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to persuade don Juan to let me use a tape recorder, but he
said relying on something mechanical only makes us more and
more sterile. "It curtails your magic," he said. "Better to
learn with your whole body so you'll remember with your
whole body." I had no idea what he meant. Consequently I
began keeping voluminous field notes of what he said. He
found my industriousness amusing. As for my books, I dream
them. I gather myself and my field notes -- usually in the
afternoon but not always -- and go through all my notes and
translate them into English. In the evening I sleep and
dream what I want to write. When I wake up, I write in the
quiet hours of the night, drawing upon what has arranged
itself coherently in my head.
Do you rewrite?
It's not my practice to do so. Regular writing is for me
quite dry and labored. Dreaming is best. Much of my training
with don Juan was in reconditioning perception to sustain
dream images long enough to look at them carefully. Don Juan
was right about the tape recorder -- and in retrospect,
right about the notes. They were my crutch, and I no longer
need them. By the end of my time with don Juan, I learned to
listen and watch and sense and recall in all the cells of my
body.
Earlier you mentioned reaching the end of the road, and now
you're talking about the end of your time with don Juan.
Where is he now?
He's gone. He disappeared.
Without a clue?
Don Juan told me he was going to fulfill the sorcerer's
dream of leaving this world and entering into "unimaginable
dimensions." He displaced his assemblage point from its
fixation in the conventional human world. We would call it
combusting from the inside. It's an alternative to dying.
Either they bury you six feet deep in the poor flowers or
you burn. Don Juan chose burning.
I guess it's one way to erase personal history. Then this
conversation is don Juan's obituary notice?
He had come to the end, deliberately. By intent. He wanted
to expand, to join his physical body with his energy body.
His adventure was there, where the tiny personal tide pool
joins the great ocean. He called it the "definitive
journey." Such vastness is incomprehensible to my mind, so I
can only give up explaining. I've found that the explanatory
principle will protect you from fear of the unknown, but I
prefer the unknown.
You've traveled far and wide. Give it to me straight: Is
reality ultimately a safe place?
I once asked don Juan something quite similar. We were alone
in the desert -- nighttime, billions of stars. He laughed in
a friendly and genuine way. He said, "Sure, the universe is
benign. It may destroy you, but in the process it will teach
you something worth knowing."
What's next for Carlos Castaneda?
I'll have to let you know. Next time.
Will there be a next time?
There's always a next time.
***************************************
An exclusive interview with three if the female warriors of
Carlos Castaneda's sorcery lineage Florinda, Donner-Grau,
Taisha Abelar, and Carol Tiggs interview by Keith Nichols.
It's been over twenty years since Carlos Castaneda
began igniting his readers' imaginations about the
possibility of viewing reality differently. Today, American
seekers are involved in a magical blend of religious
practices aimed at the same thing from Zen Buddhism to Yoga
to herbal remedies and even Wicca and spiritualism. Yet
questions still remain from the intensive searching of the
last several decades, such as when are we going to get free,
anyway? And how do we explain the inexplicable?
These were the questions on my mind when I found myself
journeying down the coast toward Los Angeles for an
encounter with three women of Castaneda's sorcery lineage:
Florinda Donner Grau, Taisha Abelar, and Carol Tiggs.
When Florinda Donner-Grau and I first met, she told me
about an encounter that serves well to explain the threshold
that many people have already encountered. As she walked
down the streets in downtown Los Angeles, she saw a floating
blob of energy. As she watched it bounce up and down the
street, she was a little unsure about her senses. She tugged
on the shoulder of a man standing nearby whose mouth was
open wide in a state of disbelief--or maybe bewilderment.
She saw that he too was looking at the blob.
As a sorcerer, Donner-Grau is aware that reality is
largely perception and that what we choose to perceive and
not to perceive is based on our training. So perhaps the man
in L.A. represents a sort of graduation in the school of
larger possibilities, a generation prepared by Castaneda and
others to perceive subtler energies.
With the recent publication of Castaneda's ninth book,
as well as books by Florinda Donner-Grau and Taisha Abelar,
Carlos Castaneda's sorcerers party has evolved into seems to
beckon forth that this reality is not the only one; others
do exist into which we can transcend.
Why are the women of this lineage just beginning to come out
and speak about their practices?
Florinda Donner-Grau: Well, there is a fundamental
difference in the way males and females perceive and respond
to reality. Females, such as Taisha, Carol, and I, didn't
write about anything for twenty years. This is the
fundamental difference: females need to embody a system of
belief before they can write about it. While males build
their bridges of understanding with words, women build their
understanding with their life. Both are equally valid ways
of understanding, yet they are very different ways of
processing life.
In terms of energy the male cones toward knowledge; he
builds step by step. In physics, this stepping can be
described like a cone, where males are always moving toward
a source but never reaching it. With females, it is
different because that cone is reversed. Because of the
womb, females have the capacity to perceive knowledge
directly. There is no reason for her to explain because she
already knows. And it is this knowingness, this experience
of being connected with the source-what we call Intent-that
sorcerers want to get back to. Females have an inherent
advantage in that they know Intent directly, while the male
is always approaching it.
What is the purpose of being connected with this source,
Intent?
Florinda Donner-Grau: Well, I'll tell you a story. I love
books; I'm an avid reader. Now Carlos hasn't read a book in
over twenty years. I know that because he gave all his books
to me. Now I'm very interested in phenomenology because as
an intellectual pursuit, it is the only one that comes close
to sorcery. Well, I'll be reading something and then I'll
ask Carlos a question. He'll be quiet for about ten minutes
and then he'll give me an explanation of exactly what I have
been reading. At that point, I know that he's been out there
grabbing that knowledge from elsewhere. And this ability has
no limitation; I can ask him something about physics and he
immediately gives me a bonafide answer.
How would you describe what he is doing?
Carol Tiggs: I would say that he is practicing dreaming,
which is a way of describing that he is using his energetic
body to grab hold of a line of energy and access information
directly from the source of the universe.
Florinda Donner-Grau: And Carlos knows exactly what line to
grab. Seers see that it is all out there anyway. But what
makes a capable sorcerer is the ability to access these
lines of information with control and at will. Recently,
Carlos took a group of twenty people to a small church in
Mexico (written about in several of his books). While in the
church, he took the whole group into a state of dreaming and
journeyed into another world.
How does one learn how to do this?
Florinda Donner-Grau: It's all a matter of having enough
energy to be able to see. We're all so consumed by the
everydayness of life that we simply don't have any energy
left over to see.
How do people use daily life to begin to find where they are
draining themselves energetically?
Carol Tiggs: When you look back over your workday, one of
the clues to where you lost your energy is where you began
to feel tired and not energetically yourself. Those places
are where you'll find your answers and start to develop some
perspective-and you'll be able to begin to pull back your
energy from these events and begin to start examining the
patterns that keep you stuck within the ego game of hero and
victim.
Is this process different for the males and the females?
Florinda Donner-Grau: The process isn't any different. When
you recapitulate, you take yourself back and recreate every
event as it happened. Once you have the energy, this happens
automatically and you don't have to reach it through any
shamanistic means, such as fasting and so on. You can begin
any day and start from that day and move backwards. I've
done four recapitulations of my entire life to date and I
find something new each time. And what I find is that not
directly but indirectly we always try to be the hero
ourselves.
At some of the lectures we have given, people are
always taking notes and I find myself saying to them, "No,
don't take notes, because those things are meaningless. Just
listen." All of their energy is gong into taking notes and
they're missing half of what is really going on.
Taisha Abelar: We constantly hear people say, If only I was
a part of your group, then I could do this or that. But what
they don't understand is that wherever you are, that is
where you start.
Carol Tiggs: Sorcery is really just perception. There are no
rituals, no dancing, no nothing. Just perception and some
techniques to enhance perception through gathering up of
oneself energetically. There are aids, such as not-doing
techniques.
Taisha Abelar: Or just watching your thoughts and hearing
what you are really thinking. You can learn a lot by doing
that.
Carol Tiggs: What I've found is that people generally fall
into one of two categories: either they have to be in
control or they are being controlled by something else. When
you come from these two scenarios, you generally aren't
perceiving your life clearly. By recapitulating you light up
in your awareness exactly the energies (or reality) that was
constructed so that you can begin to perceive the patterns
and programming that control you.
Taisha Abelar: When you begin to clearly see the social
patterns that control you, you start to move into stalking
yourself. This is where you can become an active participant
in life. Suddenly your boss is no longer that evil, horrible
controller that he once was. Instead he becomes a mirror by
which you start to see where you are trapped into the games
of this reality. These games are what consume or tie up
people's energy and keep them from perceiving the true
energetic nature of this reality.
When you move away from the consensus of everyday life,
you can allow the Intent or the dream that has been set up
by Intent to become the moving force, the guide.
