbleness. One is equal to everything.
* * *
Apply all the concentration you have to decide whether or not to enter into battle, for any battle is a battle for one's life. This is the third principle of the art of stalking . A warrior must be willing and ready to make his last stand here and now. But not in a helter-skelter way.
The fourth principle of the art of stalking is; relax, abandon yourself, fear nothing. Only then will the powers that guide us open the road and aid us. Only then.
The fifth principle is; when faced with odds that cannot be dealt with, warriors retreat for a moment. They let their minds meander. They occupy their time with something else. Anything would do.
The sixth principle: warriors compress time; even an instant counts. In a battle for your life, a second is an eternity; an eternity that may decide the outcome. Warriors aim at succeeding, therefore they compress time. Warriors don't waste an instant.
* * *
A recapitulation is the forte of stalkers as the dreaming body is the forte of dreamers . It consists of recollecting one's life down to the most insignificant detail.
The first stage is a brief recounting of all the incidents in our lives that in an obvious manner stand out for examination.
The second stage is a more detailed recollection, which starts systematically at a point that could be the moment prior to the stalker sitting, and theoretically could extend to the moment of birth.
A perfect recapitulation can change a warrior as much, if not more, than the total control of the dreaming body . In this respect, dreaming and stalking lead to the same end, the entering into the third attention. It is important for a warrior, however, to know and practice both.
The key element in recapitulating is breathing. Recollecting is easy if one can reduce the area of stimulation around the body. Theoretically, stalkers have to remember every feeling that they have had in their lives, and this process begins with a breath.
Write down a list of the events to be relived. The procedure starts with an initial breath. Stalkers begin with their chin on the right shoulder and slowly inhale as they move their head over a hundred and eighty degree arc. The breath terminates on the left shoulder. Once the inhalation ends, the head goes back to a relaxed position. They exhale looking straight ahead.
The stalker then takes the event at the top of the list and remains with it until all the feelings expended in it have been recounted. As stalkers remember the feelings they invested in whatever it is that they are remembering, they inhale slowly, moving their heads from the right shoulder to the left. The function of this breathing is to restore energy. The luminous body is constantly creating cobweblike filaments, which are projected out of the luminous mass, propelled by emotions of any sort. Therefore, every situation of interaction, or every situation where feelings are involved, is potentially draining to the luminous body. By breathing from right to left while remembering a feeling, stalkers , through the magic of breathing, pick up the filaments they left behind. The next immediate breath is from left to right and it is an exhalation. With it stalkers eject filaments left in them by other luminous bodies involved in the event being recollected.
These are the mandatory preliminaries of stalking . Unless stalkers have gone through the preliminaries in order to retrieve the filaments they have left in the world, and particularly in order to reject those that others have left in them, there is no possibility of handling controlled folly, because those foreign filaments are the basis of one's limitless capacity for self-importance.
In order to practice controlled folly, since it is not a way to fool or chastise people or feel superior to them, one has to be capable of laughing at oneself. One of the results of a detailed recapitulation is genuine laughter upon coming face to face with the boring repetition of one's self-esteem, which is at the core of all human interactions.
The rule defines stalking and dreaming as arts; therefore they are something that one performs. The life-giving nature of breath is what also gives it its cleansing capacity. It is this capacity that makes a recapitulation into a practical matter.
A profound recapitulation is the most expedient means to lose the human form. Thus it is easier for stalkers , after recapitulating their lives, to make use of all the not-doings of the self, such as erasing personal history, losing self-importance, breaking routines and so forth.
* * *
A stalker never pushes himself to the front. In order to apply this seventh principle of the art of stalking , one has to apply the other six. Only a master stalker can be a master of controlled folly. Controlled folly doesn't mean to con people. It means, as my benefactor explained it, that warriors apply the seven basic principles of the art of stalking to whatever they do, from the most trivial acts to life and death situations.
Applying these principles brings about three results. The first is that stalkers learn never to take themselves seriously; they learn to laugh at themselves. If they're not afraid of being a fool, they can fool anyone. The second is that stalkers learn to have endless patience. Stalkers are never in a hurry; they never fret. And the third is that stalkers learn to have an endless capacity to improvise.
* * *
Stalkers face the oncoming time. Normally we face time as it recedes from us. Only stalkers can change that and face time as it advances on them. They see time as something concrete, yet incomprehensible.
* * *
We're warriors, and warriors have only one thing in mind--their freedom. To die and be consumed by the Indescribable Force is no challenge. On the other hand, to sneak around the Indescribable Force and be free is the ultimate audacity.

What's needed to enter fully into the other self is to abandon the intent of our first attention.
* * *
Be frugal and utilize every bit of your energy without wasting any of it.
* * *
When I talk about time, I am not referring to something which is measured by the movement of a clock. Time is the essence of attention; the Indescribable Force 's emanations are made out of time; and properly, when one enters into any aspect of the other self, one is becoming acquainted with time.
The wheel of time is like a state of heightened awareness which is part of the other self, as the left side awareness is part of the self of everyday life. It can physically be described as a tunnel of infinite length and width; a tunnel with reflective furrows. Every furrow is infinite, and there are infinite numbers of them. Living creatures are compulsorily made, by the force of life, to gaze into one furrow. To gaze into it means to be trapped by it, to live that furrow.
Will belongs to the wheel of time. It is something like the runner of a vine, or an intangible tentacle which all of us possess. A warrior's final aim is to learn to focus it on the wheel of time in order to make it turn. Warriors who have succeeded in turning the wheel of time can gaze into any furrow and draw from it whatever they desire. To be trapped compulsorily in one furrow of time entails seeing the images of that furrow only as they recede. To be free from the spellbinding force of those grooves means that one can look in either direction, as images recede or as they approach.
* * *
Warriors have no life of their own. From the moment they understand the nature of awareness, they cease to be persons and the human condition is no longer part of their view. You have your duty as a warrior and nothing else is important. So do your best.
The challenge of a warrior is to arrive at a very subtle balance of positive and negative forces. This challenge does not mean that a warrior should strive to have everything under control, but that a warrior should strive to meet any conceivable situation, the expected and the unexpected, with equal efficiency. To be perfect under perfect circumstances is to be a paper warrior.
I will give you a formula, an incantation for times when your task is greater than your strength;

I am already given to the power that rules my fate.
And I cling to nothing, so I will have nothing to defend.
I have no thoughts, so I will see.
I fear nothing, so I will remember myself.
Detached and at ease,
I will dart past the Eagle to be free.

It takes an enormity of strength to let go of the intent of everyday life. One must place one's attention on the luminous shell. A warrior must evoke intent . The glance is the secret. The eyes beckon intent .
The reason why seeing seems to be visual is because we need the eyes to focus on intent . Our eyes can catch another aspect of intent and that's called seeing . The true function of the eyes is to be the catchers of intent .
* * *
You should trust yourself. On the left side there are no tears. A warrior can no longer weep. The only expression of anguish is a shiver that comes from the very depths of the universe. It is as if one of the Indescribable Force 's emanations is anguish. The warrior's shiver is infinite.
* * *
The act of remembering the other self is thoroughly incomprehensible. In actuality it is the act of remembering oneself, which does not stop at recollecting the interaction warriors perform in their left side awareness, but goes on to recollect every memory that the luminous body has stored from the moment of birth.
This act of remembering, although it seems to be only associated with warriors, is something that is within the realm of every human being; every one of us can go directly to the memories of our luminosity with unfathomable results.

The Fire from Within

There is no completeness without sadness and longing, for without them there is no sobriety, no kindness. Wisdom without kindness and knowledge without sobriety are useless.

Seeing is a peculiar feeling of knowing, of knowing something without a shadow of doubt.

Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it--what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.
Every effort should be made to eradicate self-importance from the lives of warriors. Without self-importance we are invulnerable.
* * *
Self-importance can't be fought with niceties.
* * *
Seers are divided into two categories. Those who are willing to exercise self-restraint and can channel their activities toward pragmatic goals, which would benefit other seers and man in general, and those who don't care about self-restraint or about any pragmatic goals. The latter have failed to resolve the problem of self-importance.
Self-importance is not something simple and naive. On the one hand, it is the core of everything that is good in us, and on the other hand, the core of everything that is rotten. To get rid of the self-importance that is rotten requires a masterpiece of strategy.
In order to follow the path of knowledge one has to be very imaginative. In the path of knowledge nothing is as clear as we'd like it to be. Warriors fight self-importance as a matter of strategy, not principle.
Impeccability is nothing else but the proper use of energy. My statements have no inkling of morality. I've saved energy and that makes me impeccable. To understand this, you have to save enough energy yourself.
Warriors take strategic inventories. They list everything they do. Then they decide which of those things can be changed in order to allow themselves a respite, in terms of expending their energy.
The strategic inventory covers only behavioral patterns that are not essential to our survival and well-being.
In the strategic inventories of warriors, self-importance figures as the activity that consumes the greatest amount of energy, hence, their effort to eradicate it.
One of the first concerns of warriors is to free that energy in order to face the unknown with it. The action of rechanneling that energy is impeccability.
The most effective strategy for rechanneling that energy consists of six elements that interplay with one another. Five of them are called the attributes of warriorship: control, discipline, forbearance, timing, and will . They pertain to the world of the warrior who is fighting to lose self-importance. The sixth element, which is perhaps the most important of all, pertains to the outside world and is called the petty tyrant.
A petty tyrant is a tormentor. Someone who either holds the power of life and death over warriors or simply annoys them to distraction.
Petty tyrants teach us detachment. The ingredients of the new seers' strategy shows how efficient and clever is the device of using a petty tyrant. The strategy not only gets rid of self-importance; it also prepares warriors for the final realization that impeccability is the only thing that counts in the path of knowledge.
Usually, only four attributes are played. The fifth, will , is always saved for an ultimate confrontation, when warriors are facing the firing squad, so to speak.
Will belongs to another sphere, the unknown. The other four belong to the known, exactly where the petty tyrants are lodged. In fact, what turns human beings into petty tyrants is precisely the obsessive manipulation of the known.
The interplay of all the five attributes of warriorship is done only by seers who are also impeccable warriors and have mastery over will . Such an interplay is a supreme maneuver that cannot be performed on the daily human stage.
Four attributes are all that is needed to deal with the worst of petty tyrants, provided, of course, that a petty tyrant has been found. The petty tyrant is the outside element, the one we cannot control and the element that is perhaps the most important of them all. The warrior who stumbles on a petty tyrant is a lucky one. You're fortunate if you come upon one in your path, because if you don't you have to go out and look for one.
If seers can hold their own in facing petty tyrants, they can certainly face the unknown with impunity, and then they can even stand the presence of the unknowable.
Nothing can temper the spirit of a warrior as much as the challenge of dealing with impossible people in positions of power. Only under those conditions can warriors acquire the sobriety and serenity to stand the pressure of the unknowable.
The perfect ingredient for the making of a superb seer is a petty tyrant with unlimited prerogatives. Seers have to go to extremes to find a worthy one. Most of the time they have to be satisfied with very small fry. Then warriors develop a strategy using the four attributes of warriorship: control, discipline, forbearance, and timing.
On the path of knowledge there are four steps. The first step is the decision to become apprentices. After the apprentices change their views about themselves and the world they take the second step and become warriors, which is to say, beings capable of the utmost discipline and control over themselves. The third step, after acquiring forbearance and timing, is to become men of knowledge. When men of knowledge learn to see they have taken the fourth step and have become seers.
Control and discipline refer to an inner state. A warrior is self-oriented, not in a selfish way but in the sense of a total examination of the self.
Forbearance and timing are not quite an inner state. They are in the domain of the man of knowledge.
The idea of using a petty tyrant is not only for perfecting the warrior's spirit, but also for enjoyment and happiness. Even the worst tyrants can bring delight, provided, of course, that one is a warrior.
The mistake average men make in confronting petty tyrants is not to have a strategy to fall back on; the fatal flaw is that average men take themselves too seriously; their actions and feelings, as well as those of the petty tyrants, are all-important. Warriors, on the other hand, not only have a well-thought-out strategy, but are free from self-importance. What restrains their self-importance is that they have understood that reality is an interpretation we make.
Petty tyrants take themselves with deadly seriousness while warriors do not. What usually exhausts us is the wear and tear on our self-importance. Any man who has an iota of pride is ripped apart by being made to feel worthless.
To tune the spirit when someone is trampling on you is called control. Instead of feeling sorry for himself a warrior immediately goes to work mapping the petty tyrant's strong points, his weaknesses, his quirks of behavior.
To gather all this information while they are beating you up is called discipline. A perfect petty tyrant has no redeeming feature.
Forbearance is to wait patiently--no rush, no anxiety--a simple, joyful holding back of what is due.
A warrior knows that he is waiting and what he is waiting for. Right there is the great joy of warriorship.
Timing is the quality that governs the release of all that is held back. Control, discipline, and forbearance are like a dam behind which everything is pooled. Timing is the gate in the dam.
Forbearance means holding back with the spirit something that the warrior knows is rightfully due. It doesn't mean that a warrior goes around plotting to do anybody mischief, or planning to settle past scores. Forbearance is something independent. As long as the warrior has control, discipline, and timing, forbearance assures giving whatever is due to whoever deserves it.
To be defeated by a small-fry petty tyrant is not deadly, but devastating. Warriors who succumb to a small-fry petty tyrant are obliterated by their own sense of failure and unworthiness.
Anyone who joins the petty tyrant is defeated. To act in anger, without control and discipline, to have no forbearance, is to be defeated.
After warriors are defeated they either regroup themselves or they abandon the quest for knowledge and join the ranks of the petty tyrants for life.

There are a series of truths about awareness that have been arranged in a specific sequence for purposes of comprehension. The mastery of awareness consists in internalizing the total sequence of such truths.
The first truth is that our familiarity with the world we perceive compels us to believe that we are surrounded by objects, existing by themselves and as themselves, just as we perceive them, whereas, in fact, there is no world of objects, but a universe of the Indescribable Force 's emanations.
Before I can explain the Indescribable Force 's emanations, I have to talk about the known, the unknown, and the unknowable.
The unknown is something that is veiled from man, shrouded perhaps by a terrifying context, but which, nonetheless, is within man's reach.
The unknown becomes the known at a given time. The unknowable, on the other hand, is the indescribable, the unthinkable, the unrealizable. It is something that will never be known to us, and yet it is there, dazzling and at the same time horrifying in its vastness.
There is a simple rule of thumb: in the face of the unknown, man is adventurous. It is a quality of the unknown to give us a sense of hope and happiness. Man feels robust, exhilarated. Even the apprehension that it arouses is very fulfilling. The new seers saw that man is at his best in the face of the unknown.
The unknown and the known are really on the same footing, because both are within the reach of human perception. Seers, can leave the known at a given moment and enter into the unknown.
Whatever is beyond our capacity to perceive is the unknowable. And the distinction between it and the knowable is crucial. Confusing the two would put seers in a most precarious position whenever they are confronted with the unknowable. Most of what's out there is beyond our comprehension.
* * *
The first truth about awareness is that the world out there is not really as we think it is. We think it is a world of objects and it's not.
You say you agree with me because everything could be reduced to being a field of energy. But you are merely intuiting a truth. To reason it out is not to verify it. I am not interested in your agreement or disagreement, but in your attempt to comprehend what is involved in this truth. You cannot witness fields of energy; not as an average man, that is. Now, if you were able to see them, you would be a seer, in which case you would be explaining the truths about awareness.
Conclusions arrived at through reasoning have very little or no influence in altering the course of our lives. Hence, the countless examples of people who have the clearest convictions and yet act diametrically against them time and time again; and have as the only explanation for their behavior the idea that to err is human.
The first truth is that the world is as it looks and yet it isn't. It's not as solid and real as our perception has been led to believe, but it isn't a mirage either. The world is not an illusion, as it has been said to be; it's real on the one hand, and unreal on the other. Pay close attention to this, for it must be understood, not just accepted. We perceive. This is a hard fact. But what we perceive is not a fact of the same kind, because we learn what to perceive.
Something out there is affecting our senses. This is the part that is real. The unreal part is what our senses tell us is there. Take a mountain, for instance. Our senses tell us that it is an object. It has size, color, form. We even have categories of mountains, and they are downright accurate. Nothing wrong with that; the flaw is simply that it has never occurred to us that our senses play only a superficial role. Our senses perceive the way they do because a specific feature of our awareness forces them to do so.
I've used the term "the world" to mean everything that surrounds us. I have a better term, of course, but it would be quite incomprehensible to you. Seers say that we think there is a world of objects out there only because of our awareness. But what's really out there are the Indescribable Force 's emanations, fluid, forever in motion, and yet unchanged, eternal.
* * *
The reason for the existence of all sentient beings is to enhance awareness. The old seers, risking untold dangers, actually saw the Indescribable Force which is the source of all sentient beings. They called that indescribable force the Eagle, because in the few glimpses that they could sustain, they saw it as something that resembled a black-and-white eagle of infinite size. They saw that it is the Indescribable Force that bestows awareness and creates sentient beings so that they will live and enrich the awareness it gives them with life. They also saw that it is the Indescribable Force , that devours that same enriched awareness after making sentient beings relinquish it at the moment of death. For the old seers to say that the reason for existence is to enhance awareness is not a matter of faith or deduction. They saw it.
* * *
A nagual man or woman is someone flexible enough to be anything. To be a nagual, among other things, means to have no points to defend. The description of the Indescribable Force as the Eagle, and what it does, are not truths to defend passionately. Those truths were put together for the delight and enlightenment of warriors, not to engage any proprietary sentiments. When I told you that a nagual has no points to defend, I meant, among other things, that a nagual has no obsessions.
The Indescribable Force is as real for seers as gravity and time are for you, and just as abstract and incomprehensible. The Indescribable Force and its emanations are as corroboratable as gravity and time and the discipline of the new seers is dedicated to doing just that. The Indescribable Force 's emanations are an immutable thing-in-itself, which engulfs everything that exists, the knowable and the unknowable.
There is no way to describe in words what the Indescribable Force 's emanations really are. A seer must witness them. They are a presence, almost a mass of sorts, a pressure that creates a dazzling sensation. One can catch only a glimpse of them, as one can catch only a glimpse of the Indescribable Force itself.
There is nothing visual about the Indescribable Force . The entire body of a seer senses the Indescribable Force . There is something in all of us that can make us witness with our entire body. Seers explain the act of seeing the Indescribable Force in very simple terms: because man is composed of the Indescribable Force 's emanations, man need only revert back to his components. The problem arises with man's awareness; it is his awareness that becomes entangled and confused. At the crucial moment when it should be a simple case of the emanations acknowledging themselves, man's awareness is compelled to interpret. The result is a vision of the Eagle, and the Eagle's emanations. But there is no Eagle and no Eagle's emanations. What is out there is something that no living creature can grasp.
The characteristic of miserable seers is that they are willing to forget the wonder of the world. They become overwhelmed by the fact that they see and believe that it's their genius that counts. A seer must be a paragon in order to override the nearly invincible laxness of our human condition. More important than seeing itself is what seers do with what they see.
The Indescribable Force attracts our consciousness, much as a magnet attracts iron shavings. At the moment of dying, all of our being disintegrates under the attraction of that immense force.
* * *
Seers who see the Indescribable Force 's emanations often call them commands. That's what they really are, commands.
Everything is made out of the Indescribable Force 's emanations. Only a small portion of those emanations is within reach of human awareness, and that small portion is still further reduced, to a minute fraction, by the constraints of our daily lives. That minute fraction of the Indescribable Force 's emanations is the known; the small portion within possible reach of human awareness is the unknown, and the incalculable rest is the unknowable.
The new seers, being pragmatically oriented, became immediately cognizant of the compelling power of the emanations. They realized that all living creatures are forced to employ the Indescribable Force 's emanations without ever knowing what they are. They also realized that organisms are constructed to grasp a certain range of those emanations and that every species has a definite range. The emanations exert great pressure on organisms, and through that pressure organisms construct their perceivable world.
In our case, as human beings, we employ those emanations and interpret them as reality. But what man senses is such a small portion of the Indescribable Force 's emanations that it's ridiculous to put much stock in our perceptions, and yet it isn't possible for us to disregard our perceptions.
I want you to be very aware of what we are doing. We are discussing the mastery of awareness. The truths we're discussing are the principles of that mastery.
* * *
One of the greatest forces in the lives of warriors is fear, it spurs them to learn.
* * *
The Indescribable Force 's emanations cannot be rendered at all in a language of comparisons. Individual seers may feel the urge to make comments about certain emanations, but that will remain personal.
The new seers were terrible practical men. They weren't involved in concocting rational theories.
The new seers, imbued with practicality, were able to see a flux of emanations and to see how man and other living beings utilize them to construct their perceivable world.
The way those emanations are utilized by man is so simple it sounds idiotic. For a seer, men are luminous beings. Our luminosity is made up of that portion of the Indescribable Force 's emanations which is encased in our egglike cocoon. That particular portion, that handful of emanations that is encased, is what makes us men. To perceive is to match the emanations contained inside our cocoon with those that are outside.
Seers can see , for instance, the emanations inside any living creature and can tell which of the outside emanations would match them.
The emanations are something indescribable. My personal comment would be to say that they are like filaments of light. What's incomprehensible to normal awareness is that the filaments are aware. I can't tell you what that means, because I don't know what I am saying. All I can tell you with my personal comments is that the filaments are aware of themselves, alive and vibrating, that there are so many of them that numbers have no meaning and that each of them is an eternity in itself.

Perception is a condition of alignment; the emanations inside the cocoon become aligned with those outside that fit them. Alignment is what allows awareness to be cultivated by every living creature. Seers make these statements because they see living creatures as they really are: luminous beings that look like bubbles of whitish light.
The emanations inside and the emanations outside are the same filaments of light. Sentient beings are minute bubbles made out of those filaments, microscopic points of light, attached to the infinite emanations.
The luminosity of living beings is made by the particular portion of the Indescribable Force 's emanations they happen to have inside their luminous cocoons. When seers see perception, they witness that the luminosity of the Indescribable Force 's emanations outside those creatures' cocoons brightens the luminosity of the emanations inside their cocoons. The outside luminosity attracts the inside one; it traps it, so to speak, and fixes it. That fixation is the awareness of every specific being.
Seers can also see how the emanations outside the cocoon exert a particular pressure on the portion of emanations inside. This pressure determines the degree of awareness that every living being has.
The Indescribable Force 's emanations are more than filaments of light. Each one of them is a source of boundless energy. Think of it this way: since some of the emanations outside the cocoon are the same as the emanations inside, their energies are like a continuous pressure. But the cocoon isolates the emanations that are inside its web and thereby directs the pressure.
I've mentioned to you that the old seers were masters of the art of handling awareness. What I can add now is that they were the masters of that art because they learned to manipulate the structure of man's cocoon. I've said to you that they unraveled the mystery of being aware. By that I meant that they saw and realized that awareness is a glow in the cocoon of living beings. They rightly called it the glow of awareness.
The old seers saw that man's awareness is a glow of amber luminosity more intense than the rest of the cocoon. That glow is on a narrow, vertical band on the extreme right side of the cocoon, running along its entire length. The mastery of the old seers was to move that glow, to make it spread from its original setting on the surface of the cocoon inward across its width.
* * *
Seeing is to lay bare the core of everything, to witness the unknown and to glimpse into the unknowable. As such, it doesn't bring one solace. Seers ordinarily go to pieces on finding out that existence is incomprehensibly complex and that our normal awareness maligns it with its limitations.
* * *
Your concentration has to be total. To understand is of crucial importance. The new seers placed the highest value on deep, unemotional realizations. For instance, the other day, when you understood about your self-importance, you didn't understand anything really. You had an emotional outburst, that was all. I say this because the next day you were back on your high horse of self-importance as if you never had realized anything.
The same thing happened to the old seers. They were given to emotional reactions. But when the time came for them to understand what they had seen , they couldn't do it. To understand one needs sobriety, not emotionality. Beware of those who weep with realization, for they have realized nothing.
There are untold dangers in the path of knowledge for those without sober understanding. I am outlining the order in which the new seers arranged the truths about awareness, so it will serve you as a map, a map that you have to corroborate with your seeing , but not with your eyes.
Everybody falls pray to the mistake that seeing is done with the eyes. Seeing is not a matter of the eyes.
Seeing is alignment and perception is alignment. The alignment of the Indescribable Force 's emanations used routinely is the perception of the day-to-day world, but the alignment of emanations that are never used ordinarily is seeing . When such an alignment occurs one sees . Seeing , therefore, being produced by alignment out of the ordinary, cannot be something one could merely look at. So, don't succumb to the way seeing is labeled and described.
When seers see , something explains everything as the new alignment takes place. It's a voice that tells them in their ear what's what. If that voice is not present, what the seer is engaged in isn't seeing .
It is equally fallacious to say that seeing is hearing, because it is infinitely more than that, but seers have opted for using sound as a gauge of a new alignment.
The voice of seeing is a most mysterious inexplicable thing. My personal conclusion is that the voice of seeing belongs only to man. It may happen because talking is something that no one else besides man does. The old seers believed it was the voice of an overpowering entity intimately related to mankind, a protector of man. The new seers found out that that entity, which they called the mold of man, doesn't have a voice. The voice of seeing for the new seers is something quite incomprehensible; they say it's the glow of awareness playing on the Indescribable Force 's emanations as a harpist plays on a harp.
* * *
The pressure that the emanations outside the cocoon, which are called emanations at large, exert on the emanations inside the cocoon is the same in all sentient beings. Yet the results of that pressure are vastly different among them, because their cocoons react to that pressure in every conceivable way. There are, however, degrees of uniformity within certain boundaries.
Now, when seers see that the pressure of the emanations at large bears down on the emanations inside, which are always in motion and makes them stop moving, they know that the luminous being at that moment is fixated by awareness.
To say that the emanations at large bear down on those inside the cocoon and make them stop moving means that seers see something indescribable, the meaning of which they know without a shadow of doubt. It means that the voice of seeing has told them that the emanations inside the cocoon are completely at rest and match some of those which are outside.
Seers maintain, naturally, that awareness always comes from outside ourselves, that the real mystery is not inside us. Since by nature the emanations at large are made to fixate what is inside the cocoon, the trick of awareness is to let the fixating emanations merge with what is inside us. Seers believe that if we let that happen we become what we really are--fluid, forever in motion, eternal.
The degree of awareness of every individual sentient being depends on the degree to which it is capable of letting the pressure of the emanations at large carry it.
* * *
Seers have seen that from the moment of conception awareness is enhanced, enriched, by the process of being alive. The awareness of an individual insect or that of an individual man grows from the moment of conception in astoundingly different ways, but with equal consistency. Awareness develops from the moment of conception.
Sexual energy is something of ultimate importance and it has to be controlled and used with great care. Don't resent or applaud what I say, thinking that I am speaking of control in terms of morality; I mean it in terms of saving and rechanneling energy. I recommend, therefore, that one control oneself and understand the Indescribable Force 's command that sex is for bestowing the glow of awareness. It is the Indescribable Force 's command that sexual energy be used for creating life. Through sexual energy, the Indescribable Force bestows awareness. So when sentient beings are engaged in sexual intercourse, the emanations inside their cocoons do their best to bestow awareness to the new sentient being they are creating.
During the sexual act, the emanations encased inside the cocoon of both partners undergo a profound agitation, the culminating point of which is a merging, a fusing of two pieces of the glow of awareness, one from each partner, that separate from their cocoons.
Sexual intercourse is always a bestowal of awareness even though the bestowal may not be consolidated. Warriors know that the only real energy we possess is a life-bestowing sexual energy. This knowledge makes them permanently conscious of their responsibility. If warriors want to have enough energy to see , they must become misers with their sexual energy.
You needn't think this a puritanical attitude toward sex. There is nothing wrong with man's sensuality. It's man's ignorance of and disregard for his magical nature that is wrong. It's a mistake to waste recklessly the life-bestowing force of sex and not have children, but it's also a mistake not to know that in having children one taxes the glow of awareness. Seers have seen that on having a child, the parents' glow of awareness diminishes and the child's increases. In some supersensitive, frail parents, the glow of awareness almost disappears. As children enhance their awareness, a big dark spot develops in the luminous cocoon of the parents, on the very place from which the glow was taken away. It is usually on the midsection of the cocoon. Sometimes those spots can even be seen superimposed on the body itself.
Nothing can be done to give people a more balanced understanding of the glow of awareness. At least, there is nothing that seers can do. Seers aim to be free, to be unbiased witnesses incapable of passing judgment; otherwise they would have to assume the responsibility for bringing about a more adjusted cycle. No one can do that. The new cycle, if it is to come, must come of itself.

