Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan’s Teachings

The displacement and the fixation of the assemblage point can be realized at will by means of the sorcerers’ iron-handed discipline. The sorcerers of our lineage believed that there were at least six hundred points within the luminous sphere that we are, that when reached at will by the assemblage point, can each give us a totally inclusive world; meaning that, if our assemblage point is displaced to any of those points and remains fixed on it, we will perceive a world as inclusive and total as the world of everyday life, but a different world nevertheless.

The art of sorcery is to manipulate the assemblage point and make it change positions at will on the luminous spheres that human beings are. The result of this manipulation is a shift in the point of contact with the dark sea of awareness, which brings as its concomitant a different bundle of zillions of energy fields in the form of luminous filaments that converge on the assemblage point. The consequence of new energy fields converging on the assemblage point is that awareness of a different sort than that which is necessary for perceiving the world of everyday life enters into action, turning the new energy fields into sensory data, sensory data that is interpreted and perceived as a different world because the energy fields that engender it are different from the habitual ones.

An accurate definition of sorcery as a practice would be to say that sorcery is the manipulation of the assemblage point for purposes of changing its focal point of contact with the dark sea of awareness, thus making it possible to perceive other worlds.

The art of the stalkers enters into play after the assemblage point has been displaced. Maintaining the assemblage point fixed in its new position assures sorcerers that they will perceive whatever new world they enter in its absolute completeness, exactly as we do in the world of ordinary affairs. For the sorcerers of our lineage, the world of everyday life is but one fold of a total world consisting of at least six hundred folds.

What we can do from inner silence is very similar to what is done in dreaming when one is asleep. However, when journeying through the dark sea of awareness, there is no interruption of any sort caused by going to sleep, nor is there any attempt whatsoever at controlling one’s attention while having a dream. The journey through the dark sea of awareness entails an immediate response. There is an overpowering sensation of the here and now. Some idiotic sorcerers gave the name dreaming-awake to the act of reaching the dark sea of awareness directly, making the term dreaming even more ridiculous.

When one thinks that they have had the dream-fantasy of going to a town of their choice, they have actually placed their assemblage point directly on a specific position on the dark sea of awareness that allows the journey. Then the dark sea of awareness supplies them with whatever is necessary to carry on that journey. There’s no way whatsoever to choose that place at will. Sorcerers say that inner silence selects it unerringly. Simple, isn’t it?

Choice, for warrior-travelers, is not really the act of choosing, but rather the act of acquiescing elegantly to the solicitations of infinity.

Infinity chooses. The art of the warrior-traveler is to have the ability to move with the slightest insinuation, the art of acquiescing to every command of infinity. For this, a warrior-traveler needs prowess, strength, and above everything else, sobriety. All those three put together give, as a result, elegance!

The universe has no limits, and the possibilities at play in the universe at large are indeed incommensurable. So don’t fall prey to the axiom, “I believe only what I see,” because it is the bumbest stand one can possibly take.

You must deliberately journey through the dark sea of awareness but you’ll never know how this is done. Let’s say that inner silence does it, following inexplicable ways, ways that cannot be understood, but only practiced.

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You are not unique in your pettiness, It is a condition in which human beings are trapped, a condition that is not even human, but imposed from the outside.

A break in the continuity of time. That is what inner silence does.

The interruption of that flow of continuity that makes the world understandable to us is sorcery. You journey through the dark sea of awareness, you see people as they are, engaged in people’s business. And then you see the strand of energy that joins specific lines of human beings. You witness something specific and inexplicable. You understood what people are saying, without knowing their language, and you see the strand of energy that connects human beings to certain other beings, and you select those aspects through an act of intending it. This intending is not something conscious or volitional; this intending is done at a deep level, and is ruled by necessity. You need to become cognizant of some of the possibilities of journeying through the dark sea of awareness, and inner silence guides intent&endash;a perennial force in the universe&endash;to fulfill that need.

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You already know that there exists in the universe a perennial force, which the sorcerers of ancient Mexico called the dark sea of awareness. While they were at the maximum of their perceiving power, they saw something that made them shake in their boots. They saw that the dark sea of awareness is responsible not only for the awareness of organisms, but also for the awareness of entities that don’t have an organism.

The old shamans discovered that the entire universe is composed of twin forces, forces that are at the same time opposed and complementary to each other. It is inescapable that our world is a twin world. Its opposite and complementary world is one populated by beings that have awareness, but not an organism. For this reason, the old shamans called them inorganic beings.

I told you that it’s our twin world, so it’s intimately related to us. The sorcerers of ancient Mexico didn’t think like most do in terms of space and time. They thought exclusively in terms of awareness. Two types of awareness coexist without ever impinging on each other, because each type is entirely different from the other. The old shamans faced this problem of coexistence without concerning themselves with time and space. They reasoned that the degree of awareness of organic beings and the degree of awareness of inorganic beings were so different that both could coexist with the most minimal interference.

We can perceive those inorganic beings, sorcerers do it at will. Average people do it, but they don’t realize that they’re doing it because they are not conscious of the existence of a twin world. It has never occurred to them that their fantasies have their origin in a subliminal knowledge that all of us have: that we are not alone.

The difficulty with your facing things in terms of time and space is that you only notice if something has landed in the space and time at your disposal, which is very limited. Sorcerers, on the other hand, have a vast field on which they can notice if something extraneous has landed. Lots of entities from the universe at large, entities that possess awareness but not an organism, land in the field of awareness of our world, or the field of awareness of its twin world, without an average human being ever noticing them. The entities that land on our field of awareness, or the field of awareness of our twin world, belong to other worlds that exist besides our world and its twin. The universe at large is crammed to the brim with worlds of awareness, organic and inorganic.

Those sorcerers knew when inorganic awareness from other worlds besides our twin world had landed in their field of awareness. As every human being on this earth would do, those shamans made endless classifications of different types of this energy that has awareness. They know them by the general term inorganic beings.

If you think that life is to be aware, then they do have life. I suppose it would be accurate to say that if life can be measured by the intensity, the sharpness, the duration of that awareness, I can sincerely say that they are more alive than you and I.

If you call death the termination of awareness, yes, they die. Their awareness ends. Their death is rather like the death of a human being, and at the same time, it isn’t, because the death of human being has a hidden option. It is something like a clause in a legal document, a clause that is written in tiny letters that you can barely see. You have to use a magnifying glass to read it, and yet it’s the most important clause of the document.

Death’s hidden option is exclusively for sorcerers. They are the only ones who have, to my knowledge, read the fine print. For them, the option is pertinent and functional. For average human beings, death means the termination of their awareness, the end of their organisms. For the inorganic beings, death means the same: the end of their awareness. In both cases, the impact of death is the act of being sucked into the dark sea of awareness. Their individual awareness, loaded with their life experiences, breaks its boundaries, and awareness as energy spills out into the dark sea of awareness