Florinda Donner-Grau: To do this you have to relinquish this
feeling of having to be the one in control. But believe me,
even after you have recapitulated, you still have that
feeling that you have this one little area over here and
that once you get to it, then you will be the one who is in
charge.
Let's get back to the ways in which males and females
perceive. If females perceive directly, then why aren't most
females walking around steeped in understanding or
knowingness of Intent?
Florinda Donner-Grau: Males have an energetic advantage in
the physical world. Though the male cone shape configuration
of energy makes perceiving the source of Intent more
difficult, it is ideal for being able to work stronger in
the physical world . There is no way for females to compete
against that energetic advantage as long as they are
imitating roles that males have created. Instead we as
females have to find our own resources and break this cycle
of imitation so that we can truly begin to evolve into
something different.
What is that evolvement?
Carol Tiggs: To tell you the truth, I really don't know.
What is our Intent as we evolve and what does this
evolvement entail? For female sorcerers, part of this comes
into enhancing the secondary functions of our wombs, which
are the dreaming organs in the female body. And we do this
by recapitulating, breaking old patterns, gathering up our
energy, so that we can begin to dream a new dream.
Taisha Abelar: Whatever has happened to us-and something has
happened-we hope to convey to younger people that change is
possible. But there has to be some kind of critical mass to
make this change possible.
Florinda Donner-Grau: When you go against the enormous
consensus that constitutes everyday reality, you are
pounding against a stone wall. When sorcerers enter into
dreaming, the first thing they will usually encounter is a
bank of fog. When you see this fog you are pulling at
something else energetically.
ln a way, sorcery is like Chinese Medicine in that it
treats the body as if it were a field of energy. Western
Medicine treats the body as if it were an object so it
doesn't take advantage of the more powerful energetic
reality. Consequently you have doctors cutting out matter
instead of using energy to change it. Medicine, like modem
man, would change dramatically if it took advantage of these
energetic principles to aid in a metamorphis of current
limitations and illnesses.
Carol Tiggs: What a sorcerer searches for is that evolvement
within his awareness or energetic field; that moment or
possibility of change into a state of being that has more
wellness.
Florinda Donner-Grau: Currently there is so much invested in
institutions like the A.M.A. that there is no way that they
are going to change things like that. But what they are
doing to the body is horrendous. They teach us that medicine
has advanced, but that simply isn't true. Now we have Aids
and cancer and we really don't know what the hell we are
doing.
I had a young female friend who died of intestinal
cancer a couple of months ago. On the outside she was living
the perfect life but on the inside she was being eaten
alive. You see, her husband was a president of one of those
huge corporations and you wouldn't believe the pains she
went through to impress people. She was killing herself to
impress other people. I asked her, "If things are so bad,
why didn't you seek some help?" But she said that she was
worried about what people would think. I answered back,
"What will they think when you are dead?" Now, she is dead,
and they don't think a thing. If that is the price you are
going to pay, then take off.
But that's what we do. You see, in a way, we're still
monkeys. Don Juan used to tease us and say that we are like
a monkey who has reached into a gourd to grab some seeds.
The monkey can't get his hand out as long as he holds on to
those seeds. Humans are very much the same way. Our social
expectations are the seeds which consume our awareness. All
the monkey would have to do to become free is to just let go
of those damn seeds, but he won't. We won't let go of the
seeds to get ourselves out of a trapped situation. We just
can't let go.
Gary Larson drew a cartoon showing an ape who had
fallen out of a tree and was laying flat on the ground.
Under the drawing was the transcription: The dawn of man.
The only thing he forgot to add was that the monkey had
fallen onto a patch of seeds. You see, he had grabbed for
the seeds; that was the real fall of man.
Magical Blend Magazine (c) 1994
=========================
Version: 0.4 (under construction)
Last-Updated: Tue May 17 12:54:52 CDT 1994
--------------------------
Summerized from Tales of Power, Washington Square Press.
The secret of the luminous beings is that we are perceivers,
we are an awareness without solidity or bounds. The world we
think we see is only a description of world told to us by
our internal dialog, a description that has been taught to
us by others. We are trapped inside that bubble of
perception and what we witness on its walls is a reflection
of our world view, our description.
As luminous beings, our perception is controlled by the
position of our Assemblage Point (the point where our
luminous being focuses its awareness on the energy fibers of
the universe). There are infinite worlds outside our daily
perceptions. By stopping the internal dialog you break
through this barrier to the totality of oneself.
To this end sorcerers use "the right way of walking" as a
practical task; it saturates the tonal and without the
one-to-one relation with the elements of its description the
tonal becomes silent. Also used are acting without believing
or expecting rewards; erasing personal history; and
"dreaming". To help erase personal history the techniques of
losing self-importance, assuming responsibility, and using
death as an adviser are applied. To aide in "dreaming" the
three techniques of disrupting the routines of life, the
gait of power, and not-doing are used. These techniques are
bound together by living like a warrior, to give temperance
and strength to withstand the path of knowledge.
The nagual is the unspeakable. All the possible feelings and
beings and selves float in it like barges, peaceful,
unaltered, forever. Then the glue of life binds some of them
together and a being is created. That being loses the sense
of its true nature and becomes blinded by the glare and
clamor of the tonal, where all unified organizations exist.
That cluster is the bubble of perception. The secret of the
double is in the bubble of perception. In the nagual, the
cluster of feelings can be rearranged to any form and made
to assemble instantly anywhere. In other words, one can
perceive the here and the there at once. The nagual is
witnessed by "will", and the tonal by "reason".
The tonal is but a reflection of that indescribable unknown
filled with order; the nagual is but a reflection of that
indescribable void that contains everything.
---------------------------
Summerized from _The Art of Dreaming_.
First Gate:
You reach the first gate when you become aware you are
falling asleep or have a gigantically real dream (perhaps
what some would call a lucid dream). You cross the first
gate when you are able to sustain the sight of any item in
your dream.
In order to offset the evanescent quality of dreams,
sorcerers have devised the use of the starting point item.
Ever time you isolate it and look at it, you get a surge
of energy,
Second Gate:
You cross the second gate when you are able to change from
dream to dream. For example, you wake up from a dream in
another dream or use an item of your dream to trigger
another dream.
Third Gate:
You reach the third gate when you dream yourself asleep.
You cross the third gate by moving your engery body after
having done so. At the third gate you begin to merge your
dreaming reality with the reality of the daily world.
Fourth Gate:
At the fourth gate, the energy body travels to specific,
concrete places either in this world, out of this world,
or places that exist only in the intent of others.
Go to sleep in a certain position, then in dreaming, dream
that you lie down in the same position and fall asleep
again. This is called the twin positions and it solidifies
your dreaming attention. The second dream is intending in
the second attention: the only way to cross the fourth
gate of dreaming.
------------------------------
Exceprts from _The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of
Knowledge_; pages 82-87.
A man of knowledge is one who has followed truthfully the
hardships of learning. A man who has, without rushing or
without faltering, gone as far as he can in unraveling the
secrets of power and knowledge. To become a man of
knowledge one must challenge and defeat the four natural
enemies.
The first enemy of a man of knowledge is Fear. A terrible
enemy--treacherous, and difficult to overcome. It remains
concealed at every turn of the way, prowling, waiting. And
if the man, terrified in its presence, runs away, his
enemy will have put an end to his quest. Once a man has
vanquished fear, he is free from it for the rest of his
life because, instead of fear, he has acquired clarity of
mind which erases fear.
And thus he has encountered his second enemy; Clarity.
That clarity of mind, which is so hard to obtain, dispels
fear, but also blinds. If the man yields to this
make-believe power, he has succumbed to his second enemy
and will be patient when he should rush. And he will
fumble with learning until he winds up incapable of
learing anything more.
He must defy his clarity and use it only to see, and wait
patiently and measure carefully before taking new steps;
he must think, above all, that his clarity is almost a
mistake. And a moment will come when he will understand
that his clarity was only a point before his eyes. And
thus he will have overcome his second enemy, and will
arrive at a position where nothing can harm him anymore.
It will be true power; the third enemy of a man of
knowledge.
A man at this stage hardly notices his third enemy closing
in on him. And suddenly, without knowing, he will
certainly have lost the battle. His enemy will have turned
him into a cruel, capricious man. The man must defy his
power, deliberately. He has to come to realize the power
he has seemingly conquered is in reality never his. He
will reach a point where everything is held in check. He
will know then when and how to use his power. And thus he
will have defeated his third enemy.