The consciousness of adult human beings, matured by the process of growth, can no longer be called awareness, because it has been modified into something more intense and complex, which seers call attention.
At a given time in the growth of human beings a band of the emanations inside their cocoons becomes very bright; as human beings accumulate experience, it begins to glow. In some instances, the glow of this band of emanations increases so dramatically that it fuses with the emanations from the outside. Seers, witnessing an enhancement of this kind, had to surmise that awareness is the raw material and attention the end product of maturation.
Attention is the harnessing and enhancing of awareness through the process of being alive.
The danger of definitions is that they simplify matters to make them understandable; in this case, in defining attention, one runs the risk of transforming a magical, miraculous accomplishment into something commonplace.
Attention is man's greatest single accomplishment. It develops from raw animal awareness until it covers the entire gamut of human alternatives. Seers perfect it even further until it covers the whole scope of human possibilities.
Human alternatives are everything we are capable of choosing as persons. They have to do with the level of our day-to-day range, the known; and owing to that fact, they are quite limited in number and scope. Human possibilities belong to the unknown. They are not what we are capable of choosing but what we are capable of attaining.
An example of human alternatives is our choice to believe that the human body is an object among objects. An example of human possibilities is the seers' achievement in viewing man as an egglike luminous being. With the body as an object one tackles the known, with the body as a luminous egg one tackles the unknown; human possibilities have, therefore, nearly an inexhaustible scope.
Seers say that there are three types of attention. When they say that, they mean it just for human beings, not for all the sentient beings in existence. But the three are not just types of attention, they are rather three levels of attainment. They are the first, second, and third attention, each of them an independent domain, complete in itself.
The first attention in man is animal awareness, which has been developed, through the process of experience, into a complex, intricate, and extremely fragile faculty that takes care of the day-to-day world in all its innumerable aspects. In other words, everything that one can think about is part of the first attention.
The first attention is everything we are as average men. By virtue of such an absolute rule over our lives, the first attention is the most valuable asset that the average man has. Perhaps it is even our only asset.
Taking into account its true value, the new seers started a rigorous examination of the first attention through seeing . In order to examine and explain the first attention, one must see it. Only seers can do that. But to examine what seers see in the first attention is essential. It allows the first attention the only opportunity it will ever have to realize its own workings.
The first attention is the glow of awareness developed to an ultra shine. But it is a glow fixed on the surface of the cocoon, so to speak. It is a glow that covers the known.
The second attention, on the other hand, is a more complex and specialized state of the glow of awareness. It has to do with the unknown. It comes about when unused emanations inside man's cocoon are utilized.
The reason I called the second attention specialized is that in order to utilize those unused emanations, one needs uncommon, elaborate tactics that require supreme discipline and concentration.
The concentration needed to be aware that one is having a dream is the forerunner of the second attention. That concentration is a form of consciousness that is not in the same category as the consciousness needed to deal with the daily world.
The second attention is also called the left-side awareness; and it is the vastest field that one can imagine, so vast in fact that it seems limitless. It is a quagmire so complex and bizarre that sober seers go into it only under the strictest conditions.
The new seers let the mastery of awareness develop to its natural end, which is to extend the glow of awareness beyond the bounds of the luminous cocoon in one single stroke.
The third attention is attained when the glow of awareness turns into the fire from within: a glow that kindles not one band at a time but all the Indescribable Force 's emanations inside man's cocoon. The supreme accomplishment of human beings is to attain that level of attention while retaining the lifeforce.
* * *
Don't let your self-importance run rampant.
* * *
Usually anger is very sobering, or sometimes fear is, or humor.
* * *
Awareness begins with the permanent pressure that the emanations at large exert on the emanations trapped inside the cocoon. This pressure produces the first act of consciousness; it stops the motion of the trapped emanations, which are fighting to break the cocoon, fighting to die.
For a seer, the truth is that all living beings are struggling to die. What stops death is awareness. The new seers were profoundly disturbed by the fact that awareness forestalls death and at the same time induces it by being attracted by the Indescribable Force . Since they could not explain it, for there is no rational way to understand existence, seers realized that their knowledge is composed of contradictory propositions.
For example, seers have to be methodical, rational beings, paragons of sobriety, and at the same time they must shy away from all of those qualities in order to be completely free and open to the wonders and mysteries of existence.
Only a feeling of supreme sobriety can bridge the contradictions. You may call the bridge between contradictions anything you want--art, affection, sobriety, love, or even kindness.
In examining the first attention, the new seers realized that all organic beings, except man, quiet down their agitated trapped emanations so that those emanations can align themselves with their matching ones outside. Human beings do not do that; instead, their first attention takes an inventory of the Indescribable Force 's emanations inside their cocoons. Human beings take notice of the emanations they have inside their cocoons, no other creatures do that. The moment the pressure from the emanations at large fixates the emanations inside, the first attention begins to watch itself. It notes everything about itself, or at least it tries to, in whatever aberrant ways it can. This is the process seers call taking an inventory.
I don't mean to say that human beings choose to take an inventory, or that they can refuse to take it. To take an inventory is the Indescribable Force 's command. What is subject to volition, however, is the manner in which the command is obeyed.
Although I dislike calling the emanations commands, that is what they are: commands that no one can disobey. Yet the way out of obeying the commands is in obeying them.
In the case of the inventory of the first attention, seers take it, for they can't disobey. But once they have taken it they throw it away. The Indescribable Force doesn't command us to worship our inventory; it commands us to take it, that's all.
The emanations inside the cocoon of man are not quieted down for purposes of matching them with those outside. This is evident after seeing what other creatures do. On quieting down, some of them actually merge themselves with the emanations at large and move with them.
But human beings quiet down their emanations and then reflect on them. The emanations focus on themselves. Human beings carry the command of taking an inventory to its logical extreme and disregard everything else. Once they are deeply involved in the inventory, two things may happen. They may ignore the impulses of the emanations at large, or they may use them in a very specialized way.
The end result of ignoring those impulses after taking an inventory is a unique state known as reason. The result of using every impulse in a specialized way is known as self-absorption.
* * *
The first attention works very well with the unknown. It blocks it; it denies it so fiercely that in the end, the unknown doesn't exist for the first attention.
Taking an inventory makes us invulnerable. That is why the inventory came into existence in the first place.

The first attention consumes all the glow of awareness that human beings have, and not an iota of energy is left free. So, the new seers proposed that warriors, since they have to enter into the unknown, have to save their energy. But where are they going to get energy, if all of it is taken? They'll get it from eradicating unnecessary habits. Eradicating unnecessary habits detaches awareness from self-reflection and allows it the freedom to focus on something else.
The unknown is forever present, but it is outside the possibility of our normal awareness. The unknown is the superfluous part of the average man. And it is superfluous because the average man doesn't have enough free energy to grasp it.
* * *
Their is a force that is present throughout everything there is. It is called will , the will of the Indescribable Force 's emanations, or intent .
One of the most worthwhile findings of the ancient seers was the discovery that organic life is not the only form of life present on this earth.
For seers, to be alive means to be aware. For the average man, to be aware means to be an organism. This is where seers are different. For them, to be aware means that the emanations that cause awareness are encased inside a receptacle.
Organic living beings have a cocoon that encloses the emanations. But there are other creatures whose receptacles don't look like a cocoon to a seer. Yet they have the emanations of awareness in them and characteristics of life other than reproduction and metabolism; such as emotional dependency, sadness, joy, wrath, and so forth and so on. And the best yet, love; a kind of love man can't even conceive. If we take as our clue what seers see , life is indeed extraordinary.
Those beings make themselves known to man all the time. And not only to seers but also to the average man. The problem is that all the energy available is consumed by the first attention. Man's inventory not only takes it all, but it also toughens the cocoon to the point of making it inflexible. Under those circumstances there is no possible interaction.
* * *
In the life of warriors it is extremely natural to be sad for no overt reason. Seers say that the luminous egg, as a field of energy, senses its final destination whenever the boundaries of the known are broken. A mere glimpse of the eternity outside the cocoon is enough to disrupt the coziness of our inventory. The resulting melancholy is sometimes so intense that it can bring about death. The best way to get rid of melancholy is to make fun of it.
There is nothing more lonely than eternity. And nothing is more cozy for us than to be a human being. This indeed is another contradiction--how can man keep the bonds of his humanness and still venture gladly and purposefully into the absolute loneliness of eternity? Whenever you resolve this riddle, you'll be ready for the definitive journey.
The new seers have found that the only thing that counts is impeccability. That is, freed energy.

Pull yourself together and don't fight your fear, roll with it. Be afraid without being terrified. Put all your concentration on the midpoint of your body--a true center of energy in all of us. Fear does not exist as soon as the glow of awareness moves beyond a certain threshold inside man's cocoon.
* * *
I'll briefly outline the truths about awareness which I have discussed. 1) There is no objective world, but only a universe of energy fields which seers call the Indescribable Force 's emanations. 2) Human beings are made of the Indescribable Force 's emanations and are in essence bubbles of luminescent energy; each of us is wrapped in a cocoon that encloses a small portion of these emanations. 3) Awareness is achieved by the constant pressure that the emanations outside our cocoon, which are called emanations at large, exert on those inside our cocoon. 4) Awareness gives rise to perception, which happens when the emanations inside our cocoons align themselves with the corresponding emanations at large.
The next truth is that perception takes place because there is in each of us an agent called the assemblage point that selects internal and external emanations for alignment. The particular alignment that we perceive as the world is the product of the specific spot where our assemblage point is located on our cocoon.
In order to corroborate the truths about awareness, you need energy. Dealing with petty tyrants helps seers accomplish a sophisticated maneuver: that maneuver is to move their assemblage points.
* * *
In order for our first attention to bring into focus the world that we perceive, it has to emphasize certain emanations selected from the narrow band of emanations where man's awareness is located. The discarded emanations are still within our reach but remain dormant, unknown to us for the duration of our lives.
The new seers call the emphasized emanations the right side, normal awareness, the tonal , this world, the known, the first attention. The average man calls it reality, rationality, common sense.
The emphasized emanations compose a large portion of man's band of awareness, but a very small piece of the total spectrum of emanations present inside the cocoon of man. The disregarded emanations within man's band are thought of as a sort of preamble to the unknown, the unknown proper consisting of the bulk of emanations which are not part of the human band and which are never emphasized. Seers call them the left-side awareness, the nagual , the other world, the unknown, the second attention.
Normally the glow of awareness is seen on the surface of the cocoon of all sentient beings. After man develops attention, however, the glow of awareness acquires depth. In other words, it is transmitted from the surface of the cocoon to quite a number of emanations inside the cocoon.
A state of heightened awareness is seen not only as a glow that goes deeper inside the egglike shape of human beings, but also as a more intense glow on the surface of the cocoon. Yet it is nothing in comparison to the glow produced by a state of total awareness, which is seen as a burst of incandescence in the entire luminous egg. It is an explosion of light of such a magnitude that the boundaries of the shell are diffused and the inside emanations extend themselves beyond anything imaginable.
Seers who deliberately attain total awareness are a sight to behold. That is the moment when they burn from within. The fire from within consumes them. And in full awareness they fuse themselves to the emanations at large, and glide into eternity.
* * *
I've explained to you that the new seers aim to be free. And freedom has the most devastating implications. Among them is the implication that warriors must purposely seek change. Your predilection is to live the way you do. You stimulate your reason by running through your inventory and pitting it against your friends' inventories. Those maneuvers leave you very little time to examine yourself and your fate. You will have to give up all that.
* * *
Human beings repeatedly choose the same emanations for perceiving because of two reasons. First, and most important, because we have been taught that those emanations are perceivable, and second because our assemblage points select and prepare those emanations for being used.
Every living being has an assemblage point which selects emanations for emphasis. Seers can see whether sentient beings share the same view of the world, by seeing if the emanations their assemblage points have selected are the same.
One of the most important breakthroughs for the new seers was to find that the spot where that point is located on the cocoon of all living creatures is not a permanent feature, but is established on that specific spot by habit. Hence the tremendous stress the new seers put on new actions, on new practicalities. They want desperately to arrive at new usages, new habits.
A matter of great importance is the proper understanding of the truths about awareness in order to realize that that point can be moved from within. The unfortunate truth is that human beings always lose by default. They simply don't know about their possibilities.
The new seers say that realization is the technique. They say that, first of all, one must become aware that the world we perceive is the result of our assemblage points being located on a specific spot on the cocoon. Once that is understood, the assemblage point can move almost at will, as a consequence of new habits.
The assemblage point of man appears around a definite area of the cocoon, because the Indescribable Force commands it. But the precise spot is determined by habit, by repetitious acts. First we learn that it can be placed there and then we ourselves command it to be there. Our command becomes the Indescribable Force 's command and that point is fixated at that spot. Consider this very carefully; our command becomes the Indescribable Force 's command.
I've mentioned to you that sorcery is something like entering a dead-end street. What I meant was that sorcery practices have no intrinsic value. Their worth is indirect, for their real function is to make the assemblage point shift by making the first attention release its control on that point.
The new seers realized the true role those sorcery practices played and decided to go directly into the process of making their assemblage points shift, avoiding all the other nonsense of rituals and incantations. Yet rituals and incantations are indeed necessary at one time in every warrior's life. But only for purposes of luring one's first attention away from the power of self-absorption, which keeps his assemblage point rigidly fixed.
The obsessive entanglement of the first attention in self-absorption or reason is a powerful binding force, and ritual behavior, because it is repetitive, forces the first attention to free some energy from watching the inventory, as a consequence of which the assemblage point loses its rigidity.
When that happens, if you are not a warrior, you think you're losing your mind. If you are a warrior, you know you've gone crazy, but you patiently wait. You see, to be healthy and sane means that the assemblage point is immovable. When it shifts, it literally means that one is deranged.
Two options are opened to warriors whose assemblage points have shifted. One is to acknowledge being ill and to behave in deranged ways, reacting emotionally to the strange worlds that their shifts force them to witness; the other is to remain impassive, untouched, knowing that the assemblage point always returns to its original position.
If the assemblage point doesn't return to its original position, then those people are lost. They are either incurably crazy, because their assemblage points could never assemble the world as we know it, or they are peerless seers who have begun their movement toward the unknown.
What determines it is energy! Impeccability! Impeccable warriors don't lose their marbles. They remain untouched. I've said to you many times that impeccable warriors may see horrifying worlds and yet the next moment they are telling a joke, laughing with their friends or with strangers.
The mind, for a seer, is nothing but the self-reflection of the inventory of man. If you lose that self-reflection, but don't lose your underpinnings, you actually live an infinitely stronger life than if you had kept it.
The flaw is in our emotional reaction, which prevents us from realizing that the oddity of our sensorial experiences is determined by the depth to which our assemblage point has moved into man's band of emanations.
Man's band of emanations is not like a ribbon, but rather like a disc. The luminous shape of man is like a ball with a thick disk inserted into it. If the ball were transparent you would have the perfect replica of man's cocoon. The disc goes all the way inside the ball. It's a disk that goes from the surface on one side to the surface on the other side.
The assemblage point of man is located high up, three-fourths of the way toward the top of the egg on the surface of the cocoon. Heightened awareness comes about when the intense glow of the assemblage point lights up dormant emanations way inside the disk. To see the glow of the assemblage point moving inside that disk gives the feeling that it is shifting toward the left on the surface of the cocoon.
The transparency of the luminous egg creates the impression of a movement toward the left, when in fact every movement of the assemblage point is in depth, into the center of the luminous egg along the thickness of man's band.
Man is not the unknowable. Man's luminosity can be seen almost as if one were using the eyes alone.
The old seers saw the movement of the assemblage point but it never occurred to them that it was a movement in depth; instead they followed their seeing and coined the phrase "shift to the left," which the new seers retained although they knew that it was erroneous to call it a shift to the left.
The contention of the new seers is that in the course of our growth, once the glow of awareness focuses on man's band of emanations and selects some of them for emphasis, it enters into a vicious circle. The more it emphasizes certain emanations, the more stable the assemblage point gets to be. This is equivalent to saying that our command becomes the Indescribable Force 's command. It goes without saying that when our awareness develops into the first attention the command is so strong that to break that circle and make the assemblage point shift is a genuine triumph.
The assemblage point is also responsible for making the first attention perceive in terms of clusters. An example of a cluster of emanations that receive emphasis together is the human body as we perceive it. Another part of our total being, our luminous cocoon, never receives emphasis and is relegated to oblivion; for the effect of the assemblage point is not only to make us perceive clusters of emanations, but also to make us disregard emanations.
The assemblage point radiates a glow that groups together bundles of encased emanations. These bundles then become aligned, as bundles, with the emanations at large. Clustering is carried out even when seers deal with the emanations that are never used. Whenever they are emphasized, we perceive them just as we perceive the clusters of the first attention.
One of the greatest moments the new seers had was when they found out that the unknown is merely the emanations discarded by the first attention. It's a huge affair, but an affair, mind you, where clustering can be done.
The unknowable, on the other hand, is an eternity where our assemblage point has no way of clustering anything.
The assemblage point is like a luminous magnet that picks emanations and groups them together wherever it moves within the bounds of man's band of emanations. This discovery was the glory of the new seers, for it put the unknown in a new light. The new seers noticed that some of the obsessive visions of seers, the ones that were almost impossible to conceive, coincided with a shift of the assemblage point to the region of man's band which is diametrically opposed to where it is ordinarily located.
Those were visions of the dark side of man. It is somber and foreboding. It's not only the unknown, but the who-cares-to-know-it.
The emanations that are inside the cocoon but out of the bounds of man's band can be perceived, but in really indescribable ways. They're not the human unknown, as is the case with the unused emanations in the band of man, but the nearly immeasurable unknown where human traits do not figure at all. It is really an area of such an overpowering vastness that the best of seers would be hard put to describe it.
The mystery is outside us. Inside us we have only emanations trying to break the cocoon. And this fact aberrates us, one way or another, whether we're average men or warriors. Only the new seers get around this. They struggle to see . And by means of the shifts of their assemblage points, they get to realize that the mystery is perceiving. Not so much what we perceive, but what makes us perceive.
The new seers believe that our senses are capable of detecting anything. They believe this because they see that the position of the assemblage point is what dictates what our senses perceive.
If the assemblage point aligns emanations inside the cocoon in a position different from its normal one, the human senses perceive in inconceivable ways.

The new seers are the warriors of total freedom, and their only search is the ultimate liberation that comes when they attain total awareness.
Warriors prepare themselves to be aware, and full awareness comes to them only when there is no more self-importance left in them. Only when they are nothing do they become everything.
* * *
Self-importance is the motivating force for every attack of melancholy. Warriors are entitled to have profound states of sadness, but that sadness is there only to make them laugh.
* * *
The articulation point of everything seers do is stopping the internal dialogue. The internal dialogue is what keeps the assemblage point fixed to its original position.
Once silence is attained, everything is possible. You stop talking to yourself by willing it, and thus you set a new intent , a new command. Then your command becomes the Indescribable Force 's command.
This is one of the most extraordinary things that the new seers found out: that our command can become the Indescribable Force 's command. The internal dialogue stops in the same way it begins: by an act of will . After all, we are forced to start talking to ourselves by those who teach us. As they teach us, they engage their will and we engage ours, both without knowing it. As we learn to talk to ourselves, we learn to handle will . We will ourselves to talk to ourselves. The way to stop talking to ourselves is to use exactly the same method: we must will it, we must intend it.
Infants are taught by everyone around them to repeat an endless dialogue about themselves. The dialogue becomes internalized, and that force alone keeps the assemblage point fixed.
The internal dialogue is a process that constantly strengthens the position of the assemblage point, because that position is an arbitrary one and needs steady reinforcement.
I have profound admiration for the human capacity to impart order to the chaos of the Indescribable Force 's emanations. Every one of us, in his own right, is a masterful magician and our magic is to keep our assemblage point unwaveringly fixed.
The force of the emanations at large makes our assemblage point select certain emanations and cluster them for alignment and perception. That's the command of the Indescribable Force , but all the meaning that we give to what we perceive is our command, our gift of magic.
The new seers say that since the exact position of the assemblage point is an arbitrary position chosen for us by our ancestors, it can move with a relatively small effort; once it moves, it forces new alignments of emanations, thus new perceptions.
Power plants have that effect; but hunger, tiredness, fever, and other things like that can have a similar effect. The flaw of the average man is that he thinks the result of a shift is purely mental. It isn't.
On both edges of man's band of emanations there is a strange storage of refuse, an incalculable pile of human junk.
Any person can reach that storehouse by simply stopping his internal dialogue. If the shift is minimal, the results are explained as fantasies of the mind. If the shift is considerable, the results are called hallucinations.
One of the most mysterious aspects of the seers' knowledge is the incredible effects of inner silence. Once inner silence is attained, the bonds that tie the assemblage point to the particular spot where it is placed begin to break and the assemblage point is free to move.
If the assemblage point moves beyond a crucial threshold, the world vanishes; it ceases to be what it is to us at man's level.

I've explained to you that man has an assemblage point and that that assemblage point aligns emanations for perception. We've also discussed that that point moves from its fixed position. Now, the last truth is that once that assemblage point moves beyond a certain limit, it can assemble worlds entirely different from the world we know.
Without enough energy, the force of alignment is crushing. You have to have energy to sustain the pressure of alignments which never take place under ordinary circumstances.
Warriors are in the world to train themselves to be unbiased witnesses, so as to understand the mystery of ourselves and relish the exultation of finding what we really are. This is the highest of the new seers' goals. And not every warrior attains it.
To be a peerless nagual, one has to love freedom, and one has to have supreme detachment. What makes the warrior's path so very dangerous is that it is the opposite of the life situation of modern man. Modern man has left the realm of the unknown and the mysterious, and has settled down in the realm of the functional. He has turned his back to the world of the foreboding and the exulting and has welcomed the world of boredom.
To be given a chance to go back again to the mystery of the world is sometimes too much for warriors, and they succumb; they are waylaid by what I've called the high adventure of the unknown. They forget the quest for freedom; they forget to be unbiased witnessed. They sink into the unknown and love it.
In order to be unbiased witnesses, we begin by understanding that the fixation or the movement of the assemblage point is all there is to us and the world we witness, whatever that world might be.
* * *
The new seers say that when we were taught to talk to ourselves, we were taught the means to dull ourselves in order to keep the assemblage point fixed on one spot.
* * *
I'll tell you what my teacher said to me when I got to a certain point. He told me that I had been evicted from the home where I had lived all my live. A result of having saved energy had been the disruption of my cozy but utterly limiting and boring nest in the world of everyday life. My depression, he told me, was not so much the sadness of having lost my nest, but the annoyance of having to look for new quarters. "The new quarters are not as cozy," he said, "but they are infinitely more roomy."
My eviction notice came in the form of a great depression, a loss of the desire to live. When I told my teacher that I didn't want to live, he couldn't help laughing.
* * *
The position of the assemblage point on man's cocoon is maintained by the internal dialogue, and because of that, it is a flimsy position at best.

