Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan’s Teachings

There is no way of knowing how it is done. Strong emotion or unbending intent , or great interest serves as a guide; then the assemblage point gets powerfully fixed at the dreaming position , long enough to drag there all the emanations that are inside the cocoon.

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Now you need to have one last clarification: the coherent but irrational realization that everything in the world we have learned to perceive is inextricably tied to the position where the assemblage point is located. If the assemblage point is displaced from that position, the world will cease to be what it is to us.

A displacement of the assemblage point beyond the midline of the cocoon of man makes the entire world we know vanish from our view in one instant, as if it had been erased–for the stability, the substantiality, that seems to belong to our perceivable world is just the force of alignment. Certain emanations are routinely aligned because of the fixation of the assemblage point on one specific spot; that is all there is to our world.

The soundness of the world is not the mirage. The mirage is the fixation of the assemblage point on any spot. When seers shift their assemblage points, they are not confronted with an illusion, they are confronted with another world; that new world is as real as the one we are watching now, but the new fixation of their assemblage points, which produces that new world, is as much of a mirage as the old fixation.

There is probably no way to soothe anyone who realizes the journey of the dreaming body.

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You say that you feel terribly sad. Who cares about sadness? Think only of the mysteries; mystery is all that matters. We are living beings; we have to die and relinquish our awareness. But if we could change just a tinge of that, what mysteries must await us! What mysteries!

Warriors end their training when they are capable of breaking the barrier of perception, unaided, starting from a normal state of awareness.

The only force that can temporarily cancel out alignment is alignment. By intending a new position for your assemblage point and by intending to keep it fixed their long enough, you will assemble another of the seven worlds and escape this one. You’ll be separated from your normal world by the very barrier that you have broken: the barrier of perception. But you will remain. That is the mystery.

The wall of fog, the plain with yellow dunes, the world of the apparitions–all are lateral alignments that our assemblage points make as they approach a crucial position.

To assemble other worlds is not only a matter of practice, but a matter of intent . And it isn’t merely an exercise of bouncing out of those worlds, like being pulled by a rubber band. You see, a seer has to be daring. Once you break the barrier of perception, you don’t have to come back to the same place in the world. See what I mean.

For warriors the danger of assembling other worlds is that those worlds are as possessive as our world. The force of alignment is such that once the assemblage point breaks away from its normal position, it becomes fixed at other positions, by other alignments, and warriors run the risk of getting stranded in inconceivable aloneness.

Breaking the barrier of perception is the culmination of everything seers do. From the moment that barrier is broken, man and his fate take on a different meaning for warriors.

What you are going to do is to make this world vanish. But you are going to remain somewhat yourself. This is the ultimate bastion of awareness, the one the new seers count on. They know that after they burn with consciousness, they somewhat retain the sense of being themselves.

This street, like all others, leads to eternity. All you have to do is follow it in total silence.

Intend the movement of your assemblage point. You must remember that intent begins with a command.

If warriors are going to have an internal dialogue, they should have the proper dialogue. That’s the detached manipulation of intent through sober commands.

The manipulation of intent begins with a command given to oneself; the command is then repeated until it becomes the Indescribable Force ‘s command, and then the assemblage point shifts, accordingly, the moment warriors reach inner silence.

The fact that such a maneuver is possible is something of the most singular importance to seers. It means escaping the Indescribable Force by moving their assemblage points to a particular dreaming position called total freedom.

The old seers discovered that it is possible to move the assemblage point to the limit of the known and keep it fixed there in a state of prime heightened awareness. From that position, they saw the feasibility of slowly shifting their assemblage points permanently to other positions beyond that limit–a stupendous feat fraught with daring but lacking sobriety, for they could never retract the movement of their assemblage points, or perhaps they never wanted to.

Adventurous men, faced with the choice of dying in the world of ordinary affairs or dying in unknown worlds, will unavoidably choose the latter. The new seers, realizing that their predecessors had chosen merely to change the locale of their death, came to understand the futility of it all; The futility of struggling to control their fellow men, the futility of assembling other worlds, and, above all, the futility of self-importance.

One of the most fortunate decisions that the new seers made was never to allow their assemblage points to move permanently to any position other than heightened awareness. From that position, they actually resolved their dilemma of futility and found out that the solution is not simply to choose an alternate world in which to die, but to choose total consciousness, total freedom.

By choosing total freedom, the new seers unwittingly continued in the tradition of their predecessors and became the quintessence of the death defiers.

The new seers discovered that if the assemblage point is made to shift constantly to the confines of the unknown, but is made to return to a position at the limit of the known, then when it is suddenly released it moves like lightning across the entire cocoon of man, aligning all the emanations inside the cocoon at once.

The new seers burn with the force of alignment, with the force of will , which they have turned into the force of intent through a life of impeccability. Intent is the alignment of all the amber emanations of awareness, so it is correct to say that total freedom means total awareness.

Freedom is the Indescribable Force ‘s gift to man. Unfortunately, very few men understand that all we need, in order to accept such a magnificent gift, is to have sufficient energy. If that’s all we need, then, by all means, we must become misers of energy in order to accept the Indescribable Force ‘s gift ourselves.

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.