The man will be, by then, at the end of his journey of
learning, and almost without warning he will come upon the
last of his enemies: Old age. This enemy is the cruelest
of all, the one he won't be able to defeat completely, but
only fight away. His desire to retreat will overrule all
his clarity, his power, and his knowledge. But if the man
sloughs off his tiredness, and lives his fate through, he
can then be called a man of knowledge, if only for the
brief moment when he succeeds in fighting off his last,
invincible enemy. That moment of clarity, power, and
knowledge is enough.
---------
Teachings: Jun 23 1961 - Sep 30 1965
Separate Reality: Apr 2 1968 - Oct 18 1970
Journey to Ixtlan: Dec 17 1960 - May 1971
[I would like short reviews of each book, if you do it
just email it to castaneda-request@austin.bsdi.com]
--------
The Eight Points
+---Seeing----+
/ \
Nagual Will-----Feeling-----Talking---Reason Tonal
\ /
+---Dreaming--+
Stopping the Internal Dialog
Stopping our description of the world; breaking the
barrier of perception. Stopping the internal dialog is
the key to the sorcerers' world. The rest of the
activities are only props to accelerate the effect.
The Right Way of Walking
Tales of Power, WSP Paperback edition, page 236, don
Juan says: The warrior, first by curling his fingers,
drew attention to the arms; and then by looking, without
focusing his eyses, at any point directly in front of
him on the arc that started at the tip of his feet and
ended above the horizon, he literally flooded his
"tonal" with information. The "tonal", without its
one-to-one relationship with the elements of its
description, was incapable of talking to itself, and
thus one became silent.
Acting Without Believing
Acting just for the hell of it, without expecting
rewards.
Erasing Personal History
Removing cues of oneself from the world at large, making
oneself unavailable. This frees you from the trap of
others attention. This also helps to remove Self-Pity
from your world.
Losing Self-Importance
Another aide in removing Self-Pity.
Assuming Responsibility
Assume responsibility for your actions and being in this
world.
Using Death as an Advisor
Take every act as your last battle on earth. It doesn't
matter if you win or lose a battle but never abandon
yourself, even to your death. You should replace
Self-Pity as your advisor and use death instead. Actions
taken with death as an advisor have power.
Disrupting the Routines of Life
Our routines are what allows death to stalk us. A hunter
learns the routines of its pray and uses them to kill
it.
Gait of Power
Running with abandon, but without abandoning oneself.
Imagine yourself being chased in the dark by a ferocious
animal, if you get away, this is how you will have run.
Not-Doing
Focusing your attention on features of the world that
are ordinarily overlooked, such as the shadows of
things.
Dreaming
Using the natural shift of the Assemblage Point while
asleep.
Together, disrupting routines, the gate of power, and
not-doing are avenues for learning new ways of
perceiving the world, and they give a warrior an inkling
of incredible possibilities of action. These lead to the
knowledge of a separate and pragmatic world of
"dreaming".
Stalking
Fixing the Assemblage Point in position to give your
perception coherence. Used in the daily world it's a way
of behaving towards our fellow men.
Recapitulation
Used to free energy trapped in the world. Performed by
visualizing past events (to shift your Assemblage Point
to that point) and reclaiming any energy you left behind
and returning energy that isn't yours.
Mood of a Warrior
A mood in which to approch the world, acting with
abandon but without abandoning oneself. Using death as
an advisor, each act is your last battle on earth.
Controlled Folly
Since a man of knowledge "sees" and he knows that
nothing is more important than anything else then
nothing matters to him, he has only his controlled
folly, acting as if it mattered even though he knows it
does not.
Gazing
A sourcerery technique of looking without staring at
something. The "not-doing" of looking at something.
Worthy Opponent
An opponent to spur you on the path of knowledge.
Having to Believe
Having no choice, the situation inspired by the worth
opponent.
Man of Knowledge
A warrior who has become a sorcerer and who "sees" and
knows. The ultimate state of being, in total control
over your being.
Energy Body
???
Assemblage Point
The point at which your awarness is focused on your
luminous being causing the energy fibers at large to
align with the energy fibers inside your cocoon.
Glow of Awarness
The glowing point at which the Assemblage Point is
focused, indicating that the being is alive. This glow
lights the fibers and makes the luminous being percieve
them.
First Attention
The attention of the tonal. Used to assemble our daily
world.
Second Attention
The attention of the nagual.
Third Attention
The attention after burning with the fire from within.
Dreaming Attention
The attention used while dreaming to exercise the energy
body, it's a gateway to the second attention.
First Ring of Power
Also the first attention
Second Ring of Power
Also the second attention
Gates of Dreaming
The seven gates of dreaming are energy obstacles that
must be overcome.
Dreaming Emissary
???
Scouts
Energy beings from other realms in your dreams. By
isolating then and indending to follow them they can
transport your awareness to inconceivable realms.
Dreaming Awake
This state results from moving the Assemblage Point
during normal awareness.
The Tonal and the Nagual
The tonal is but a reflection of that indescribable
unknown filled with order; the nagual is but a
reflection of that indescribable void that contains
everything.
The Dreamer and the Dreamed
The secret of the dreamer and the dreamed is that the
dreamed dreams the dreamer, just as the dreamer dreams
the dreamed.
The Secret of the Luminous Beings
The secret of the luminous beings is that we are
perceivers, we are an awareness without solidity or
bounds. The world we think we see is only a description
of world told to us by our internal dialog, a
description that has been taught to us by others. We are
trapped inside that bubble of perception and what we
witness on its walls is a reflection of our world view,
our description.
Bubble of Perception
The bubble of perception is the cluster of feelings that
have been assembled in the nagual and bound together by
the force of life.
The following are notes I took at a talk by Taisha Abelar
on
10 October 1992 at the Alexandria II bookstore in
Pasadena, California.
These are somewhat cryptic but may be of interest to some
on the list.
((my comments if any are in double parentheses))
The Activity of sorcerers is that of Dreaming yourself.
Society is oriented toward a "poor baby" syndrome (society
and the individual are at effect).
Drills to resolve this :
Write your internal dialogue down for 3 days, wait three
days and read it
Mark up the newspaper wherever the poor baby concept is
expressed.
We presently have a mating/courtship compulsion
the self is presented as a "poor baby" to the world
Stalking the self - see how you are living.
The reason for all this is that mankind's assemblage point
is in a certain position.
You can move the assemblage point to another place.
That's what sorcerers do - move it away from the poor baby
position
The assembalge point is a place of luminosity on the
energetic body,
it lights the filiaments. When the filiaments of the
energetic body match those of the universe perception
takes place.
How do you move the assemblage point?
You need energy - this may be obtained from not doing the
presentation of the self in everyday life and stopping
seeking courtship.
curtail needingness.
After you've increased your energy THEN practice sorceric
techniques.
1. The recapitulation (see Sorcerer's crossing)
2. Quiet the internal dialogue (Meditation and breathing
techniques are good for this)
((Taisha told a rather amusing story of going to a guru in
India who had a $900 breathing technique))
The $900 dollar breath: 3 exhalations, 1 inhalation
(Use) any technique that works - sorcery passes, gazing
techniques.
Practice impeccability, you'll know impeccability when you
have no self interest.
Act without expecting rewards or returns.
Act impeccably and the assemblage point moves to the"
place of no pity "
Heightened awareness.
When the assemblage point moves far enough you'll see
different worlds.
You'll know when you are there - (you'll be) very quiet,
unknown to yourself, you'll feel solitude but not
loneliness.
Energy comes to you and will guide you, energy of the
double, the ethereal body. " Poor Baby" ravages energy.
That's the beginning, heightened awareness is the door to
infinity.
NOW you can use dreaming and stalking.
Dreaming, use dreams to enhance awareness of being, wake
up the energetic body. The art of dreaming - move the
assemblage point systematically (find your hands, etc.)
Art of stalking - when assemblage point moves you have to
fix it at new position - give it reality - explore, get
adventuresome.
find out the ramifications of the new position from a
bodily energy viewpoint. Then develop the energetic body.
Use it (while awake).
Solidify it and act from it.
Where Taisha Abelar is is a poistion of the assemblage
point.
Moving assemblage point to where their's (other sorcerers)
were.
The earth too has an assemblage point ((cf. Ley lines
etc.))
embarrassment disrupts the assemblage point.
There are other worlds than this consensual world.
Nagual - pronounced " NO - ALL"
You can move the assemblage point in dreaming.
(( Taisha Abelar made a loud scream at this point in the
talk))
Shriek - makes the assemblage point shift and solidify the
energy body.
For a normal human the assemblage point is behind the left
shoulder at the back.
Perception is encoded in the body (cf. Husserl,
phenomenologists)
Perception - a facet of corporeality.
The only way to change the energy body is to move the
assemblage point, lighting up different filiaments.
Memories can reengage, restimulate different energetic
memories.
Dream yourself, its up to you
A man waits for death and while he waits he surrounds
himself with beauty and with strength " The Death Defier"
The change comes from within, to change the world, the
environment, the universe.
