Sorcery is
the act of embodying some specialized theoretical and practical premises
about the nature and role of perception in molding the universe around
us.
Our world is only one in a cluster of
consecutive worlds, arranged like the layers of an onion. Even though we
have been energetically conditioned to perceive solely our world, we still
have the capability of entering into those other realms, which are as
real, unique, absolute, and engulfing as our own world is.
For us to perceive those other realms, not only do we have
to covet them but we need to have sufficient energy to seize them. Their
existence is constant and independent of our awareness, but their
inaccessibility is entirely a consequence of our energetic conditioning.
In other words, simply and solely because of that conditioning, we are
compelled to assume that the world of daily life is the one and only
possible world.
Believing that our energetic
conditioning is correctable, sorcerers of ancient times developed a set of
practices designed to recondition our energetic capabilities to perceive.
They called this set of practices the art of dreaming . It's
the gateway to infinity.
Through
dreaming we can perceive other worlds, which we can certainly
describe, but we can't describe what makes us perceive them. Yet we can
feel how dreaming opens up those other realms.
Dreaming seems to be a sensation--a process in our bodies, an
awareness in our minds.
Dreaming
instruction is divided into two parts. One is about dreaming
procedures, the other about the purely abstract explanations of these
procedures: an interplay between enticing one's intellectual curiosity
with the abstract principles of dreaming and guiding one to
seek an outlet in its practices.
The human psyche is infinitely more complex than our mundane
or academic reasoning has led us to believe.
The second attention is an energetic
configuration of awareness.
In order to appreciate the position of dreamers and
dreaming , one has to understand the struggle of modern-day
sorcerers to steer sorcery away from concreteness toward the
abstract.
Concreteness is the practical part of
sorcery. The obsessive fixation of the mind on practices and techniques.
And the unwarranted influence over people.
The
abstract is the search for freedom, freedom to perceive, without
obsessions, all that's humanly possible. Present-day sorcerers seek the
abstract because they seek freedom; they have no interest in concrete
gains.
After lifelong discipline and training,
sorcerers acquire the capacity to perceive the essence of things, a
capacity they call seeing .
To
perceive the energetic essence of things means that you perceive energy
directly. By separating the social part of perception, you'll perceive the
essence of everything. Whatever we are perceiving is energy, but since we
can't directly perceive energy, we process our perception to fit a mold.
This mold is the social part of perception, which you have to
separate.
You have to separate it because it
deliberately reduces the scope of what can be perceived and makes us
believe that the mold into which we fit our perception is all that exists.
For man to survive now, his perception must change at its social
base.
This social base of perception is the
physical certainty that the world is made of concrete objects. I call this
a social base because a serious and fierce effort is put out by everybody
to guide us to perceive the world the way we do.
Everything is energy. The whole universe is energy. The social base of our
perception should be the physical certainty that energy is all there is. A
mighty effort should be made to guide us to perceive energy as energy.
Then we would have both alternatives at our fingertips.
To train people in such a fashion is possible and this is precisely
what I am doing with you. I am teaching you a new way of perceiving,
first, by making you realize we process our perception to fit a mold and,
second, by fiercely guiding you to perceive energy directly. This method
is very much like the one used to teach us to perceive the world of daily
affairs.
Our entrapment in processing our
perception to fit a social mold loses its power when we realize we have
accepted this mold, as an inheritance from our ancestors, without
bothering to examine it.
To perceive a world of
hard objects that had either a positive or a negative value must have been
utterly necessary for our ancestors' survival. After ages of perceiving in
such a manner, we are now forced to believe that the world is made up of
objects.
It is unquestionably a world of objects.
To prove it, all we have to do is bump into them. We are not arguing that.
I am saying that this is first a world of energy; then it's a world of
objects. If we don't start with the premise that it is a world of energy,
we'll never be able to perceive energy directly. We'll always be stopped
by the physical certainty of the hardness of objects.
Our way of perceiving is a predator's way. There is another mode,
the one I am familiarizing you with: the act of perceiving the essence of
everything, energy itself, directly.
To perceive
the essence of everything will make us understand, classify, and describe
the world in entirely new, more exciting, more sophisticated terms. Terms
that correspond to sorcery truths, which have no rational foundation and
no relation whatsoever to the facts of our daily world but which are
self-evident truths for the sorcerers who perceive energy directly and
see the essence of everything.
For
such sorcerers, the most significant act of sorcery is to see
the essence of the universe. The essence of the universe resembles
incandescent threads stretched into infinity in every conceivable
direction, luminous filaments that are conscious of themselves in ways
impossible for the human mind to comprehend.
From
seeing the essence of the universe, sorcerers go on to
see the energy essence of human beings and depict human
beings as bright shapes that resemble giant eggs and call them luminous
eggs.
