Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan’s Teachings

I mean that it’s not true to say, for example, that the second gate is reached and crossed when a dreamer learns to wake up in another dream, or when a dreamer learns to change dreams without waking up in the world of daily life. The second gate of dreaming is reached and crossed only when a dreamer learns to isolate and follow the foreign energy scouts.

Waking up in another dream or changing dreams is the drill devised by the old sorcerers to exercise a dreamer ‘s capacity to isolate and follow a scout.

Following a scout is a high accomplishment and when dreamers are able to perform it, the second gate is flung open and the universe that exists behind it becomes accessible to them. This universe is there all the time but we cannot go into it because we lack energetic prowess, and in essence, the second gate of dreaming is the door into the inorganic beings’ world, and dreaming is the key that opens that door.

The rule of the second gate can be described in terms of a series of three steps: one, through practicing the drill of changing dreams, dreamers find out about the scouts; two, by following the scouts, they enter into another veritable universe; and three, in that universe, by means of their actions, dreamers find out, on their own, the governing laws and regulations of that universe.

The unavoidable reaction on the part of the inorganic beings is the attempt to keep the dreamer in their world. The inorganic beings don’t let anyone go, not without a real fight.

You have to continue your dreaming until you have gone through the universe behind the second gate. I mean that you alone must either accept or reject the lure of the inorganic beings.

I was forced to teach you dreaming only because that is the pattern set out by the old sorcerers. The path of dreaming is filled with pitfalls, and to avoid those pitfalls or to fall into them is the personal and individual affair of each dreamer , and I may add that it is a final affair.

Those pitfalls are the result of succumbing to adulation or to promises of power. And not only succumbing to those, but succumbing to anything offered by the inorganic beings. There is no way for sorcerers to accept anything offered by them, beyond a certain point.

That point depends on us as individuals. The challenge is for each of us to take only what is needed from that world, nothing more. To know what’s needed is the virtuosity of sorcerers, but to take only what’s needed is their highest accomplishment. To fail to understand this simple rule is the surest way of plummeting into a pitfall.

If you fall, you pay the price, and the price depends on the circumstances and the depth of the fall. But there is really no way of talking about an eventuality of this sort, because we are not facing a problem of punishment. Energetic currents are at stake here, energetic currents which create circumstances that are more dreadful than death. Everything in the sorcerers’ path is a matter of life or death, but in the path of dreaming this matter is enhanced a hundred fold.

You may come to think you are extremely disciplined and conscientious with your dreaming practices. That’s the time for you to be even more disciplined and handle everything related to dreaming with kid gloves. Be, about all, vigilant, one can’t foretell where the attack will come from.

The universe behind the second gate is the closest to our own, and our own universe is pretty crafty and heartless. So the two can’t be that different.

The universe of the inorganic beings is always ready to strike. But so is our own universe. That’s why you have to go into their realm exactly as if you were venturing into a war zone.

I don’t mean that dreamers always have to be afraid of that world. Once a dreamer goes through the universe behind the second gate, or once a dreamer refuses to consider it as a viable option, there are no more headaches.

Only then are dreamers free to continue. The universe behind the second gate is so powerful and aggressive that it serves as a natural screen or a testing ground where dreamers are probed for their weaknesses. If they survive the tests, they can proceed to the next gate; it they do not, they remain forever trapped in that universe.

For dreamers , their feelings alone can stop their dreaming . Once they have formulated the thought of reentering dreaming , their practices will continue as if they had never been interrupted.

If dreaming is overemphasized, it becomes what it was for the old sorcerers: a source of inexhaustible indulging. You must exercise all the care you are able to muster up. The old sorcerers’ flaw was that they took to the inorganic beings’ realm like fish take to water. When dreamers realize that the inorganic beings have no appeal it is usually too late for them, because by then the inorganic beings have them in the bag. The inorganic beings are like fishermen; they attract and catch awareness.

You are suffering from anxiety, you say. That means nothing. Gain back your energy, and don’t worry about nonsense.

* * *

The inorganic beings are forever in search of awareness and energy. The inorganic beings cannot lie.

The third gate of dreaming is reached when you find yourself in a dream, staring at someone else who is asleep. And that someone else turns out to be you.

There are two phases to each of the gates of dreaming . The first, is to arrive at the gate; the second is to cross it. By dreaming that you see yourself asleep, you arrive at the third gate. The second phase is to move around once you’ve seen yourself asleep.

At the third gate of dreaming you begin to deliberately merge your dreaming reality with the reality of the daily world. This is the drill, and sorcerers call it completing the energy body. The merge between the two realities has to be so thorough that you need to be more fluid than ever. Examine everything at the third gate with great care and curiosity.

Our tendency at the third gate is to get lost in detail. To view things with great care and curiosity means to resist the nearly irresistible temptation to plunge into detail.

The given drill, at the third gate, is to consolidate the energy body. Dreamers begin forging the energy body by fulfilling the drills of the first and second gates. When they reach the third gate, the energy body is ready to come out, or perhaps it would be better to say that it is ready to act. Unfortunately, this also means that it’s ready to be mesmerized by detail.

The energy body is like a child who’s been imprisoned all its life. The moment it is free, it soaks up everything it can find, and I mean everything. Every irrelevant, minute detail totally absorbs the energy body.

The most asinine detail becomes a world for the energy body. The effort that dreamers have to make to direct the energy body is staggering. I know that it sounds awkward to tell you to view things with care and curiosity, but that is the best way to describe what you should do. At the third gate, dreamers have to avoid a nearly irresistible impulse to plunge into everything, and they avoid it by being so curious, so desperate to get into everything that they don’t let any particular thing imprison them.

My recommendations, which I know sound absurd to the mind, are directly aimed at your energy body. Your energy body has to unite all its resources in order to act.

Your entire energy body has to be engaged to perform the drill of the third gate. Therefore, to make things easier for your energy body, you must hold back your rationality.

At the third gate, rationality is responsible for the insistence of our energy bodies on being obsessed with superfluous detail. At the third gate, then, we need irrational fluidity, irrational abandon to counteract that insistence.

* * *

The position of the assemblage point is like a vault where sorcerers keep their records. Sorcerers are capable of leaving accurate records of their findings in the position of the assemblage point. When it comes to getting to the essence of a written account, we have to use our sense of sympathetic or imaginative participation to go beyond the mere page into the experience itself. However, in the sorcerers’ world, since there are no written pages, total records, which can be relived instead of read, are left in the position of the assemblage point.

* * *

With the inorganic beings, once you get to play with them, you are hooked. They’ll always be after you. Or, what’s worse yet, you’ll always be after them.