You must move the assemblage point
Recapitulation - make list of everyone you've known begin
with the latest person and work backwards
Breath in over right shoulder to left then exhale back
(rotating the head back) - visualize and breath you can do
it in the world.
Don't poor baby yourself.
Use devices to jolt yourself you can move the assemblage
point up and down.
(( She talks about her experiences in the other world with
the trees
(described in Sorcerer's Crossing)))
Competition among the roots of trees (not recommended to
move the Assemblage point down)
The greatest challenge - practice controlled folly, you
see the situation and you don't do anything about it - you
don't judge - judging is death.
Inorganic entities, they permeate this other realm of the
universe.
Don Juan's/Carlo's new book The Seven Gates of Dreaming
The second gate is these guys - Gargoyles/vampires/shadows
they inhabit a close realm and feed off our energy.
Don Juan's allys.
Seers can see this energy. Build integrity - internal
strength.
Gazing at gravel/leaves/moon/clouds
But if you don't have the sobriety of recapitulation then
there are hazards.
The Inorganic Entities come thru tunnels, ignore them.
The Inorganic Entities obey your commands.
You can recapitualte your dreams or recapitulate in your
dreams.
If awake Normal recapitulation start at right inhale to
left, exhale to center.
In dreams inhale Clockwise, exhale counterclockwise in
center.
There are layers of recapitulation.
Best place for assemblage point - an infinite number of
other places.
The spirit, intent, will let it move , Best intermediate
place - "The place of no pity"
Do the newspaper exercise (looking for "poor baby")
Take a pen and paper to your internal dialogue.
Scratch the surface, stalk yourself.
Taisha Abelar and her fellow sorcerers are now moving
assemblage points elsewhere and using energetic bodies to
establish realities there.
Proper use of sexual energy. if you've got energy to spare
- ((sex is)) OK if you've recapitualted.
If you want to move the assemblage point to other areas
use sexual energy to do dreaming.
The second gate is the graveyard of failed sorcerers.
Control, the stalker's sobriety.
level 1 energy body
level 2 energy and physical body (this needs lots more
energy)
((the above is describing 'going places' via dreaming as
an energy body or taking the physical body too))
After recapitulating there is only NOW.
This permits discrepancies - coming and going from the
consensual universe.
When moving the assemblage point either:
1. Get rid of friends
2. Use them as controlled folly.
The world has multitudes of realities
The real challenge is in the world - can you get off the
assemblage point position?
Stalking - move assemblage point, give the energy body a
jolt.
((an example of a stalking exercise follows))
Tie up the dominant hand and use the other.
Not doing exercises
Walk backwards
Walk on all fours with kneepads
any trigger - sound/time/smell causes the body to remember
cover up mirrors - (they reinforce agreements and put
attention on the self)
Stalk yourself
look at the world
Begin recapitulation
Dream and find your hands in your dream
Not doing
Disrupt routines
and do exercise to wake up the energetic body (physical
exercise)
These are the of notes of the Abelar public talk in Menlo
Park, California held January 7, 1994. These notes are not
in the public domain; they may be distributed to friends
interested in Abelar, CC and Donner, but please do not
repost them on other bulletin boards and they may not be
published in any magazine etc. Please respect the style of
teaching of Abelar, Castaneda etc. which seems to be based
on limited public display.
"Tonight's talk with be on Stopping. To Stop you must only
do one thing. Decide to be a warrior or not.
"The assemblage point fluctuates naturally in sleep. It will
also move under the influence of drugs, deep meditation,
starvation, sensory deprivation.
"The assemblage point is located behind you at the level of
your shoulder blades.
"Sorcerers use Discipline to move their assemblage points.
"Everyone of us can 'see' energy - even now - but you are no
longer aware of it. Infants on the other hand perceive
energy directly. However, as they get older the 'Usher'
introduces them to the world of ordinary reality. Instead of
seeing amorphous energy, the infant one day will assemble
the energy configuration into...a table. A toy. A dog. A
tree. Each time the transformation comes from the Usher.
"First and foremost we live in a world of energy. Only
secondarily do we live in a world of objects. The position
of the assemblage point determines the reality that we
assemble of the energy.
"The sorcerer [presumably unlike the hunger artists and
sensory deprivers] seeks to FIX the assembly point at a new
location [not just move it]. To agglutinate energy again
into new sets of 'objects' and hence into a new 'reality.'
"This world is not as important as we make it out to be. Our
language is biased; we call it 'reality' when it is really
only one of many modes of the assemblage point. For
convenience though let us refer to it as 'ordinary' reality.
"Ordinarily once the Ushers do their work of helping us
perceive the various energy configurations as 'objects,' the
assemblage point is fixed once and for all and the
assemblage point does not move thereafter.
"We are forced to maintain a world of everyday life until we
die.
"By the way death, from a sorcerer's standpoint, is not the
fast process that it appears to be. The glow of the
assemblage point fades quickly, but all the other energy
strands that make up the energy egg of the human being can
take a long long time to disperse. This process can also be
slowed down, for example if you were buried in a lead coffin
right after death.
"The alternative to being stuck all your life on one
assemblage point is to move it by the practice of
Discipline, and then to fix it at a new location while
awake.
"A firm foundation in the warrior's way is required for
heavy duty stopping and dreaming."
"Discipline is not the same thing as practiced by Catholic
girls in a convent. Nor the same thing as what USED to be
practiced by the nuns themselves. It is not getting up early
to do aerobics before going to work, or eating sensibly.
These are just routines, habits. Not a warrior's Discipline.
"From the point of view of a warrior, stalker or dreamer,
Discipline is abstract - an unbending hooking to a purpose -
so that the actual implementation of the Discipline is
actually very flexible and fluid. It takes courage of steel,
there is no room for doubt or hesitation which will
otherwise rise up to pull you back to the everyday world of
tantrums and self indulgence.
"Discipline leads to harmony, well being and balance.
Everyday life, on the other hand, is indulgence.
"Unbending unyielding purpose is what is requird for
Discipline in our quest for freedom.
"At the Phoenix Bookstore [ed. note - Santa Monica, CA I
think] talks recently - some of you were there - Carlos
Castaneda gave a talk of the 'warrior's way.'
"You can't 'learn' to be a warrior! It is just a decision
you have to make one day for yourself on your own. Asking
someone to teach you to be a warrior is the wrong approach,
it is the 'poor baby me' approach to warriorship.
"Carlos Castaneda said that first and foremost the
transfiguring event in a warrior's life, what is at the
bedrock of becoming a warrior, is accepting responsibility
for your own death. This is the bottom line. Don't assume
you are immortal.
"Face infinity and death in the mirror at night.
"Just by doing this, taking death as an advisor this way,
lots of things will fall off, fall away from you.
"Assume responsibility for your perception of the world. Not
just the single perception you were born into. Instead
intend the movement of your assemlage point to other areas
of the luminous egg. If you tighten your belt, curtail the
other things in your life the pont will JUST MOVE ON ITS OWN
without any exercises or routines on your part. The lamp of
awareness, strong now that you have cut the excess baggage
out of your life, will shine on all the other possible
positions of your assemblage point.
"The next rule of being a warrior is to pay your debts. A
warrior is very generous. He or she does not look at the
world in terms of what other people owe him or her. The
warrior looks at the world in terms of opportunities to
discharge his or her debts to other people so he or she will
not be tied up forever.
"This paying of debts leads to an unbiased affection for all
things. Most of what we consider to be affection is the
trading of favors with other people. The warrior, on the
other hand, gives affection with no expectation of return.
It is not that the warrior is trying to eliminate affection,
be an unfeeling person. The warrior's affection is just so
unbiased it unravels everyday connections. The warrior's
affection is so unbiased that if the warrior goes into
another reality completely different from this one the
warrior's affection will extend to all the other new beings
that exist in that other reality.
"If someone has really INJURED you this also needs to be
paid back. The concept of paying debts is not a sentimental
concept limited to returning the good connections. The point
is to loosen all connections. If you are connected to
someone who injured you, you may need to sever that
connection by paying back the injury. So it is not a moral
issue; it goes two ways."
"The warrior's path is an escape hatch, somewhere to go
after you have finished dismantling everyday life. There is
no room for crapping out, for fear, for indulgence, for
regrets or for nostalgia when going into the unknown.
"Unbending determination is the only choice you can make or
terrible things will happen to you once you have accumulated
enough energy [by using death as an advisor to cut loose the
excess baggage].
"You CANNOT be half assed, half willing or, with your
partial energy, even worse things will happen to you [than
if you had never taken this path].