When sorcerers see a human
being they see a giant, luminous shape that floats, making,
as it moves, a deep furrow in the energy of the earth, just as if the
luminous shape had a taproot that was dragging.
The decisive finding of the sorcerers of antiquity and the crucial feature
of human beings as luminous balls, is a round spot of intense brilliance,
the size of a tennis ball, permanently lodged inside the luminous ball,
flush with its surface, about two feet back from the crest of a person's
right shoulder blade.
The luminous ball is much
larger than the human body. The spot of intense brilliance is part of this
ball of energy, and it is located on a place at the height of the shoulder
blades, an arm's length from a person's back. The old sorcerers named it
the assemblage point after seeing what it does. It makes us
perceive. In human beings, perception is assembled there, on that point.
Seeing that all living beings have such a point of
brilliance, the old sorcerers surmised that perception in general must
take place on that spot, in whatever pertinent manner.
What they saw that made them conclude that perception
takes place on the assemblage point was first, that out of the millions of
the universe's luminous energy filaments passing through the entire
luminous ball, only a small number pass directly through the assemblage
point, as should be expected since it is small in comparison with the
whole. Next, they saw that a
spherical extra glow, slightly bigger than the assemblage point, always
surrounds it, greatly intensifying the luminosity of the filaments passing
directly through that glow.
Finally, they
saw two things. One, that the assemblage points of human
beings can dislodge themselves from the spot where they are usually
located. And, two, that when the assemblage point is on its habitual
position, perception and awareness seem to be normal, judging by the
normal behavior of the subjects being observed. But when their assemblage
points and surrounding glowing spheres are on a different position than
the habitual one, their unusual behavior seems to be the proof that their
awareness is different, that they are perceiving in an unfamiliar
manner. The conclusion the old sorcerers drew from
all this was that the greater the displacement of the assemblage point
from its customary position, the more unusual the consequent behavior and,
evidently, the consequent awareness and perception.
Notice that when I talk about seeing , I always say
"having the appearance of" or "seemed like." Everything one
sees is so unique that there is no way to talk about it
except by comparing it to something known to us.
The most adequate example of this difficulty is the way sorcerers talk
about the assemblage point and the glow that surrounds it. They describe
them as brightness, yet it cannot be brightness, because seers
see them without their eyes. They have to fill out the
difference, however, and say that the assemblage point is a spot of light
and that around it there is a halo, a glow. We are so visual, so ruled by
our predator's perception, that everything we see must be
rendered in terms of what the predator's eye normally sees.
After seeing what the assemblage point and its
surrounding glow seemed to be doing, the old sorcerers advanced an
explanation. They proposed that in human beings the assemblage point, by
focusing its glowing sphere on the universe's filaments of energy that
pass directly through it, automatically and without premeditation
assembles those filaments into a steady perception of the world.
How those filaments are assembled into a steady perception
of the world, no one can possibly know. Sorcerers see the
movement of energy, but just seeing the movement of energy
cannot tell them how or why energy moves.
Seeing that millions of conscious energy filaments pass
through the assemblage point, the old sorcerers postulated that in passing
through it they come together, amassed by the glow that surrounds it.
After seeing that the glow is extremely dim in people who
have been rendered unconscious or are about to die, and that it is totally
absent from corpses, they were convinced that this glow is
awareness.
The assemblage point and its
surrounding glow are the mark of life and consciousness. The inescapable
conclusion of the sorcerers of antiquity was that awareness and perception
go together and are tied to the assemblage point and the glow that
surrounds it.
I can't explain to you why, but
there is no way sorcerers can be mistaken about their seeing
. Now the conclusions they arrive at from their seeing might
be wrong, but that would be because they are naive, uncultivated. In order
to avoid this disaster, sorcerers have to cultivate their minds, in
whatever form they can.
It certainly would be
infinitely safer for sorcerers to remain solely at the level of describing
what they see , but the temptation to conclude and explain,
even if only to oneself, is far too great to resist.
When the assemblage point is displaced to another position, a new
conglomerate of millions of luminous energy filaments come together on
that point. The sorcerers of antiquity saw this and concluded
that since the glow of awareness is always present wherever the assemblage
point is, perception is automatically assembled there. Because of the
different position of the assemblage point, the resulting world, however,
cannot be our world of daily affairs.
The old
sorcerers were capable of distinguishing two types of assemblage point
displacement. One was a displacement to any position on the surface or in
the interior of the luminous ball; this displacement they called a
shift of the assemblage point. The other was a displacement
to a position outside the luminous ball; they called this displacement a
movement of the assemblage point. They found out that the
difference between a shift and a movement was the nature of the perception
each allows.