We are going to talk about the great bands of emanations. It is another key discovery that the old seers made, but in their aberration they relegated it to oblivion until it was rescued by the new seers.
The Indescribable Force 's emanations are always grouped in clusters. The old seers called those clusters the great bands of emanations. They aren't really bands, but the name stuck.
For instance, there is an immeasurable cluster that produces organic beings. The emanations of that organic band have a sort of fluffiness. They are transparent and have a unique light of their own, a peculiar energy. They are aware, they jump. That's the reason why all organic beings are filled with a peculiar consuming energy. The other bands are darker, less fluffy. Some of them have no light at all, but a quality of opaqueness.
Organic beings belong to the same great band. Think of it as an enormously wide band of luminous filaments, luminous strings with no end. Organic beings are bubbles that grow around a group of luminous filaments. Imagine that in this band of organic life some bubbles are formed around the luminous filaments in the center of the band, others are formed close to the edges; the band is wide enough to accommodate every kind of organic being with room to spare. In such an arrangement, bubbles that are close to the edges of the band miss altogether the emanations that are in the center of the band, which are shared only by bubbles that are aligned with the center. By the same token, bubbles in the center miss the emanations from the edges.
As you can understand, organic beings share the emanations of one band; yet seers see that within that organic band beings are as different as they can be.
There are as many of these great bands as infinity itself. Seers have found out, however, that in the earth there are only forty-eight such bands.
For seers, that means there are forty-eight types of organizations on the earth, forty-eight types of clusters or structures. Organic life is one of them.
The old seers counted seven bands that produced inorganic bubbles of awareness. In other words, there are forty bands that produce bubbles without awareness; those are bands that generate only organization.
Think of the great bands as being like trees. All of them bear fruit; they produce containers filled with emanations; yet only eight of those trees bear edible fruit, that is, bubbles of awareness. Seven have sour fruit, but edible nonetheless, and one has the most juicy, luscious fruit there is.
What makes those eight bands produce awareness is the Indescribable Force ; which bestows awareness through its emanations. To say that the Indescribable Force bestows awareness through its emanations is like what a religious man would say about God, that God bestows life through love. However, the two statements are not made from the same point of view. And yet I think they mean the same thing. The difference is that seers see how the Indescribable Force bestows awareness through its emanations and religious men don't see how God bestows life through his love.
The Indescribable Force bestows awareness by means of three giant bundles of emanations that run through eight great bands. These bundles are quite peculiar, because they make seers feel a hue. One bundle gives the feeling of being beige-pink, something like the glow of pink-colored street lamps; another gives the feeling of being peach, like buff neon lights; and the third bundle gives the feeling of being amber, like clear honey.
So, it is a matter of seeing a hue when seers see that the Indescribable Force bestows awareness through its emanations. Religious men don't see God's love, but if they would see it, they would know that it is either pink, peach, or amber.
Man, for example, is attached to the amber bundle, but so are other beings. To know which beings share those emanations with man is something you will have to find out for yourself through your own seeing . There is no point in my telling you which ones; you would only be making another inventory. Suffice it to say that finding that out for yourself will be one of the most exciting things you'll ever do.
The pink and peach bundles belong to other living beings. I've told you that the glow of awareness in man has different colors. They are not really colors but casts of amber.
The amber bundle of awareness has an infinitude of subtle variants, which always denote differences in quality of awareness. Pink and pale-green amber are the most common casts. Blue amber is more unusual, but pure amber is by far the most rare.
Seers say that the amount of energy that one saves and stores determines the cast. Countless numbers of warriors have begun with an ordinary pink amber cast and have finished with the purest of all ambers.
The three bundles with all their casts crisscross the eight bands. In the organic band, the pink bundle belongs mainly to plants, the peach band belongs to insects, and the amber band belongs to man and other animals.
The same situation is prevalent in the inorganic bands. The three bundles of awareness produce specific kinds of inorganic beings in each of the seven great bands.
You may want me to elaborate on the kinds of inorganic beings that exist, however, that is another thing that you must see for yourself. The seven bands and what they produce are indeed inaccessible to human reason, but not to human seeing .
The great bands are neither flat nor round, but indescribably clustered together, like a pile of hay, which is held together in midair by the force of the hand that pitched it. Thus, there is no order to the emanations; to say that there is a central part or that there are edges is misleading, but necessary to understanding.
Inorganic beings produced by the seven other bands of awareness are characterized by having a container that has no motion; it is rather a formless receptacle with a low degree of luminosity. It does not look like the cocoon of organic beings. It lacks the tautness, the inflated quality that makes organic beings look like luminous balls bursting with energy.
The only similarity between inorganic and organic beings is that all of them have the awareness-bestowing pink or peach or amber emanations.
Those emanations, under certain circumstances make possible the most fascinating communication between the beings of those eight great bands.
Usually the organic beings, with their greater fields of energy, are the initiators of communication with inorganic beings, but a subtle and sophisticated follow-up is always the province of the inorganic beings. Once the barrier is broken, inorganic beings change and become what seers call allies. From that moment inorganic beings can anticipate the seers most subtle thoughts or moods or fears.
The old seers became mesmerized by such devotion from their allies. Stories are that the old seers could make their allies do anything they wanted. That was one of the reasons they believed in their own invulnerability. They got fooled by their self-importance. The allies have power only if the seer who sees them is the paragon of impeccability; and those old seers just weren't.
Inorganic beings are not as plentiful as organic ones, but this is offset by the greater number of bands of inorganic awareness. Also, the differences among the inorganic beings themselves are more vast than the differences among organisms, because organisms belong to only one band while inorganic beings belong to seven bands. Besides, inorganic beings live infinitely longer than organisms.
The old seers also came to realize that it is the high energy of organisms and the subsequent high development of their awareness that make them delectable morsels for the Indescribable Force . In the old seers' view, gluttony was the reason the Indescribable Force produced as many organisms as possible.
The product of the other forty great bands is not awareness at all, but a configuration of inanimate energy. The old seers chose to call whatever is produced by those bands, vessels. While cocoons and containers are fields of energetic awareness, which accounts for their independent luminosity, vessels are rigid receptacles that hold emanations without being fields of energetic awareness. Their luminosity comes only from the energy of the encased emanations.
You must bear in mind that everything on the earth is encased. Whatever we perceive is made up of portions of cocoons or vessels with emanations. Ordinarily, we don't perceive the containers of inorganic beings at all.
The total world is made of the forty-eight bands. The world that our assemblage point assembles for our normal perception is made up of two bands; one is the organic band, the other is a band that has only structure, but no awareness. The other forty-six great bands are not part of the world we normally perceive.
There are other complete worlds that our assemblage points can assemble. The old seers counted seven such worlds, one for each band of awareness. I'll add that two of those worlds, besides the world of everyday life, are easy to assemble; the other five are something else.
* * *
A shift of the assemblage point to the area below its customary position allows the seer a detailed and narrow view of the world we know. So detailed is that view that it seems to be an entirely different world. It is a mesmerizing view that has a tremendous appeal, especially for those seers who have an adventurous but somehow indolent and lazy spirit.
The change of perspective is very pleasant. Minimal effort is required, and the results are staggering. If a seer is driven by quick gain, there is no better maneuver than the shift below. The only problem is that in those positions of the assemblage point, seers are plagued by death, which happens even more brutally and more quickly than in man's position.
My teacher thought it was a great place for cavorting, but that's all. A true change of worlds happens only when the assemblage point moves into man's band, deep enough to reach a crucial threshold, at which stage the assemblage point can use another of the great bands.
How? It's a matter of energy. The force of alignment hooks another band, provided that the seer has enough energy. Our normal energy allows our assemblage points to use the force of alignment of one great band of emanations. And we perceive the world we know. But if we have a surplus of energy, we can use the force of alignment of other great bands, and consequently we perceive other worlds.
This may seem like an oddity to you, but trees, for instance, are closer to man than ants. I've told you that trees and man can develop a great relationship; that's so because they share emanations.
The cocoon of a giant tree is not much larger than the tree itself. The interesting part is that some tiny plants have a cocoon almost as big as a man's body and three times its width. Those are power plants. They share the largest amount of emanations with man, not the emanations of awareness, but other emanations in general.
Another thing unique about plants is that their luminosities have different casts. They are pinkish in general, because their awareness is pink. Poisonous plants are a pale yellow pink and medicinal plants are a bright violet pink. The only ones that are white pink are power plants; some are murky white, others are brilliant white.
But the real difference between plants and other organic beings is the location of their assemblage points. Plants have it on the lower part of their cocoon, while other organic beings have it on the upper part of their cocoon.
With the inorganic beings, some have it on the lower part of their containers. Those are thoroughly alien to man, but akin to plants. Others have it anywhere on the upper part of their containers. Those are close to man and other organic creatures.
The old seers were convinced that plants have the most intense communication with inorganic beings. They believed that the lower the assemblage point, the easier for plants to break the barrier of perception; very large trees and very small plants have their assemblage points extremely low in their cocoon. Because of this, a great number of the old seers' sorcery techniques were means to harness the awareness of trees and small plants in order to use them as guides to descend to what they called the deepest levels of the dark regions.
You understand, of course, that when they thought they were descending to the depths, they were, in fact, pushing their assemblage points to assemble other perceivable worlds with those seven great bands. They taxed their awareness to the limit and assembled worlds with five great bands that are accessible to seers only if they undergo a dangerous transformation. In their aberration they believed it was worth their while to break all the barriers of perception, even if they had to become trees to do that.

It is very easy in the path of knowledge to get lost in intricacies and morbidity. Seers are up against great enemies that can destroy their purpose, muddle their aims, and make them weak; enemies created by the warrior's path itself together with the sense of indolence, laziness, and self-importance that are integral parts of the daily world.
The mistakes the ancient seers made as a result of indolence, laziness, and self-importance were so enormous and so grave that the new seers had no option but to scorn and reject their own tradition.
The most important thing the new seers needed was practical steps in order to make their assemblage points shift. Since they had none, they began by developing a keen interest in seeing the glow of awareness, and as a result they worked out three sets of techniques that became their cornerstone.
With these three sets, the new seers accomplished a most extraordinary and difficult feat. They succeeded in systematically making the assemblage point shift away from its customary position. The old seers had also accomplished that feat, but by means of capricious, idiosyncratic maneuvers.
What the new seers saw in the glow of awareness resulted in the sequence in which they arranged the old seers' truths about awareness. This is known as the mastery of awareness. From that, they developed the three sets of techniques. The first is the mastery of stalking , the second is the mastery of intent , and the third is the mastery of dreaming . I taught you these three sets from the very first day we met.
Stalking had very humble and fortuitous origins. It started from an observation the new seers made that when warriors steadily behave in ways not customary for them, the unused emanations inside their cocoons begin to glow. And their assemblage points shift in a mild, harmonious, barely noticeable fashion.
Stimulated by this observation, the new seers began to practice the systematic control of their behavior. They called this practice the art of stalking . The name, although objectionable, is appropriate, because stalking entails a specific kind of behavior with people, behavior that can be categorized as surreptitious.
The new seers, armed with this technique, tackled the known in a sober and fruitful way. By continual practice, they made their assemblage points move steadily.
Stalking is one of the two greatest accomplishments of the new seers. And stalking is merely behavior with people.
You can now understand that shifting the assemblage point was the reason why the new seers placed such a high value on the interaction with petty tyrants. Petty tyrants force seers to use the principles of stalking and, in doing so, help seers to move their assemblage points.
Stalking belongs exclusively to the new seers. They are the only seers who have to deal with people. The old ones were so wrapped up in their sense of power that they didn't even know that people existed, until people started clobbering them on the head.
The mastery of intent together with the mastery of stalking are the new seers' two masterpieces, which mark the arrival of the modern-day seers. In their efforts to gain an advantage over their oppressors the new seers pursued every possibility. They knew that their predecessors had accomplished extraordinary feats by manipulating a mysterious and miraculous force, which they could only describe as power. The new seers had very little information about that force, so they were obliged to examine it systematically through seeing . Their efforts were amply rewarded when they discovered that the energy of alignment is that force.
They began by seeing how the glow of awareness increases in size and intensity as the emanations inside the cocoon are aligned with the emanations at large. They used that observation as a springboard, just as they had done with stalking , and went on to develop a complex series of techniques to handle that alignment of emanations.
At first they referred to those techniques as the mastery of alignment. Then they realized that what is involved is much more than alignment; what is involved is the energy that comes out of the alignment of emanations. They called that energy will .
Will became the second basis. The new seers understood it as a blind, impersonal, ceaseless burst of energy that makes us behave in the ways we do. Will accounts for our perception of the world of ordinary affairs, and indirectly, through the force of that perception, it accounts for the placement of the assemblage point in its customary position.
The new seers examined how the perception of the world of everyday life takes place and saw the effects of will . They saw that alignment is ceaselessly renewed in order to imbue perception with continuity. To renew alignment every time with the freshness that it needs to make up a living world, the burst of energy that comes out of those very alignments is automatically rerouted to reinforce some choice alignments.
This new observation served the new seers as another springboard that helped them reach the third basis of the set. They called it intent , and they described it as the purposeful guiding of will , the energy of alignment.
As time passed and the new seers established their practices, they realized that under the prevailing conditions of life, stalking only moved the assemblage points minimally. For maximum effect, stalking needed an ideal setting; it needed petty tyrants in positions of great authority and power. It became increasingly difficult for the new seers to place themselves in such situations; the task of improvising them or seeking them out became an unbearable burden.
The new seers deemed it imperative to see the Indescribable Force 's emanations in order to find a more suitable way to move the assemblage point. As they tried to see the emanations they were faced with a very serious problem. They found out that there is no way to see them without running a mortal risk, and yet they had to see them. That was the time when they used the old seers' technique of dreaming as a shield to protect themselves from the deadly blow of the Indescribable Force 's emanations. And in doing so, they realized that dreaming was in itself the most effective way to move the assemblage point.
One of the strictest commands of the new seers was that warriors have to learn dreaming while they are in their normal state of awareness. Following that command, I began teaching you dreaming almost from t

The Power of Silence

At various times I've attempted to name my knowledge for your benefit. I've said that the most appropriate name is nagualism, but that that term is too obscure. Calling it simply "knowledge" makes it too vague, and to call it "witchcraft" is debasing. "The mastery of intent " is too abstract, and "the search for total freedom" too long and metaphorical. Finally, because I've been unable to find a more appropriate name, I've called it "sorcery," although I admit it is not really accurate.
I've given you different definitions of sorcery, but I have always maintained that definitions change as knowledge increases. Now you are in a position to appreciate a clearer definition.
From where the average man stands, sorcery is nonsense or an ominous mystery beyond his reach. And he is right--not because this is an absolute fact, but because the average man lacks the energy to deal with sorcery.
Human beings are born with a finite amount of energy, an energy that is systematically deployed, beginning at the moment of birth, in order that it may be used most advantageously by the modality of the time.
The modality of the time is the precise bundle of energy fields being perceived. I believe man's perception has changed through the ages. The actual time decides the mode; the time decides which precise bundle of energy fields, out of an incalculable number, are to be used. And handling the modality of the time--those few, selected energy fields--takes all our available energy, leaving us nothing that would help us use any of the other energy fields.
The average man, if he uses only the energy he has, can't perceive the worlds sorcerers do. To perceive them, sorcerers need to use a cluster of energy fields not ordinarily used. Naturally, if the average man is to perceive those worlds and understand sorcerers' perception he must use the same cluster they have used. And this is just not possible, because all his energy is already deployed.
Think of it this way. It isn't that as time goes by you're learning sorcery; rather, what you're learning is to save energy. And this energy will enable you to handle some of the energy fields which are inaccessible to you now. And that is sorcery: the ability to use energy fields that are not employed in perceiving the ordinary world we know. Sorcery is a state of awareness. Sorcery is the ability to perceive something which ordinary perception cannot.
Everything a teacher puts his apprentice through, each of the things he shows him is only a device to convince him that there's more to us than meets the eye.
We don't need anyone to teach us sorcery, because there is really nothing to learn. What we need is a teacher to convince us that there is incalculable power at our fingertips. What a strange paradox! Every warrior on the path of knowledge thinks, at one time or another, that he's learning sorcery, but all he's doing is allowing himself to be convinced of the power hidden in his being, and that he can reach it.
I'm trying to convince you that you can reach that power. I went through the same thing. And I was as hard to convince as you are. Once we have reached it, it will, by itself, make use of energy fields which are available to us but inaccessible. And that, as I have said, is sorcery. We begin then to see --that is, to perceive--something else; not as imagination, but as real and concrete. And then we begin to know without having to use words. And what any of us does with that increased perception, with that silent knowledge, depends on our own temperament.
Now, I'm going to give you a different and more precise definition of sorcery.
In the universe there is an unmeasurable, indescribable force which sorcerers call intent. Absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link. Sorcerers, warriors, are concerned with discussing, understanding, and employing that connecting link. They are especially concerned with cleaning it of the numbing effects brought about by the ordinary concerns of their everyday lives. Sorcery at this level could be defined as the procedure of cleaning one's connecting link to intent.
The task of sorcery is to take this seemingly incomprehensible knowledge and make it understandable by the standards of awareness of everyday life.
The guide in the lives of sorcerers is called "the nagual." The nagual is a man or a woman with extraordinary energy, a teacher who has sobriety, endurance, stability; someone seers see as a luminous sphere having four compartments, as if four luminous balls have been compressed together. Naguals are responsible for supplying what sorcerers call "the minimal chance": the awareness of one's connection with intent .
Naguals school their apprentices toward three areas of expertise: the mastery of awareness , the art of stalking , and the mastery of intent . These three areas of expertise are the three riddles sorcerers encounter in their search for knowledge.
The mastery of awareness is the riddle of the mind; the perplexity sorcerers experience when they recognize the astounding mystery and scope of awareness and perception.
The art of stalking is the riddle of the heart; the puzzlement sorcerers feel upon becoming aware of two things: first that the world appears to us to be unalterably objective and factual, because of peculiarities of our awareness and perception; second, that if different peculiarities of perception come into play, the very things about the world that seem so unalterably objective and factual change.
The mastery of intent is the riddle of the spirit, or the paradox of the abstract--sorcerers' thoughts and actions projected beyond our human condition.
The art of stalking and the mastery of intent depend upon instruction on the mastery of awareness, which consists of the following basic premises:

1. The universe is an infinite agglomeration of energy fields, resembling threads of light.

2. These energy fields, called the Eagle's, or the Indescribable Force 's emanations, radiate from a source of inconceivable proportions metaphorically called the Eagle--the Indescribable Force .

3. Human beings are also composed of an incalculable number of the same threadlike energy fields. These Indescribable Force 's emanations form an encased agglomeration that manifests itself as a ball of light the size of the person's body with the arms extended laterally, like a giant luminous egg.

4. Only a very small group of the energy fields inside this luminous ball are lit up by a point of intense brilliance located on the ball's surface.

5. Perception occurs when the energy fields in that small group immediately surrounding the point of brilliance extent their light to illuminate identical energy fields outside the ball. Since the only energy fields perceivable are those lit by the point of brilliance, that point is named "the point where perception is assembled" or simply "the assemblage point."

6. The assemblage point can be moved from its usual position on the surface of the luminous ball to another position on the surface, or into the interior. Since the brilliance of the assemblage point can light up whatever energy field it comes in contact with, when it moves to a new position it immediately brightens up new energy fields, making them perceivable. This perception is known as seeing .

7. When the assemblage point shifts, it makes possible the perception of an entirely different world--as objective and factual as the one we normally perceive. Sorcerers go into that other world to get energy, power, solutions to general and particular problems, or to face the unimaginable.

8. Intent is the pervasive force that causes us to perceive. We do not become aware because we perceive; rather, we perceive as a result of the pressure and intrusion of intent .

9. The aim of sorcerers is to reach a state of total awareness in order to experience all the possibilities of perception available to man. This state of awareness even implies an alternative way of dying.
* * *
A level of practical knowledge is included as part of teaching the mastery of awareness. On this practical level are taught the procedures necessary to move the assemblage point. The two great systems devised by the sorcerer seers of ancient times to accomplish this are dreaming , the control and utilization of dreams; and stalking , the control of behavior.
Moving one's assemblage point is an essential maneuver that every sorcerer has to learn.

Sorcerers consult their past in order to obtain a point of reference. Establishing a point of reference means getting a chance to examine intent and nothing can give sorcerers a better view of intent than examining stories of other sorcerers battling to understand the same force.
In sorcery there are abstract cores, and then, based on those abstract cores, there are scores of sorcery stories about the naguals of our lineage battling to understand the spirit.
* * *
The only way to know intent is to know it directly through a living connection that exists between intent and all sentient beings. Sorcerers call intent the indescribable, the spirit, the abstract.
* *
Every act performed by sorcerers, especially by the naguals, is either performed as a way to strengthen their link with intent or as a response triggered by the link itself. Sorcerers, and specifically the naguals, therefore have to be actively and permanently on the lookout for manifestations of the spirit. Such manifestations are called gestures of the spirit or, more simply, indications or omens.
When a sorcerer interprets an omen he knows its exact meaning without having any notion of how he knows it. This is one of the bewildering effects of the connecting link with intent . Sorcerers have a sense of knowing things directly. How sure they are depends on the strength and clarity of their connecting link.
The feeling everyone knows as "intuition" is the activation of our link with intent . And since sorcerers deliberately pursue the understanding and strengthening of that link, it could be said the they intuit everything unerringly and accurately. Reading omens is commonplace for sorcerers--mistakes happen only when personal feelings intervene and cloud the sorcerers' connecting link with intent . Otherwise their direct knowledge is totally accurate and functional.
The spirit manifests itself to a sorcery, especially to a nagual, at every turn. However, this is not the entire truth. The entire truth is that the spirit reveals itself to everyone with the same intensity and consistency, but only sorcerers, and naguals in particular, are attuned to such revelations.
Naguals make decisions. With no regard for the consequences they take action or choose not to. Imposters ponder and become paralyzed.
* * *
Sorcerers speak of sorcery as a magical, mysterious bird which has paused in its flight for a moment in order to give man hope and purpose. Sorcerers live under the wing of that bird, which they call the bird of wisdom, the bird of freedom. They nourish it with their dedication and impeccability.
The bird of freedom can do only two things, take sorcerers along, or leave them behind. Don't forget, even for an instant, that the bird of freedom has very little patience with indecision, and when it flies away, it never returns.

When you have been afraid or upset, don't lie down to sleep, sleep sitting up on a soft chair. To give your body healing rest take long naps, lying on your stomach with your face turned to the left and your feet over the foot of the bed. In order to avoid being cold, put a soft pillow over your shoulders, away from your neck, and wear heavy socks, or just leave your shoes on. Follow my suggestions to the letter without bothering to believe or disbelieve me.
* * *
Intent creates edifices before us and invites us to enter them. This is the way sorcerers understand what is happening around them.
I want you to understand the underlying order of what I teach you. It means two things: both the edifice that intent manufactures in the blink of an eye and places in front of us to enter, and the signs it gives us so we won't get lost once we are inside.
* * *
At a certain stage, an apprentice enters into heightened awareness all by himself. Heightened awareness is a mystery only for our reason. In practice, it's very simple. As with everything else, we complicate matters by trying to make the immensity that surrounds us reasonable.
* * *
The Manifestations of the Spirit is the name for the first abstract core in the sorcery stories. Sorcerers know this as the edifice of intent , or the silent voice of the spirit, or the ulterior arrangement of the abstract.
Ulterior means knowledge without words, outside our immediate comprehension, not beyond our ultimate possibilities for understanding. The ulterior arrangement of the abstract is knowledge without words or the edifice of intent . The ulterior arrangement of the abstract is to know the abstract directly, without the intervention of language. The abstract is the element without which there could be no warrior's path, nor any warriors in search of knowledge.
* * *
Warriors are incapable of feeling compassion because they no longer feel sorry for themselves. Without the driving force of self-pity, compassion is meaningless.
For a warrior everything begins and ends with himself. However, his contact with the abstract causes him to overcome his feeling of self-importance. Then the self becomes abstract and impersonal.
* * *
Dreaming is a sorcerer's jet plane. They can create and project what sorcerers know as the dreaming body , or the Other, and be in two distant places at the same time.
The spirit makes adjustments in our capacity for awareness. That's a statement of fact. You can say that it's an incomprehensible fact for the moment, but the moment will change.
While we dream the assemblage point moves very gently and naturally. Mental balance is nothing but the fixing of the assemblage point on one spot we're accustomed to. Dreams make that point move, and dreaming is used to control that natural movement.
There are two different issues. One, the need to understand indirectly what the spirit is, and the other, to understand the spirit directly.
Once you understand what the spirit is, the second issue will be resolved automatically, and vice versa. If the spirit speaks to you, using its silent words, you will certainly know immediately what the spirit is.
The difficulty is our reluctance to accept the idea that knowledge can exist without words to explain it. Accepting this proposition is not as easy as saying you accept it. The whole of humanity has moved away from the abstract. It takes years for an apprentice to be able to go back to the abstract, that is, to know that knowledge and language can exist independent of each other.
The crux of our difficulty in going back to the abstract is our refusal to accept that we can know without words or even without thoughts. Knowledge and language are separate.
I told you there is no way to talk about the spirit because the spirit can only be experienced. Sorcerers try to explain this condition when they say that the spirit is nothing you can see or feel. But it's there looming over us always. Sometimes it comes to some of us. Most of the time it seems indifferent.
The spirit in many ways is a sort of wild animal. It keeps its distance from us until a moment when something entices it forward. It is then that the spirit manifests itself.
For a sorcerer an abstract is something with no parallel in the human condition. For a sorcerer, the spirit is an abstract simply because he knows it without words or even thoughts. It's an abstract because he can't conceive what the spirit is. Yet without the slightest chance or desire to understand it, a sorcerer handles the spirit. He recognizes it, beckons it, entices it, becomes familiar with it, and expresses it with his acts.
Think about the proposition that knowledge might be independent of language, without bothering to understand it.
Consider this. It was not the act of meeting me that mattered to you. The day I met you, you met the abstract. But since you couldn't talk about it, you didn't notice it. Sorcerers meet the abstract without thinking about it or seeing it or touching it or feeling its presence.

The second abstract core of the sorcery stories is called the Knock of the Spirit. The first core, the Manifestations of the Spirit, is the edifice that intent builds and places before a sorcerer, then invites him to enter. It is the edifice of intent seen by a sorcerer. The Knock of the Spirit is the same edifice seen by the beginner who is invited--or rather forced--to enter.
A nagual can be a conduit for the spirit only after the spirit has manifested its willingness to be used--either almost imperceptibly or with outright commands.
After a lifetime of practice, sorcerers, naguals in particular, know if the spirit is inviting them to enter the edifice being flaunted before them. They have learned to discipline their connecting links to intent . So they are always forewarned, always know what the spirit has in store for them.
Progress along the sorcerers' path is, in general, a drastic process the purpose of which is to bring one's connecting link to order. In order to revive that link sorcerers need a rigorous, fierce purpose--a special state of mind called unbending intent .
An apprentice is someone who is striving to clear and revive his connecting link with the spirit. Once the link is revived, he is no longer an apprentice, but until that time, in order to keep going he needs a fierce purpose which, of course, he doesn't have. So he allows the nagual to provide the purpose and to do that he has to relinquish his individuality. That's the difficult part.
Volunteers are not welcome in the sorcerers' world, because they already have a purpose of their own, which makes it particularly hard for them to relinquish their individuality. If the sorcerers' world demands ideas and actions contrary to the volunteers' purpose, volunteers simply refuse to change.
Reviving an apprentice's link is a nagual's most challenging and intriguing work. And one of his biggest headaches too. Depending, of course, on the apprentice's personality, the designs of the spirit are either sublimely simple or the most complex labyrinths.
* * *
The power of man is incalculable. Death exists only because we have intended it since the moment of our birth. The intent of death can be suspended by making the assemblage point change positions.
* * *
I have given you different versions of what the sorcery task consists. It would not be presumptuous of me to disclose that, from the spirit's point of view, the task consists of clearing our connecting link with it. The edifice that intent flaunts before us is, then, a clearinghouse, within which we find not so much the procedures to clear our connecting link as the silent knowledge that allows the clearing process to take place. Without that silent knowledge no process could work, and all we would have would be an indefinite sense of needing something.
The events unleashed by sorcerers as a result of silent knowledge are so simple and yet so abstract that sorcerers decided long ago to speak of those events only in symbolic terms. The manifestations and the knock of the spirit are examples.
For instance, a description of what takes place during the initial meeting between a nagual and a prospective apprentice from the sorcerers' point of view, would be absolutely incomprehensible. It would be nonsense to explain that the nagual, by virtue of his lifelong experience, is focusing something we couldn't imagine, his second attention--the increased awareness gained through sorcery training--on his invisible connection with some indefinable abstract. He is doing this to emphasize and clarify someone else's invisible connection with that indefinable abstract.
Each of us is barred from silent knowledge by natural barriers, specific to each individual. The most impregnable of my barriers was the drive to disguise my complacency as independence.
We as average men do not know, nor will we ever know, that it is something utterly real and functional--our connecting link with intent --which gives us our hereditary preoccupation with fate. During our active lives we never have the chance to go beyond the level of mere preoccupation, because since time immemorial the lull of daily affairs has made us drowsy. It is only when our lives are nearly over that our hereditary preoccupation with fate begins to take on a different character. It begins to make us see through the fog of daily affairs. Unfortunately, this awakening always comes hand in hand with loss of energy caused by aging, when we have no more strength left to turn our preoccupation into a pragmatic and positive discovery. At this point, all there is left is an amorphous, piercing anguish, a longing for something indescribable, and simple anger at having missed out.

The third abstract core is called the trickery of the spirit, or the trickery of the abstract, or stalking oneself, or dusting the link.
* * *
Perception is the hinge for everything man is or does, and perception is ruled by the location of the assemblage point. Therefore, if that point changes positions, man's perception of the world changes accordingly. The sorcerer who knows exactly where to place his assemblage point can become anything he wants.
* * *
The art of stalking is learning all the quirks of your disguise. To learn them so well no one will know you are disguised. For that you need to be ruthless, cunning, patient, and sweet.
Stalking is an art applicable to everything. There are four steps to learning it: ruthlessness, cunning, patience, and sweetness. Ruthlessness should not be harshness, cunning should not be cruelty, patience should not be negligence, and sweetness should not be foolishness. These four steps have to be practiced and perfected until they are so smooth they are unnoticeable.