"Take back the energy used to support the everyday world [by
using death as an advisor and paying back debts]. The
everyday world is a gigantic edifice but it rest on just
said relying on something mechanical only makes us more and
more sterile. "It curtails your magic," he said. "Better to
learn with your whole body so you'll remember with your
whole body." I had no idea what he meant. Consequently I
began keeping voluminous field notes of what he said. He
found my industriousness amusing. As for my books, I dream
them. I gather myself and my field notes -- usually in the
afternoon but not always -- and go through all my notes and
translate them into English. In the evening I sleep and
dream what I want to write. When I wake up, I write in the
quiet hours of the night, drawing upon what has arranged
itself coherently in my head.
Do you rewrite?
It's not my practice to do so. Regular writing is for me
quite dry and labored. Dreaming is best. Much of my training
with don Juan was in reconditioning perception to sustain
dream images long enough to look at them carefully. Don Juan
was right about the tape recorder -- and in retrospect,
right about the notes. They were my crutch, and I no longer
need them. By the end of my time with don Juan, I learned to
listen and watch and sense and recall in all the cells of my
body.
Earlier you mentioned reaching the end of the road, and now
you're talking about the end of your time with don Juan.
Where is he now?
He's gone. He disappeared.
Without a clue?
Don Juan told me he was going to fulfill the sorcerer's
dream of leaving this world and entering into "unimaginable
dimensions." He displaced his assemblage point from its
fixation in the conventional human world. We would call it
combusting from the inside. It's an alternative to dying.
Either they bury you six feet deep in the poor flowers or
you burn. Don Juan chose burning.
I guess it's one way to erase personal history. Then this
conversation is don Juan's obituary notice?
He had come to the end, deliberately. By intent. He wanted
to expand, to join his physical body with his energy body.
His adventure was there, where the tiny personal tide pool
joins the great ocean. He called it the "definitive
journey." Such vastness is incomprehensible to my mind, so I
can only give up explaining. I've found that the explanatory
principle will protect you from fear of the unknown, but I
prefer the unknown.
You've traveled far and wide. Give it to me straight: Is
reality ultimately a safe place?
I once asked don Juan something quite similar. We were alone
in the desert -- nighttime, billions of stars. He laughed in
a friendly and genuine way. He said, "Sure, the universe is
benign. It may destroy you, but in the process it will teach
you something worth knowing."
What's next for Carlos Castaneda?
I'll have to let you know. Next time.
Will there be a next time?
There's always a next time.
***************************************
An exclusive interview with three if the female warriors of
Carlos Castaneda's sorcery lineage Florinda, Donner-Grau,
Taisha Abelar, and Carol Tiggs interview by Keith Nichols.
It's been over twenty years since Carlos Castaneda
began igniting his readers' imaginations about the
possibility of viewing reality differently. Today, American
seekers are involved in a magical blend of religious
practices aimed at the same thing from Zen Buddhism to Yoga
to herbal remedies and even Wicca and spiritualism. Yet
questions still remain from the intensive searching of the
last several decades, such as when are we going to get free,
anyway? And how do we explain the inexplicable?
These were the questions on my mind when I found myself
journeying down the coast toward Los Angeles for an
encounter with three women of Castaneda's sorcery lineage:
Florinda Donner Grau, Taisha Abelar, and Carol Tiggs.
When Florinda Donner-Grau and I first met, she told me
about an encounter that serves well to explain the threshold
that many people have already encountered. As she walked
down the streets in downtown Los Angeles, she saw a floating
blob of energy. As she watched it bounce up and down the
street, she was a little unsure about her senses. She tugged
on the shoulder of a man standing nearby whose mouth was
open wide in a state of disbelief--or maybe bewilderment.
She saw that he too was looking at the blob.
As a sorcerer, Donner-Grau is aware that reality is
largely perception and that what we choose to perceive and
not to perceive is based on our training. So perhaps the man
in L.A. represents a sort of graduation in the school of
larger possibilities, a generation prepared by Castaneda and
others to perceive subtler energies.
With the recent publication of Castaneda's ninth book,
as well as books by Florinda Donner-Grau and Taisha Abelar,
Carlos Castaneda's sorcerers party has evolved into seems to
beckon forth that this reality is not the only one; others
do exist into which we can transcend.
Why are the women of this lineage just beginning to come out
and speak about their practices?
Florinda Donner-Grau: Well, there is a fundamental
difference in the way males and females perceive and respond
to reality. Females, such as Taisha, Carol, and I, didn't
write about anything for twenty years. This is the
fundamental difference: females need to embody a system of
belief before they can write about it. While males build
their bridges of understanding with words, women build their
understanding with their life. Both are equally valid ways
of understanding, yet they are very different ways of
processing life.
In terms of energy the male cones toward knowledge; he
builds step by step. In physics, this stepping can be
described like a cone, where males are always moving toward
a source but never reaching it. With females, it is
different because that cone is reversed. Because of the
womb, females have the capacity to perceive knowledge
directly. There is no reason for her to explain because she
already knows. And it is this knowingness, this experience
of being connected with the source-what we call Intent-that
sorcerers want to get back to. Females have an inherent
advantage in that they know Intent directly, while the male
is always approaching it.
What is the purpose of being connected with this source,
Intent?
Florinda Donner-Grau: Well, I'll tell you a story. I love
books; I'm an avid reader. Now Carlos hasn't read a book in
over twenty years. I know that because he gave all his books
to me. Now I'm very interested in phenomenology because as
an intellectual pursuit, it is the only one that comes close
to sorcery. Well, I'll be reading something and then I'll
ask Carlos a question. He'll be quiet for about ten minutes
and then he'll give me an explanation of exactly what I have
been reading. At that point, I know that he's been out there
grabbing that knowledge from elsewhere. And this ability has
no limitation; I can ask him something about physics and he
immediately gives me a bonafide answer.
How would you describe what he is doing?
Carol Tiggs: I would say that he is practicing dreaming,
which is a way of describing that he is using his energetic
body to grab hold of a line of energy and access information
directly from the source of the universe.
Florinda Donner-Grau: And Carlos knows exactly what line to
grab. Seers see that it is all out there anyway. But what
makes a capable sorcerer is the ability to access these
lines of information with control and at will. Recently,
Carlos took a group of twenty people to a small church in
Mexico (written about in several of his books). While in the
church, he took the whole group into a state of dreaming and
journeyed into another world.
How does one learn how to do this?
Florinda Donner-Grau: It's all a matter of having enough
energy to be able to see. We're all so consumed by the
everydayness of life that we simply don't have any energy
left over to see.
How do people use daily life to begin to find where they are
draining themselves energetically?
Carol Tiggs: When you look back over your workday, one of
the clues to where you lost your energy is where you began
to feel tired and not energetically yourself. Those places
are where you'll find your answers and start to develop some
perspective-and you'll be able to begin to pull back your
energy from these events and begin to start examining the
patterns that keep you stuck within the ego game of hero and
victim.
Is this process different for the males and the females?
Florinda Donner-Grau: The process isn't any different. When
you recapitulate, you take yourself back and recreate every
event as it happened. Once you have the energy, this happens
automatically and you don't have to reach it through any
shamanistic means, such as fasting and so on. You can begin
any day and start from that day and move backwards. I've
done four recapitulations of my entire life to date and I
find something new each time. And what I find is that not
directly but indirectly we always try to be the hero
ourselves.
At some of the lectures we have given, people are
always taking notes and I find myself saying to them, "No,
don't take notes, because those things are meaningless. Just
listen." All of their energy is gong into taking notes and
they're missing half of what is really going on.
Taisha Abelar: We constantly hear people say, If only I was
a part of your group, then I could do this or that. But what
they don't understand is that wherever you are, that is
where you start.
Carol Tiggs: Sorcery is really just perception. There are no
rituals, no dancing, no nothing. Just perception and some
techniques to enhance perception through gathering up of
oneself energetically. There are aids, such as not-doing
techniques.
Taisha Abelar: Or just watching your thoughts and hearing
what you are really thinking. You can learn a lot by doing
that.
Carol Tiggs: What I've found is that people generally fall
into one of two categories: either they have to be in
control or they are being controlled by something else. When
you come from these two scenarios, you generally aren't
perceiving your life clearly. By recapitulating you light up
in your awareness exactly the energies (or reality) that was
constructed so that you can begin to perceive the patterns
and programming that control you.
Taisha Abelar: When you begin to clearly see the social
patterns that control you, you start to move into stalking
yourself. This is where you can become an active participant
in life. Suddenly your boss is no longer that evil, horrible
controller that he once was. Instead he becomes a mirror by
which you start to see where you are trapped into the games
of this reality. These games are what consume or tie up
people's energy and keep them from perceiving the true
energetic nature of this reality.
When you move away from the consensus of everyday life,
you can allow the Intent or the dream that has been set up
by Intent to become the moving force, the guide.