Since the shifts of the assemblage
point are displacements within the luminous ball, the worlds engendered by
them, no matter how bizarre or wondrous or unbelievable they might be, are
still worlds within the human domain. The human domain is the energy
filaments that pass through the entire luminous ball. By contrast,
movements of the assemblage point, since they are displacements to
positions outside the luminous ball, engage filaments of energy that are
beyond the human realm. Perceiving such filaments engenders worlds that
are beyond comprehension, inconceivable worlds with no trace of human
antecedents in them.
This business of the
assemblage point is an idea so farfetched, so inadmissible that there is
only one thing for you to do. See the assemblage point! It
isn't that difficult to see . The difficulty is in breaking
the retaining wall we all have in our minds that holds us in place. To
break it, all we need is energy. Once we have energy, seeing
happens to us by itself. The trick is in abandoning our fort of
self-complacency and false security.
It
is just a matter of having energy. The hard part is
convincing yourself that it can be done. For this, you need to trust the
nagual. The marvel of sorcery is that every sorcerer has to prove
everything with his own experience. I am telling you about the principles
of sorcery not with the hope that you will memorize them but with the hope
that you will practice them.
Our link is with the
spirit itself and only incidentally with the man who brings us its
message.
The assemblage point has nothing to do
with what we normally perceive as the body. It's part of the luminous egg,
which is our energy self.
It is displaced through
energy currents. Jolts of energy, originating outside or inside our energy
shape. These are usually unpredictable currents that happen randomly, but
with sorcerers they are very predictable currents that obey the
sorcerer's intent .
Every sorcerer
feels them. Every human being does, for that matter, but average human
beings are too busy with their own pursuits to pay any attention to
feelings like that.
When the assemblage point
moves outside the energy shape it pushes the contours of the energy shape
out, without breaking its energy boundaries.
The
end result of a movement of the assemblage point is a total change in the
energy shape of a human being. Instead of a ball or an egg, he becomes
something resembling a smoking pipe. The tip of the stem is the assemblage
point, and the bowl of the pipe is what remains of the luminous ball. If
the assemblage point keeps on moving, a moment comes when the luminous
ball becomes a thin line of energy. What makes mankind homogeneous is the
fact that we are all luminous balls.
Another topic
of our explanations is the indispensability of energetic uniformity and
cohesion for the purpose of perceiving. Mankind perceives the world we
know, in the terms we do, only because we share energetic uniformity and
cohesion. We automatically attain these two conditions of energy in the
course of our rearing. They are so taken for granted we do not realize
their vital importance until we are faced with the possibility of
perceiving worlds other than the world we know. At those moments, it
becomes evident that we need a new appropriate energetic uniformity and
cohesion to perceive coherently and totally.
Man's
energetic shape has uniformity in the sense that every human being on
earth has the form of a ball or an egg. And the fact that man's energy
holds itself together as a ball or an egg proves it has cohesion. An
example of a new uniformity and cohesion is the old sorcerers' energetic
shape when it became a line: every one of them uniformly became a line and
cohesively remained a line. Uniformity and cohesion at a line level
permitted those old sorcerers to perceive a homogeneous new
world.
The key to acquiring uniformity and
cohesion is the position of the assemblage point, or rather the fixation
of the assemblage point.
Those old sorcerers could
have reverted to being egglike but they did not. And then the line
cohesion set in and made it impossible for them to go back. What really
crystallized that line cohesion and prevented them but making the journey
back was a matter of choice and greed. The scope of what those sorcerers
were able to perceive and do as lines of energy was astronomically greater
than what an average man or any average sorcerer can do or
perceive.
The human domain when one is an energy
ball is whatever energy filaments pass through the space within the ball's
boundaries. Normally, we perceive not all the human domain but perhaps
only one thousandth of it. If we take this into consideration, the
enormity of what the old sorcerers did becomes apparent; they extended
themselves into a line a thousand times the size of a man as an energy
ball and perceived all the energy filaments that passed through that
line. Make a giant effort to understand the new
model of energy configuration I am outlining for you.
To understand all this certainly isn't an exercise for your reason.
I have no way of explaining what sorcerers mean by filaments inside and
outside the human shape. When seers see the human energy
shape, they see one single ball of energy. If there is
another ball next to it, the other ball is seen again as a
single ball of energy. The idea of a multitude of luminous balls comes
from our knowledge of human crowds. In the universe of energy, there are
only single individuals, alone, surrounded by the boundless. You must
see that for yourself.
To rearrange
uniformity and cohesion means to enter into the second attention by
retaining the assemblage point on its new position and keeping it from
sliding back to its original spot.