Knowing what intent is means that one can, at any time, explain that knowledge or use it. A nagual by the force of his position is obliged to command his knowledge in this manner.
* * *
A warrior needs focus. Heightened awareness is like a springboard. From it one can jump into infinity. When the assemblage point is dislodged, it either becomes lodged again at a position very near its customary one or continues moving on into infinity.
People have no idea of the strange power we carry within ourselves. At this moment, for instance, you have the means to reach infinity.
* * *
Egomania is a real tyrant. We must work ceaselessly to dethrone it. You can learn to be ruthless, cunning, patient, and sweet. Ruthlessness, cunning, patience, and sweetness are the essence of stalking . They are the basics that with all their ramifications have to be taught in careful, meticulous steps.
* * *
Sorcerers' behavior is always impeccable. Sorcerers, though, have an ulterior purpose for their acts, which has nothing to do with personal gain. The fact that they enjoy their acts does not count as gain. Rather, it is a condition of their character. The average man acts only if there is the chance for profit. Warriors say they act not for profit but for the spirit. We have no thought of personal gain. Our acts are dictated by impeccability--we can't be angry or disillusioned.
The two masteries: stalking and intent , are the crowning glory of sorcerers old and new. Stalking is the beginning. Before anything can be attempted on the warrior's path, warriors must learn to stalk ; next they must learn to intend , and only then can they move their assemblage point at will.
* * *
Words are tremendously powerful and important and are the magical property of whoever has them. Sorcerers have a rule of thumb: they say that the deeper the assemblage point moves, the greater the feeling that one has knowledge and no words to explain it. Sometimes the assemblage point of average persons can move without a known cause and without their being aware of it, except that they become tongue-tied, confused, and evasive.
* * *
The very first principle of stalking is that a warrior stalks himself. He stalks himself ruthlessly, cunningly, patiently, and sweetly.
Stalking is the art of using behavior in novel ways for specific purposes. Normal human behavior in the world of everyday life is routine. Any behavior that brakes from routine causes an unusual effect on our total being. That unusual effect is what sorcerers seek, because it is cumulative.
The sorcerer seers of ancient times, through their seeing , first noticed that unusual behavior produced a tremor in the assemblage point. They soon discovered that if unusual behavior was practiced systematically and directed wisely, it eventually forced the assemblage point to move.
The real challenge for those sorcerer seers, was finding a system of behavior that was neither petty nor capricious, but that combined the morality and the sense of beauty which differentiates sorcerer seers from plain witches.
Anyone who succeeds in moving his assemblage point to a new position is a sorcerer. And from that new position, he can do all kinds of good and bad things to his fellow men. Being a sorcerer, therefore, can be like being a cobbler or a baker. The quest of sorcerer seers is to go beyond that stand. And to do that, they need morality and beauty.
For sorcerers, stalking is the foundation on which everything else they do is built. It is the art of controlled folly.
* * *
Sorcerers say that heightened awareness is the portal of intent . And they use it as such. Think about it.
You must reach the point where you understand what intent is. And, above all, you must understand that that knowledge cannot be turned into words. That knowledge is there for everyone. It is there to be felt, to be used, but not to be explained. One can come into it by changing levels of awareness, therefore, heightened awareness is an entrance. But even the entrance cannot be explained. One can only make use of it.
The natural knowledge of intent is available to anyone, but the command of it belongs to those who probe it.

Sorcerers believe that until the very moment of the spirit's descent, any of us could walk away from the spirit; but not afterwards.
The fourth abstract core is called the descent of the spirit or being moved by intent . It is the full brunt of the spirit's descent. The fourth abstract core is an act of revelation. The spirit reveals itself to us. Sorcerers describe it as the spirit lying in ambush and then descending on us, its prey. Sorcerers say that the spirit's descent is always shrouded. It happens and yet it seems not to have happened at all.
There is a threshold that once crossed permits no retreat. Every sorcerer should have a clear memory of crossing that threshold so he can remind himself of the new state of his perceptual potential. One does not have to be an apprentice of sorcery to reach this threshold, and the only difference between an average man and a sorcerer, in such cases, is what each emphasizes. A sorcerer emphasizes crossing this threshold and uses the memory of it as a point of reference. An average man does not cross the threshold and does his best to forget all about it.
Sorcerers say that the fourth abstract core happens when the spirit cuts our chains of self-reflection. Cutting our chains is marvelous, but also very undesirable, for nobody wants to be free.
What a strange feeling: to realize that everything we think, everything we say depends on the position of the assemblage point.
The secret of our chains is that they imprison us, but by keeping us pinned down on our comfortable spot of self-reflection, they defend us from the onslaughts of the unknown.
Once our chains are cut, we are no longer bound by the concerns of the daily world. We are still in the daily world, but we don't belong there anymore. In order to belong we must share the concerns of people. And without chains we can't.
What distinguishes normal people is that we share a metaphorical dagger: the concerns of our self-reflection. With this dagger, we cut ourselves and bleed; and the job of our chains of self-reflection is to give us the feeling that we are bleeding together, that we are sharing something wonderful: our humanity. But if we were to examine it, we would discover that we are bleeding alone; that we are not sharing anything; that all we are doing is toying with our manageable, unreal, man-made reflection.
Sorcerers are no longer in the world of daily affairs because they are no longer prey to their self-reflection.
* * *
The universe is made up of energy fields which defy description or scrutiny. They resemble filaments of ordinary light, except that light is lifeless compared to the Indescribable Force 's emanations, which exude awareness.
Normal perception occurs when intent , which is pure energy, lights up a portion of the luminous filaments inside our cocoon, and at the same time brightens a long extension of the same luminous filaments extending into infinity outside our cocoon. Extraordinary perception, seeing , occurs when by the force of intent , a different cluster of energy fields energizes and lights up. When a crucial number of energy fields are lit up inside the luminous cocoon, a sorcerer is able to see the energy fields themselves.
Awareness takes place when the energy fields inside our luminous cocoon are aligned with the same energy fields outside.
Only a very small portion of the total number of luminous filaments inside the cocoon are energized while the rest remain unaltered. The filaments do not need to be aligned to be lit up, because the ones inside our cocoon are the same as those outside. Whatever energizes them is definitely an independent force. We can't call it awareness because awareness is the glow of the energy fields being lit up. The force that lites up the fields is named will .
Will is the force that keeps the Indescribable Force 's emanations separated and is not only responsible for our awareness, but also for everything in the universe. This force has total consciousness and it springs from the very fields of energy that make the universe. Intent is a more appropriate name for it than will . In the long run, however, the name proves disadvantageous, because it does not describe its overwhelming importance nor the living connection it has with everything in the universe.
Our great collective flaw is that we live our lives completely disregarding that connection. The busyness of our lives, our relentless interests, concerns, hopes, frustrations, and fears take precedence, and on a day-to-day basis we are unaware of being linked to everything else.
Being cast out from the Garden of Eden sounds like an allegory for losing our silent knowledge, our knowledge of intent . Sorcery, then, is a going back to the beginning, a return to paradise.
The spirit is the force that sustains the universe. Intent is not something one might use or command or move in any way--nevertheless, one could use it, command it, or move it as one desires. This contradiction is the essence of sorcery. To fail to understand it has brought generations of sorcerers unimaginable pain and sorrow. Modern-day naguals, in an effort to avoid paying this exorbitant price in pain, have developed a code of behavior called the warrior's way, or the impeccable action, which prepares sorcerers by enhancing their sobriety and thoughtfulness.
Sorcerers concern themselves exclusively with the capacity that their individual connecting link with intent has to set them free to light the fire from within.
All modern-day sorcerers have to struggle fiercely to gain soundness of mind. Sorcery is an attempt to reestablish our knowledge of intent and regain use of it without succumbing to it. The abstract cores of the sorcerer stories are shades of realization, degrees of our being aware of intent .
* * *
It does not matter what our specific fate is as long as we face it with ultimate abandon.

A warrior is on permanent guard against the roughness of human behavior. A warrior is magical and ruthless, a maverick with the most refined taste and manners, whose worldly task is to sharpen, yet disguise, his cutting edges so that no one would be able to suspect his ruthlessness.
Sorcerers constantly stalk themselves. The sensation of being bottled up is experienced by every human being. It is a reminder of our existing connection with intent . For sorcerers this sensation is even more acute, precisely because their goal is to sensitize their connecting link until they can make it function at will.
When the pressure of their connecting link is too great, sorcerers relieve it by stalking themselves. Stalking is a procedure, a very simple one. Stalking is special behavior that follows certain principles. It is secretive, furtive, deceptive behavior designed to deliver a jolt. And, when you stalk yourself you jolt yourself, using your own behavior in a ruthless, cunning way.
When a sorcerer's awareness becomes bogged down with the weight of his perceptual input, the best, or even perhaps the only, remedy is to use the idea of death to deliver that stalking jolt.
The idea of death therefore is of monumental importance in the life of a sorcerer. I have shown you innumerable things about death to convince you that the knowledge of our impending and unavoidable end is what gives us sobriety. Our most costly mistake as average men is indulging in a sense of immortality. It is as though we believe that if we don't think about death we can protect ourselves from it.
Not thinking about death protects us from worrying about it. But that purpose is an unworthy one for average men and a travesty for sorcerers. Without a clear view of death, there is no order, no sobriety, no beauty. Sorcerers struggle to gain this crucial insight in order to help them realize at the deepest possible level that they have no assurance whatsoever their lives will continue beyond the moment. That realization gives sorcerers the courage to be patient and yet take action, courage to be acquiescent without being stupid.
The idea of death is the only thing that can give sorcerers courage. Strange, isn't it? It gives sorcerers the courage to be cunning without being conceited, and above all it gives them courage to be ruthless without being self-important.
Sorcerers stalk themselves in order to break the power of their obsessions. There are many ways of stalking oneself. If you don't want to use the idea of your death, you can use poems to stalk yourself.
I stalk myself with them. I deliver a jolt to myself with them. I listen, and shut off my internal dialogue and let my inner silence gain momentum. Then the combination of the poem and the silence delivers the jolt.
See if you can feel what I'm talking about with this poem by José Gorostiza.
...this incessant stubborn dying,
this living death,
that slays you, oh God,
in your rigorous handiwork,
in the roses, in the stones,
in the indomitable stars
and in the flesh that burns out,
like a bonfire lit by a song,
a dream,
a hue that hits the eye.

...and you, yourself,
perhaps have died eternities of ages out there,
without us knowing about it,
we dregs, crumbs, ashes of you;
you that still are present,
like a star faked by its very light,
an empty light without star
that reaches us,
hiding
its infinite catastrophe.

As I hear the words, I feel that that man is seeing the essence of things and I can see with him. I care only about the feeling the poets longing brings me. I borrow his longing, and with it I borrow the beauty. And marvel at the fact that he, like a true warrior, lavishes it on the recipients, the beholders, retaining for himself only his longing. This jolt, this shock of beauty, is stalking .
Death is not an enemy, although it appears to be. Death is not our destroyer, although we think it is.
Sorcerers say death is the only worthy opponent we have. Death is our challenger. We are born to take that challenge, average men or sorcerers. Sorcerers know about it; average men do not.
Life is the process by means of which death challenges us. Death is the active force. Life is the arena. And in that arena there are only two contenders at any time: oneself and death.
We are passive. Think about it. If we move, it's only when we feel the pressure of death. Death sets the pace for our actions and feelings and pushes us relentlessly until it breaks us and wins the bout, or else we rise about all possibilities and defeat death.
Sorcerers defeat death and death acknowledges the defeat by letting the sorcerers go free, never to be challenged again. Death stops challenging them. It means thought has taken a somersault into the inconceivable.
A somersault of thought into the inconceivable is the descent of the spirit; the act of breaking our perceptual barriers. It is the moment in which man's perception reaches its limits.
Sorcerers practice the art of sending scouts, advance runners, to probe our perceptual limits. This is another reason I like poems. I take them as advance runners. But poets don't know as exactly as sorcerers what those advance runners can accomplish.
* * *
As the energy that is ordinarily used to maintain the fixed position of the assemblage point becomes liberated, it focuses automatically on that connecting link. There are no techniques or maneuvers for a sorcerer to learn beforehand to move energy from one place to the other. Rather it is a matter of an instantaneous shift taking place once a certain level of proficiency has been attained.
The level of proficiency is pure understanding. In order to attain that instantaneous shift of energy, one needs a clear connection with intent , and to get a clear connection one needs only to intend it through pure understanding.
Pure understanding is a sorcerer's advance runner probing that immensity out there.

The nature of ruthlessness is that it is the opposite of self-pity. All sorcerers are ruthless.
* * *
As I have said, the fourth abstract core of the sorcery stories is called the descent of the spirit, or being moved by intent . In order to let the mysteries of sorcery reveal themselves it is necessary for the spirit to descend. The spirit chooses a moment when a man is distracted, unguarded, and, showing no pity, the spirit lets its presence by itself move the man's assemblage point to a specific position. This spot is known to sorcerers as the place of no pity. Ruthlessness becomes, in this way, the first principle of sorcery.
The first principle should not be confused with the first effect of sorcery apprenticeship, which is the shift between normal and heightened awareness.
To all appearances, having the assemblage point shift is the first thing that actually happens to a sorcery apprentice. So, it is only natural for an apprentice to assume that this is the first principle of sorcery. But it is not. Ruthlessness is the first principle of sorcery.
What we need to do to allow magic to get hold of us is to banish doubt from our minds. Once doubts are banished, anything is possible.
* * *
Stop thinking by intending the movement of your assemblage point. Intent is beckoned with the eyes.
* * *
The place of no pity is the site of ruthlessness. Let's say that ruthlessness, being a specific position of the assemblage point, is shown in the eyes of sorcerers. It's like a shimmering film over the eyes. The eyes of sorcerers are brilliant. The greater the shine, the more ruthless the sorcerer is.
When the assemblage point moves to the place of no pity, the eyes begin to shine. The firmer the grip of the assemblage point on its new position, the more the eyes shine.
A recapitulation of their lives, which sorcerers do, is the key to moving their assemblage points. Sorcerers start their recapitulati

The Art of Dreaming

Sorcery is the act of embodying some specialized theoretical and practical premises about the nature and role of perception in molding the universe around us.
Our world is only one in a cluster of consecutive worlds, arranged like the layers of an onion. Even though we have been energetically conditioned to perceive solely our world, we still have the capability of entering into those other realms, which are as real, unique, absolute, and engulfing as our own world is.
For us to perceive those other realms, not only do we have to covet them but we need to have sufficient energy to seize them. Their existence is constant and independent of our awareness, but their inaccessibility is entirely a consequence of our energetic conditioning. In other words, simply and solely because of that conditioning, we are compelled to assume that the world of daily life is the one and only possible world.
Believing that our energetic conditioning is correctable, sorcerers of ancient times developed a set of practices designed to recondition our energetic capabilities to perceive. They called this set of practices the art of dreaming . It's the gateway to infinity.
Through dreaming we can perceive other worlds, which we can certainly describe, but we can't describe what makes us perceive them. Yet we can feel how dreaming opens up those other realms. Dreaming seems to be a sensation--a process in our bodies, an awareness in our minds.
Dreaming instruction is divided into two parts. One is about dreaming procedures, the other about the purely abstract explanations of these procedures: an interplay between enticing one's intellectual curiosity with the abstract principles of dreaming and guiding one to seek an outlet in its practices.
* * *
The human psyche is infinitely more complex than our mundane or academic reasoning has led us to believe.
* * *
The second attention is an energetic configuration of awareness.

In order to appreciate the position of dreamers and dreaming , one has to understand the struggle of modern-day sorcerers to steer sorcery away from concreteness toward the abstract.
Concreteness is the practical part of sorcery. The obsessive fixation of the mind on practices and techniques. And the unwarranted influence over people.
The abstract is the search for freedom, freedom to perceive, without obsessions, all that's humanly possible. Present-day sorcerers seek the abstract because they seek freedom; they have no interest in concrete gains.
After lifelong discipline and training, sorcerers acquire the capacity to perceive the essence of things, a capacity they call seeing .
To perceive the energetic essence of things means that you perceive energy directly. By separating the social part of perception, you'll perceive the essence of everything. Whatever we are perceiving is energy, but since we can't directly perceive energy, we process our perception to fit a mold. This mold is the social part of perception, which you have to separate.
You have to separate it because it deliberately reduces the scope of what can be perceived and makes us believe that the mold into which we fit our perception is all that exists. For man to survive now, his perception must change at its social base.
This social base of perception is the physical certainty that the world is made of concrete objects. I call this a social base because a serious and fierce effort is put out by everybody to guide us to perceive the world the way we do.
Everything is energy. The whole universe is energy. The social base of our perception should be the physical certainty that energy is all there is. A mighty effort should be made to guide us to perceive energy as energy. Then we would have both alternatives at our fingertips.
To train people in such a fashion is possible and this is precisely what I am doing with you. I am teaching you a new way of perceiving, first, by making you realize we process our perception to fit a mold and, second, by fiercely guiding you to perceive energy directly. This method is very much like the one used to teach us to perceive the world of daily affairs.
Our entrapment in processing our perception to fit a social mold loses its power when we realize we have accepted this mold, as an inheritance from our ancestors, without bothering to examine it.
To perceive a world of hard objects that had either a positive or a negative value must have been utterly necessary for our ancestors' survival. After ages of perceiving in such a manner, we are now forced to believe that the world is made up of objects.
It is unquestionably a world of objects. To prove it, all we have to do is bump into them. We are not arguing that. I am saying that this is first a world of energy; then it's a world of objects. If we don't start with the premise that it is a world of energy, we'll never be able to perceive energy directly. We'll always be stopped by the physical certainty of the hardness of objects.
Our way of perceiving is a predator's way. There is another mode, the one I am familiarizing you with: the act of perceiving the essence of everything, energy itself, directly.
To perceive the essence of everything will make us understand, classify, and describe the world in entirely new, more exciting, more sophisticated terms. Terms that correspond to sorcery truths, which have no rational foundation and no relation whatsoever to the facts of our daily world but which are self-evident truths for the sorcerers who perceive energy directly and see the essence of everything.
For such sorcerers, the most significant act of sorcery is to see the essence of the universe. The essence of the universe resembles incandescent threads stretched into infinity in every conceivable direction, luminous filaments that are conscious of themselves in ways impossible for the human mind to comprehend.
From seeing the essence of the universe, sorcerers go on to see the energy essence of human beings and depict human beings as bright shapes that resemble giant eggs and call them luminous eggs.
When sorcerers see a human being they see a giant, luminous shape that floats, making, as it moves, a deep furrow in the energy of the earth, just as if the luminous shape had a taproot that was dragging.
The decisive finding of the sorcerers of antiquity and the crucial feature of human beings as luminous balls, is a round spot of intense brilliance, the size of a tennis ball, permanently lodged inside the luminous ball, flush with its surface, about two feet back from the crest of a person's right shoulder blade.
The luminous ball is much larger than the human body. The spot of intense brilliance is part of this ball of energy, and it is located on a place at the height of the shoulder blades, an arm's length from a person's back. The old sorcerers named it the assemblage point after seeing what it does. It makes us perceive. In human beings, perception is assembled there, on that point. Seeing that all living beings have such a point of brilliance, the old sorcerers surmised that perception in general must take place on that spot, in whatever pertinent manner.
What they saw that made them conclude that perception takes place on the assemblage point was first, that out of the millions of the universe's luminous energy filaments passing through the entire luminous ball, only a small number pass directly through the assemblage point, as should be expected since it is small in comparison with the whole.
Next, they saw that a spherical extra glow, slightly bigger than the assemblage point, always surrounds it, greatly intensifying the luminosity of the filaments passing directly through that glow.
Finally, that saw two things. One, that the assemblage points of human beings can dislodge themselves from the spot where they are usually located. And, two, that when the assemblage point is on its habitual position, perception and awareness seem to be normal, judging by the normal behavior of the subjects being observed. But when their assemblage points and surrounding glowing spheres are on a different position than the habitual one, their unusual behavior seems to be the proof that their awareness is different, that they are perceiving in an unfamiliar manner.
The conclusion the old sorcerers drew from all this was that the greater the displacement of the assemblage point from its customary position, the more unusual the consequent behavior and, evidently, the consequent awareness and perception.
Notice that when I talk about seeing , I always say "having the appearance of" or "seemed like." Everything one sees is so unique that there is no way to talk about it except by comparing it to something known to us.
The most adequate example of this difficulty is the way sorcerers talk about the assemblage point and the glow that surrounds it. They describe them as brightness, yet it cannot be brightness, because seers see them without their eyes. They have to fill out the difference, however, and say that the assemblage point is a spot of light and that around it there is a halo, a glow. We are so visual, so ruled by our predator's perception, that everything we see must be rendered in terms of what the predator's eye normally sees.
After seeing what the assemblage point and its surrounding glow seemed to be doing, the old sorcerers advanced an explanation. They proposed that in human beings the assemblage point, by focusing its glowing sphere on the universe's filaments of energy that pass directly through it, automatically and without premeditation assembles those filaments into a steady perception of the world.
How those filaments are assembled into a steady perception of the world, no one can possibly know. Sorcerers see the movement of energy, but just seeing the movement of energy cannot tell them how or why energy moves.
Seeing that millions of conscious energy filaments pass through the assemblage point, the old sorcerers postulated that in passing through it they come together, amassed by the glow that surrounds it. After seeing that the glow is extremely dim in people who have been rendered unconscious or are about to die, and that it is totally absent from corpses, they were convinced that this glow is awareness.
The assemblage point and its surrounding glow are the mark of life and consciousness. The inescapable conclusion of the sorcerers of antiquity was that awareness and perception go together and are tied to the assemblage point and the glow that surrounds it.
I can't explain to you why, but there is no way sorcerers can be mistaken about their seeing . Now the conclusions they arrive at from their seeing might be wrong, but that would be because they are naive, uncultivated. In order to avoid this disaster, sorcerers have to cultivate their minds, in whatever form they can.
It certainly would be infinitely safer for sorcerers to remain solely at the level of describing what they see , but the temptation to conclude and explain, even if only to oneself, is far too great to resist.
When the assemblage point is displaced to another position, a new conglomerate of millions of luminous energy filaments come together on that point. The sorcerers of antiquity saw this and concluded that since the glow of awareness is always present wherever the assemblage point is, perception is automatically assembled there. Because of the different position of the assemblage point, the resulting world, however, cannot be our world of daily affairs.
The old sorcerers were capable of distinguishing two types of assemblage point displacement. One was a displacement to any position on the surface or in the interior of the luminous ball; this displacement they called a shift of the assemblage point. The other was a displacement to a position outside the luminous ball; they called this displacement a movement of the assemblage point. They found out that the difference between a shift and a movement was the nature of the perception each allows.
Since the shifts of the assemblage point are displacements within the luminous ball, the worlds engendered by them, no matter how bizarre or wondrous or unbelievable they might be, are still worlds within the human domain. The human domain is the energy filaments that pass through the entire luminous ball. By contrast, movements of the assemblage point, since they are displacements to positions outside the luminous ball, engage filaments of energy that are beyond the human realm. Perceiving such filaments engenders worlds that are beyond comprehension, inconceivable worlds with no trace of human antecedents in them.
This business of the assemblage point is an idea so farfetched, so inadmissible that there is only one thing for you to do. See the assemblage point! It isn't that difficult to see . The difficulty is in breaking the retaining wall we all have in our minds that holds us in place. To break it, all we need is energy. Once we have energy, seeing happens to us by itself. The trick is in abandoning our fort of self-complacency and false security.
It is just a matter of having energy. The hard part is convincing yourself that it can be done. For this, you need to trust the nagual. The marvel of sorcery is that every sorcerer has to prove everything with his own experience. I am telling you about the principles of sorcery not with the hope that you will memorize them but with the hope that you will practice them.
Our link is with the spirit itself and only incidentally with the man who brings us its message.
The assemblage point has nothing to do with what we normally perceive as the body. It's part of the luminous egg, which is our energy self.
It is displaced through energy currents. Jolts of energy, originating outside or inside our energy shape. These are usually unpredictable currents that happen randomly, but with sorcerers they are very predictable currents that obey the sorcerer's intent .
Every sorcerer feels them. Every human being does, for that matter, but average human beings are too busy with their own pursuits to pay any attention to feelings like that.
When the assemblage point moves outside the energy shape it pushes the contours of the energy shape out, without breaking its energy boundaries.
The end result of a movement of the assemblage point is a total change in the energy shape of a human being. Instead of a ball or an egg, he becomes something resembling a smoking pipe. The tip of the stem is the assemblage point, and the bowl of the pipe is what remains of the luminous ball. If the assemblage point keeps on moving, a moment comes when the luminous ball becomes a thin line of energy. What makes mankind homogeneous is the fact that we are all luminous balls.
Another topic of our explanations is the indispensability of energetic uniformity and cohesion for the purpose of perceiving. Mankind perceives the world we know, in the terms we do, only because we share energetic uniformity and cohesion. We automatically attain these two conditions of energy in the course of our rearing. They are so taken for granted we do not realize their vital importance until we are faced with the possibility of perceiving worlds other than the world we know. At those moments, it becomes evident that we need a new appropriate energetic uniformity and cohesion to perceive coherently and totally.
Man's energetic shape has uniformity in the sense that every human being on earth has the form of a ball or an egg. And the fact that man's energy holds itself together as a ball or an egg proves it has cohesion. An example of a new uniformity and cohesion is the old sorcerers' energetic shape when it became a line: every one of them uniformly became a line and cohesively remained a line. Uniformity and cohesion at a line level permitted those old sorcerers to perceive a homogeneous new world.
The key to acquiring uniformity and cohesion is the position of the assemblage point, or rather the fixation of the assemblage point.
Those old sorcerers could have reverted to being egglike but they did not. And then the line cohesion set in and made it impossible for them to go back. What really crystallized that line cohesion and prevented them but making the journey back was a matter of choice and greed. The scope of what those sorcerers were able to perceive and do as lines of energy was astronomically greater than what an average man or any average sorcerer can do or perceive.
The human domain when one is an energy ball is whatever energy filaments pass through the space within the ball's boundaries. Normally, we perceive not all the human domain but perhaps only one thousandth of it. If we take this into consideration, the enormity of what the old sorcerers did becomes apparent; they extended themselves into a line a thousand times the size of a man as an energy ball and perceived all the energy filaments that passed through that line.
Make a giant effort to understand the new model of energy configuration I am outlining for you.
To understand all this certainly isn't an exercise for your reason. I have no way of explaining what sorcerers mean by filaments inside and outside the human shape. When seers see the human energy shape, they see one single ball of energy. If there is another ball next to it, the other ball is seen again as a single ball of energy. The idea of a multitude of luminous balls comes from our knowledge of human crowds. In the universe of energy, there are only single individuals, alone, surrounded by the boundless. You must see that for yourself.
To rearrange uniformity and cohesion means to enter into the second attention by retaining the assemblage point on its new position and keeping it from sliding back to its original spot.
The old sorcerers called the result of fixing the assemblage point on new positions the second attention. And they treated the second attention as an area of all-inclusive activity, just as the attention of the daily world is. Sorcerers really have two complete areas for their endeavors: a small one, called the first attention or the awareness of our daily world or the fixation of the assemblage point on its habitual position; and a much larger area, the second attention or the awareness of other worlds or the fixation of the assemblage point on each of an enormous number of new positions.
Every time anyone enters into the second attention, the assemblage point is on a different position. To remember that experience, then, means to relocate the assemblage point on the exact position it occupied at the time those entrances into the second attention occurred. Not only do sorcerers have total and absolute recall but they relive every experience they had in the second attention by this act of returning their assemblage point to each of those specific positions. Sorcerers dedicate a lifetime to fulfilling this task of remembering.
Learning something in the second attention is just like learning when we were children. What we learn remains with us for live.
Entering into the second attention forces you to sustain, for long periods of time, new positions of your assemblage point and to perceive coherently in them, that is to say, it forces you to rearrange your uniformity and cohesion.
The assemblage point becomes very easily displaced during sleep. Dreams are totally associated with that displacement. The greater the displacement, the more unusual the dream or vice versa: the more unusual the dream, the greater the displacement.
Sorcerers view dreaming as an extremely sophisticated art; the art of displacing the assemblage point at will from its habitual position in order to enhance and enlarge the scope of what can be perceived.
The art of dreaming is anchored on five conditions in the energy flow of human beings.

1. . Only the energy filaments that pass directly through the assemblage point can be assembled into coherent perception.