Florinda Donner-Grau: To do this you have to relinquish this
feeling of having to be the one in control. But believe me,
even after you have recapitulated, you still have that
feeling that you have this one little area over here and
that once you get to it, then you will be the one who is in
charge.
Let's get back to the ways in which males and females
perceive. If females perceive directly, then why aren't most
females walking around steeped in understanding or
knowingness of Intent?
Florinda Donner-Grau: Males have an energetic advantage in
the physical world. Though the male cone shape configuration
of energy makes perceiving the source of Intent more
difficult, it is ideal for being able to work stronger in
the physical world . There is no way for females to compete
against that energetic advantage as long as they are
imitating roles that males have created. Instead we as
females have to find our own resources and break this cycle
of imitation so that we can truly begin to evolve into
something different.
What is that evolvement?
Carol Tiggs: To tell you the truth, I really don't know.
What is our Intent as we evolve and what does this
evolvement entail? For female sorcerers, part of this comes
into enhancing the secondary functions of our wombs, which
are the dreaming organs in the female body. And we do this
by recapitulating, breaking old patterns, gathering up our
energy, so that we can begin to dream a new dream.
Taisha Abelar: Whatever has happened to us-and something has
happened-we hope to convey to younger people that change is
possible. But there has to be some kind of critical mass to
make this change possible.
Florinda Donner-Grau: When you go against the enormous
consensus that constitutes everyday reality, you are
pounding against a stone wall. When sorcerers enter into
dreaming, the first thing they will usually encounter is a
bank of fog. When you see this fog you are pulling at
something else energetically.
ln a way, sorcery is like Chinese Medicine in that it
treats the body as if it were a field of energy. Western
Medicine treats the body as if it were an object so it
doesn't take advantage of the more powerful energetic
reality. Consequently you have doctors cutting out matter
instead of using energy to change it. Medicine, like modem
man, would change dramatically if it took advantage of these
energetic principles to aid in a metamorphis of current
limitations and illnesses.
Carol Tiggs: What a sorcerer searches for is that evolvement
within his awareness or energetic field; that moment or
possibility of change into a state of being that has more
wellness.
Florinda Donner-Grau: Currently there is so much invested in
institutions like the A.M.A. that there is no way that they
are going to change things like that. But what they are
doing to the body is horrendous. They teach us that medicine
has advanced, but that simply isn't true. Now we have Aids
and cancer and we really don't know what the hell we are
doing.
I had a young female friend who died of intestinal
cancer a couple of months ago. On the outside she was living
the perfect life but on the inside she was being eaten
alive. You see, her husband was a president of one of those
huge corporations and you wouldn't believe the pains she
went through to impress people. She was killing herself to
impress other people. I asked her, "If things are so bad,
why didn't you seek some help?" But she said that she was
worried about what people would think. I answered back,
"What will they think when you are dead?" Now, she is dead,
and they don't think a thing. If that is the price you are
going to pay, then take off.
But that's what we do. You see, in a way, we're still
monkeys. Don Juan used to tease us and say that we are like
a monkey who has reached into a gourd to grab some seeds.
The monkey can't get his hand out as long as he holds on to
those seeds. Humans are very much the same way. Our social
expectations are the seeds which consume our awareness. All
the monkey would have to do to become free is to just let go
of those damn seeds, but he won't. We won't let go of the
seeds to get ourselves out of a trapped situation. We just
can't let go.
Gary Larson drew a cartoon showing an ape who had
fallen out of a tree and was laying flat on the ground.
Under the drawing was the transcription: The dawn of man.
The only thing he forgot to add was that the monkey had
fallen onto a patch of seeds. You see, he had grabbed for
the seeds; that was the real fall of man.
Magical Blend Magazine (c) 1994
=========================
Version: 0.4 (under construction)
Last-Updated: Tue May 17 12:54:52 CDT 1994
--------------------------
Summerized from Tales of Power, Washington Square Press.
The secret of the luminous beings is that we are perceivers,
we are an awareness without solidity or bounds. The world we
think we see is only a description of world told to us by
our internal dialog, a description that has been taught to
us by others. We are trapped inside that bubble of
perception and what we witness on its walls is a reflection
of our world view, our description.
As luminous beings, our perception is controlled by the
position of our Assemblage Point (the point where our
luminous being focuses its awareness on the energy fibers of
the universe). There are infinite worlds outside our daily
perceptions. By stopping the internal dialog you break
through this barrier to the totality of oneself.
To this end sorcerers use "the right way of walking" as a
practical task; it saturates the tonal and without the
one-to-one relation with the elements of its description the
tonal becomes silent. Also used are acting without believing
or expecting rewards; erasing personal history; and
"dreaming". To help erase personal history the techniques of
losing self-importance, assuming responsibility, and using
death as an adviser are applied. To aide in "dreaming" the
three techniques of disrupting the routines of life, the
gait of power, and not-doing are used. These techniques are
bound together by living like a warrior, to give temperance
and strength to withstand the path of knowledge.
The nagual is the unspeakable. All the possible feelings and
beings and selves float in it like barges, peaceful,
unaltered, forever. Then the glue of life binds some of them
together and a being is created. That being loses the sense
of its true nature and becomes blinded by the glare and
clamor of the tonal, where all unified organizations exist.
That cluster is the bubble of perception. The secret of the
double is in the bubble of perception. In the nagual, the
cluster of feelings can be rearranged to any form and made
to assemble instantly anywhere. In other words, one can
perceive the here and the there at once. The nagual is
witnessed by "will", and the tonal by "reason".
The tonal is but a reflection of that indescribable unknown
filled with order; the nagual is but a reflection of that
indescribable void that contains everything.
---------------------------
Summerized from _The Art of Dreaming_.
First Gate:
You reach the first gate when you become aware you are
falling asleep or have a gigantically real dream (perhaps
what some would call a lucid dream). You cross the first
gate when you are able to sustain the sight of any item in
your dream.
In order to offset the evanescent quality of dreams,
sorcerers have devised the use of the starting point item.
Ever time you isolate it and look at it, you get a surge
of energy,
Second Gate:
You cross the second gate when you are able to change from
dream to dream. For example, you wake up from a dream in
another dream or use an item of your dream to trigger
another dream.
Third Gate:
You reach the third gate when you dream yourself asleep.
You cross the third gate by moving your engery body after
having done so. At the third gate you begin to merge your
dreaming reality with the reality of the daily world.
Fourth Gate:
At the fourth gate, the energy body travels to specific,
concrete places either in this world, out of this world,
or places that exist only in the intent of others.
Go to sleep in a certain position, then in dreaming, dream
that you lie down in the same position and fall asleep
again. This is called the twin positions and it solidifies
your dreaming attention. The second dream is intending in
the second attention: the only way to cross the fourth
gate of dreaming.
------------------------------
Exceprts from _The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of
Knowledge_; pages 82-87.
A man of knowledge is one who has followed truthfully the
hardships of learning. A man who has, without rushing or
without faltering, gone as far as he can in unraveling the
secrets of power and knowledge. To become a man of
knowledge one must challenge and defeat the four natural
enemies.
The first enemy of a man of knowledge is Fear. A terrible
enemy--treacherous, and difficult to overcome. It remains
concealed at every turn of the way, prowling, waiting. And
if the man, terrified in its presence, runs away, his
enemy will have put an end to his quest. Once a man has
vanquished fear, he is free from it for the rest of his
life because, instead of fear, he has acquired clarity of
mind which erases fear.
And thus he has encountered his second enemy; Clarity.
That clarity of mind, which is so hard to obtain, dispels
fear, but also blinds. If the man yields to this
make-believe power, he has succumbed to his second enemy
and will be patient when he should rush. And he will
fumble with learning until he winds up incapable of
learing anything more.
He must defy his clarity and use it only to see, and wait
patiently and measure carefully before taking new steps;
he must think, above all, that his clarity is almost a
mistake. And a moment will come when he will understand
that his clarity was only a point before his eyes. And
thus he will have overcome his second enemy, and will
arrive at a position where nothing can harm him anymore.
It will be true power; the third enemy of a man of
knowledge.
A man at this stage hardly notices his third enemy closing
in on him. And suddenly, without knowing, he will
certainly have lost the battle. His enemy will have turned
him into a cruel, capricious man. The man must defy his
power, deliberately. He has to come to realize the power
he has seemingly conquered is in reality never his. He
will reach a point where everything is held in check. He
will know then when and how to use his power. And thus he
will have defeated his third enemy.