The old
sorcerers called the result of fixing the assemblage point on new
positions the second attention. And they treated the second attention as
an area of all-inclusive activity, just as the attention of the daily
world is. Sorcerers really have two complete areas for their endeavors: a
small one, called the first attention or the awareness of our daily world
or the fixation of the assemblage point on its habitual position; and a
much larger area, the second attention or the awareness of other worlds or
the fixation of the assemblage point on each of an enormous number of new
positions.
Every time anyone enters into the
second attention, the assemblage point is on a different position. To
remember that experience, then, means to relocate the assemblage point on
the exact position it occupied at the time those entrances into the second
attention occurred. Not only do sorcerers have total and absolute recall
but they relive every experience they had in the second attention by this
act of returning their assemblage point to each of those specific
positions.
Sorcerers dedicate a lifetime to fulfilling this task of
remembering.
Learning something in the second
attention is just like learning when we were children. What we learn
remains with us for live.
Entering into the second
attention forces you to sustain, for long periods of time, new positions
of your assemblage point and to perceive coherently in them, that is to
say, it forces you to rearrange your uniformity and cohesion.
The assemblage point becomes very easily displaced during
sleep. Dreams are totally associated with that displacement. The greater
the displacement, the more unusual the dream or vice versa: the more
unusual the dream, the greater the displacement.
Sorcerers view dreaming as an extremely sophisticated art;
the art of displacing the assemblage point at will from its habitual
position in order to enhance and enlarge the scope of what can be
perceived.
The art of dreaming is
anchored on five conditions in the energy flow of human beings.
-
. Only the energy filaments that pass directly through the
assemblage point can be assembled into coherent perception.
-
If the assemblage point is displaced to another position, no matter
how minute the displacement, different and unaccustomed energy filaments
begin to pass through it, engaging awareness and forcing the assembling
of these unaccustomed energy fields into a steady, coherent
perception.
-
In the course of ordinary dreams, the assemblage point becomes
easily displaced by itself to another position on the surface or in the
interior of the luminous egg.
-
The assemblage point can be made to move to positions outside the
luminous egg, into the energy filaments of the universe at
large.
-
Through discipline it is possible to cultivate and perform, in the
course of sleep and ordinary dreams, a systematic displacement of the
assemblage point.
As a preamble to the first lesson in dreaming , I will
talk about the second attention as a progression: beginning as an idea
that comes to us more like a curiosity than an actual possibility; turning
into something that can only be felt, as a sensation is felt; and finally
evolving into a state of being, or a realm of practicalities, or a
preeminent force that opens for us worlds beyond our wildest
fantasies.
Being a by-product of a displacement of
the assemblage point, the second attention does not happen naturally but
must be intended, beginning with intending it as
an idea and ending up with intending it as a steady and
controlled awareness of the assemblage points displacement.
The first step to power is to set up dreaming .
To set up dreaming means to have a precise and practical
command over the general situation of a dream.
This control is no different from the control we have over any situation
in our daily lives. Sorcerers are used to it and get it every time they
want or need to. In order for you to get used to it yourself I taught you
to look at your hands while dreaming .
Explanations always call for deep
thought. But when you actually dream, be as light as a feather.
Dreaming has to be performed with integrity and seriousness,
but in the midst of laughter and with the confidence of someone who
doesn't have a worry in the world. Only under these conditions can our
dreams actually be turned into dreaming .
I selected your hands as something to
look for in your dreams because they will always be there. Looking for
anything else is just as valid provided that you pick one thing in advance
and stay with it night after night until you succeed in finding it. The
goal of the exercise is not finding a specific thing but engaging your
dreaming attention.
The
dreaming attention is the control one acquires over one's
dreams upon fixating the assemblage point on any new position to which it
has been displaced during dreams. The dreaming attention is
an incomprehensible facet of awareness that exists by itself, waiting for
a moment when we would entice it, a moment when we would give it purpose;
it is a veiled faculty that every one of us has in reserve but never has
the opportunity to use in everyday life.
There are
seven gates and dreamers have to open all seven of them, one
at a time. There are entrances and exits in the energy flow of the
universe. In the specific case of dreaming , there are seven
entrances, experienced as obstacles, which sorcerers call the seven gates
of dreaming .
The first gate is a
threshold we must cross by becoming aware of a particular sensation before
deep sleep. A sensation which is like a pleasant heaviness that doesn't
let us open our eyes. We reach that gate the instant we become aware that
we're falling asleep, suspended in darkness and heaviness. There are no
steps to follow. One just intends to become aware of falling
asleep.
Intent or
intending is something very difficult to talk about. I or
anyone else would sound idiotic trying to explain it. Bear that in mind
when you hear what I have to say next: sorcerers intend
anything they set themselves to intend , simply by
intending it.
For sorcerers, because
the statement I made pertains to intent and
intending , understanding it pertains to the realm of energy.
Sorcerers believe that if one would intend that statement for
the energy body, the energy body would understand it in terms entirely
different from those of the mind. The trick is to reach the energy body.