2. If the assemblage point is displaced to another position, no matter how minute the displacement, different and unaccustomed energy filaments begin to pass through it, engaging awareness and forcing the assembling of these unaccustomed energy fields into a steady, coherent perception.

3. In the course of ordinary dreams, the assemblage point becomes easily displaced by itself to another position on the surface or in the interior of the luminous egg.

4. The assemblage point can be made to move to positions outside the luminous egg, into the energy filaments of the universe at large.

5. Through discipline it is possible to cultivate and perform, in the course of sleep and ordinary dreams, a systematic displacement of the assemblage point.

As a preamble to the first lesson in dreaming , I will talk about the second attention as a progression: beginning as an idea that comes to us more like a curiosity than an actual possibility; turning into something that can only be felt, as a sensation is felt; and finally evolving into a state of being, or a realm of practicalities, or a preeminent force that opens for us worlds beyond our wildest fantasies.
Being a by-product of a displacement of the assemblage point, the second attention does not happen naturally but must be intended, beginning with intending it as an idea and ending up with intending it as a steady and controlled awareness of the assemblage points displacement.
The first step to power is to set up dreaming . To set up dreaming means to have a precise and practical command over the general situation of a dream.
This control is no different from the control we have over any situation in our daily lives. Sorcerers are used to it and get it every time they want or need to. In order for you to get used to it yourself I taught you to look at your hands while dreaming .
* * *
Explanations always call for deep thought. But when you actually dream, be as light as a feather. Dreaming has to be performed with integrity and seriousness, but in the midst of laughter and with the confidence of someone who doesn't have a worry in the world. Only under these conditions can our dreams actually be turned into dreaming .
* * *
I selected your hands as something to look for in your dreams because they will always be there. Looking for anything else is just as valid provided that you pick one thing in advance and stay with it night after night until you succeed in finding it. The goal of the exercise is not finding a specific thing but engaging your dreaming attention.
The dreaming attention is the control one acquires over one's dreams upon fixating the assemblage point on any new position to which it has been displaced during dreams. The dreaming attention is an incomprehensible facet of awareness that exists by itself, waiting for a moment when we would entice it, a moment when we would give it purpose; it is a veiled faculty that every one of us has in reserve but never has the opportunity to use in everyday life.
There are seven gates and dreamers have to open all seven of them, one at a time. There are entrances and exits in the energy flow of the universe. In the specific case of dreaming , there are seven entrances, experienced as obstacles, which sorcerers call the seven gates of dreaming .
The first gate is a threshold we must cross by becoming aware of a particular sensation before deep sleep. A sensation which is like a pleasant heaviness that doesn't let us open our eyes. We reach that gate the instant we become aware that we're falling asleep, suspended in darkness and heaviness. There are no steps to follow. One just intends to become aware of falling asleep.
Intent or intending is something very difficult to talk about. I or anyone else would sound idiotic trying to explain it. Bear that in mind when you hear what I have to say next: sorcerers intend anything they set themselves to intend , simply by intending it.
For sorcerers, because the statement I made pertains to intent and intending , understanding it pertains to the realm of energy. Sorcerers believe that if one would intend that statement for the energy body, the energy body would understand it in terms entirely different from those of the mind. The trick is to reach the energy body. For that you need energy.
The energy body would understand that statement in terms of a bodily feeling, which is hard to describe. You'll have to experience it to know what I mean.
Intending is a subject not for your reason but for your energy body. At this point, you can't yet comprehend the import of all this, not only because you don't have sufficient energy but because you're not intending anything. If you were, your energy body would comprehend immediately that the only way to intend is by focusing your intent on whatever you want to intend .
The goal of dreaming is to intend the energy body. In this particular instance, since we're talking about the first gate of dreaming , the goal of dreaming is to intend that your energy body becomes aware that you are falling asleep. Don't try to force yourself to be aware of falling asleep. Let your energy body do it. To intend is to wish without wishing, to do without doing.
Accept the challenge of intending . Put your silent determination, without a single thought, into convincing yourself that you have reached your energy body and that you are a dreamer . Doing this will automatically put you in the position to be aware that you are falling asleep.
When you hear that you have to convince yourself, you automatically become more rational. How can you convince yourself you are a dreamer when you know you are not? Intending is both: the act of convincing yourself you are indeed a dreamer , although you have never dreamt before, and the act of being convinced.
I don't mean you have to tell yourself you are a dreamer and try your best to believe it. It isn't that.
Intending is much simpler and, at the same time, infinitely more complex than that. It requires imagination, discipline, and purpose. In this case, to intend means that you get an unquestionable bodily knowledge that you are a dreamer . You feel you are a dreamer with all the cells of your body.
You must reach your energy body on your own. Intending the first gate of dreaming is one of the means discovered by the sorcerers of antiquity for reaching the second attention and the energy body.
To ask a dreamer to find a determined item in his dreams is a subterfuge. The real issue is to become aware that one is falling asleep. And, strange as it may seem, that doesn't happen by commanding oneself to be aware that one is falling asleep but by sustaining the sight of whatever one is looking at in a dream.
Dreamers take quick, deliberate glances at everything present in a dream. If they focus their dreaming attention on something specific, it is only as a point of departure. From there, dreamers move on to look at other items in the dream's content, returning to the point of departure as many times as possible.
All that is required is your awareness of falling asleep. Dreaming has to be a very sober affair. No false movement can be afforded. Dreaming is a process of awakening, of gaining control. Our dreaming attention must be systematically exercised, for it is the door to the second attention.
The difference between the dreaming attention and the second attention is that the second attention is like an ocean, and the dreaming attention is like a river feeding into it. The second attention is the condition of being aware of total worlds, total like our world is total, while the dreaming attention is the condition of being aware of the items of our dreams.
* * *
The dreaming attention is the key to every movement in the sorcerers' world. Among the multitude of items in our dreams, there exist real energetic interferences, things that have been put in our dreams extraneously, by an alien force. To be able to find them and follow them is sorcery.
Dreams are, if not a door, a hatch into other worlds. As such, dreams are a two-way street. Our awareness goes through that hatch into other realms, and those other realms send scouts into our dreams.
Those scouts are energy charges that get mixed with the items of our normal dreams. They are bursts of foreign energy that come into our dreams, and we interpret them as items familiar or unfamiliar to us.
Dreams are a hatch into other realms of perception. Through that hatch, currents of unfamiliar energy seep in. Then the mind or the brain or whatever takes those currents of energy and turns them into parts of our dreams.
Sorcerers are aware of those currents of foreign energy. They notice them and strive to isolate them from the normal items of their dreams.
They isolate them because they come from other realms. If we follow them to their source, they serve us as guides into areas of such mystery that sorcerers shiver at the mere mention of such a possibility.
Sorcerers isolate them from the normal items of their dreams by the exercise and control of their dreaming attention. At one moment, our dreaming attention discovers them among the items of a dream and focuses on them, then the total dream collapses, leaving only the foreign energy.
I'm going to repeat what you must do in your dreams in order to pass the first gate of dreaming . First you must focus your gaze on your hands as the starting point. Then shift your gaze to other items and look at them in brief glances. Focus your gaze on as many things as you can. Remember that if you glance only briefly, then the images don't shift. Then go back to your hands.
To pass the first gate of dreaming means that, first of all, we have reached the first gate of dreaming by becoming aware that we are falling asleep, or by having a gigantically real dream, and second, that we have crossed it by being able to sustain the sight of any item of our dreams.
In order to offset the evanescent quality of dreams, sorcerers have devised the use of the starting point item. Every time you isolate it and look at it, you get a surge of energy. As soon as the images begin to shift and you feel you are losing control, go back to your starting point item and start all over again.
The most astounding thing that happens to dreamers is that, on reaching the first gate, they also reach the energy body.
The energy body is the counterpart of the physical body. A ghostlike configuration made of pure energy. The physical body also is made out of energy.
The difference is that the energy body has only appearance but no mass. Since it's pure energy, it can perform acts that are beyond the possibilities of the physical body; such as transporting itself in one instant to the ends of the universe. And dreaming is the art of tempering the energy body, of making it supple and coherent by gradually exercising it.
Through dreaming we condense the energy body until it's a unit capable of perceiving. Its perception, although affected by our normal way of perceiving the daily world, is an independent perception. It has its own sphere.
That sphere is energy. The energy body deals with energy in terms of energy. There are three ways in which it deals with energy in dreaming : it can perceive energy as it flows, or it can use energy to boost itself like a rocket into unexpected areas, or it can perceive as we ordinarily perceive the world.
To perceive energy as it flows means to see . It means that the energy body sees energy directly as a light or as a vibrating current of sorts or as a disturbance. Or It feels it directly as a jolt or as a sensation that can even be pain.
Since energy is its sphere, it is no problem for the energy body to use currents of energy that exist in the universe to propel itself. All it has to do is isolate them, and off it goes with them.
Sorcerers isolate in their dreams scouts from other realms. Their energy bodies do that. They recognize energy and go for it. But it isn't desirable for dreamers to indulge in searching for scouts. I was reluctant to tell you about it, because of the facility with which one can get swayed be that search.
Reaching, with deliberate control, the first gate of dreaming is a way of arriving at the energy body. But to maintain that gain is predicated on energy alone. Sorcerers get that energy by redeploying, in a more intelligent manner, the energy they have and use for perceiving the daily world.
We all have a determined quantity of basic energy. That quantity is all the energy we have, and we use all of it for perceiving and dealing with our engulfing world. There is no more energy for us anywhere and, since our available energy is already engaged, there is not a single bit left in us for any extraordinary perception, such as dreaming .
That leaves us to scrounge energy for ourselves, wherever we can find it.
Sorcerers have a scrounging method. They intelligently redeploy their energy by cutting down anything they consider superfluous in their lives. They call this method the sorcerers' way. In essence, the sorcerers' way is a chain of behavioral choices for dealing with the world, choices much more intelligent than those our progenitors taught us. These sorcerers' choices are designed to revamp our lives by altering our basic reactions about being alive.
Those basic reactions are the two ways of facing our being alive. One is to surrender to it, either by acquiescing to its demands or by fighting those demands. The other is by molding our particular life situation to fit our own configurations.
One's particular life situation can be molded to fit one's specifications. Dreamers do that. A wild statement? Not really, if you consider how little we know about ourselves.
My interest, as a teacher, is to get you thoroughly involved with the themes of life and being alive; that is to say, with the difference between life, as a consequence of biological forces, and the act of being alive, as a matter of cognition.
When sorcerers talk about molding one's life situation they mean molding the awareness of being alive. Through molding this awareness, we can get enough energy to reach and sustain the energy body, and with it we can certainly mold the total direction and consequences of our lives.
* * *
Don't merely think about what I have told you. Turn my concepts into a viable way of life by a process of repetition. Everything new in our lives, such as the sorcerers' concepts I am teaching you, must be repeated to us to the point of exhaustion before we open ourselves to it. Repetition is the way our progenitors socialized us to function in the daily world.
* * *
As we tighten the control over our dreams, we tighten the mastery over our dreaming attention. The dreaming attention comes into play when it is called, when it is given a purpose. Its coming into play is not really a process, as one would normally understand a process, that is as an ongoing system of operations or a series of actions or functions that bring about an end result. It is rather an awakening. Something dormant becomes suddenly functional.

A dreaming teacher must create a didactic synthesis in order to emphasize a given point. In essence, what I wanted with your first task was to exercise your dreaming attention by focusing it on the items of your dreams. To this effect I used as a spearhead the idea of being aware of falling asleep. My subterfuge was to say that the only way to be aware of falling asleep is to examine the elements of one's dreams.
Exercising the dreaming attention is the essential point in dreaming . To the mind, however, it seems impossible that one can train oneself to be aware at the level of dreams. The active element of such training is persistence. The mind and all its rational defenses cannot cope with persistence. Sooner or later, the mind's barriers fall, under its impact, and the dreaming attention blooms.
As you practice focusing and holding your dreaming attention on the items of your dreams your entering into the second attention. This calls for even more sobriety on your part. Go slowly, but don't stop, and about all, don't talk about it. Just do it.
If one takes short glances at everything in a dream, the images do not dissolve. The difficult part is to break the initial barrier that prevents us from bringing dreams to our conscious attention.
This barrier is in part a psychological one created by our socialization, which puts a premium on disregarding dreams. But the barrier is more than socialization. It's the first gate of dreaming . The first gate of dreaming has to do with the flow of energy in the universe. It's a natural obstacle.
The energy needed to release our dreaming attention from its socialization prison comes from redeploying our existing energy. The emergence of our dreaming attention is a direct corollary of revamping our lives. Since we have no way to plug into any external source for a boost of energy, we must redeploy our existing energy, by any means available.
The sorcerers' way is the best means to oil, so to speak, the wheels of energy redeployment. Of all the items in the sorcerers' way, the most effective is losing self-importance . This is indispensable for everything sorcerers do, and for this reason I put an enormous emphasis on guiding all my students to fulfill this requirement. Self-importance is not only the sorcerer's supreme enemy but the nemesis of mankind.
Most of our energy goes into upholding our importance. This is most obvious in our endless worry about the presentation of the self, about whether or not we are admired or liked or acknowledged. If we are capable of losing some of that importance, two extraordinary things happen to us. One, we free our energy from trying to maintain the illusory idea of our grandeur; and, two, we provide ourselves with enough energy to enter into the second attention to catch a glimpse of the actual grandeur of the universe.
The capability of examining the contents of one's dreams is the product of a natural configuration of our being, similar to our capability of walking. We are physically conditioned to walk only in one manner, bipedally, yet it takes a monumental effort for us to learn to walk.
* * *
We are not alone in this world. There are other worlds available to dreamers , total worlds. From those other total worlds, energetic entities sometimes come to us.
You can't explain dreaming by way of things you know or suspect you know. Believe me, the most extravagant feature of sorcery is that configuration called out of this world.
* * *
You reach the second gate of dreaming when you wake up from a dream into another dream. You can have as many dreams as you want or as many as you are capable of, but you must exercise adequate control and not wake up in the world we know.
I'm not saying that you should never wake up in this world. But I have to tell you that that is an alternative. The sorcerers of antiquity used to do that, never wake up in the world we know. It certainly can be done, but I don't recommend it. What I want is for you to wake up naturally when you are through with dreaming , but while you are dreaming , I want you to dream that you wake up in another dream.
This control is no different from the control we have over any situation in our daily lives.
There's one problem with the second gate. It's a problem that can be serious, depending on one's bent of character. If our tendency is to indulge in clinging to things or situations, we are in for a sock in the jaw.
Imagine yourself going from dream to dream, watching everything, examining every detail. It's very easy to realize that one may sink to mortal depths. Especially if one is given to indulging.
Wouldn't the body or the brain naturally put a stop to it? Yes, if it's a natural sleeping situation, meaning normal. But this is not a normal situation. This is dreaming . A dreamer on crossing the first gate has already reached the energy body. So what is really going through the second gate, hopping from dream to dream, is the energy body.
The implication is that on crossing the second gate you must intend a greater and more sober control over your dreaming attention: the only safety valve for dreamers .
You will find out for yourself that the true goal of dreaming is to perfect the energy body. A perfect energy body, among other things of course, has such a control over the dreaming attention that it makes it stop when needed. This is the safety valve dreamers have. No matter how indulging they might be, at a given time, their dreaming attention must make them surface.
Crossing the second gate is a very serious affair; it requires a most disciplined effort.
I told you that one has to wake up in another dream, but what I meant is that one has to change dreams in an orderly and precise manner.
There are two ways of properly crossing the second gate of dreaming . One is to wake up in another dream, that is to say, to dream that one is having a dream and then dream that one wakes up from it. The alternative is to use the items of a dream to trigger another dream; that is, zoom from a definite item accessible to your immediate dreaming attention to another one, not quite accessible. Or gaze at any item of a dream, maintaining the gaze until the item changes shape and, by changing shape, pulls you into another dream.
* * *
Life and consciousness, being exclusively a matter of energy, are not solely the property of organisms. Sorcerers have seen that there are two types of conscious beings roaming the earth, the organic and the inorganic. In comparing one with the other, they have seen that both are luminous masses crossed from every imaginable angle by millions of the universe's energy filaments. They are different from each other in their shape and in their degree of brightness. Inorganic beings are long and candlelike but opaque, whereas organic beings are round and by far the brighter. Another noteworthy difference sorcerers have seen , is that the life and consciousness of organic beings is short-lived, because they are made to hurry, whereas the life of inorganic beings is infinitely longer and their consciousness infinitely more calm and deeper.
Sorcerers find no problem interacting with them. Inorganic beings possess the crucial ingredient for interaction, consciousness.
For sorcerers, having life means having consciousness. It means having an assemblage point and its surrounding glow of awareness, a condition that points out to sorcerers that the being in front of them, organic or inorganic, is thoroughly capable of perceiving. Perceiving is understood by sorcerers as the precondition of being alive.
The inorganic beings must also die. They lose their awareness just like we do, except that the length of their consciousness is staggering to the mind.
It's very difficult to tell what is what with them. Let's say that those beings are enticed by us or, better yet, compelled to interact with us.
The proper thing to do is to suspend judgment and let things take their course, meaning that you let the inorganic beings come to you.
The difficulty with inorganic beings is that their awareness is very slow in comparison with ours. It will take years for a sorcerer to be acknowledged by inorganic beings. So, it is advisable to have patience and wait. Sooner or later they show up. But not like you or I would show up. Theirs is a most peculiar way to make themselves known.
Sorcerers entice them in dreaming . What's involved, though, is more than enticing them; by the act of dreaming , sorcerers compel those beings to interact with them.
Dreaming is sustaining the position where the assemblage point has shifted in dreams. This act creates a distinctive energy charge, which attracts their attention. It's like bait to fish; they'll go for it. Sorcerers, by reaching and crossing the first two gates of dreaming , set bait for those beings and compel them to appear.
By going through the two gates, you make your bidding known to them. Then, you must wait for a sign from them; possibly the appearance of one of them, or simply some interference in your dreaming .
You must gauge your expectations. Our normal expectation when engaging in interaction with our fellow men or with other organic beings is to get an immediate reply to our solicitation. With inorganic beings, however, since they are separated from us by a most formidable barrier--energy that moves at a different speed--sorcerers must gauge their expectations and sustain the solicitation for as long as it takes to be acknowledged.
The solicitation is the same as the dreaming practices. But for a perfect result, you must add to your practices the intent of reaching those inorganic beings. Send a feeling of power and confidence to them, a feeling of strength, of detachment. Avoid at any cost sending a feeling of fear or morbidity. They are pretty morbid by themselves; to add your morbidity to them is unnecessary, to say the least.
They do, at times, materialize themselves in the daily world, right in front of us. Most of the time, though, their invisible presence is marked by a bodily jolt, a shiver of sorts that comes from the marrow of the bones.
In dreaming we have the total opposite. At times, we feel them as a jolt of fear. Most of the time, they materialize themselves right in front of us. Since at the beginning of dreaming we have no experience whatsoever with them, they might imbue us with fear beyond measure. That is a real danger to us. Through the channel of fear, they can follow us to the daily world, with disastrous results for us.
Fear can settle down in our lives, and we would have to be mavericks to deal with it. Inorganic beings can be worse than a pest. Through fear they can easily drive us raving mad.
What sorcerers do with the inorganic beings is mingle with them. They turn them into allies. They form associations, create extraordinary friendships. I call them vast enterprises, where perception plays the uppermost role. We are social beings. We unavoidably seek the company of consciousness.
With inorganic beings, the secret is not to fear them. And this must be done from the beginning. The intent one has to send out to them has to be of power and abandon. In that intent one must encode the message "I don't fear you. Come to see me. If you do, I'll welcome you. If you don't want to come, I'll miss you." With a message like this, they'll get so curious that they'll come for sure.
Why should they come to seek you, or why on earth should you seek them? Dreamers , whether they like it or not, in their dreaming seek associations with other beings. This may come to you as a shock, but dreamers automatically seek groups of beings, nexuses of inorganic beings in this case. Dreamers seek them avidly. Why would dreamers do that? The novelty for us is the inorganic beings. And the novelty for them is one of our kind crossing the boundaries of their realm. The thing you must bear in mind from now on is that inorganic beings with their superb consciousness exert a tremendous pull over dreamers and can easily transport them into worlds beyond description.
The sorcerers of antiquity used them, and they are the ones who coined the name allies. Their allies taught them to move the assemblage point out of the egg's boundaries into the nonhuman universe. So when they transport a sorcerer, they transport him to worlds beyond the human domain.
Think about dreaming in these terms: dreaming is perceiving more than what we believe it is possible to perceive.
The second attention is available to all of us, but, by willfully holding on to our half-cocked rationality, some of us more fiercely than others, we keep the second attention at arm's length. Dreaming brings down the barriers that surround and insulate the second attention.
If the inorganic beings single a dreamer out by reappearing over and over again in his dreaming , it means that they seek an association. I've mentioned to you that sorcerers form bonds of friendship with them. Such a friendship consists of a mutual exchange of energy. The inorganic beings supply their high awareness, and sorcerers supply their heightened awareness and high energy. The positive result is an even exchange. The negative one is dependency on both parties. Once they have singled a dreamer out the dreamer can summon them in his normal daily awareness, size them up, and then decide himself what to do.
You summon them by holding your dream view of them in your mind. The reason they would saturate a dreamer with their presence in his dreams is that they want to create a memory of their shape in his mind.
You can then use that memory by closing your eyes and visualize their shape until they are just like they are in your dreams. When you have them in focus, open your eyes, then get up and grab one of them and don't let go, no matter how it shakes you. You drop it and you're done for!
If you feel the inorganic being's energy like water you are not going to have helping friends among the inorganic beings, but relationships of annoying dependency. Be, in that case, extremely careful. Watery inorganic beings are more given to excesses. The old sorcerers believed that they were more loving, more capable of imitating, or perhaps even having feelings. As opposed to the other kind, the fiery ones, who were thought to be more serious, more contained than the others, but also more pompous.
My recommendation is that you vanquish fear from your dreams and from your life, in order to safeguard your unity.
In matters of the inorganic beings, I am nearly a novice. I refused that part of the sorcerers' knowledge on the ground that it is too cumbersome and capricious. I don't want to be at the mercy of any entity, organic or inorganic.

