THE POWER OF SILENCE
By Carlos Castaneda
Contents:
FOREWORD
1. THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE SPIRIT
The First Abstract Core
The Impeccability of the Nagual Elías
2. THE KNOCK OF THE SPIRIT
The Abstract
The Last Seduction of the Nagual Julian
3. THE TRICKERY OF THE SPIRIT
Dusting the Link with the Spirit
The Four Moods of Stalking
4. THE DESCENT OF THE SPIRIT
Seeing the Spirit
The Somersault of Thought
Moving the Assemblage Point
The Place of No Pity
5. THE REQUIREMENTS OF INTENT
Breaking the Mirror of Self-Reflection The Ticket to Impeccability
6. HANDLING INTENT
The Third Point The Two One-Way Bridges Intending Appearances
Foreword
My books are a true account of a teaching method that don Juan Matus, a Mexican Indian sorcerer, used in order to help me understand the sorcerers’ world. In this sense, my books are the account of an on-going process which becomes more clear to me as time goes by-
It takes years of training to teach us to deal intelligently with the world of everyday life. Our schooling—whether in plain reasoning or formal topics—is rigorous, because the knowledge we are trying to impart is very complex. The same criteria apply to the sorcerers’ world: their schooling, which relies on oral instruction and the manipulation of awareness, although different from ours, is just as rigorous, because their knowledge is as, or perhaps more, complex.
VII
Introduction
At various times don Juan attempted to name his knowledge for my benefit. He felt that the most appropriate name was nagualism, but that the term was too obscure. Calling it simply “knowledge” made it too vague, and to call it “witchcraft” was debasing. “The mastery of intent” was too abstract, and “the search for total freedom” too long and metaphorical. Finally, because he was unable to find a more appropriate name, he called it “sorcery,” although he admitted it was not really accurate.
Over the years, he had given me different definitions of sorcery, but he had always maintained that definitions change as knowledge increases. Toward the end of my apprenticeship, I felt I was in a position to appreciate a clearer definition, so I asked him once more.
“From where the average man stands,” don Juan said, “sorcery is nonsense or an ominous mystery beyond his reach. And he is right—not because this is an absolute fact, but because the average man lacks the energy to deal with sorcery.”
He stopped for a moment before he continued. “Human beings are born with a finite amount of energy,” don Juan said, “an energy that is systematically deployed, beginning at the moment of birth, in order that it may be used most advantageously by the modality of the time.”
“What do you mean by the modality of the time?” I asked.
“The modality of the time is the precise bundle of energy fields being perceived,” he answered. “I believe man’s perception has changed through the ages. The actual time decides the mode; the time decides which precise bundle of energy fields, out of an incalculable number, are to be used. And handling the modality of the time—those few, selected energy fields—takes all our available energy, leaving us nothing that would help us use any of the other energy fields.”
He urged me with a subtle movement of his eyebrows to consider all this.
“This is what I mean when I say that the average man lacks the energy needed to deal with sorcery,” he went on. “If he uses only the energy he has, he can’t perceive the worlds sorcerers do. To perceive them, sorcerers need to use a cluster of energy fields not ordinarily used. Naturally, if the average man is to perceive those worlds and understand sorcerers’ perception he must use the same cluster they have used. And this is just not possible, because all his energy is already deployed.”
He paused as if searching for the appropriate words to make his point.
“Think of it this way,” he proceeded. “It isn’t that as time goes by you’re learning sorcery; rather, what
you’re learning is to save energy. And this energy will enable you to handle some of the energy fields which are inaccessible to you now. And that is sorcery: the ability to use energy fields that are not employed in perceiving the ordinary world we know. Sorcery is a state of awareness. Sorcery is the ability to perceive something which ordinary perception cannot.
“Everything I’ve put you through,” don Juan went on, “each of the things I’ve shown you was only a device to convince you that there’s more to us than meets the eye. We don’t need anyone to teach us sorcery, because there is really nothing to learn. What we need is a teacher to convince us that there is incalculable power at our fingertips. What a strange paradox! Every warrior on the path of knowledge thinks, at one time or another, that he’s learning sorcery, but all he’s doing is allowing himself to be convinced of the power hidden in his being, and that he can reach it.”
“Is that what you’re doing, don Juan—convincing me?”
“Exactly. I’m trying to convince you that you can reach that power. I went through the same thing. And I was as hard to convince as you are.”
“Once we have reached it, what exactly do we do with it, don Juan?”
“Nothing. Once we have reached it, it will, by itself, make use of energy fields which are available to us but inaccessible. And that, as I have said, is sorcery. We begin then to see—that is, to perceive— something else; not as imagination, but as real and concrete. And then we begin to know without having to use words. And what any of us does with that increased perception, with that silent knowledge, depends on our own temperament.”
On another occasion, he gave me another kind of explanation. We were discussing an unrelated topic when he abruptly changed the subject and began to tell me a joke. He laughed and, very gently, patted my back between the shoulder blades, as if he were shy and it was too forward of him to touch me. He chuckled at my nervous reaction.
“You’re skittish,” he said teasingly, and slapped my back with greater force.
My ears buzzed. For an instant I lost my breath. It felt as though he had hurt my lungs. Every breath brought me great discomfort. Yet, after I had coughed and choked a few times, my nasal passages opened and I found myself taking deep, soothing breaths. I had such a feeling of well-being that I was not even annoyed at him for his blow, which had been hard as well as unexpected.
Then don Juan began a most remarkable explanation. Clearly and concisely, he gave me a different and more precise definition of sorcery.
I had entered into a wondrous state of awareness! I had such clarity of mind that I was able to comprehend and assimilate everything don Juan was saying. He said that in the universe there is an unmeasurable, indescribable force which sorcerers call intent, and that absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link. Sorcerers, or warriors, as he called them, were concerned with discussing, understanding, and employing that connecting link. They were especially concerned with cleaning it of the numbing effects brought about by the ordinary concerns of their everyday lives. Sorcery at this level could be defined as the procedure of cleaning one’s connecting link to intent. Don Juan stressed that this “cleaning procedure” was extremely difficult to understand, or to learn to perform. Sorcerers, therefore, divided their instruction into two categories. One was instruction for the everyday-life state of awareness, in which the cleaning process was presented in a disguised fashion. The other was instruction for the states of heightened awareness, such as the one I was presently experiencing, in which sorcerers obtained knowledge directly from intent, without the distracting intervention of spoken language.
Don Juan explained that by using heightened awareness over thousands of years of painful struggle, sorcerers had gained specific insights into intent; and that they had passed these nuggets of direct knowledge on from generation to generation to the present. He said that the task of sorcery is to take this seemingly incomprehensible knowledge and make it understandable by the standards of awareness of everyday life.
Then he explained the role of the guide in the lives of sorcerers. He said that a guide is called “the na-gual,” and that the nagual is a man or a woman with extraordinary energy, a teacher who has sobriety, endurance, stability; someone seers see as a luminous sphere having four compartments, as if four luminous balls have been compressed together. Because of their extraordinary energy, naguals are intermediaries. Their energy allows them to channel peace, harmony, laughter, and knowledge directly from the source, from intent, and transmit them to their companions. Naguals are responsible for supplying what sorcerers call “the minimal chance”: the awareness of one’s connection with intent.