Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan’s Teachings

I have given you a detailed account of the two forces that aid our assemblage points to move: the earth’s boost and the rolling force; plus the three techniques worked out by the new seers–stalking , intent , and dreaming –and their effects on the movement of the assemblage point.

Now, the only thing left for you to do before the explanation of the mastery of awareness is complete is to break the barrier of perception by yourself. You must move your assemblage point, unaided by anyone, and align another great band of emanations. Not to do this will turn everything you’ve learned and done with me into merely talk, just words. And words are fairly cheap.

When the assemblage point is moving away from its customary position and reaches a certain depth, it breaks a barrier that momentarily disrupts its capacity to align emanations. We experience it as a moment of perceptual blankness. The old seers called that moment the wall of fog, because a bank of fog appears whenever the alignment of emanations falters.

There are three ways of dealing with it. It can be taken abstractly as a barrier of perception; it can be felt as the act of piercing a tight paper screen with the entire body; or it can be seen as a wall of fog.

There is great comfort and ease in seeing it as a wall of fog, but there is also the grave danger of turning something incomprehensible into something somber and foreboding; hence, my recommendation is to keep incomprehensible things incomprehensible rather than making them part of the inventory of the first attention.

Exercises of assembling other worlds allow the assemblage point to gain experience in shifting. The initial boost to dislodge your assemblage point from its usual position comes from intent . Since alignment is the force that is involved in everything, intent is what makes the assemblage point move.

The mastery of awareness is what gives the assemblage point its boost. After all, there is really very little to us human beings; we are, in essence, an assemblage point fixed at a certain position. Our enemy and at the same time our friend is our internal dialogue, our inventory. Be a warrior; shut off your internal dialogue; make your inventory and then throw it away. The new seers make accurate inventories and then laugh at them. Without the inventory the assemblage point becomes free.

* * *

The mold of man is a huge cluster of emanations in the great band of organic life. It is called the mold of man because the cluster appears only inside the cocoon of man.

The mold of man is the portion of the Indescribable Force ‘s emanations that seers can see directly without any danger to themselves.

To break the barrier of perception is the last task of the mastery of awareness. In order to move your assemblage point to that position you must gather enough energy.

Anger is a natural reaction to the hesitation of the assemblage point to move on command. It will be a long time before you can apply the principle that your command is the Indescribable Force ‘s command. That’s the essence of the mastery of intent . In the meantime, make a command now not to fret, not even at the worst moments of doubt. It will be a slow process until that command is heard and obeyed as if it were the Indescribable Force ‘s command.

There is an unmeasurable area of awareness in between the customary position of the assemblage point and the position where there are no more doubts, which is almost the place where the barrier of perception makes its appearance. In that unmeasurable area, warriors fall prey to every conceivable misdeed. Be on the lookout and don’t lose confidence, for you will unavoidably be struck at one time or another by gripping feelings of defeat.

The new seers recommend a very simple act when impatience, or despair, or anger, or sadness comes their way. They recommend that warriors roll their eyes. Any direction will do; I prefer to roll mine clockwise. The movement of the eyes makes the assemblage point shift momentarily. In that movement, you will find relief. This is in lieu of true mastery of intent .

To see the mold of man on your own, unaided by anyone, is an important step, because all of us have certain ideas that must be broken before we are free; the seer who travels into the unknown to see the unknowable must be in an impeccable state of being. To be in an impeccable state of being is to be free of rational assumptions and rational fears.

The old seers as well as the mystics of our world have one thing in common–they have been able to see the mold of man but not understand what it is. Mystics, throughout the centuries, have given us moving accounts of their experiences. But these accounts, however beautiful, are flawed by the gross and despairing mistake of believing the mold of man to be an omnipotent, omniscient creator; and so is the interpretation of the old seers, who called the mold of man a friendly spirit, a protector of man.

The new seers are the only ones who have the sobriety to see the mold of man and understand what it is; the pattern of every human attribute we can think of and some we cannot even conceive. We are what it stamps us with.

Anyone who sees the mold of man automatically assumes that it is God. The new seers have seen that what we call God is a static prototype of humanness without any power. We are simply the product of its stamp; we are its impression. The mold of man is exactly what its name tells us it is, a pattern, a form, a cast that groups together a particular bunch of fiberlike elements, which we call man.

* * *

Real affection cannot be an investment.

* * *

There are two ways of seeing the mold of man. You can see it as a man or you can see it as a light. That depends on the shift of the assemblage point. If the shift is lateral, the mold is a human being; if the shift is in the midsection of man’s band, the mold is a light.

The position where one sees the mold of man is very close to that where the dreaming body and the barrier of perception appear. That is the reason the new seers recommend that the mold of man be seen and understood.

Freedom is like a contagious disease. It is transmitted; its carrier is an impeccable nagual. People might not appreciate that, and that’s because they don’t want to be free. Freedom is frightening. Remember that. But not for us.

* * *

The dreaming body and the barrier of perception are positions of the assemblage point, and that knowledge is as vital to seers as knowing how to read and write is to modern man. Both are accomplishments attained after years of practice.

The dreaming body is known by different names. The name I like the best is, the Other. We can be in two places at once, we can experience a sort of perceptual dualism. There is no end to the mystery of man and to the mystery of the world.

The only thing that soothes those who journey into the unknown, is oblivion. What a relief to be in the ordinary world!

For warriors, there are two positions of the assemblage point where there are no more doubts. In one you have no more doubts because you know everything. In the other, which is normal awareness, you have no doubts because you don’t know anything.

No rational assumptions should interfere with the actions of a seer. Rationality is a condition of alignment, merely the result of the position of the assemblage point. You have to understand this when you are in a state of great vulnerability. To understand it when your assemblage point has reached the position where there are no doubts is useless, because realizations of that nature are commonplace in that position. It is equally useless to understand it in a state of normal awareness; in that state, such realizations are emotional outbursts that are valid only for as long as the emotion lasts.

You can travel by waking up at a distant dreaming position. By moving your assemblage point from normal awareness all the way to the position where the dreaming body appears, your dreaming body can actually fly over incredible distances in the blink of an eyelid. The mystery is in the dreaming position. If it is strong enough to pull you, you can go to the ends of this world or beyond it, just as the old seers did. They disappeared from this world because they woke up at a dreaming position beyond the limits of the known.