The man will be, by then, at the end of his journey of
learning, and almost without warning he will come upon the
last of his enemies: Old age. This enemy is the cruelest
of all, the one he won't be able to defeat completely, but
only fight away. His desire to retreat will overrule all
his clarity, his power, and his knowledge. But if the man
sloughs off his tiredness, and lives his fate through, he
can then be called a man of knowledge, if only for the
brief moment when he succeeds in fighting off his last,
invincible enemy. That moment of clarity, power, and
knowledge is enough.
---------
Teachings: Jun 23 1961 - Sep 30 1965
Separate Reality: Apr 2 1968 - Oct 18 1970
Journey to Ixtlan: Dec 17 1960 - May 1971
[I would like short reviews of each book, if you do it
just email it to castaneda-request@austin.bsdi.com]
--------
The Eight Points
+---Seeing----+
/ \
Nagual Will-----Feeling-----Talking---Reason Tonal
\ /
+---Dreaming--+
Stopping the Internal Dialog
Stopping our description of the world; breaking the
barrier of perception. Stopping the internal dialog is
the key to the sorcerers' world. The rest of the
activities are only props to accelerate the effect.
The Right Way of Walking
Tales of Power, WSP Paperback edition, page 236, don
Juan says: The warrior, first by curling his fingers,
drew attention to the arms; and then by looking, without
focusing his eyses, at any point directly in front of
him on the arc that started at the tip of his feet and
ended above the horizon, he literally flooded his
"tonal" with information. The "tonal", without its
one-to-one relationship with the elements of its
description, was incapable of talking to itself, and
thus one became silent.
Acting Without Believing
Acting just for the hell of it, without expecting
rewards.
Erasing Personal History
Removing cues of oneself from the world at large, making
oneself unavailable. This frees you from the trap of
others attention. This also helps to remove Self-Pity
from your world.
Losing Self-Importance
Another aide in removing Self-Pity.
Assuming Responsibility
Assume responsibility for your actions and being in this
world.
Using Death as an Advisor
Take every act as your last battle on earth. It doesn't
matter if you win or lose a battle but never abandon
yourself, even to your death. You should replace
Self-Pity as your advisor and use death instead. Actions
taken with death as an advisor have power.
Disrupting the Routines of Life
Our routines are what allows death to stalk us. A hunter
learns the routines of its pray and uses them to kill
it.
Gait of Power
Running with abandon, but without abandoning oneself.
Imagine yourself being chased in the dark by a ferocious
animal, if you get away, this is how you will have run.
Not-Doing
Focusing your attention on features of the world that
are ordinarily overlooked, such as the shadows of
things.
Dreaming
Using the natural shift of the Assemblage Point while
asleep.
Together, disrupting routines, the gate of power, and
not-doing are avenues for learning new ways of
perceiving the world, and they give a warrior an inkling
of incredible possibilities of action. These lead to the
knowledge of a separate and pragmatic world of
"dreaming".
Stalking
Fixing the Assemblage Point in position to give your
perception coherence. Used in the daily world it's a way
of behaving towards our fellow men.
Recapitulation
Used to free energy trapped in the world. Performed by
visualizing past events (to shift your Assemblage Point
to that point) and reclaiming any energy you left behind
and returning energy that isn't yours.
Mood of a Warrior
A mood in which to approch the world, acting with
abandon but without abandoning oneself. Using death as
an advisor, each act is your last battle on earth.
Controlled Folly
Since a man of knowledge "sees" and he knows that
nothing is more important than anything else then
nothing matters to him, he has only his controlled
folly, acting as if it mattered even though he knows it
does not.
Gazing
A sourcerery technique of looking without staring at
something. The "not-doing" of looking at something.
Worthy Opponent
An opponent to spur you on the path of knowledge.
Having to Believe
Having no choice, the situation inspired by the worth
opponent.
Man of Knowledge
A warrior who has become a sorcerer and who "sees" and
knows. The ultimate state of being, in total control
over your being.
Energy Body
???
Assemblage Point
The point at which your awarness is focused on your
luminous being causing the energy fibers at large to
align with the energy fibers inside your cocoon.
Glow of Awarness
The glowing point at which the Assemblage Point is
focused, indicating that the being is alive. This glow
lights the fibers and makes the luminous being percieve
them.
First Attention
The attention of the tonal. Used to assemble our daily
world.
Second Attention
The attention of the nagual.
Third Attention
The attention after burning with the fire from within.
Dreaming Attention
The attention used while dreaming to exercise the energy
body, it's a gateway to the second attention.
First Ring of Power
Also the first attention
Second Ring of Power
Also the second attention
Gates of Dreaming
The seven gates of dreaming are energy obstacles that
must be overcome.
Dreaming Emissary
???
Scouts
Energy beings from other realms in your dreams. By
isolating then and indending to follow them they can
transport your awareness to inconceivable realms.
Dreaming Awake
This state results from moving the Assemblage Point
during normal awareness.
The Tonal and the Nagual
The tonal is but a reflection of that indescribable
unknown filled with order; the nagual is but a
reflection of that indescribable void that contains
everything.
The Dreamer and the Dreamed
The secret of the dreamer and the dreamed is that the
dreamed dreams the dreamer, just as the dreamer dreams
the dreamed.
The Secret of the Luminous Beings
The secret of the luminous beings is that we are
perceivers, we are an awareness without solidity or
bounds. The world we think we see is only a description
of world told to us by our internal dialog, a
description that has been taught to us by others. We are
trapped inside that bubble of perception and what we
witness on its walls is a reflection of our world view,
our description.
Bubble of Perception
The bubble of perception is the cluster of feelings that
have been assembled in the nagual and bound together by
the force of life.
The following are notes I took at a talk by Taisha Abelar
on
10 October 1992 at the Alexandria II bookstore in
Pasadena, California.
These are somewhat cryptic but may be of interest to some
on the list.
((my comments if any are in double parentheses))
The Activity of sorcerers is that of Dreaming yourself.
Society is oriented toward a "poor baby" syndrome (society
and the individual are at effect).
Drills to resolve this :
Write your internal dialogue down for 3 days, wait three
days and read it
Mark up the newspaper wherever the poor baby concept is
expressed.
We presently have a mating/courtship compulsion
the self is presented as a "poor baby" to the world
Stalking the self - see how you are living.
The reason for all this is that mankind's assemblage point
is in a certain position.
You can move the assemblage point to another place.
That's what sorcerers do - move it away from the poor baby
position
The assembalge point is a place of luminosity on the
energetic body,
it lights the filiaments. When the filiaments of the
energetic body match those of the universe perception
takes place.
How do you move the assemblage point?
You need energy - this may be obtained from not doing the
presentation of the self in everyday life and stopping
seeking courtship.
curtail needingness.
After you've increased your energy THEN practice sorceric
techniques.
1. The recapitulation (see Sorcerer's crossing)
2. Quiet the internal dialogue (Meditation and breathing
techniques are good for this)
((Taisha told a rather amusing story of going to a guru in
India who had a $900 breathing technique))
The $900 dollar breath: 3 exhalations, 1 inhalation
(Use) any technique that works - sorcery passes, gazing
techniques.
Practice impeccability, you'll know impeccability when you
have no self interest.
Act without expecting rewards or returns.
Act impeccably and the assemblage point moves to the"
place of no pity "
Heightened awareness.
When the assemblage point moves far enough you'll see
different worlds.
You'll know when you are there - (you'll be) very quiet,
unknown to yourself, you'll feel solitude but not
loneliness.
Energy comes to you and will guide you, energy of the
double, the ethereal body. " Poor Baby" ravages energy.
That's the beginning, heightened awareness is the door to
infinity.
NOW you can use dreaming and stalking.
Dreaming, use dreams to enhance awareness of being, wake
up the energetic body. The art of dreaming - move the
assemblage point systematically (find your hands, etc.)
Art of stalking - when assemblage point moves you have to
fix it at new position - give it reality - explore, get
adventuresome.
find out the ramifications of the new position from a
bodily energy viewpoint. Then develop the energetic body.
Use it (while awake).
Solidify it and act from it.
Where Taisha Abelar is is a poistion of the assemblage
point.
Moving assemblage point to where their's (other sorcerers)
were.
The earth too has an assemblage point ((cf. Ley lines
etc.))
embarrassment disrupts the assemblage point.
There are other worlds than this consensual world.
Nagual - pronounced " NO - ALL"
You can move the assemblage point in dreaming.
(( Taisha Abelar made a loud scream at this point in the
talk))
Shriek - makes the assemblage point shift and solidify the
energy body.
For a normal human the assemblage point is behind the left
shoulder at the back.
Perception is encoded in the body (cf. Husserl,
phenomenologists)
Perception - a facet of corporeality.
The only way to change the energy body is to move the
assemblage point, lighting up different filiaments.
Memories can reengage, restimulate different energetic
memories.
Dream yourself, its up to you
A man waits for death and while he waits he surrounds
himself with beauty and with strength " The Death Defier"
The change comes from within, to change the world, the
environment, the universe.