For that you need energy.
The energy body would
understand that statement in terms of a bodily feeling, which is hard to
describe. You'll have to experience it to know what I mean.
Intending is a subject not for your reason but for your
energy body. At this point, you can't yet comprehend the import of all
this, not only because you don't have sufficient energy but because you're
not intending anything. If you were, your energy body would
comprehend immediately that the only way to intend is by
focusing your intent on whatever you want to
intend .
The goal of
dreaming is to intend the energy body. In this
particular instance, since we're talking about the first gate of
dreaming , the goal of dreaming is to
intend that your energy body becomes aware that you are
falling asleep. Don't try to force yourself to be aware of falling asleep.
Let your energy body do it. To intend is to wish without
wishing, to do without doing.
Accept the challenge
of intending . Put your silent determination, without a
single thought, into convincing yourself that you have reached your energy
body and that you are a dreamer . Doing this will
automatically put you in the position to be aware that you are falling
asleep.
When you hear that you have to convince
yourself, you automatically become more rational. How can you convince
yourself you are a dreamer when you know you are not?
Intending is both: the act of convincing yourself you are
indeed a dreamer , although you have never dreamt before, and
the act of being convinced.
I don't mean you have
to tell yourself you are a dreamer and try your best to
believe it. It isn't that.
Intending is much
simpler and, at the same time, infinitely more complex than that. It
requires imagination, discipline, and purpose. In this case, to
intend means that you get an unquestionable bodily knowledge
that you are a dreamer .
You feel you are a
dreamer with all the cells of your body.
You must reach your energy body on your own. Intending
the first gate of dreaming is one of the means discovered by
the sorcerers of antiquity for reaching the second attention and the
energy body.
To ask a dreamer to find
a determined item in his dreams is a subterfuge. The real issue is to
become aware that one is falling asleep. And, strange as it may seem, that
doesn't happen by commanding oneself to be aware that one is falling
asleep but by sustaining the sight of whatever one is looking at in a
dream.
Dreamers take quick,
deliberate glances at everything present in a dream. If they focus their
dreaming attention on something specific, it is only as a
point of departure. From there, dreamers move on to look at
other items in the dream's content, returning to the point of departure as
many times as possible.
All that is required is
your awareness of falling asleep. Dreaming has to be a very
sober affair. No false movement can be afforded. Dreaming is
a process of awakening, of gaining control. Our dreaming
attention must be systematically exercised, for it is the door to the
second attention.
The difference between the
dreaming attention and the second attention is that the
second attention is like an ocean, and the dreaming attention
is like a river feeding into it. The second attention is the condition of
being aware of total worlds, total like our world is total, while the
dreaming attention is the condition of being aware of the
items of our dreams.
The dreaming attention is the key to every movement in the
sorcerers' world. Among the multitude of items in our dreams, there exist
real energetic interferences, things that have been put in our dreams
extraneously, by an alien force. To be able to find them and follow them
is sorcery.
Dreams are, if not a door, a hatch
into other worlds. As such, dreams are a two-way street. Our awareness
goes through that hatch into other realms, and those other realms send
scouts into our dreams.
Those scouts are energy
charges that get mixed with the items of our normal dreams. They are
bursts of foreign energy that come into our dreams, and we interpret them
as items familiar or unfamiliar to us.
Dreams are
a hatch into other realms of perception. Through that hatch, currents of
unfamiliar energy seep in. Then the mind or the brain or whatever takes
those currents of energy and turns them into parts of our
dreams.
Sorcerers are aware of those currents of
foreign energy. They notice them and strive to isolate them from the
normal items of their dreams.
They isolate them
because they come from other realms. If we follow them to their source,
they serve us as guides into areas of such mystery that sorcerers shiver
at the mere mention of such a possibility.
Sorcerers isolate them from the normal items of their dreams by the
exercise and control of their dreaming attention. At one
moment, our dreaming attention discovers them among the items
of a dream and focuses on them, then the total dream collapses, leaving
only the foreign energy.
I'm going to repeat what
you must do in your dreams in order to pass the first gate of
dreaming . First you must focus your gaze on your hands as
the starting point. Then shift your gaze to other items and look at them
in brief glances. Focus your gaze on as many things as you can. Remember
that if you glance only briefly, then the images don't shift. Then go back
to your hands.
To pass the first gate of
dreaming means that, first of all, we have reached the first
gate of dreaming by becoming aware that we are falling
asleep, or by having a gigantically real dream, and second, that we have
crossed it by being able to sustain the sight of any item of our
dreams.
In order to offset the evanescent quality
of dreams, sorcerers have devised the use of the starting point item.
