Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan’s Teachings

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.

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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.

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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.

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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 .