The end of an era means that the units of a foreign cognition are beginning to take hold. The units of your normal cognition, no matter how pleasant and rewarding they are for you, are beginning to fade. A grave moment in the life of a man!
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Don’t admire people from afar. That is the surest way to create mythological beings. Get close to them, talk to them, see what they are like as people. Test them. If their behavior is the result of their conviction that they are a being who is going to die, then everything they do, no matter how strange, must be premeditated and final. If what they say turns out to be just words, they’re not worth a hoot.
Human beings are beings that are going to die. Sorcerers firmly maintain that the only way to have a grip on our world, and on what we do in it, is by fully accepting that we are beings on the way to dying. Without this basic acceptance, our lives, our doings, and the world in which we live are unmanageable affairs.
The acceptance of this is far-reaching. However, it’s not the mere acceptance that does the trick. We have to embody that acceptance and live it all the way through. Sorcerers throughout the ages have said that the view of our death is the most sobering view that exists. What is wrong with us human beings, and has been wrong since time immemorial, it that without ever stating it in so many words, we believe that we have entered the realm of immortality, We behave as if we were never going to die&endash;an infantile arrogance. But even more injurious than this sense of immortality is what comes with it: the sense that we can engulf this inconceivable universe with our minds.
Sorcerers don’t admire people in a vacuum. They talk to them; they get to know them. They establish points of reference. They compare.
Sorcerers view any kind of activity with people, no matter how minute or unimportant, as a battlefield. In that battlefield, sorcerers performed their best magic, their best effort. The trick to being at ease in such situations is to face our opponents openly. Abhorrent are the timid souls who shy away from interaction to the point where even though they interact, they merely infer or deduce, in terms of their own psychological states, what is going on without actually perceiving what is really going on. They interact without ever being part of the interaction.
Always look at the man who is involved in a tug of war with you. Don’t just pull the rope; look up and see his eyes. You’ll know then that he is a man, just like you. No matter what he’s saying, no matter what he’s doing, he’s shaking in his boots, just like you. A look like that renders the opponent helpless, if only for an instant; deliver your blow then.
When the sorcerers talk about the cognitive world of ancient Mexico they are talking about things for which we have no equivalent in the world of everyday life.
For instance, perceiving energy directly as it flows in the universe is a unit of cognition that shamans live by. They see how energy flows, and they follow its flow. If its flow is obstructed, they move away to do something entirely different. Shamans see lines in the universe. Their art, or their job, is to choose the line that will take them, perception-wise, to regions that have no name. You can say that shamans react immediately to the lines of the universe. They see human beings as luminous balls, and they search in them for their flow of energy. Naturally, they react instantly to this sight. It’s part of their cognition.
The practicalities that scientists are interested in are conducive to building more and more complex machines. They are not the practicalities that changed an individual’s life course from within. They are not geared to reaching the vastness of the universe as a personal, experiential affair. The stupendous machines in existence, or those in the making are cultural affairs, the attainment of which has to be enjoyed vicariously, even by the creators of those machines themselves. The only reward for them is monetary.
Perhaps you can recall what I said to you about one of our biggest flaws as average human beings. The big flaw I am talking about is something you ought to bear in mind every second of your existence. For me, it’s the issue of issues, which I will repeat to you over and over until it comes out of your ears.
We are beings on our way to dying. We are not immortal, but we behave as if we were. This is the flaw that brings us down as individuals and will bring us down as a species someday.
The sorcerers’ advantage over their average fellow men is that sorcerers know that they are beings on their way to dying and they don’t let themselves deviate from that knowledge. An enormous effort must be employed in order to elicit and maintain this knowledge as a total certainty.
Why is it so hard for us to admit something that is so truthful? It’s really not man’s fault. Someday, I’ll tell you more about the forces that drive a man to act like an ass.
Many of us make sense when we talk because we are prepared to use words accurately. But most of us are not prepared to take ourselves seriously as men who are going to die. Being immortal, we wouldn’t know how to do that. It makes no difference what complex machines scientists can build. The machines can in no way help anyone face the unavoidable appointment: the appointment with infinity.
The nagual Julian used to tell me about the conquering generals of ancient Rome. When they would return home victorious, gigantic parades were staged to honor them. Riding with them was always a slave whose job was to whisper in their ear that all fame and glory is but transitory.
If we are victorious in any way, we don’t have anyone to whisper in our ear that our victories are fleeting. Sorcerers, however, do have the upper hand; as beings on their way to dying, they have someone whispering in their ear that everything is ephemeral. The whisperer is death, the infallible advisor, the only one who won’t ever tell you a lie.
Warrior-travelers don’t leave any debts unpaid. It is time that you square certain indebtedness you have incurred in the course of your life. Not that you will ever pay in full, mind you, but you must make a gesture. You must make a token payment in order to atone, in order to appease infinity.
What you intend to do is something very simple, and yet nearly impossible. You want to cross over the threshold of personal indebtedness and in one sweep be free, in order to proceed. If you cannot cross that threshold, there won’t be any point in trying to continue with me.
I have told you over and over that warrior-travelers are pragmatists. They are not involved in sentimentalism, or nostalgia, or melancholy. For warrior-travelers, there is only struggle, and it is a struggle with no end. If you think that you have come here to find peace, or that this is a lull in your life, you’re wrong. This task of paying your debts is not guided by any feelings that you know about. It is guided by the purest sentiment, the sentiment of a warrior-traveler who is about to dive into infinity, and just before he does, he turns around to say thank you to those who favored him.
You must face this task with all the gravity it deserves. It is your last stop before infinity swallows you. In fact, unless a warrior-traveler is in a sublime state of being, infinity will not touch him with a ten-foot pole. So, don’t spare yourself; don’t spare any effort. Push it mercilessly, but elegantly, all the way through.
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If you don’t have self-importance, you have only feelings.
Do the following simple and direct exercise that could mean the world to you: Remove from your memory of a past interaction with someone any statements that you make to yourself such as ‘He said this or that to me, and he yelled at me!’ and remain at the level of your feelings. If you hadn’t been so self-important, what would you have had as the irreducible residue at that level of your feelings; and is that feeling any less today than it was? Now, embrace them from your silence. Don’t be meager, embrace them totally for the last time. But intend that this is the last time on Earth. Intend it from your darkness. If you are worth your salt, when you make your gift to them, you’ll sum up your entire life. Acts of this nature make warriors airborne, almost vaporous.