Every time you isolate it and look at it, you get a surge of energy. As
soon as the images begin to shift and you feel you are losing control, go
back to your starting point item and start all over again.
The most astounding thing that happens to
dreamers is that, on reaching the first gate, they also reach
the energy body. The energy body is the
counterpart of the physical body. A ghostlike configuration made of pure
energy. The physical body also is made out of energy.
The difference is that the energy body has only appearance but no
mass. Since it's pure energy, it can perform acts that are beyond the
possibilities of the physical body; such as transporting itself in one
instant to the ends of the universe. And dreaming is the art
of tempering the energy body, of making it supple and coherent by
gradually exercising it.
Through
dreaming we condense the energy body until it's a unit
capable of perceiving. Its perception, although affected by our normal way
of perceiving the daily world, is an independent perception. It has its
own sphere.
That sphere is energy. The energy body
deals with energy in terms of energy. There are three ways in which it
deals with energy in dreaming : it can perceive energy as it
flows, or it can use energy to boost itself like a rocket into unexpected
areas, or it can perceive as we ordinarily perceive the world.
To perceive energy as it flows means to see .
It means that the energy body sees energy directly as a light
or as a vibrating current of sorts or as a disturbance. Or It feels it
directly as a jolt or as a sensation that can even be pain.
Since energy is its sphere, it is no problem for the energy
body to use currents of energy that exist in the universe to propel
itself. All it has to do is isolate them, and off it goes with
them.
Sorcerers isolate in their dreams scouts
from other realms. Their energy bodies do that. They recognize energy and
go for it. But it isn't desirable for dreamers to indulge in
searching for scouts. I was reluctant to tell you about it, because of the
facility with which one can get swayed be that search.
Reaching, with deliberate control, the first gate of
dreaming is a way of arriving at the energy body. But to
maintain that gain is predicated on energy alone. Sorcerers get that
energy by redeploying, in a more intelligent manner, the energy they have
and use for perceiving the daily world.
We all
have a determined quantity of basic energy. That quantity is all the
energy we have, and we use all of it for perceiving and dealing with our
engulfing world. There is no more energy for us anywhere and, since our
available energy is already engaged, there is not a single bit left in us
for any extraordinary perception, such as dreaming
.
That leaves us to scrounge energy for ourselves,
wherever we can find it.
Sorcerers have a
scrounging method. They intelligently redeploy their energy by cutting
down anything they consider superfluous in their lives. They call this
method the sorcerers' way. In essence, the sorcerers' way is a chain of
behavioral choices for dealing with the world, choices much more
intelligent than those our progenitors taught us. These sorcerers' choices
are designed to revamp our lives by altering our basic reactions about
being alive.
Those basic reactions are the two
ways of facing our being alive. One is to surrender to it, either by
acquiescing to its demands or by fighting those demands. The other is by
molding our particular life situation to fit our own
configurations. One's particular life situation
can be molded to fit one's specifications. Dreamers do that.
A wild statement? Not really, if you consider how little we know about
ourselves.
My interest, as a teacher, is to get
you thoroughly involved with the themes of life and being alive; that is
to say, with the difference between life, as a consequence of biological
forces, and the act of being alive, as a matter of cognition.
When sorcerers talk about molding one's life situation they
mean molding the awareness of being alive. Through molding this awareness,
we can get enough energy to reach and sustain the energy body, and with it
we can certainly mold the total direction and consequences of our
lives.
Don't merely
think about what I have told you. Turn my concepts into a viable way of
life by a process of repetition. Everything new in our lives, such as the
sorcerers' concepts I am teaching you, must be repeated to us to the point
of exhaustion before we open ourselves to it. Repetition is the way our
progenitors socialized us to function in the daily world.
As we tighten the control over our
dreams, we tighten the mastery over our dreaming attention.
The dreaming attention comes into play when it is called,
when it is given a purpose. Its coming into play is not really a process,
as one would normally understand a process, that is as an ongoing system
of operations or a series of actions or functions that bring about an end
result. It is rather an awakening. Something dormant becomes suddenly
functional. A
dreaming teacher must create a didactic synthesis in order to
emphasize a given point. In essence, what I wanted with your first task
was to exercise your dreaming attention by focusing it on the
items of your dreams. To this effect I used as a spearhead the idea of
being aware of falling asleep. My subterfuge was to say that the only way
to be aware of falling asleep is to examine the elements of one's
dreams.
Exercising the dreaming
attention is the essential point in dreaming . To the mind,
however, it seems impossible that one can train oneself to be aware at the
level of dreams. The active element of such training is persistence. The
mind and all its rational defenses cannot cope with persistence. Sooner or
later, the mind's barriers fall, under its impact, and the
dreaming attention blooms.