By means of their dreaming contacts with inorganic beings, the old sorcerers became immensely well-versed in the manipulation of the assemblage point, a vast and ominous subject.
The inorganic beings have never been my cup of tea. My reason for that is the best reason in the world: we are antithetical. They love slavery, and I love freedom. They love to buy, and I don't sell.
The best thing to do with inorganic beings is deny their existence but visit with them regularly and maintain that you are dreaming and in dreaming anything is possible. This way you don't commit yourself.
If one is to accept that inorganic beings are as real as people, where, in the physicality of the universe, is the realm in which they exist? That realm exists in a particular position of the assemblage point. Just like our world exists in the habitual position of the assemblage point.
Upon crossing the first or second gate of dreaming , dreamers reach a threshold of energy and begin to see things or to hear voices. Not really plural voices, but a singular voice. Sorcerers call it the voice of the dreaming emissary.
The dreaming emissary is alien energy that has conciseness. Alien energy that purports to aid dreamers by telling them things. The problem with the dreaming emissary is that it can tell only what the sorcerers already know or should know, were they worth their salt. It's alien energy. An impersonal force that we turn into a very personal one because it has a voice. Some sorcerers swear by it. They even see it.
We see it or hear it because we maintain our assemblage points fixed on a specific new position; the more intense this fixation, the more intense our experience of the emissary.
This force is capable of materializing itself. It all depends on how fixed the assemblage point is. But, rest assured, if you are capable of maintaining a degree of detachment, nothing happens. The emissary remains what it is: an impersonal force that acts on us because of the fixation of our assemblage points.
Is its advice safe and sound? It cannot be advice. It only tells us what's what, and then we draw the inferences ourselves.
It's just like I said, the emissary doesn't tell you anything new. Its statements are correct, but it only seems to be revealing things to you. What the emissary does is merely repeat what you already know.
You know now infinitely more about the mystery of the universe than what you rationally suspect. But that's our human malady, to know more about the mystery of the universe than we suspect.
The emissary tells me anything I focus my intent on, things I don't want to take the trouble of following up myself.
Let's say that the dreaming emissary is a force that comes from the realm of inorganic beings. This is the reason dreamers always encounter it. Every dreamer hears or sees the emissary though very few see it or feel it. I don't have any explanation for this, besides, I really don't care about the emissary. At one point in my life, I had to make a decision whether to concentrate on the inorganic beings and follow in the footsteps of the old sorcerers or to refuse it all. My teacher helped me make up my mind to refuse it. I've never regretted that decision.
The whole realm of inorganic beings is always poised to teach. Perhaps because inorganic beings have a deeper consciousness than ours, they feel compelled to take us under their wings. I didn't see any point in becoming their pupil--their price is to high--their price is our lives, our energy, our devotion to them. In other words, our freedom.
They teach things pertinent to their world. The same way we ourselves would teach them, if we were capable of teaching them, things pertinent to our world. Their method, however, is to take our basic self as a gauge of what we need and then teach us accordingly. A most dangerous affair.
If someone was going to take your basic self as a gauge, with all your fears and greed and envy, et cetera, et cetera, and teach you what fulfills that horrible state of being, what do you think the result would be?
The problem with the old sorcerers was that they learned wonderful things, but on the basis of their unadulterated lower selves. The inorganic beings became their allies, and, by means of deliberate examples, they taught the old sorcerers marvels. Their allies performed the actions, and the old sorcerers were guided step by step to copy those actions, without changing anything about their basic nature.
Involvements of this nature curtail our search for freedom by consuming all our available energy.
If a sorcerer wants to live in the realm of the inorganic beings, the emissary is the perfect bridge; it speaks, and its bent is to teach, to guide.
I neither approve of that realm nor like it. It belongs to another mood, the old sorcerers' mood. Besides, its teachings and guidance in our world are nonsense. And for that nonsense the emissary charges us enormities in terms of energy.
* * *
Just because we haven't been taught to emphasize dreams as a genuine field for exploration doesn't mean they are not one. Dreams are analyzed for their meaning or are taken as portents, but never are they taken as a realm of real events.
To my knowledge, only the old sorcerers did that. But at the end they flubbed it. They got greedy, and when they came to a crucial crossroads, they took the wrong fork. They put all their eggs in one basket: the fixation of the assemblage point on the thousands of positions it can adopt.
Out of all the marvelous things the old sorcerers learned exploring those thousands of positions, only the art of dreaming and the art of stalking remain. The art of dreaming is concerned with the displacement of the assemblage point. Stalking is the art that deals with the fixation of the assemblage point on any location to which it is displaced.
To fixate the assemblage point on any new spot means to acquire cohesion. An apprentice does just that in his dreaming practices. He is perfecting his energy body. He is doing that and much more; he is learning to have cohesion. Dreaming does it by forcing dreamers to fixate the assemblage point. The dreaming attention, the energy body, the second attention, the relationship with inorganic beings, the dreaming emissary are but by-products of acquiring cohesion; in other words, they are all by-products of fixating the assemblage point on a number of dreaming positions .
A dreaming position is any new position to which the assemblage point has been displaced during sleep. We fixate the assemblage point on a dreaming position by sustaining the view of any item in our dreams, or by changing dreams at will. Through his dreaming practices, an apprentice is really exercising his capacity to be cohesive; that is to say, he is exercising his capacity to maintain a new energy shape by holding the assemblage point fixed on the position of any particular dream he is having. While exercising his capacity to maintain a new energy shape, he isn't really maintaining a new energy shape yet, not exactly, and not because he can't but only because he is shifting the assemblage point instead of moving it. Shifts of the assemblage point give rise to minute changes, which are practically unnoticeable. The challenge of shifts is that they are so small and so numerous that to maintain cohesiveness in all of them is a triumph.
We know we are maintaining cohesion by the clarity of our perception. The clearer the view of our dreams, the greater our cohesion.
I'm going to tell you about a practical application of what an apprentice learns in dreaming . He focuses his attention, as if he is in a dream, on the foliage of a tree. He doesn't just gaze at it; he does something very special with the foliage. Remember, I've said that in dreaming , once you are able to hold the view of any item, you are really holding the dreaming position of your assemblage point. So then, an apprentice gazes at the leaves of a tree as if he is in a dream, but with a slight yet most meaningful variation: he holds his dreaming attention on the leaves of the tree in the awareness of our daily world.
By staring at the foliage, he accomplishes a minute displacement of his assemblage point. Then, by summoning his dreaming attention through staring at individual leaves, he actually fixates that minute displacement, and his cohesion makes him perceive in terms of the second attention. The process is so simple it is ridiculous.
Our speech faculty is extremely flimsy and attacks of muteness are common among sorcerers who venture this way, beyond the limits of normal perception.
It is not possible for one to rely on one's rationality to understand such an experience as summoning one's dreaming attention through staring at individual leaves. Not because our rationality is in any way impaired but because what takes place is a phenomenon outside the parameters of reason.
Reason is only a by-product of the habitual position of the assemblage point; therefore, knowing what is going to, being of sound mind, having our feet on the ground--sources of great pride to us and assumed to be a natural consequence of our worth--are merely the result of the fixation of the assemblage point on its habitual place. The more rigid and stationary it is, the greater our confidence in ourselves, the greater our feeling of knowing the world, of being able to predict.
What dreaming does is give us the fluidity to enter into other worlds by destroying our sense of knowing this world. Dreaming is a journey of unthinkable dimensions, a journey that, after making us perceive everything we can humanly perceive, makes the assemblage point jump outside the human domain and perceive the inconceivable.
We are back again, harping on the most important topic of the sorcerers' world; the position of the assemblage point. The old sorcerers' curse, as well as mankind's thorn in the side. I say that because both, mankind in general and the old sorcerers, fell prey to the position of the assemblage point: mankind, because by not knowing that the assemblage point exists we are obliged to take the by-product of its habitual position as something final and indisputable. And the old sorcerers because, although they knew all about the assemblage point, they fell for its facility to be manipulated. You must avoid falling into those traps.
Different worlds exist in the position of the assemblage point. You will have two choices. One, to follow mankind's rationales and be faced with a predicament: your experience will tell you that other worlds exist, but your reason will say that such worlds do not and cannot exist. The other, to follow the old sorcerers' rationales, in which case you will automatically accept the existence of other worlds, and your greed alone will make your assemblage point hold on to the position that creates those worlds. The result would be another kind of predicament: that of having to move physically into visionlike realms, driven by expectations of power and gain.
* * *
The dreaming emissary's voice is an impersonal but constant force from the realm of inorganic beings; thus, every dreamer experiences it, in more or less the same terms. And if we choose to take its words as advice, we are incurable fools.
My interest in telling you about the old sorcerers is not to bad-mouth them but to pit them against you. Sooner or later, your assemblage point will be more fluid, but not fluid enough to offset the facility to be like them: righteous and hysterical.
There is only one way to avoid all that. Sorcerers call it sheer understanding. I call it a romance with knowledge. It's the drive sorcerers use to know, to discover, to be bewildered.
Seeing children's assemblage points constantly fluttering, as if moved by tremors, changing their place with ease, the old sorcerers came to the conclusion that the assemblage points habitual location is not innate but brought about by habituation. Seeing also that only in adults is it fixed on one spot, they surmised that the specific location of the assemblage point fosters a specific way of perceiving. Through usage, this specific way of perceiving becomes a system of interpreting sensory data.
Since we are drafted into that system by being born into it, from the moment of our birth we imperatively strive to adjust our perceiving to conform to the demands of this system, a system that rules us for life. Consequently, the old sorcerers were thoroughly right in believing that the act of countermanding it and perceiving energy directly is what transforms a person into a sorcerer.
I am in wonder at the greatest accomplishment of our human upbringing: to lock our assemblage point on its habitual position. For, once it is immobilized there, our perception can be coached and guided to interpret what we perceive. In other words, we can then be guided to perceive more in terms of our system than in terms of our senses. Human perception is universally homogeneous, because the assemblage points of the whole human race are fixed on the same spot.
Sorcerers prove all this to themselves when they see that at the moment the assemblage point is displaced beyond a certain threshold, and new universal filaments of energy begin to be perceived, there is no sense to what we perceive. The immediate cause is that new sensory data has rendered our system inoperative; it can no longer be used to interpret what we are perceiving.
Perceiving without our system is, of course, chaotic. But strangely enough, when we think we have truly lost our bearings, our old system rallies; it comes to our rescue and transforms our new incomprehensible perception into a thoroughly comprehensible new world. Just like what happens to an apprentice when he gazes at the leaves of a tree and his dreaming attention comes forth. His perception is chaotic for a while; everything comes to him at once, and his system for interpreting the world doesn't function. Then, the chaos clears up and there he is, in front of a new world.
That world exists in the precise position of his assemblage point at that moment. In order to perceive it, he needs cohesion, that is, he needs to maintain his assemblage point fixed on that position. The result is that he totally perceives a new world for a while.
Others would perceive that same world if they had uniformity and cohesion. Uniformity and cohesion is to hold, in unison, the same position of the assemblage point. The old sorcerers called the entire act of acquiring uniformity and cohesion outside the normal world "stalking perception."
The art of stalking , as I have already said, deals with the fixation of the assemblage point. The old sorcerers discovered, through practice, that important as it is to displace the assemblage point, it is even more important to make it stay fixed on its new position, wherever that new position might be.
If the assemblage point does not become stationary, there is no way that we can perceive coherently. We would experience then a kaleidoscope of disassociated images. This is the reason the old sorcerers put as much emphasis on dreaming as they did on stalking . One art cannot exist without the other, especially for the kinds of activities in which the old sorcerers were involved.
The old sorcerers called them the intricacies of the second attention or the grand adventure of the unknown. These activities stem from the displacements of the assemblage point. Not only had the old sorcerers learned to displace their assemblage points to thousands of positions on the surface or on the inside of their energy masses but they had also learned to fixate their assemblage points on those positions, and thus retain their cohesiveness, indefinitely. We can't talk about the benefits of that, we can talk only about end results.
The cohesiveness of the old sorcerers was such that it allowed them to become perceptually and physically everything the specific position of their assemblage points dictated. They could transform themselves into anything for which they had a specific inventory. An inventory is all the details of perception involved in becoming, for example, a jaguar, a bird, an insect, et cetera, et cetera. It is possible, not so much for you and me, but you them. For them, it was nothing.
The old sorcerers had superb fluidity. All they needed was the slightest shift of their assemblage points, the slightest perceptual cue from their dreaming , and they would instantaneously stalk their perception, rearrange their cohesiveness to fit their new state of awareness, and be an animal, another person, a bird, or anything.
Sorcerers bring order to the chaos. Their preconceived, transcendental purpose is to free their perception. Sorcerers don't make up the world they are perceiving; they perceive energy directly, and then they discover that what they are perceiving is an unknown new world, which can swallow them whole, because it is as real as anything we know to be real.
What happens as an apprentice gazes at the leaves of a tree is that he began by perceiving the energy of the tree. On the subjective level, however, he believes he is dreaming because he employs dreaming techniques to perceive energy. To use dreaming techniques in the world of everyday life was one of the old sorcerers most effective devices. It made perceiving energy directly dreamlike, instead of totally chaotic, until a moment when something rearranged perception and the sorcerer found himself facing a new world. The scenery one views in that case is not a dream, nor is it our daily world.
I've been saying this to you over and over, and you think that I am merely repeating myself. I know how difficult it is for the mind to allow mindless possibilities to become real. But new worlds exist! They are wrapped one around the other, like the skins of an onion. The world we exist in is but one of those skins.
So then, is the goal of my teaching to prepare you to go into those worlds? No. I don't mean that. We go into those worlds only as an exercise. Those journeys are the antecedents of the sorcerers of today. We do the same dreaming that the old sorcerers used to do, but at one moment we deviate into new ground. The old sorcerers preferred the shifts of the assemblage point, so they were always on more or less known, predictable ground. We prefer the movements of the assemblage point. The old sorcerers were after the human unknown. We are after the nonhuman unknown. You haven't gotten to that yet. You are only beginning. And at the beginning everyone has to go through the old sorcerers' steps. After all, they were the ones who invented dreaming .
When dreaming is too easy for you it can be a damnation if you don't watch it. It leads to the human unknown. As I said to you, modern-day sorcerers strive to get to the nonhuman unknown; that is, freedom from being human. Inconceivable worlds that are outside the band of man but that we still can perceive. This is where modern sorcerers take the side road. Their predilection is what's outside the human domain. And what are outside that domain are all-inclusive worlds, not merely the realm of birds or the realm of animals or the realm of man, even if it be the unknown man. What I am talking about are worlds, like the one where we live; total worlds with endless realms.
Those worlds are in different positions of the assemblage point. But positions sorcerers arrive at with a movement of the assemblage point, not a shift. Entering into those worlds is the type of dreaming only sorcerers of today do. The old sorcerers stayed away from it, because it requires a great deal of detachment and no self-importance whatsoever. A price they couldn't afford to pay.
For the sorcerers who practice dreaming today, dreaming is freedom to perceive worlds beyond the imagination. Freedom is an adventure with no end, in which we risk our lives and much more for a few moments of something beyond words, beyond thoughts or feelings.
What can be the driving force to do all this? To seek freedom is the only driving force I know. Freedom to fly off into that infinity out there. Freedom to dissolve; to lift off; to be like the flame of a candle, which, in spite of being up against the light of a billion stars, remains intact, because it never pretended to be more than what it is: a mere candle.

To suspend judgment and let the inorganic beings come, was in fact, the very procedure used by the sorcerers of antiquity to attract them. It is very difficult to make the self give up its strongholds except through practice. One of the self's strongest lines of defense is indeed our rationality, and this is not only the most durable line of defense when it comes to sorcery actions and explanations but also the most threatened. The existence of inorganic beings is a foremost assailant of our rationality.
From time to time a projection from the realm of the inorganic beings, a current of foreign energy, a scout, will be injected into your dreams. So after you have crossed the first gate of dreaming , adjust your dreaming attention and be on the alert.
Scouts are more numerous when our dreams are average, normal ones. The dreams of dreamers are strangely free from scouts. When they appear, they are identifiable by the strangeness and incongruity surrounding them. Their presence doesn't make any sense.
Only in average dreams are things nonsensical. I would say that this is so because more scouts are injected then, because average people are subject to a greater barrage from the unknown.
In my opinion, what takes place is a balance of forces. Average people have stupendously strong barriers to protect themselves against those onslaughts. Barriers such as worries about the self. The stronger the barrier, the greater the attack.
Dreamers, by contrast, have fewer barriers and fewer scouts in their dreams. It seems that in dreamers ' dreams nonsensical things disappear, perhaps to ensure that dreamers catch the presence of scouts.
In dreaming , some items are of key importance because they are associated with the spirit. Others are entirely unimportant by reason of being associated with our indulging personality.
The first scout you isolate will always be present, in any form. Incongruous items are foreign invaders of your dreams. Upon isolating them, your dreaming attention always focuses on them with an intensity that does not occur under any other circumstances.
At that point in your dreaming , scouts are reconnoiterers sent by the inorganic realm. They are very fast, meaning that they don't stay long.
They come in search of potential awareness. They have consciousness and purpose, although it is incomprehensible to our minds, comparable perhaps to the consciousness and purpose of trees. The inner speed of trees and inorganic beings is incomprehensible to us because it is infinitely slower than ours.
Both trees and inorganic beings last longer than we do. They are made to stay put. They are immobile, yet they make everything move around them. Inorganic beings are stationary like trees. What one sees in dreaming as bright or dark sticks are their projections. What one hears as the voice of the dreaming emissary is equally their projection. And so are their scouts.
Trees also have projections like that. Their projections are, however, even less friendly to us than those of the inorganic beings. Dreamers never seek them, unless they are in a state of profound amenity with trees, which is a very difficult state to attain.
Remember, the realm of inorganic beings was the old sorcerers' field. To get there, they tenaciously fixed their dreaming attention on the items of their dreams. In that fashion, they were able to isolate the scouts. And when they had the scouts in focus, they voiced their intent to follow them. The instant the old sorcerers voiced that intent , off they went, pulled by that foreign energy.
* * *
Only follow the dreaming emissary's guidance when it refers to dreaming .
* * *
The dreaming attention comes from behind the roof of the mouth. Feel in dreaming that you are pressing the roof of your mouth with the tip of your tongue.
* * *
By living up to my standards of self-examination with no indulgence, the emissary's voice and what it says will become a superchallenge for you. You have to avoid, at all cost, succumbing to the temptation of the emissary's promise of knowledge, and you have to do this all by yourself.
The diabolical nature of the inorganic beings' realm is that it might very well be the only sanctuary dreamers have in a hostile universe.
It really is a haven for some dreamers . Not for me. I don't need props or railings. I know what I am. I am alone in a hostile universe, and I have learned to say, So be it!
* * *
Under the influence of dreaming , reality suffers a metamorphosis. Two options are faced by all dreamers : either we carefully revamp or we completely disregard our system of sensory input interpretation.
To revamp our interpretation system means to intend its reconditioning. It means that one deliberately and carefully attempts to enlarge its capabilities. By living in accordance with the sorcerers' way, dreamers save and store the necessary energy to suspend judgment and thus facilitate that intended revamping. If we choose to recondition our interpretation system, reality becomes fluid, and the scope of what can be real is enhanced without endangering the integrity of reality. Dreaming , then, indeed opens the door into other aspects of what is real.
If we choose to disregard our system, the scope of what can be perceived without interpretation grows inordinately. The expansion of our perception is so gigantic that we are left with very few tools for sensory interpretation and, thus, a sense of an infinite realness that is unreal or an infinite unrealness that could very well be real but is not.
The existence of inorganic beings is the foremost assailant of our rationality. Only after you have really suspended judgment will you get any relief.
* * *
An apprentice's energy level, which steadily grows, one day reaches a threshold that allows him to disregard assumptions and prejudgments about the nature of man, reality, and perception. That day he becomes enamored with knowledge, regardless of logic or functional value, and, above all, regardless of personal convenience.
* * *
The inorganic beings are after our awareness. They'll give us knowledge, but they'll extract a payment: our total being.
Inorganic beings can't force anyone to stay with them. To live in their world is a voluntary affair. Yet they are capable of imprisoning any one of us by catering to our desires, by pampering and indulging us. Beware of awareness that is immobile. Awareness like that has to seek movement, and it does this, as I've told you, by creating projections, phantasmagorical projections at times.
Inorganic beings hook onto dreamers ' innermost feelings and play them mercilessly. They create phantoms to please dreamers or frighten them. Inorganic beings are superb projectionists, who delight in projecting themselves like pictures on the wall.
The old sorcerers portrayed the inorganic beings' world as a blob of caverns and pores floating in some dark space. And they portrayed the inorganic beings as hollow canes bound together, like the cells of our bodies. Every dreamer sees that world in the same terms; as it is.
The inorganic beings create for dreamers the sense of being unique, exclusive; plus a more pernicious sense yet: the sense of having power. Power and uniqueness are unbeatable as corrupting forces. Watch out!
You can avoid that danger by going to that world a few times, and then never going back. In the opinion of sorcerers, the universe is predatorial, and sorcerers more than anyone else have to take this into account in their daily sorcery activities. Consciousness is intrinsically compelled to grow, and the only way it can grow is through strife, through life-or-death confrontations.
The awareness of sorcerers grows when they do dreaming . And the moment it grows, something out there acknowledges its growth, recognizes it and makes a bid for it. The inorganic beings are the bidders for that new, enhanced awareness. Dreamers have to be forever on their toes. They are prey the moment they venture out in that predatorial universe. To be safe, you must be on your toes every second! Don't let anything or anybody decide for you. That is to say, go to the inorganic beings' world only when you want to go.
Once you isolate a scout, a tremendous pull may be exerted on you to go to the inorganic beings' world. You can consciously stop that pull of the scouts. Always remember, you can change the course of your dreaming by intending that course.
With practice, your capacity to intend journeys into the inorganic beings' realm will become extraordinarily keen. An increased capacity to intend brings forth an increased control over your dreaming attention. This additional control makes one more daring. Such confidence is very scary because it is the confidence of a fool.
To be transported bodily is possible. We are energy that is kept in a specific shape and position by the fixation of the assemblage point on one location. If that location is changed, the shape and position of that energy will change accordingly. All the inorganic beings have to do is to place our assemblage point on the right location, and off we go, like a bullet, shoes, hat, and all.
It is absurd to trust the inorganic beings. They have their own rhythm, and it isn't human. Sorcerers' maneuvers are deadly. I beseech you to be extraordinarily aware. Don't get involved in having some idiotic confidence in yourself.

One must seriously consider that the inorganic beings have astounding means at their disposal. Their awareness is superb. In comparison, we are children, children with a lot of energy, which the inorganic beings covet.
You already understand that the gates of dreaming are specific obstacles, but you haven't understood yet that whatever is given as the exercise to reach and cross a gate is not really what that gate is all about.
I mean that it's not true to say, for example, that the second gate is reached and crossed when a dreamer learns to wake up in another dream, or when a dreamer learns to change dreams without waking up in the world of daily life. The second gate of dreaming is reached and crossed only when a dreamer learns to isolate and follow the foreign energy scouts.
Waking up in another dream or changing dreams is the drill devised by the old sorcerers to exercise a dreamer 's capacity to isolate and follow a scout.
Following a scout is a high accomplishment and when dreamers are able to perform it, the second gate is flung open and the universe that exists behind it becomes accessible to them. This universe is there all the time but we cannot go into it because we lack energetic prowess, and in essence, the second gate of dreaming is the door into the inorganic beings' world, and dreaming is the key that opens that door.
The rule of the second gate can be described in terms of a series of three steps: one, through practicing the drill of changing dreams, dreamers find out about the scouts; two, by following the scouts, they enter into another veritable universe; and three, in that universe, by means of their actions, dreamers find out, on their own, the governing laws and regulations of that universe.
The unavoidable reaction on the part of the inorganic beings is the attempt to keep the dreamer in their world. The inorganic beings don't let anyone go, not without a real fight.
You have to continue your dreaming until you have gone through the universe behind the second gate. I mean that you alone must either accept or reject the lure of the inorganic beings.
I was forced to teach you dreaming only because that is the pattern set out by the old sorcerers. The path of dreaming is filled with pitfalls, and to avoid those pitfalls or to fall into them is the personal and individual affair of each dreamer , and I may add that it is a final affair.
Those pitfalls are the result of succumbing to adulation or to promises of power. And not only succumbing to those, but succumbing to anything offered by the inorganic beings. There is no way for sorcerers to accept anything offered by them, beyond a certain point.
That point depends on us as individuals. The challenge is for each of us to take only what is needed from that world, nothing more. To know what's needed is the virtuosity of sorcerers, but to take only what's needed is their highest accomplishment. To fail to understand this simple rule is the surest way of plummeting into a pitfall.
If you fall, you pay the price, and the price depends on the circumstances and the depth of the fall. But there is really no way of talking about an eventuality of this sort, because we are not facing a problem of punishment. Energetic currents are at stake here, energetic currents which create circumstances that are more dreadful than death. Everything in the sorcerers' path is a matter of life or death, but in the path of dreaming this matter is enhanced a hundred fold.
You may come to think you are extremely disciplined and conscientious with your dreaming practices. That's the time for you to be even more disciplined and handle everything related to dreaming with kid gloves. Be, about all, vigilant, one can't foretell where the attack will come from.
The universe behind the second gate is the closest to our own, and our own universe is pretty crafty and heartless. So the two can't be that different.
The universe of the inorganic beings is always ready to strike. But so is our own universe. That's why you have to go into their realm exactly as if you were venturing into a war zone.
I don't mean that dreamers always have to be afraid of that world. Once a dreamer goes through the universe behind the second gate, or once a dreamer refuses to consider it as a viable option, there are no more headaches.
Only then are dreamers free to continue. The universe behind the second gate is so powerful and aggressive that it serves as a natural screen or a testing ground where dreamers are probed for their weaknesses. If they survive the tests, they can proceed to the next gate; it they do not, they remain forever trapped in that universe.
For dreamers , their feelings alone can stop their dreaming . Once they have formulated the thought of reentering dreaming , their practices will continue as if they had never been interrupted.
If dreaming is overemphasized, it becomes what it was for the old sorcerers: a source of inexhaustible indulging. You must exercise all the care you are able to muster up. The old sorcerers' flaw was that they took to the inorganic beings' realm like fish take to water. When dreamers realize that the inorganic beings have no appeal it is usually too late for them, because by then the inorganic beings have them in the bag. The inorganic beings are like fishermen; they attract and catch awareness.

You are suffering from anxiety, you say. That means nothing. Gain back your energy, and don't worry about nonsense.
* * *
The inorganic beings are forever in search of awareness and energy. The inorganic beings cannot lie.