You must move the assemblage point
Recapitulation - make list of everyone you've known begin
with the latest person and work backwards
Breath in over right shoulder to left then exhale back
(rotating the head back) - visualize and breath you can do
it in the world.
Don't poor baby yourself.
Use devices to jolt yourself you can move the assemblage
point up and down.
(( She talks about her experiences in the other world with
the trees
(described in Sorcerer's Crossing)))
Competition among the roots of trees (not recommended to
move the Assemblage point down)
The greatest challenge - practice controlled folly, you
see the situation and you don't do anything about it - you
don't judge - judging is death.
Inorganic entities, they permeate this other realm of the
universe.
Don Juan's/Carlo's new book The Seven Gates of Dreaming
The second gate is these guys - Gargoyles/vampires/shadows
they inhabit a close realm and feed off our energy.
Don Juan's allys.
Seers can see this energy. Build integrity - internal
strength.
Gazing at gravel/leaves/moon/clouds
But if you don't have the sobriety of recapitulation then
there are hazards.
The Inorganic Entities come thru tunnels, ignore them.
The Inorganic Entities obey your commands.
You can recapitualte your dreams or recapitulate in your
dreams.
If awake Normal recapitulation start at right inhale to
left, exhale to center.
In dreams inhale Clockwise, exhale counterclockwise in
center.
There are layers of recapitulation.
Best place for assemblage point - an infinite number of
other places.
The spirit, intent, will let it move , Best intermediate
place - "The place of no pity"
Do the newspaper exercise (looking for "poor baby")
Take a pen and paper to your internal dialogue.
Scratch the surface, stalk yourself.
Taisha Abelar and her fellow sorcerers are now moving
assemblage points elsewhere and using energetic bodies to
establish realities there.
Proper use of sexual energy. if you've got energy to spare
- ((sex is)) OK if you've recapitualted.
If you want to move the assemblage point to other areas
use sexual energy to do dreaming.
The second gate is the graveyard of failed sorcerers.
Control, the stalker's sobriety.
level 1 energy body
level 2 energy and physical body (this needs lots more
energy)
((the above is describing 'going places' via dreaming as
an energy body or taking the physical body too))
After recapitulating there is only NOW.
This permits discrepancies - coming and going from the
consensual universe.
When moving the assemblage point either:
1. Get rid of friends
2. Use them as controlled folly.
The world has multitudes of realities
The real challenge is in the world - can you get off the
assemblage point position?
Stalking - move assemblage point, give the energy body a
jolt.
((an example of a stalking exercise follows))
Tie up the dominant hand and use the other.
Not doing exercises
Walk backwards
Walk on all fours with kneepads
any trigger - sound/time/smell causes the body to remember
cover up mirrors - (they reinforce agreements and put
attention on the self)
Stalk yourself
look at the world
Begin recapitulation
Dream and find your hands in your dream
Not doing
Disrupt routines
and do exercise to wake up the energetic body (physical
exercise)
These are the of notes of the Abelar public talk in Menlo
Park, California held January 7, 1994. These notes are not
in the public domain; they may be distributed to friends
interested in Abelar, CC and Donner, but please do not
repost them on other bulletin boards and they may not be
published in any magazine etc. Please respect the style of
teaching of Abelar, Castaneda etc. which seems to be based
on limited public display.
"Tonight's talk with be on Stopping. To Stop you must only
do one thing. Decide to be a warrior or not.
"The assemblage point fluctuates naturally in sleep. It will
also move under the influence of drugs, deep meditation,
starvation, sensory deprivation.
"The assemblage point is located behind you at the level of
your shoulder blades.
"Sorcerers use Discipline to move their assemblage points.
"Everyone of us can 'see' energy - even now - but you are no
longer aware of it. Infants on the other hand perceive
energy directly. However, as they get older the 'Usher'
introduces them to the world of ordinary reality. Instead of
seeing amorphous energy, the infant one day will assemble
the energy configuration into...a table. A toy. A dog. A
tree. Each time the transformation comes from the Usher.
"First and foremost we live in a world of energy. Only
secondarily do we live in a world of objects. The position
of the assemblage point determines the reality that we
assemble of the energy.
"The sorcerer [presumably unlike the hunger artists and
sensory deprivers] seeks to FIX the assembly point at a new
location [not just move it]. To agglutinate energy again
into new sets of 'objects' and hence into a new 'reality.'
"This world is not as important as we make it out to be. Our
language is biased; we call it 'reality' when it is really
only one of many modes of the assemblage point. For
convenience though let us refer to it as 'ordinary' reality.
"Ordinarily once the Ushers do their work of helping us
perceive the various energy configurations as 'objects,' the
assemblage point is fixed once and for all and the
assemblage point does not move thereafter.
"We are forced to maintain a world of everyday life until we
die.
"By the way death, from a sorcerer's standpoint, is not the
fast process that it appears to be. The glow of the
assemblage point fades quickly, but all the other energy
strands that make up the energy egg of the human being can
take a long long time to disperse. This process can also be
slowed down, for example if you were buried in a lead coffin
right after death.
"The alternative to being stuck all your life on one
assemblage point is to move it by the practice of
Discipline, and then to fix it at a new location while
awake.
"A firm foundation in the warrior's way is required for
heavy duty stopping and dreaming."
"Discipline is not the same thing as practiced by Catholic
girls in a convent. Nor the same thing as what USED to be
practiced by the nuns themselves. It is not getting up early
to do aerobics before going to work, or eating sensibly.
These are just routines, habits. Not a warrior's Discipline.
"From the point of view of a warrior, stalker or dreamer,
Discipline is abstract - an unbending hooking to a purpose -
so that the actual implementation of the Discipline is
actually very flexible and fluid. It takes courage of steel,
there is no room for doubt or hesitation which will
otherwise rise up to pull you back to the everyday world of
tantrums and self indulgence.
"Discipline leads to harmony, well being and balance.
Everyday life, on the other hand, is indulgence.
"Unbending unyielding purpose is what is requird for
Discipline in our quest for freedom.
"At the Phoenix Bookstore [ed. note - Santa Monica, CA I
think] talks recently - some of you were there - Carlos
Castaneda gave a talk of the 'warrior's way.'
"You can't 'learn' to be a warrior! It is just a decision
you have to make one day for yourself on your own. Asking
someone to teach you to be a warrior is the wrong approach,
it is the 'poor baby me' approach to warriorship.
"Carlos Castaneda said that first and foremost the
transfiguring event in a warrior's life, what is at the
bedrock of becoming a warrior, is accepting responsibility
for your own death. This is the bottom line. Don't assume
you are immortal.
"Face infinity and death in the mirror at night.
"Just by doing this, taking death as an advisor this way,
lots of things will fall off, fall away from you.
"Assume responsibility for your perception of the world. Not
just the single perception you were born into. Instead
intend the movement of your assemlage point to other areas
of the luminous egg. If you tighten your belt, curtail the
other things in your life the pont will JUST MOVE ON ITS OWN
without any exercises or routines on your part. The lamp of
awareness, strong now that you have cut the excess baggage
out of your life, will shine on all the other possible
positions of your assemblage point.
"The next rule of being a warrior is to pay your debts. A
warrior is very generous. He or she does not look at the
world in terms of what other people owe him or her. The
warrior looks at the world in terms of opportunities to
discharge his or her debts to other people so he or she will
not be tied up forever.
"This paying of debts leads to an unbiased affection for all
things. Most of what we consider to be affection is the
trading of favors with other people. The warrior, on the
other hand, gives affection with no expectation of return.
It is not that the warrior is trying to eliminate affection,
be an unfeeling person. The warrior's affection is just so
unbiased it unravels everyday connections. The warrior's
affection is so unbiased that if the warrior goes into
another reality completely different from this one the
warrior's affection will extend to all the other new beings
that exist in that other reality.
"If someone has really INJURED you this also needs to be
paid back. The concept of paying debts is not a sentimental
concept limited to returning the good connections. The point
is to loosen all connections. If you are connected to
someone who injured you, you may need to sever that
connection by paying back the injury. So it is not a moral
issue; it goes two ways."
"The warrior's path is an escape hatch, somewhere to go
after you have finished dismantling everyday life. There is
no room for crapping out, for fear, for indulgence, for
regrets or for nostalgia when going into the unknown.
"Unbending determination is the only choice you can make or
terrible things will happen to you once you have accumulated
enough energy [by using death as an advisor to cut loose the
excess baggage].
"You CANNOT be half assed, half willing or, with your
partial energy, even worse things will happen to you [than
if you had never taken this path].
"Take back the energy used to support the everyday world [by
using death as an advisor and paying back debts]. The
everyday world is a gigantic edifice but it rest on just