Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan’s Teachings

One changes the facade by altering the use of the elements of the island. Take self-pity again. It is useful to you because you either feel important and deserving of better conditions, better treatment, or because you are unwilling to assume responsibility for the acts that brought you to the state that elicited self-pity, or because you are incapable of bringing the idea of your impending death to witness your acts and advise you.

Erasing personal history and its three companion techniques are the sorcerers’ means for changing the facade of the elements of the island. For instance, by erasing your personal history, you deny use to self-pity; in order for self-pity to work you have to feel important, irresponsible, and immortal. When those feelings are altered in some way, it is no longer possible for you to feel sorry for yourself.

Your self-pity will still be a feature of your island; it will be there in the back in the same way that the idea of your impending death, or your humbleness, or your responsibility for your acts has been there, without ever being used.

Once all those techniques have been presented, the apprentice arrives at a crossroad. Depending on his sensibility, the apprentice does one of two things. He either takes the recommendations and suggestions made by his teacher at their face value, acting without expecting rewards; or he takes everything as a joke or an aberration.

If you use those four techniques to clear and reorder your island of the tonal they lead you to the nagual . Power provides according to your impeccability. If you seriously use those four techniques, you will store enough personal power, you will be impeccable, and power will open all the necessary avenues. That is the rule.

* * *

We function at the center of reason exclusively, regardless of who we are or where we come from. Reason can naturally account in one way or another for everything that happens within its view of the world. Sorcerers have learned after generations to account in their views for everything that is accountable about them. I would say that sorcerers, by using their will , have succeeded in enlarging their views of the world. Some though are not man of knowledge. They never brake the bounds of their enormous views and thus never arrive at the totality of themselves.

Only if one pits two views against each other can one weasel between them to arrive at the real world. That is, one can arrive at the totality of oneself only when one fully understands that the world is merely a view, regardless of whether that view belongs to an ordinary man or to a sorcerer.

What matters is not to learn a new description but to arrive at the totality of oneself. One should get to the nagual without maligning the tonal , and above all, without injuring one’s body.

* * *

The tonal doesn’t know that decisions are in the realm of the nagual . When we think we decide, all we’re doing is acknowledging that something beyond our understanding has set up the frame of our so-called decision, and all we do is to acquiesce.

* * *

In the life of a warrior there is only one thing, one issue alone which is really undecided: how far one can go on the path of knowledge and power. That is an issue which is open and no one can predict its outcome. I once told you that the freedom a warrior has is either to act impeccably or to act like a nincompoop. Impeccability is indeed the only act which is free and thus the true measure of a warrior’s spirit.

I’ve taught you the three techniques that help dreaming : disrupting the routines of life, the gait of power, and not-doing . Disrupting routines, the gait of power, and not-doing are avenues for learning new ways of perceiving the world, and they give a warrior an inkling of incredible possibilities of action. The knowledge of a separate and pragmatic world of dreaming is made possible through the use of those three techniques.

Dreaming is a practical aid devised by sorcerers. They were not fools; they knew what they were doing and sought the usefulness of the nagual by training their tonal to let go for a moment, so to speak, and then grab again. This statement may not make sense to you. But that’s what you’re doing: training yourself to let go without losing your marbles. Dreaming , of course, is the crown of the sorcerers’ efforts, the ultimate use of the nagual .

We’re at the end of our review. All in all, then, you have been being led into the nagual . But here we have a strange question. What is being led into the nagual ? Not reason . Reason is meaningless there. Reason craps out in an instant when it is out of its safe narrow bounds. Your tonal ? No, the tonal and the nagual are the two inherent parts of ourselves. They cannot be led into each other. Your perception!

We’re coming now to the sorcerers’ explanation. It won’t explain anything and yet…

Sorcerers say that we are inside a bubble. It is a bubble into which we are placed at the moment of our birth. At first the bubble is open, but then it begins to close until it has sealed us in. That bubble is our perception. We live inside that bubble all of our lives. And what we witness on its round walls is our own reflection.

If what we witness on the walls is our own reflection, then the thing that’s being reflected must be the real thing. The thing reflected is our view of the world. That view is first a description, which is given to us from the moment of our birth until all our attention is caught by it and the description becomes a view. The teacher’s task is to rearrange the view, to prepare the luminous being for the time when the spirit opens the bubble.

The bubble is opened in order to allow the luminous being a view of his totality. Naturally this business of calling it a bubble is only a way of talking, but in this case it is an accurate way.

The delicate maneuver of leading a luminous being into the totality of himself requires that the teacher reorder the view of the world. I have called that view the island of the tonal . I’ve said that everything that we are is on that island. The sorcerers’ explanation says that the island of the tonal is made by our perception, which has been trained to focus on certain elements; each of those elements and all of them together form our view of the world. The job of a teacher, insofar as the apprentice’s perception is concerned, consists of reordering all the elements of the island on one half of the bubble. By now you must have realized that cleaning and reordering the island of the tonal means regrouping all its elements on the side of reason . My task has been to disarrange your ordinary view, not to destroy it but to force it to rally on the side of reason .

The art of a teacher is to force his disciple to group his view of the world on the right half of the bubble. That’s the side of the tonal . The teacher always addresses himself to that side. By presenting his apprentice with the warrior’s way he forces him into reasonableness, and sobriety, and strength of character and body. The other half of the bubble, the one that has been cleared, can then be claimed by something sorcerers call will .

We can better explain this by saying that the task of the teacher is to wipe clean one half of the bubble and to reorder everything on the other half. The spirit then opens the bubble on the side that has been cleaned. Once the seal is broken, the warrior is never the same. He has then the command of his totality. Half of the bubble is the ultimate center of reason , the tonal . The other half is the ultimate center of will , the nagual . That is the order that should prevail; any other arrangement is nonsensical and petty, because it goes against our nature; it robs us of our magical heritage and reduces us to nothing.

We have one single issue left. Sorcerers call it the secret of the luminous beings, and that is the fact that we are perceivers. We men and all the other luminous beings on earth are perceivers. That is our bubble, the bubble of perception. Our mistake is to believe that the only perception worthy of acknowledgment is what goes through our reason .

* * *

To be ready for the sorcerers’ explanation is a very difficult accomplishment. It shouldn’t be, but we insist on indulging in our lifelong view of the world.