The third gate of dreaming is reached when you find yourself in a dream, staring at someone else who is asleep. And that someone else turns out to be you.
There are two phases to each of the gates of dreaming . The first, is to arrive at the gate; the second is to cross it. By dreaming that you see yourself asleep, you arrive at the third gate. The second phase is to move around once you've seen yourself asleep.
At the third gate of dreaming you begin to deliberately merge your dreaming reality with the reality of the daily world. This is the drill, and sorcerers call it completing the energy body. The merge between the two realities has to be so thorough that you need to be more fluid than ever. Examine everything at the third gate with great care and curiosity.
Our tendency at the third gate is to get lost in detail. To view things with great care and curiosity means to resist the nearly irresistible temptation to plunge into detail.
The given drill, at the third gate, is to consolidate the energy body. Dreamers begin forging the energy body by fulfilling the drills of the first and second gates. When they reach the third gate, the energy body is ready to come out, or perhaps it would be better to say that it is ready to act. Unfortunately, this also means that it's ready to be mesmerized by detail.
The energy body is like a child who's been imprisoned all its life. The moment it is free, it soaks up everything it can find, and I mean everything. Every irrelevant, minute detail totally absorbs the energy body.
The most asinine detail becomes a world for the energy body. The effort that dreamers have to make to direct the energy body is staggering. I know that it sounds awkward to tell you to view things with care and curiosity, but that is the best way to describe what you should do. At the third gate, dreamers have to avoid a nearly irresistible impulse to plunge into everything, and they avoid it by being so curious, so desperate to get into everything that they don't let any particular thing imprison them.
My recommendations, which I know sound absurd to the mind, are directly aimed at your energy body. Your energy body has to unite all its resources in order to act.
Your entire energy body has to be engaged to perform the drill of the third gate. Therefore, to make things easier for your energy body, you must hold back your rationality.
At the third gate, rationality is responsible for the insistence of our energy bodies on being obsessed with superfluous detail. At the third gate, then, we need irrational fluidity, irrational abandon to counteract that insistence.
* * *
The position of the assemblage point is like a vault where sorcerers keep their records. Sorcerers are capable of leaving accurate records of their findings in the position of the assemblage point. When it comes to getting to the essence of a written account, we have to use our sense of sympathetic or imaginative participation to go beyond the mere page into the experience itself. However, in the sorcerers' world, since there are no written pages, total records, which can be relived instead of read, are left in the position of the assemblage point.
* * *
With the inorganic beings, once you get to play with them, you are hooked. They'll always be after you. Or, what's worse yet, you'll always be after them.
* * *
To be ready for a true merging of your dreaming reality and your daily reality you must recapitulate your life further.
The recapitulation of our lives never ends, no matter how well we've done it once. The reason average people lack volition in their dreams is that they have never recapitulated and their lives are filled to capacity with heavily loaded emotions like memories, hopes, fears, et cetera, et cetera.
Sorcerers, in contrast, are relatively free from heavy, binding emotions, because of their recapitulation. And if something stops them, the assumption is that there still is something in them that is not quite clear.
Recapitulating and dreaming go hand in hand. As we regurgitate our lives, we get more and more airborne.
The recapitulation consists of reliving the totality of one's life experiences by remembering every possible minute detail of them. It's the essential factor in a dreamer 's redefinition and redeployment of energy. The recapitulation sets free energy imprisoned within us, and without this liberated energy dreaming is not possible.
Make a list of all the people you have met in your life, starting at the present. Arrange your list in an orderly fashion, breaking it down into areas of activity, such as jobs you have had, schools you have attended. Then go, without deviation, from the first person on your list to the last one, reliving every one of your interactions with them.
Recapitulating an event starts with one's mind arranging everything pertinent to what is being recapitulated. Arranging means reconstructing the event, piece by piece, starting by recollecting the physical details of the surroundings, then going to the person with whom one shared the interaction, and then going to oneself, to the examination of one's feelings.
The recapitulation is coupled with a natural, rhythmical breathing. Long exhalations are performed as the head moves gently and slowly from right to left; and long inhalations are taken as the head moves back from left to right. This act of moving the head from side to side is called "fanning the event." The mind examines the event from beginning to end while the body fans, on and on, everything the mind focuses on.
The sorcerers of antiquity, the inventors of the recapitulation, viewed breathing as a magical, life-giving act and used it, accordingly, as a magical vehicle; the exhalation, to eject the foreign energy left in them during the interaction being recapitulated and the inhalation to pull back the energy that they themselves left behind during the interaction.
It is more involved than an intellectual psychoanalysis. The recapitulation is a sorcerer's ploy to induce a minute but steady displacement of the assemblage point. The assemblage point, under the impact of reviewing past actions and feelings, goes back and forth between its present site and the site it occupied when the event being recapitulated took place.
The old sorcerers' rationale behind the recapitulation was their conviction that there is an inconceivable dissolving force in the universe, which makes organisms live by lending them awareness. That force also makes organisms die, in order to extract the same lent awareness, which organisms have enhanced through their life experiences. The old sorcerers believed that since it is our life experience this force is after, it is of supreme importance that it can be satisfied with a facsimile of our life experience: the recapitulation. Having had what it seeks, the dissolving force then lets sorcerers go, free to expand their capacity to perceive and reach with it the confines of time and space.
Dreaming requires every bit of our available energy. If there is a deep preoccupation in our life, there is no possibility of dreaming . If you think you are deeply preoccupied and your practices are not interrupted, it would be that you are only egomaniacally disturbed. To be preoccupied, for sorcerers, means that all your energy sources are taken on.
There is a second round of the recapitulation. It consists of a new recapitulation pattern. Construct a jigsaw puzzle by recapitulating, without any apparent order, different events of your life.
It'll be a mess if you let your pettiness choose the events you are going to recapitulate. Instead, let the spirit decide. Be silent, and then get to the event the spirit points out.
There are two basic rounds to the recapitulation, the first is called formality and rigidity, and the second fluidity.
* * *
When dreaming you are seeing your body you have to establish some valid guide to find out whether you are actually seeing your body asleep in your bed. Remember, you must be in your actual room, seeing your actual body. Otherwise, what you are having is merely a dream. If that's the case, control that dream, either by observing its detail or by changing it. Figure out a way to validate the fact that you are looking at yourself. Use your own judgment.
Dreamers have to be imaginative to move their energy bodies. Sorcerers say that at the third gate the entire energy body can move like energy moves: fast and directly. Their energy bodies know exactly how to move. They can move as they move in the inorganic beings' world. When your energy body learns to move by itself, you'll be thoroughly out of the inorganic beings' reach.
* * *
Be impeccable. I have told you this dozens of times. To be impeccable means to put your life on the line in order to back up your decisions, and then to do quite a lot more than your best to realize those decisions. When you are not deciding anything, you are merely playing roulette with your life in a helter-skelter way.
* * *
Instead of struggling to walk in dreaming , one wills oneself to move. It takes sorcerers forever to learn to move the energy body with their own volition. Once you've learned how to move your energy body by yourself, you should continue moving. Moving your energy body opens up a new area of extraordinary exploration.
Again, one must come up with an idea to validate the faithfulness of one's dreams.
To be transported by a scout is the real dreaming task of the second gate. It is a very serious matter, but not as serious as forging and moving the energy body. Therefore, when the time comes, you have to make sure, by some means of your own, whether you are actually seeing yourself asleep or whether you are merely dreaming that you're seeing yourself asleep. One's new extraordinary exploration hinges on really seeing oneself asleep.
Dreamers take a very long time to perfect their energy bodies. And this is exactly what's at stake here: perfecting your energy body. The reason the energy body is compelled to examine detail and get inextricably stuck in it is its inexperience, its incompleteness. Sorcerers spend a lifetime consolidating the energy body by letting it sponge up everything possible.
Until the energy body is complete and mature, it is self-absorbed. It can't get free from the compulsion to be absorbed by everything. But if one takes this into consideration, instead of fighting the energy body, one can lend it a hand by directing its behavior, that is to say, by stalking it.
Since everything related to the energy body depends on the appropriate position of the assemblage point, and since dreaming is nothing else but the means to displace it, stalking is, consequently, the way to make the assemblage point stay put on the perfect position, in this case, the position where the energy body can become consolidated and from which it can finally emerge.
The moment the energy body can move on its own, sorcerers assume that the optimum position of the assemblage point has been reached. The next step is to stalk it, that is, to fixate it on that position in order to complete the energy body. The procedure is simplicity itself. One intends to stalk it.
Let your energy body intend to reach the optimum dreaming position . Then, let your energy body intend to stay at that position and you will be stalking .
Intending is the secret. Sorcerers displace their assemblage points through intending and fixate them, equally, through intending . And there is no technique for intending . One intends through usage.
The ideal spot and the fixation of the assemblage point are metaphors. They have nothing to do with the words used to describe them.
What comes next is a sorcerer's gem, the real task; seeing energy in your dreaming with your energy body.
Dreamers have a rule of thumb. If their energy body is complete, they see energy every time they gaze at an item in the daily world. In dreams, if they see the energy of an item, they know they are dealing with a real world, no matter how distorted that world may appear to their dreaming attention. If they can't see the energy of an item, they are in an ordinary dream and not in a real world.
What is a real world? A world that generates energy; the opposite of a phantom world of projections, where nothing generates energy, like most of our dreams, where nothing has an energetic effect.
Another definition of dreaming is: a process by which dreamers isolate dream conditions in which they can find energy-generating elements. Dreaming is the process by which we intend to find adequate positions of the assemblage point, positions that permit us to perceive energy-generating items in dreamlike states.
The energy body is also capable of perceiving energy that is quite different from the energy of our own world, as in the case of items of the inorganic beings' realm, which the energy body perceives as sizzling energy. In our world nothing sizzles; everything here wavers.
From a certain point the issue of your dreaming will be to determine whether the items on which you focus your dreaming attention are energy generating, mere phantom projections, or generators of foreign energy.
Seeing energy is the gauge to determine whether or not you are observing your real body asleep.
* *
In order to see in dreaming not only do you have to intend seeing but you have to put your intent into words. You have to speak up. There are other means to accomplish the same result, but voicing one's intent is one of the simplest and most direct way.
You need to have patience. You are learning to do something extraordinary, you are learning to intend to see in your dreams. Someday you will not have to voice your intent ; you'll simply will it, silently.
If nothing happens when you voice your intent to see it means that your dream is an ordinary dream; phantom projections; images that have life only in your dreaming attention.
Don't give up or get discouraged. Keep on trying. Sooner or later, you'll hit the right note.
The drill for the third gate of dreaming is to make the energy body move on its own.
In special dreams, our dreaming attention focuses on the daily world, and it moves instantly from one real object to another in the world. What makes this movement possible is that the assemblage point is on the proper dreaming position . From that position, the assemblage point gives the dreaming attention such fluidity that it can move in a split second over incredible distances, and in doing so it produces a perception so fast, so fleeting that it resembles an ordinary dream.
When your energy body is complete and functioning, the implication that you see energy in your dream is that you are perceiving a real world, through the veil of a dream.
Unless we see in dreaming , we can't tell a real, energy-generating thing from a phantom projection.
* * *
The world is like an onion, it has many skins. The world we know is but one of them. Sometimes, we cross boundaries and enter into another skin: another world, very much like this one, but not the same.
In the view of sorcerers, the universe is constructed in layers, which the energy body can cross. Do you know where the old sorcerers are still existing to this day? In another layer, in another skin of the onion.
The idea of a real, pragmatic journey, taken in dreams, is very difficult to understand or to accept. The journey of the energy body depends exclusively on the position of the assemblage point.
Our problem is our cynicism. Cynicism doesn't allow us to make drastic changes in our understanding of the world. It also forces us to feel that we are always right.
I propose that you do one nonsensical thing that might turn the tide. Repeat to yourself incessantly that the hinge of sorcery is the mystery of the assemblage point. If you repeat this to yourself long enough, some unseen force takes over and makes the appropriate changes in you.
Cut your cynical attitude! Repeat this in a bona fide manner. The mystery of the assemblage point is everything in sorcery. Or rather, everything in sorcery rests on the manipulation of the assemblage point. You may know all this, but you have to repeat it.
* * *
There is an enormous difference between the thoughts and deeds of the men of antiquity and those of modern men. The men of ancient times had a very realistic view of perception and awareness because their view stemmed from their observations of the universe around them. Modern men, in contrast, have an absurdly unrealistic view of perception and awareness because their view stems from their observations of the social order and from their dealings with it.
You are a modern man involved with the views and observations of men of antiquity. And none of those views and observations are familiar to you. Now more than ever you need sobriety and aplomb. I am trying to make a solid bridge, a bridge you can walk on, between the views of men of ancient times and those of modern men.
Of all the transcendental observations of the men of ancient times, the only one with which you are familiar, because it has filtered down to our day, is the idea of selling our souls to the devil in exchange for immortality, which sounds to me like something coming straight out of the relationship of the old sorcerers with the inorganic beings.
Succumbing to the lure of the inorganic beings is not just an idea; it's real. Dreaming , likewise, is real; it is an energy-generating condition. You hear my statements and you may understand what I mean, but your awareness hasn't caught up with the total implication of it yet.
When you are fully aware of what an energy-generating condition means you will measure dreaming with the greatest care and deliberation. When you believe you are just dreaming , you take blind chances. Faulty reasoning tells you that no matter what happens, at a given moment the dream will be over and you will wake up.
I am talking to you about the views of men of antiquity and the views of modern man because your awareness, which is the awareness of modern man, prefers to deal with an unfamiliar concept as if it were an empty ideality.
If I left it up to you, you'd regard dreaming as an idea. Of course, I'm sure you take dreaming seriously, but you don't quite believe in the reality of dreaming .
I am saying all this because the time will come when you are in the proper position to understand that dreaming is an energy-generating condition. Then, you will understand that ordinary dreams are the honing devices used to train the assemblage point to reach the position that creates this energy-generating condition we call dreaming .
Since dreamers touch and enter real worlds of all-inclusive effects, they ought to be in a permanent state of the most intense and sustained alertness; any deviation from total alertness imperils the dreamer in ways more than dreadful.
Regard dreaming as something extremely dangerous. And begin that now.
When you can displace your assemblage point quickly and easily that ease can have the tendency to make the displacement erratic. Then you must bring that ease to order. And don't allow yourself even a fraction of an inch leeway.
Faithfully and daily repeat what I asked you to repeat, that everything in sorcery rests on the manipulation of the assemblage point. The results of your litany-like invocation will be incredible. It has the same effect on one's awareness that exercise has on the muscles of the body. Your assemblage point becomes more agile, which means that seeing energy in dreaming becomes the sole goal of your practices. A moment then comes when you are able just to intend seeing , without saying a word, and actually experience the same result as when you voice out loud your intent to see .
The energy of our world wavers. It scintillates. Not only living beings but everything in our world glimmers with an inner light of its own. The energy of our world consists of layers of shimmering hues. The top layer is whitish; another, immediately adjacent to it, is chartreuse; and another one, more distant yet, is amber. You will see glimmers of them whenever items that you encounter in your dreamlike states change shapes. However, a whitish glow is always the initial impact of seeing anything that generates energy.
There is an endless number of different hues, but for the purposes of a beginning order, you should be concerned with those three. Later on, you can get as sophisticated as you want and isolate dozens of hues, if you are able to do it.
The whitish layer is the hue of the present position of mankind's assemblage point. Let's say that it is a modern hue. Sorcerers believe that everything man does nowadays is tinted with that whitish glow. At another time, more distant yet, it made it amber. The color of sorcerers' energy is amber, which means that they are energetically associated with the men who existed in a distant past.
The present whitish hue may change someday if man is capable of evolving. The grand task of sorcerers is to bring forth the idea that, in order to evolve, man must first free his awareness from its bindings to the social order. Once awareness is free, intent will redirect it into a new evolutionary path.
Sorcerers have succeeded in that task. They themselves are the proof. To convince others of the value and import of evolving is another matter.
The other kind of energy present in our world but alien to it is the scouts energy, the energy that sizzles.
Bear in mind that not every scout you are going to find belongs to the realm of inorganic beings. Some of the scouts you will encounter are going to be not from the inorganic beings' realm but from other, even more distant levels of awareness.
Since scouts are aware of themselves, they make contact with us when we are awake. But our great misfortune is to have our consciousness so fully engaged that we don't have time to pay attention. In our sleep, however, the two-way-traffic trapdoor opens: we dream. And in our dreams, we make contact.
The way to tell whether the scouts are from a level besides the inorganic beings' world is: the greater their sizzling, the farther they come from. It sounds simplistic, but you have to let your energy body tell you what is what. I assure you, it'll make very fine distinctions and unerring judgments when faced with alien energy.
Unless you know exactly what you are doing and what you want out of alien energy, you have to be content with a brief glance. Anything beyond a glance is as dangerous and as stupid as petting a rattlesnake.
Scouts are always very aggressive and extremely daring. They have to be that way in order to prevail in their explorations. Sustaining our dreaming attention on them is tantamount to soliciting their awareness to focus on us. Once they focus their attention on us, we are compelled to go with them. And that, of course, is the danger. We may end up in worlds beyond our energetic possibilities.
There are many types of scouts, but at a beginning level of energy one can only focus on three. The first two types are the easiest to spot. Their disguises in our dreams are so outlandish, that they immediately attract our dreaming attention. The scouts of the third type are the most dangerous, in terms of aggressiveness and power, and because they hide behind subtle disguises.
One of the strangest things dreamers find, which you yourself will find, is this third type of scout. The most ferocious scout hides behind people in our dreams. It's annoying that they are always associated with the dream images of our parents or close friends. Perhaps that's why we often feel ill at ease when we dream of them. A rule of thumb for dreamers is to assume that the third type of scout is present whenever they feel perturbed by their parents or friends in a dream. Sound advice is to avoid those dream images. They are sheer poison.
Blue energy doesn't sizzle. It is like ours; it wavers, but it is blue instead of white. Blue energy doesn't exist in a natural state in our world.
The deadly scouts of the third type are bright orange.
* * *
The inorganic beings only show themselves at the beginning. After their scouts take us to their world, there is no necessity for the inorganic beings' projections. If we want to see the inorganic beings, a scout takes us there. For no one, and I mean no one, can journey by himself to their realm.
Their world is sealed. No one can enter or leave without the consent of the inorganic beings. The only thing you can do by yourself once you are inside is, of course, voice your intent to stay. To say it out loud means to set in motion currents of energy that are irreversible. In olden times, words were incredibly powerful. Now they are not. In the inorganic beings' realm, they haven't lost their power.
There is one last issue related to that world that we haven't discussed. In the final analysis my aversion to the old sorcerers' activities is very personal. As a nagual, I detest what they did. They cowardly sought refuge in the inorganic beings' world. They argued that in a predatorial universe, poised to rip us apart, the only possible haven for us is in that realm.
They believed that because it's true. Since the inorganic beings can't lie, the sales pitch of the dreaming emissary is all true. That world can give us shelter and prolong our awareness for nearly an eternity.
When the emissary's sales pitch, even if it's the truth, has no appeal to you, and you are ready to chance a road that might rip you apart, you will be ready for this one final statement about that world. The most dreadful statement I can make.
The energy necessary to move the assemblage points of sorcerers comes from the realm of inorganic beings.
This is the truth and the legacy of the old sorcerers to us. The inorganic beings have us pinned down to this day. This is the reason I don't like them. I resent having to dip into one source alone. Personally, I refuse to do it. And I am trying to steer you away from it.
We can't have dealings with them. And yet we can't stay away from them. My solution has been to take their energy but not give into their influence. This is known as the ultimate stalking . It is done by sustaining the unbending intent of freedom, even though no sorcerer knows what freedom really is.
The reason sorcerers have to take energy from the realm of inorganic beings is because there is no other viable energy for sorcerers. In order to maneuver the assemblage point in the manner they do, sorcerers need an inordinate amount of energy. As I've said, a redeployment of energy is necessary in order to do dreaming . To start dreaming sorcerers need to redefine their premises and save their energy, but that redefining is valid only to have the necessary energy to set up dreaming . To fly into other realms, to see energy, to forge the energy body, et cetera, et cetera, is another matter. For those maneuvers, sorcerers need loads of dark, alien energy.
They take it from the inorganic beings' world by the mere act of going to that world. All the sorcerers of our line have to do this.

Awareness is an endless area of exploration for sorcerers and man in general. In order to enhance awareness, there is no risk we should not run, no means we should refuse. Bear in mind, however, that only in soundness of mind can awareness be enhanced.
I'm going to propose a line of action for you. It's the last task of the third gate of dreaming , and it consists of stalking the stalkers , a most mysterious maneuver. To stalk the stalkers means to deliberately draw energy from the inorganic beings' realm in order to perform a sorcery feat. A journey--a journey that uses awareness as an element of the environment.
In the world of daily life, water is an element of the environment that we use for traveling. Imagine awareness being a similar element that can be used for traveling. Through the medium of awareness, scouts from all over the universe come to us, and vice versa; via awareness, sorcerers go to the ends of the universe.
Awareness is an energetic element. You have to make that distinction. For sorcerers who see , awareness is a glow. They can hitch their energy body to that glow and go with it.
The difference between a physical and an energetic element is that physical elements are part of our interpretation system, and energetic elements are not. Energetic elements, like awareness, exist in our universe. But we, as average people, perceive only the physical elements because we were taught to do so. Sorcerers perceive the energetic elements for the same reason: they were taught to do so.
The use of awareness as an energetic element of our environment is the essence of sorcery. In terms of practicalities, the trajectory of sorcery is, first, to free the existing energy in us by impeccably following the sorcerers' path; second, to use that energy to develop the energy body by means of dreaming ; and, third, to use awareness as an element of the environment in order to enter with the energy body and all our physicality into other worlds.
There are two kinds of energy journeys into other worlds. One is when awareness picks up the sorcerer's energy body and takes it wherever it may, and the other is when the sorcerer decides, in full consciousness, to use the avenue of awareness to make a journey. It takes an enormous discipline to do the second.
In the life of sorcerers there are issues that require masterful handling, and dealing with awareness, as an energetic element open to the energy body, is the most important, vital, and dangerous of those issues.
With enough energy you can perform the last task of the third gate of dreaming : to break the boundaries of the normal world and, using awareness as an energetic element, enter into another. This breaking and entering amounts to stalking the stalkers . Using awareness as an element of the environment bypasses the influence of the inorganic beings, but it still uses their energy.
* * *
In a pinch, your energy body is perfectly capable of taking care of itself.
* * *
After getting into a state of total inner silence, slip gently into dreaming , voicing your intent to go to the realm of the inorganic beings. Once you are in the world of the inorganic beings, you have to voice your intent to transfer your normal awareness to your energy body. What is important is that you intend the transfer of the total awareness of your daily world to your energy body.
Transferring awareness is purely a matter of voicing your intent and having the necessary amount of energy to tip the scales. That means to be able to add one's total physical mass to the energy body. Using awareness as a medium to make the journey into another world is not the result of applying any techniques but is the corollary of intending and having enough energy to be energetically capable of pulling our physicality and placing it on the energy body in order to make that journey.
In order to enter into that other world your total physical mass has to be added to your energy body. The great difficulty of this maneuver is to discipline the energy body. Lack of discipline is the only reason you may fail in performing this feat of ultimate stalking . Sometimes, as a fluke, an average person ends up performing it and entering into another world. But this is immediately explained away as insanity or hallucination.
* * *
Forget the self and you will fear nothing.
* * *
During an experience of stalking the stalkers one realizes that perceiving is an all-inclusive act when the assemblage point has been immobilized on one position. I have told you that the power our daily world has over us is a result of the fact that our assemblage point is immobile on its habitual position. This immobility is what makes our perception of the world so inclusive and overpowering that we cannot escape from it. If you want to break this totally inclusive force, all you have to do is dispel the fog, that is to say, displace the assemblage point by intending its displacement.
You yourself will understand what I mean the moment you have to bring your assemblage point to another position in order to dispel that world's fog which will begin to swallow you during a maneuver of stalking the stalkers . The reentry into our world is automatic if we don't let the fog set in.
Ordinarily dreamers experience the whole maneuver as a series of slow transitions, and they have to voice their intent to use awareness as an element. Ordinarily, dreamers are merely voyeurs.
The old sorcerers' damnation was that the inorganic beings took them to worlds from which they could not return.
Since they entered into that world with all their physicality, the fixation of their assemblage points on the position preselected by the inorganic beings was so overpowering that it created a sort of fog that obliterated any memory of the world they came from. The natural consequence of such an immobility, is that the dreamer 's assemblage point cannot return to its habitual position.
Think about this. Perhaps this is exactly what is happening to all of us in the world of daily life. We are here, and the fixation of our assemblage point is so overpowering that it has made us forget where we came from, and what our purpose was for coming here. The task is to sneak by the inorganic beings, not be run by them.
Perhaps you will stalk the stalkers when you have the strength. Or perhaps you'll never accomplish it. It doesn't really matter; if one thing doesn't work, another will. Sorcery is an endless challenge.
In order to use awareness as an element of the environment, dreamers first have to make a journey to the inorganic beings' realm. Then they have to use that journey as a springboard, and, while they are in possession of the necessary dark energy, they have to intend to be hurled through the medium of awareness into another world.
In your dreaming practices, see energy in energy-generating dreamlike states. When you are able to see everything that presents itself to you, you may become incapable of rendering intelligently what you see . It may be then, as though you have reached states of perception for which you have no lexicon.
Such incomprehensible and indescribable visions would be your energy body using awareness as an element not for journeying, because you wouldn't yet have enough energy, but for entering into the energy fields of inanimate matter or of living beings.

At the fourth gate of dreaming , the energy body travels to specific, concrete places. There are three ways of using the fourth gate: one, to travel to concrete places in this world; two, to travel to concrete places out of this world; and, three, to travel to places that exist only in the intent of others. Whether or not you can cross the fourth gate by yourself is up to the spirit.
Modern-day sorcerers have realized that only if they remain totally detached can they have the energy to be free. Theirs is a peculiar type of detachment, which is born not out of fear or indolence but out of conviction.
* * *
Stretch your arms in front of you, to the sides, and then behind you. It relaxes the body.
* * *
For modern-day sorcerers to perceive energy directly is a matter of personal attainment. We maneuver the assemblage point through self-discipline.
Your energy body has endless resources. Modern-day sorcerers do not know the details of the thousands of possible positions of the assemblage point. By details I mean particular ways of treating the energy body in order to maintain the assemblage point fixed on specific positions.
Most of the shifts modern-day sorcerers experience are mild shifts within a thin bundle of energetic luminous filaments inside the luminous egg, a bundle called the band of man, or the purely human aspect of the universe's energy. Beyond that band, but still within the luminous egg, lies the realm of the grand shifts. When the assemblage point shifts to any spot on that area, perception is still comprehensible to us, but extremely detailed procedures are required for perception to be total.
Every grand shift has different inner workings which modern sorcerers could learn if they knew how to fixate the assemblage point long enough at any grand shift.

By inducing a systematic displacement of the assemblage point, dreaming liberates perception, enlarging the scope of what can be perceived.
For the sorcerers of my party, dreaming has not only opened the doors of other perceivable worlds but prepared us for entering into those realms in full awareness.
The second attention has endless treasures to be discovered. The initial position in which the dreamer places his body is of key importance. The old sorcerers used to call this the twin positions. The initial position in which a dreamer holds his physical body to begin dreaming is mirrored by the position in which he holds his energy body, in dreams, to fixate his assemblage point on any spot of his choosing. The two positions make a unit.
The position in which one places the body is of utmost importance. Start your dreaming by lying on your right side, with your knees a bit bent. The discipline is to maintain that position and fall asleep in it. In dreaming , then, the exercise is to dream that you lie down in exactly the same position and fall asleep again.
It makes the assemblage point stay put, and I mean really stay put, in whatever position it is at the instant of that second falling asleep. The result of this exercise is total perception.
The four variations of the exercise are to fall asleep lying on the right side, the left, the back, and the stomach. Then in dreaming the exercise is to dream of falling asleep a second time in the same position as the dreaming had been started.
I came from a line of sorcerers who knew how to move about in the second attention by projecting their intent . They practiced the art of projecting their thoughts in dreaming in order to accomplish the truthful reproduction of any object or structure or landmark or scenery of their choice.
The sorcerers of my line used to start by gazing at a simple object and memorizing every detail of it. They would then close their eyes and visualize the object and correct their visualization against the true object until they could see it, in its completeness, with their eyes shut.
The next thing in their developing scheme was to dream with the object and create in the dream, from the point of view of their own perception, a total materialization of the object. This act is called the first step to total perception.
From a simple object, those sorcerers went on to take more and more complex items. Their final aim was for all of them together to visualize a total world, then dream that world and thus re-create a totally veritable realm where they could exist.
When any of the sorcerers of my line were able to do that they could easily pull anyone into their intent , into their dream.
Whole populations disappeared dreaming like that. It's possible because they visualized and then re-created in dreaming the same scenery.
To cross the fourth gate and travel to places that exist only in someone else's intent is perilous, since every item in such a dream has to be an ultimately personal item.
The essence of my explanation is that if you were, for instance, dreaming of your hometown and your dream had started when you lay down on your right side, you could very easily stay in the town of your dream if you would lie on your right side, in the dream, and dream that you had fallen asleep. The second dream not only would necessarily be a dream of your hometown, but would be the most concrete dream one can imagine.
The only way to have absolute control of dreams is to use the technique of the twin positions. And don't ask me why. It just happens. Like everything else.
* * *
The thought of evil cannot withstand examination. In the universe only energy exists; evil is merely a concatenation of the human mind, overwhelmed by the fixation of the assemblage point on its habitual position. Logically, there is really nothing to be afraid of.

There is no past or future in the universe. There is only the moment. Think for a moment, in the universe there is only energy, and energy has only a here and now, an endless and ever-present here and now.
* * *
The secret of the twin positions is that the second dream is intending in the second attention: the only way to cross the fourth gate of dreaming .
To make a dream an all-inclusive reality is the art of the old sorcerers. This is dreaming . You should know by now that its transactions are final.
* * *
* * *
You have been given an abstract gift: the possibility of flying on the wings of intent.

Appendix A to E

Appendix A to E

Appendix A

Alternate beginning to first four paragraphs beginning in the compilation from The Teachings of don Juan

You will have to make a very deep commitment because this training is long and arduous.
Power rests on the kind of knowledge one holds. What is the sense knowing things that are useless?
* * *
Nothing in this world is a gift, whatever there is to learn has to be learned the hard way.
One can feel with the eyes, when the eyes are not looking right into things.
You have to be inflexible with yourself if you want to learn.
You must have command over your resources.

There is nothing wrong with being afraid. When you fear, you see things in a different way.
I am going to teach you the secrets that make up the lot of a man of knowledge.
You will learn in spite of yourself; that's the rule.
You are a serious person, but your seriousness is attached to what you do, not to what goes on outside you. You dwell upon yourself too much. That's the trouble. And that produces a terrible fatigue. Seek and see the marvels all around you. You will get tired of looking at yourself alone, and that fatigue will make you deaf and blind to everything else.
* * *
A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war, wide awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake, and whoever makes it will live to regret his steps.
When a man has fulfilled those four requisites there are no mistakes for which he will have to account; under such conditions his acts lose the blundering quality of a fool's acts. If such a man fails, or suffers a defeat, he will have lost only a battle, and there will be no pitiful regrets over that.
I intend to teach you about an "ally" in the very same way my own benefactor taught me. An "ally" is a power a man can bring into his life to help him, advise him, and give him the strength necessary to perform acts, whether big or small, right or wrong. This ally is necessary to enhance a man's life, guide his acts, and further his knowledge. In fact, an ally is the indispensable aid to knowing.
An ally will make you see and understand things about which no human being could possible enlighten you. It is neither a guardian nor a spirit. It is an aid. An ally is tamed and used.
The acquiring of an ally requires the most precise teaching and the following of stages or steps without a single deviation. There are many such ally powers in the world. An ally is a power capable of carrying a man beyond the boundaries of himself. This is how an ally can reveal matters no human being could. An ally takes you out of yourself to give you power.
Learning through conversation is not only a waste, but stupidity, because learning is the most difficult task a man can undertake. Remember the time you tried to find your "spot," and how you wanted to find it without doing any work because you expected me to hand out all the information. If I had done so, You would never have learned. But now, knowing how difficult it was to find your spot, and above all knowing that it exists, gives you a unique sense of confidence. While you remain rooted to your "good spot" nothing can cause you bodily harm, because you have the assurance that at that particular spot you are at your very best. You have the power to shove off anything that might be harmful to you. If, however, I had told you where it was, you would never have had the confidence needed to claim it as true knowledge. Thus, knowledge is indeed power.
Every time a man sets himself to learn he has to labor as hard as you did to find that spot, and the limits of his learning are determined by his own nature. Thus I see no point in talking about knowledge. Certain kinds of knowledge are too powerful for the strength you have, and to talk about them would only bring harm to you.
Fears are natural; all of us experience them and there is nothing we can do about it. But on the other hand, no matter how frightening learning is, it is more terrible to think of a man without an ally, or without knowledge.

The calling of a name is a serious matter, especially if one is learning to tame an ally power. Names are reserved to be used only when one is calling for help, in moments of great stress and need. I assure you that such moments happen sooner or later in the life of whoever seeks knowledge.
* * *
Man lives only to learn. And if he learns it is because that is the nature of his lot, for good or bad.
* * *
A man of knowledge is one who has followed truthfully the hardships of learning, a man who has, without rushing or without faltering, gone as far as he can in unraveling the secrets of power and knowledge. To become a man of knowledge he must challenge and defeat his four natural enemies. A man can call himself a man of knowledge only if he is capable of defeating all four of them. Anybody who defeats them becomes a man of knowledge. Anyone can try to become a man of knowledge; very few men actually succeed, but that is only natural. The enemies a man encounters on the path of learning to become a man of knowledge are truly formidable; most men succumb to them.
To be a man of knowledge has no permanence. One is never a man of knowledge, not really. Rather, one becomes a man of knowledge for a very brief instant, after defeating the four natural enemies.

