Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan’s Teachings

A human being who has both one-way bridges working is a sorcerer in direct contact with the spirit, the vital force that makes both positions possible.

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The spirit only listens when the speaker speaks in gestures. And gestures do not mean signs or body movements, but acts of true abandon, acts of largesse, of humor. As a gesture for the spirit, sorcerers bring out the best of themselves and silently offer it to the abstract.

Sorcerers count their lives in hours. In one hour it is possible for a sorcerer to live the equivalent in intensity of a normal life. This intensity is an advantage when it comes to storing information in the movement of the assemblage point.

The assemblage point, with even the most minute shifting, creates totally isolated islands of perception. Information, in the form of experiences in the complexity of awareness can be stored there. But how can information be stored in something so vague? The mind is equally vague, and still you trust it because you are familiar with it. You don’t yet have the same familiarity with the movement of the assemblage point, but it is just about the same.

The information is stored in the experience itself. Later, when a sorcerer moves his assemblage point to the exact spot where it was, he relives the total experience. This sorcerers’ recollection is the way to get back all the information stored in the movement of the assemblage point.

Intensity is an automatic result of the movement of the assemblage point. Intensity, being an aspect of intent , is connected naturally to the shine of the sorcerers’ eyes. In order to recall those isolated islands of perception sorcerers need only intent the particular shine of their eyes associated with whichever spot they want to return to.

Because his intensity rate is greater than normal, in a few hours a sorcerer can live the equivalent of a normal lifetime. His assemblage point, by shifting to an unfamiliar position, takes in more energy than usual. That extra flow of energy is called intensity.

Beware of a reaction which typically afflicts sorcerers–a frustrating desire to explain the sorcery experience in cogent, well-reasoned terms.

The sorcerers’ experience is so outlandish that sorcerers consider it an intellectual exercise, and use it to stalk themselves with. Their trump card as stalkers , though, is that they remain keenly aware that we are perceivers and that perception has more possibilities than the mind can conceive.

In order to protect themselves from that immensity, sorcerers learn to maintain a perfect blend of ruthlessness, cunning, patience, and sweetness. These four bases are inextricably bound together. Sorcerers cultivate them by intending them. These bases are, naturally, positions of the assemblage point.

Every act performed by any sorcerer is by definition governed by these four principles. So, properly speaking, every sorcerer’s every action is deliberate in thought and realization, and has the specific blend of the four foundations of stalking .

Sorcerers use the four moods of stalking as guides. These are four different frames of mind, four different brands of intensity that sorcerers can use to induce their assemblage points to move to specific positions.

Our tendency is to ponder, to question, to find out. And there is no way to do that from within the discipline of sorcery. Sorcery is the act of reaching the place of silent knowledge, and silent knowledge can’t be reasoned out. It can only be experienced.

Sorcerers, in an effort to protect themselves from the overwhelming effect of silent knowledge, developed the art of stalking . Stalking moves the assemblage point minutely but steadily, thus giving sorcerers time and therefore the possibility of buttressing themselves.

Within the art of stalking there is a technique which sorcerers use a great deal: controlled folly. Sorcerers claim that controlled folly is the only way they have of dealing with themselves–in their state of expanded awareness and perception–and with everybody and everything in the world of daily affairs.

Controlled folly is the art of controlled deception or the art of pretending to be thoroughly immersed in the action at hand–pretending so well no one could tell it from the real thing. Controlled folly is not an outright deception but a sophisticated, artistic way of being separated from everything while remaining an integral part of everything.

Controlled folly is an art. A very bothersome art, and a difficult one to learn. Many sorcerers don’t have the stomach for it, not because there is anything inherently wrong with the art, but because it takes a lot of energy to exercise it.

By the time we come to sorcery, our personality is already formed and all we can do is practice controlled folly and laugh at ourselves.

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Stalkers who practice controlled folly believe that, in matters of personality, the entire human race falls into three categories. Sorcerers long age learned that only our personal self-reflection falls into one of the categories.

The trouble with us is that we take ourselves seriously. Whichever category our self-image falls into only matters because of our self-importance. If we weren’t self-important, it wouldn’t matter at all which category we fell into.

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The basic cores reveal themselves extremely slowly, erratically advancing and retreating. I can’t repeat often enough that every man whose assemblage point moves can move it further. And the only reason we need a teacher is to spur us on mercilessly. Otherwise our natural reaction is to stop to congratulate ourselves for having covered so much ground.

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Self-importance is a monster that has three thousand heads. And one can face up to it and destroy it in any of three ways. The first way is to sever each head one at a time; the second is to reach that mysterious state of being called the place of no pity, which destroys self-importance by slowly starving it; and the third is to pay for the instantaneous annihilation of the three-thousand-headed monster with one’s symbolic death.

Consider yourself fortunate if you get the chance to choose. For it is the spirit that usually determines which way the sorcerer is to go, and it is the duty of the sorcerer to follow.

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The place of no pity is a position of the assemblage point, a position which renders self-pity inoperative.

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Appearance is the essence of controlled folly, and stalkers create appearances by intending them. Intending appearances is exclusively an exercise for stalkers .

Stalkers call intent . The indispensable part of the act of calling intent is a total concentration on what is intended .

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Man has a dark side. It’s called stupidity. In the same measure that ritual forced the average man to construct huge churches that were monuments to self-importance, ritual also forced sorcerers to construct edifices of morbidity and obsession. As a result, it is the duty of every nagual to guide awareness so it will fly toward the abstract, free of liens and mortgages.

Ritual can trap our attention better than anything I can think of. But it also demands a very high price. That high price is morbidity; and morbidity could have the heaviest liens and mortgages on our awareness.

Human awareness is like an immense haunted house. The awareness of everyday life is like being sealed in one room of that immense house for life. We enter the room through a magical opening: birth. And we exit through another such magical opening: death.

Sorcerers, however, are capable of finding still another opening and can leave that sealed room while still alive. A superb attainment. But their astounding accomplishment is that when they escape from that sealed room they choose freedom. They choose to leave that immense, haunted house entirely instead of getting lost in other parts of it.

Morbidity is the antithesis of the surge of energy awareness needs to reach freedom. Morbidity makes sorcerers lose their way and become trapped in the intricate, dark byways of the unknown.

Stalkers who intend appearances are performers who are being coached by the spirit itself. The teacher’s reason for training an apprentice as he does is freedom. He wants their freedom from perceptual convention. And he teaches them to be artists. Stalking is an art. For a sorcerer, since he’s not a patron or a seller of art, the only thing of importance about a work of art is that it can be accomplished.

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Think about the basic cores of the sorcery stories. Or rather, don’t think about them, but make your assemblage point move toward the place of silent knowledge. Moving the assemblage point is everything, but it means nothing if it’s not a sober, controlled movement. So, close the door of self-reflection. Be impeccable and you’ll have the energy to reach the place of silent knowledge.

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.