As you
practice focusing and holding your dreaming attention on the
items of your dreams your entering into the second attention. This calls
for even more sobriety on your part. Go slowly, but don't stop, and about
all, don't talk about it. Just do it.
If one takes
short glances at everything in a dream, the images do not dissolve. The
difficult part is to break the initial barrier that prevents us from
bringing dreams to our conscious attention.
This
barrier is in part a psychological one created by our socialization, which
puts a premium on disregarding dreams. But the barrier is more than
socialization. It's the first gate of dreaming . The first
gate of dreaming has to do with the flow of energy in the
universe. It's a natural obstacle.
The energy
needed to release our dreaming attention from its
socialization prison comes from redeploying our existing energy. The
emergence of our dreaming attention is a direct corollary of
revamping our lives. Since we have no way to plug into any external source
for a boost of energy, we must redeploy our existing energy, by any means
available.
The sorcerers' way is the best means to
oil, so to speak, the wheels of energy redeployment. Of all the items in
the sorcerers' way, the most effective is losing
self-importance . This is indispensable for everything sorcerers
do, and for this reason I put an enormous emphasis on guiding all my
students to fulfill this requirement. Self-importance is not only the
sorcerer's supreme enemy but the nemesis of mankind.
Most of our energy goes into upholding our importance. This is most
obvious in our endless worry about the presentation of the self, about
whether or not we are admired or liked or acknowledged. If we are capable
of losing some of that importance, two extraordinary things happen to us.
One, we free our energy from trying to maintain the illusory idea of our
grandeur; and, two, we provide ourselves with enough energy to enter into
the second attention to catch a glimpse of the actual grandeur of the
universe.
The capability of examining the contents
of one's dreams is the product of a natural configuration of our being,
similar to our capability of walking. We are physically conditioned to
walk only in one manner, bipedally, yet it takes a monumental effort for
us to learn to walk.
We are not alone in this world. There are other worlds available to
dreamers , total worlds. From those other total worlds,
energetic entities sometimes come to us.
You can't
explain dreaming by way of things you know or suspect you
know. Believe me, the most extravagant feature of sorcery is that
configuration called out of this world.
You reach the second gate of
dreaming when you wake up from a dream into another dream.
You can have as many dreams as you want or as many as you are capable of,
but you must exercise adequate control and not wake up in the world we
know.
I'm not saying that you should never wake up
in this world. But I have to tell you that that is an alternative. The
sorcerers of antiquity used to do that, never wake up in the world we
know. It certainly can be done, but I don't recommend it. What I want is
for you to wake up naturally when you are through with
dreaming , but while you are dreaming , I want
you to dream that you wake up in another dream.
This control is no different from the control we have over any situation
in our daily lives.
There's one problem with the
second gate. It's a problem that can be serious, depending on one's bent
of character. If our tendency is to indulge in clinging to things or
situations, we are in for a sock in the jaw.
Imagine yourself going from dream to dream, watching everything, examining
every detail. It's very easy to realize that one may sink to mortal
depths. Especially if one is given to indulging.
Wouldn't the body or the brain naturally put a stop to it? Yes, if it's a
natural sleeping situation, meaning normal. But this is not a normal
situation. This is dreaming . A dreamer on
crossing the first gate has already reached the energy body. So what is
really going through the second gate, hopping from dream to dream, is the
energy body.
The implication is that on crossing
the second gate you must intend a greater and more sober
control over your dreaming attention: the only safety valve
for dreamers .
You will find out for
yourself that the true goal of dreaming is to perfect the
energy body. A perfect energy body, among other things of course, has such
a control over the dreaming attention that it makes it stop
when needed. This is the safety valve dreamers have. No
matter how indulging they might be, at a given time, their
dreaming attention must make them surface.
Crossing the second gate is a very serious affair; it requires a
most disciplined effort.
I told you that one has
to wake up in another dream, but what I meant is that one has to change
dreams in an orderly and precise manner.
There are
two ways of properly crossing the second gate of dreaming .
One is to wake up in another dream, that is to say, to dream that one is
having a dream and then dream that one wakes up from it. The alternative
is to use the items of a dream to trigger another dream; that is, zoom
from a definite item accessible to your immediate dreaming
attention to another one, not quite accessible. Or gaze at any item of a
dream, maintaining the gaze until the item changes shape and, by changing
shape, pulls you into another dream.
Life and consciousness, being exclusively a
matter of energy, are not solely the property of organisms. Sorcerers have
seen that there are two types of conscious beings roaming the
earth, the organic and the inorganic. In comparing one with the other,
they have seen that both are luminous masses crossed from
every imaginable angle by millions of the universe's energy filaments.