Appendix B

Alternate reading to follow the first two paragraphs from the begining of A Seperate Reality

In this system of knowledge there is a difference between seeing and looking . They are two distinct manners of perceiving. Looking refers to the ordinary way in which we are accustomed to perceiving the world, while seeing entails a process by virtue of which a man of knowledge perceives the essence of the things of the world.
Acquiring the necessary speed to catch a glimpse of that fleeting world of nonordinary reality is a goal of your training. You may call it a condition of inapplicability because what you will perceive when you acquire that necessary speed is incomprehensible and impossible to interpret by means of our everyday mode of understanding the world. In other words, the condition of inapplicability entails the cessation of the pertinence of our normal world view.
Obviously there has to be an endless number of possible sensible interpretations that are pertinent to sorcery that a sorcerer must learn to make. In our day-to-day life we are confronted with an endless number of sensible interpretations pertinent to it. A simple example could be the no longer deliberate interpretation, which we make scores of times every day, of the structure we call "room." It is obvious that we have learned to interpret the structure we call room in terms of room; thus room is a sensible interpretation because it requires that at the time we make it we are cognizant, in one way or another, of all the elements that enter into its composition. A system of sensible interpretation is, in other words, the process by virtue of which a person is cognizant of all the units of meaning necessary to make assumptions, deductions, predictions, etc., about all the situations pertinent to his activity.
I am attempting to make my system of sensible interpretation accessible to you. Such an accessibility, in this case, is equivalent to a process of resocialization in which new ways of interpreting perceptual data are learned.
You are the stranger, the one who lacks the capacity to make intelligent and congruous interpretations proper to sorcery. My task, as a teacher making my system accessible to you is to disarrange a particular certainty which you share with everyone else, the certainty that our "common-sense" views of the world are final.
You will see that our ordinary view of the world cannot be final because it is only an interpretation.

Appendix C

The Rule

Alternate reading instead of the six paragraphs from "Again, human beings ..." through "... ability to forget" (50 paragraphs from the begining) in The Eagle's Gift

I will clarify the previously unimagined world of hidden memories which you have been recollecting thru dreaming, memories that you have been incapable of retrieving with your everyday-life memory. As I've said, human beings are divided in two. The right side, which is called the tonal , encompasses everything the intellect can conceive of. The left side, called the nagual , is a realm of indescribable features: a realm impossible to contain in words. The left side is perhaps comprehended, if comprehension is what takes place, with the total body; thus its resistance to conceptualization. All the faculties, possibilities, and accomplishments of sorcery, from the simplest to the most astounding, are in the human body itself.

Taking as a base the concepts that we are divided in two and that everything is in the body itself, our time together has been divided between states of normal awareness; on the right side, the tonal , where the first attention prevails; and states of heightened awareness, on the left side, the nagual ; the site of the second attention.

I have lead you to the other self by means of the self-control of the second attention through dreaming . However, I have put you in direct touch with the second attention through bodily manipulation in the form of a sound blow on your back. The result of that blow is entrance into an extraordinary state of clarity. It seems that everything in that state goes faster, yet nothing in the world has been changed. That is to say, the world is the same but sharper. You stay clear until I give you another blow on the same spot to make you revert back to a normal state of awareness.

In those states of heightened awareness you've had an incomparable richness of personal interaction, a richness that your body has understood as a sensation of speeding. The richness of your perception on the left side has been, however, a post-facto realization. Your interaction appeared to be rich in the light of your capacity to remember it. You became cognizant then that in those states of heightened awareness you had perceived everything in one clump, one bulky mass of inextricable detail. You've called this ability to perceive everything at once--intensity . For years you have found it impossible to examine the separate constituent parts of those chunks of experience; you have been unable to synthesize those parts into a sequence that would make sense to the intellect. Since you were incapable of those syntheses, you could not remember. Your incapacity to remember was in reality an incapacity to put the memory of your perception on a linear basis. You could not lay your experiences flat, so to speak, and arrange them in a sequential order. The experiences were available to you, but at the same time they were impossible to retrieve, for they were blocked by a wall of intensity.

The task of remembering, then, is properly the task of joining our left and right sides, of reconciling those two distinct forms of perception into a unified whole. It is the task of consolidating the totality of oneself by rearranging intensity into a linear sequence.

The pragmatic step that I have taken to aid you in your task of remembering has been to make you interact with certain people while you were in a state of heightened awareness. I was very careful not to let you see those people when you were in a state of normal awareness. In this way I created the appropriate conditions for remembering.

Now that you have completed your remembering, you have detailed knowledge of social interactions which you have shared with my companions and me. These are not memories in the sense that you would remember an episode from your childhood; they are more than vivid moment-to-moment recollections of events. You have reconstructed conversations that seemed to be reverberating in your ears, as if you were listening to them. What you have remembered, from the point of view of your experiential self, was taking place now. Such has been the character of your remembering.

It is time now to tell you the "rule" as it pertains to the Nagual and his role, exactly as it was told to me. Being involved with the rule may be described as living a myth. In my case, a myth that caught me and made me the Nagual.

The power that governs the destiny of all living beings is called the Eagle, not because it is an eagle or has anything to do with an eagle, but because it appears to the seer as an immeasurable jet-black eagle, standing erect as an eagle stands, its height reaching to infinity.

As the seer gazes on the blackness that the Eagle is, four blazes of light reveal what the Eagle is like, The first blaze, which is like a bolt of lightning, helps the seer make out the contours of the Eagle's body. There are patches of whiteness that look like an eagle's feathers and talons. A second blaze of lightning reveals the flapping, wind-creating blackness that looks like an eagle's wings. With the third blaze of lightning the seer beholds a piercing, inhuman eye. And the fourth and last blaze discloses what the Eagle is doing.

The Eagle is devouring the awareness of all the creatures that, alive on earth a moment before and now dead, have floated to the Eagle's beak, like a ceaseless swarm of fireflies, to meet their owner, their reason for having had life. The Eagle disentangles these tiny flames, lays them flat, as a tanner stretches out a hide, and then consumes them; for awareness is the Eagle's food.

The Eagle, that power that governs the destinies of all living things, reflects equally and at once all those living things. There is no way, therefore, for man to pray to the Eagle, to ask favors, to hope for grace. The human part of the Eagle is too insignificant to move the whole.

It is only from the Eagle's actions that a seer can tell what it wants. The Eagle, although it is not moved by the circumstances of any living thing, has granted a gift to each of those beings. In its own way and right, any one of them, if it so desires, has the power to keep the flame of awareness, the power to disobey the summons to die and be consumed. Every living thing has been granted the power, if it so desires, to seek an opening to freedom and to go through it. It is evident to the seer who sees the opening, and to the creatures that go through it, that the Eagle has granted that gift in order to perpetuate awareness.

For the purpose of guiding living things to that opening, the Eagle created the Nagual. The Nagual is a double being to whom the rule has been revealed. Whether it be in the form of a human being, an animal, a plant, or anything else that lives, the Nagual by virtue of its doubleness is drawn to seek that hidden passageway.

The Nagual comes in pairs, male and female, A double man and a double woman become the Nagual only after the rule has been told to each of them, and each of them has understood it and accepted it in full.

To the eye of the seer, a Nagual man or Nagual woman appears as a luminous egg with four compartments. Unlike the average human being, who has two sides only, a left and a right, the Nagual has a left side divided into two long sections, and a right side equally divided in two.

The Eagle created the first Nagual man and Nagual woman as seers and immediately put them in the world to see. It provided them with four female warriors who were stalkers, three male warriors, and one male courier, whom they were to nourish, enhance, and lead to freedom.

The female warriors are called the four directions, the four corners of a square, the four moods, the four winds, the four different female personalities that exist in the human race.

The first is the east. She is called order. She is optimistic, lighthearted, smooth, persistent like a steady breeze.

The second is the north. She is called strength. She is resourceful, blunt, direct, tenacious like a hard wind.

The third is the west. She is called feeling. She is introspective, remorseful, cunning, sly, like a cold gust of wind.

The fourth is the south. She is called growth. She is nurturing, loud, shy, warm, like a hot wind.

The three male warriors and the courier are representative of the four types of male activity and temperament.

The first type is the knowledgeable man, the scholar; a noble, dependable, serene man, fully dedicated to accomplishing his task, whatever it may be.
The second type is the man of action, highly volatile, a great humorous fickle companion.

The third type is the organizer behind the scenes, the mysterious, unknowable man. Nothing can be said about him because he allows nothing about himself to slip out.

The courier is the fourth type. He is the assistant, a taciturn, somber man who does very well if properly directed but who cannot stand on his own.
In order to make things easier, the Eagle showed the Nagual man and Nagual woman that each of these types among men and woman of the earth has specific features in its luminous body.

The scholar has a sort of shallow dent, a bright depression at his solar plexus. In some men it appears as a pool of intense luminosity, sometimes smooth and shiny like a mirror without a reflection.

The man of action has some fibers emanating from the area of the will. The number of fibers varies from one to five, their size ranging from a mere string to a thick, whiplike tentacle up to eight feet long. Some have as many as three of these fibers developed into tentacles.

The man behind the scenes is recognized not by a feature but by his ability to create, quite involuntarily, a burst of power that effectively blocks the attention of seers. When in the presence of this type of man, seers find themselves immersed in extraneous detail rather than seeing.
The assistant has no obvious configuration. To seers he appears as a clear glow in a flawless shell of luminosity.

In the female realm, the east is recognized by the almost imperceptible blotches in her luminosity, something like small areas of discoloration.
The north has an overall radiation; she exudes a reddish glow, almost like heat.

The west has a tenuous film enveloping her, a film which makes her appear darker than the others.

The south has an intermittent glow; she shines for a moment and then gets dull, only to shine again.

The Nagual man and the Nagual woman have two different movements in their luminous bodies. Their right sides wave, while their left sides whirl.
In terms of personality, the Nagual man is supportive, steady, unchangeable. The Nagual woman is a being at war and yet relaxed, ever aware but without strain. Both of them reflect the four types of their sex, as four ways of behaving.

The first command that the Eagle gave the Nagual man and Nagual woman was to find, on their own, another set of four female warriors, four directions, who were the exact replicas of the stalkers but who were dreamers.

Dreamers appear to a seer as having an apron of hairlike fibers at their midsections. Stalkers have a similar apronlike feature, but instead of fibers the apron consists of countless small, round protuberances.
The eight female warriors are divided into two bands, which are called the right and left planets. The right planet is made up of four stalkers, the left of four dreamers. The warriors of each planet were taught by the Eagle the rule of their specific task: stalkers were taught stalking; dreamers were taught dreaming.

The two female warriors of each direction live together. They are so alike that they mirror each other, and only through impeccability can they find solace and challenge in each other's reflection.
The only time when the four dreamers or four stalkers get together is when they have to accomplish a strenuous task; but only under special circumstances should the four of them join hands, for their touch fuses them into one being and should be used only in cases of dire need, or at the moment of leaving this world.

The two female warriors of each direction are attached to one of the males, in any combination that is necessary. Thus they make a set of four households, which are capable of incorporating as many warriors as needed.
The male warriors and the courier can also form an independent unit of four men, or each can function as a solitary being, as dictated by necessity.
Next the Nagual and his party were commanded to find three more couriers. These could be all males or all females or a mixed set, but the male couriers had to be of the fourth type of man, the assistant, and the females had to be from the south.

In order to make sure that the first Nagual man would lead his party to freedom and not deviate from that path or become corrupted, the Eagle took the Nagual woman to the other world to serve as a beacon, guiding the party to the opening.

The Nagual and his warriors were then commanded to forget. They were plunged into darkness and were given new tasks: the task of remembering themselves, and the task of remembering the Eagle.
The command to forget was so great that everyone was separated. They did not remember who they were. The Eagle intended that if they were capable of remembering themselves again, they would find the totality of themselves. Only then would they have the strength and forbearance necessary to seek and face their definitive journey.

Their last task, after they had regained the totality of themselves, was to get a new pair of double beings and transform them into a new Nagual man and a new Nagual woman by virtue of revealing the rule to them. And just as the first Nagual man and Nagual woman had been provided with a minimal party, they had to supply the new pair of Naguals with four female warriors who were stalkers, three male warriors, and one male courier.
When the first Nagual and his party were ready to go through the passageway, the first Nagual woman was waiting to guide them. They were ordered then to take the new Nagual woman with them to the other world to serve as a beacon for her people, leaving the new Nagual man in the world to repeat the cycle.

While in the world, the minimal number under a Nagual's leadership is sixteen: eight female warriors, four male warriors, counting the Nagual, and four couriers. At the moment of leaving the world, when the new Nagual woman is with them, the Nagual's number is seventeen. If his personal power permits him to have more warriors, then more must be added in multiples of four.

The rule is endless and covers every facet of a warrior's behavior. The interpretation and the accumulation of the rule is the work of seers whose only task throughout the ages has been to see the Indescribable Force called the Eagle, to observe its ceaseless flux. From their observations, the seers have concluded that, providing the luminous shell that comprises one's humanness has been broken, it is possible to find in the Indescribable Force the faint reflection of man. The Indescribable Force 's irrevocable dictums can then be apprehended by seers, properly interpreted by them, and accumulated in the form of a governing body.

The rule is not a tale. To cross over to freedom does not mean eternal life as eternity is commonly understood--that is, as living forever. What the rule states is that one can keep the awareness which is ordinarily relinquished at the moment of dying. I cannot explain what it means to keep that awareness. My benefactor told me that at the moment of crossing, one enters into the third attention, and the body in its entirety is kindled with knowledge. Every cell at once becomes aware of itself, and also aware of the totality of the body.

This kind of awareness is meaningless to our compartmentalized minds. Therefore the crux of the warrior's struggle is not so much to realize that the crossing over stated in the rule means crossing to the third attention, but rather to conceive that there exists such an awareness at all.
There is a common error, that of overestimating the left-side awareness, of becoming dazzled by its clarity and power. To be in the left-side awareness does not mean that one is immediately liberated from one's folly--it only means an extended capacity for perceiving, and above all, a greater ability to forget.

Appendix D

Alternate reading to the paragraph from The Fire From Within "Any warrior can be successful with people provided that he moves his assemblage point to a position where it is immaterial whether people like him, dislike him, or ignore him."

The purpose of stalking is twofold: first, to move the assemblage point as steadily and safely as possible, and nothing can do the job as well as stalking ; second, to imprint its principles at such a deep level that the human inventory is bypassed; for example the human inventory's natural reaction of refusing and judging something that may be offensive to reason.
The new seers saw that there are two main groups of human beings: those who care about others and those who do not. In between these two extremes they saw an endless mixture of the two. The nagual Julian belonged to the category of men who do not care; I belong to the opposite category. The nagual Julian was generous, he would give you the shirt off his back. Not only was he generous; he was also utterly charming, winning. He was always deeply and sincerely interested in everybody around him. He was kind and open and gave away everything he had to anyone who needed it, or to anyone he happened to like. He was in turn loved by everyone, because being a master stalker, he conveyed to them his true feelings: he didn't give a plugged nickel for any of them.

That's stalking . The nagual Julian didn't care about anyone. That's why he could help people. And he did; he gave them the shirt off his back, because he didn't give a fig about them.

The only ones who help their fellow men are those who don't give a damn about them. That's what stalkers say. The nagual Julian, for instance, was a fabulous curer. He helped thousands and thousands of people, but he never took credit for it. He let people believe that a woman seer of his party was the curer. Now, if he had been a man who cared for his fellow men, he would've demanded acknowledgment. Those who care for others care for themselves and demand recognition where recognition is due. Since I belong to the category of those who care for their fellow men, I have never helped anyone: I feel awkward with generosity; I can't even conceive being loved as the nagual Julian was, and I would certainly feel stupid giving anyone the shirt off my back. I care so much for my fellow man that I don't do anything for him. I wouldn't know what to do. And I would always have the nagging sense that I was imposing my will on him with my gifts. Naturally, I have overcome all these feelings with the warriors' way. Any warrior can be successful with people, as the nagual Julian was, provided that he moves his assemblage point to a position where it is immaterial whether people like him, dislike him, or ignore him. But that's not the same.

Appendix E

Structural Analysis

Compiled from Carlos Castaneda's first book, The Teachings Of Don Juan:
A Yaque Way Of Knowledge

MAN OF KNOWLEDGE
The goal of my teachings is to show how to become a man of knowledge. The following seven concepts are its proper components: (1) to become a man of knowledge is a matter of learning; (2) a man of knowledge has unbending intent ; (3) a man of knowledge has clarity of mind; (4) to become a man of knowledge is a matter of strenuous labor; (5) a man of knowledge is a warrior; (6) to become a man of knowledge is an unceasing process; and (7) a man of knowledge has an ally.

These seven concepts are themes. They run through the teachings, determining the character of my entire knowledge. Inasmuch as the operational goal of my teachings is to produce a man of knowledge, everything I teach is imbued with the specific characteristics of each of the seven themes. Together they construe the concept "man of knowledge" as a way of conducting oneself, a way of behaving that is the end result of a long and hazardous training. "Man of knowledge," however, is not a guide to behavior, but a set of principles encompassing all the unordinary circumstances pertinent to the knowledge being taught.
Each one of the seven themes is composed, in turn, of various other concepts, which cover their different facets.

To Become a Man of Knowledge Is a Matter of Learning

Learning is the only possible way of becoming a man of knowledge, and that in turn implies the act of making a resolute effort to achieve an end. To become a man of knowledge is the end result of a process, as opposed to an immediate acquisition through an act of grace or through bestowal by supernatural powers. The plausibility of learning how to become a man of knowledge warrants the existence of a system for teaching one how to accomplish it.

A Man of Knowledge Has Unbending Intent.

The idea that a man of knowledge needs unbending intent refers to the exercise of volition. Having unbending intent means having the will to execute a necessary procedure by maintaining oneself at all times rigidly within the boundaries of the knowledge being taught. A man of knowledge needs a rigid will in order to endure the obligatory quality that every act possesses when it is performed in the context of my knowledge.
The obligatory quality of all the acts performed in such a context, and their being inflexible and predetermined, are no doubt unpleasant to any man, for which reason a modicum of unbending intent is sought as the only covert requirement needed by a prospective apprentice.
Unbending intent is composed of (1) frugality, (2) soundness of judgment, and (3) lack of freedom to innovate.

A man of knowledge needs frugality because the majority of the obligatory acts deal with instances or with elements that are either outside the boundaries of ordinary everyday life, or are not customary in ordinary activity, and the man who has to act in accordance with them needs an extraordinary effort every time he takes action. It is implicit that one be capable of such an extraordinary effort by being frugal with any other activity that does not deal directly with such predetermined actions.
Since all acts are predetermined and obligatory, a man of knowledge needs soundness of judgment. This concept does not imply common sense, but does imply the capacity to assess the circumstances surrounding any need to act. A guide for such an assessment is provided by bringing together, as rationales, all the parts of the teachings which are at one's command at the given moment in which any action has to be carried out. Thus, the guide is always changing as more parts are learned; yet it always implies the conviction that any obligatory act one may have to perform is, in fact, the most appropriate under the circumstances.
Because all acts are preestablished and compulsory, having to carry them out means lack of freedom to innovate. My system of imparting knowledge is so well established that there is no possibility of altering it in any way.

A Man of Knowledge Has Clarity of Mind

Clarity of mind is the theme that provides a sense of direction. The fact that all acts are predetermined means that one's orientation within the knowledge being taught is equally predetermined; as a consequence, clarity of mind supplies only a sense of direction. It reaffirms continuously the validity of the course being taken through the component ideas of (1) freedom to seek a path, (2) knowledge of the specific purpose, and (3) being fluid.

It is believed that one has the freedom to seek a path. Having the freedom to choose is not incongruous with the lack of freedom to innovate; these two ideas are not in opposition nor do they interfere with each other. Freedom to seek a path refers to the liberty to choose among different possibilities of action which are equally effective and usable. The criterion for choosing is the advantage of one possibility over others, based on one's preference. As a matter of fact, the freedom to choose a path imparts a sense of direction through the expression of personal inclinations.
Another way to create a sense of direction is through the idea that there is a specific purpose for every action performed in the context of the knowledge being taught. Therefore, a man of knowledge needs clarity of mind in order to match his own specific reasons for acting with the specific purpose of every action. The knowledge of the specific purpose of every action is the guide he uses to judge the circumstances surrounding any need to act.
Another facet of clarity of mind is the idea that a man of knowledge, in order to reinforce the performance of his obligatory actions, needs to assemble all the resources that the teachings have placed at his command. This is the idea of being fluid. It creates a sense of direction by giving one the feeling of being malleable and resourceful. The compulsory quality of all acts would imbue one with a sense of stiffness or sterility were it not for the idea that a man of knowledge needs to be fluid.

To Become A Man of Knowledge is a Matter of Strenuous Labor

A man of knowledge has to possess or has to develop in the course of his training an all-round capacity for exertion. To become a man of knowledge is a matter of strenuous labor. Strenuous labor denotes a capacity (1) to put forth dramatic exertion; (2) to achieve efficacy; and (3) to meet challenge.
In the path of a man of knowledge drama is undoubtedly the outstanding single issue, and a special type of exertion is needed for responding to circumstances that require dramatic exploitation; that is to say, a man of knowledge needs dramatic exertion. Taking my behavior as an example, at first glance it may seem that my dramatic exertion is only my own idiosyncratic preference for histrionics. Yet my dramatic exertion is always much more than acting; it is rather a profound state of belief. I impart through dramatic exertion the peculiar quality of finality to all the acts I perform. As a consequence, then, my acts are set on a stage in which death is one of the main protagonists. It is implicit that death is a real possibility in the course of learning because of the inherently dangerous nature of the items with which a man of knowledge deals; then, it is logical that the dramatic exertion created by the conviction that death is an ubiquitous player is more than histrionics.

Exertion entails not only drama, but also the need of efficacy. Exertion has to be effective; it has to possess the quality of being properly channeled, of being suitable. The idea of impending death creates not only the drama needed for overall emphasis, but also the conviction that every action involves a struggle for survival, the conviction that annihilation will result if one's exertion does not meet the requirement of being efficacious.
Exertion also entails the idea of challenge, that is, the act of testing whether, and proving that, one is capable of performing a proper act within the rigorous boundaries of the knowledge being taught.

A Man of Knowledge Is a Warrior

The existence of a man of knowledge is an unceasing struggle, and the idea that he is a warrior, leading a warrior's life, provides one with the means for achieving emotional stability. The idea of a man at war encompasses four concepts: (1) a man of knowledge has to have respect; (2) he has to have fear; (3) he has to be wide-awake; (4) he has to be self-confident. Hence, to be a warrior is a form of self-discipline which emphasizes individual accomplishment; yet it is a stand in which personal interests are reduced to a minimum, as in most instances personal interest is incompatible with the rigor needed to perform any predetermined, obligatory act.
A man of knowledge in his role of warrior is obligated to have an attitude of deferential regard for the items with which he deals; he has to imbue everything related to his knowledge with profound respect in order to place everything in a meaningful perspective. Having respect is equivalent to having assessed one's insignificant resources when facing the Unknown.
If one remains in that frame of thought, the idea of respect is logically extended to include oneself, for one is as unknown as the Unknown itself. The exercise of so sobering a feeling of respect transforms the apprenticeship of this specific knowledge, which may otherwise appear to be absurd, into a very rational alternative.
Another necessity of a warrior's life is the need to experience and carefully to evaluate the sensation of fear. The ideal is that, in spite of fear, one has to proceed with the course of one's acts. Fear must be conquered and there is a time in the life of a man of knowledge when it is vanquished, but first one has to be conscious of being afraid and duly to evaluate that sensation. One is capable of conquering fear only by facing it.
As a warrior, a man of knowledge also needs to be wide-awake. A man at war has to be on the alert in order to be cognizant of most of the factors pertinent to the two mandatory aspects of awareness: (1) awareness of intent (2) awareness of the expected flux.
Awareness of intent is the act of being cognizant of the factors involved in the relationship between the specific purpose of any obligatory act and one's own specific purpose for acting. Since all the obligatory acts have a definite purpose, a man of knowledge has to be wide-awake; that is, he needs to be capable at all times of matching the definite purpose of every obligatory act with the definite reason that he has in mind for desiring to act.
A man of knowledge, by being aware of that relationship, is also capable of being cognizant of what is believed to be the expected flux. What I call the awareness of the expected flux refers to the certainty that one is capable of detecting at all times the important variables involved in the relationship between the specific purpose of every act and one's specific reason for acting. By being aware of the expected flux one is able to detect the most subtle changes. That deliberate awareness of changes accounts for the recognition and interpretation of omens and of other unordinary events.
The last aspect of the idea of a warrior's behavior is the need for self-confidence, that is, the assurance that the specific purpose of an act one may have chosen to perform is the only plausible alternative for one's own specific reasons for acting. Without self-confidence, one would be incapable of fulfilling one of the most important aspects of the teachings: the capacity to claim knowledge as power.

To Become a Man of Knowledge Is an Unceasing Process

Being a man of knowledge is not a condition entailing permanency. There is never the certainty that, by carrying out the predetermined steps of the knowledge being taught, that you will become a man of knowledge. It is implicit that the function of the steps is only to show how to become a man of knowledge. Thus, becoming a man of knowledge is a task that cannot be fully achieved; rather, it is an unceasing process comprising (1) the idea that one has to renew the quest of becoming a man of knowledge; (2) the idea of one's impermanency; and (3) the idea that one has to follow a path with heart.

The constant renewal of the quest of becoming a man of knowledge is expressed in the theme of the four symbolic enemies encountered on the path of learning: fear, clarity, power, and old age. Renewing the quest implies the gaining and the maintenance of control over oneself. A true man of knowledge is expected to battle each of the four enemies, in succession, until the last moment of his life, in order to keep himself actively engaged in becoming a man of knowledge. Yet, despite the truthful renewal of the quest, the odds are inevitably against man; he would succumb to his last symbolic enemy. This is the idea of impermanency.
Offsetting the negative value of one's impermanency is the notion that one has to follow the path with heart. The path with heart is a metaphorical way of asserting that in spite of being impermanent one still has to proceed and has to be capable of finding satisfaction and personal fulfillment in the act of choosing the most amenable alternative and identifying oneself completely with it.
The rationale of my whole knowledge is synthesized in the metaphor that the important thing for me is to find a path with heart and then travel its length, meaning that the identification with the amenable alternative is enough for me. The journey by itself is sufficient; any hope of arriving at a permanent position is outside the boundaries of my knowledge.

A Man of Knowledge has an Ally .

The idea that a man of knowledge has an ally is the most important of the seven component themes, for it is the only one that is indispensable to explaining what a man of knowledge is. In my classificatory scheme a man of knowledge has an ally, whereas the average man does not, and having an ally is what makes him different from ordinary men.
An ally is a power capable of transporting a man beyond the boundaries of himself; that is to say, an ally is a power which allows one to transcend the realm of ordinary reality. Consequently, to have an ally implies having power; and the fact that a man of knowledge has an ally is by itself proof that the operational goal of the teaching is being fulfilled. Since that goal is to show how to become a man of knowledge, and since a man of knowledge is one who has an ally, another way of describing the operational goal of my teachings is to say that it also shows how to obtain an ally. The concept "man of knowledge," as a sorcerer's philosophical frame, has meaning for anyone who wants to live within that frame only insofar as he has an ally.