They are different from each other in their shape and in their degree of
brightness. Inorganic beings are long and candlelike but opaque, whereas
organic beings are round and by far the brighter. Another noteworthy
difference sorcerers have seen , is that the life and
consciousness of organic beings is short-lived, because they are made to
hurry, whereas the life of inorganic beings is infinitely longer and their
consciousness infinitely more calm and deeper.
Sorcerers find no problem interacting with them. Inorganic beings possess
the crucial ingredient for interaction, consciousness.
For sorcerers, having life means having consciousness. It means
having an assemblage point and its surrounding glow of awareness, a
condition that points out to sorcerers that the being in front of them,
organic or inorganic, is thoroughly capable of perceiving. Perceiving is
understood by sorcerers as the precondition of being alive.
The inorganic beings must also die. They lose their
awareness just like we do, except that the length of their consciousness
is staggering to the mind.
It's very difficult to
tell what is what with them. Let's say that those beings are enticed by us
or, better yet, compelled to interact with us.
The
proper thing to do is to suspend judgment and let things take their
course, meaning that you let the inorganic beings come to you.
The difficulty with inorganic beings is that their awareness
is very slow in comparison with ours. It will take years for a sorcerer to
be acknowledged by inorganic beings. So, it is advisable to have patience
and wait. Sooner or later they show up. But not like you or I would show
up. Theirs is a most peculiar way to make themselves known.
Sorcerers entice them in dreaming . What's
involved, though, is more than enticing them; by the act of
dreaming , sorcerers compel those beings to interact with
them.
Dreaming is sustaining the
position where the assemblage point has shifted in dreams. This act
creates a distinctive energy charge, which attracts their attention. It's
like bait to fish; they'll go for it. Sorcerers, by reaching and crossing
the first two gates of dreaming , set bait for those beings
and compel them to appear.
By going through the
two gates, you make your bidding known to them. Then, you must wait for a
sign from them; possibly the appearance of one of them, or simply some
interference in your dreaming .
You
must gauge your expectations. Our normal expectation when engaging in
interaction with our fellow men or with other organic beings is to get an
immediate reply to our solicitation. With inorganic beings, however, since
they are separated from us by a most formidable barrier--energy that moves
at a different speed--sorcerers must gauge their expectations and sustain
the solicitation for as long as it takes to be acknowledged.
The solicitation is the same as the dreaming
practices. But for a perfect result, you must add to your practices
the intent of reaching those inorganic beings. Send a feeling
of power and confidence to them, a feeling of strength, of detachment.
Avoid at any cost sending a feeling of fear or morbidity. They are pretty
morbid by themselves; to add your morbidity to them is unnecessary, to say
the least.
They do, at times, materialize
themselves in the daily world, right in front of us. Most of the time,
though, their invisible presence is marked by a bodily jolt, a shiver of
sorts that comes from the marrow of the bones.
In
dreaming we have the total opposite. At times, we feel them
as a jolt of fear. Most of the time, they materialize themselves right in
front of us. Since at the beginning of dreaming we have no
experience whatsoever with them, they might imbue us with fear beyond
measure. That is a real danger to us. Through the channel of fear, they
can follow us to the daily world, with disastrous results for
us.
Fear can settle down in our lives, and we
would have to be mavericks to deal with it. Inorganic beings can be worse
than a pest. Through fear they can easily drive us raving mad.
What sorcerers do with the inorganic beings is mingle with
them. They turn them into allies. They form associations, create
extraordinary friendships. I call them vast enterprises, where perception
plays the uppermost role. We are social beings. We unavoidably seek the
company of consciousness.
With inorganic beings,
the secret is not to fear them. And this must be done from the beginning.
The intent one has to send out to them has to be of power and
abandon. In that intent one must encode the message "I don't
fear you. Come to see me. If you do, I'll welcome you. If you don't want
to come, I'll miss you." With a message like this, they'll get so curious
that they'll come for sure.
Why should they come
to seek you, or why on earth should you seek them? Dreamers ,
whether they like it or not, in their dreaming seek
associations with other beings. This may come to you as a shock, but
dreamers automatically seek groups of beings, nexuses of
inorganic beings in this case. Dreamers seek them avidly. Why
would dreamers do that? The novelty for us is the inorganic
beings. And the novelty for them is one of our kind crossing the
boundaries of their realm. The thing you must bear in mind from now on is
that inorganic beings with their superb consciousness exert a tremendous
pull over dreamers and can easily transport them into worlds
beyond description.
The sorcerers of antiquity
used them, and they are the ones who coined the name allies. Their allies
taught them to move the assemblage point out of the egg's boundaries into
the nonhuman universe. So when they transport a sorcerer, they transport
him to worlds beyond the human domain.
Think about
dreaming in these terms: dreaming is perceiving
more than what we believe it is possible to perceive.
The second attention is available to all of us, but, by willfully
holding on to our half-cocked rationality, some of us more fiercely than
others, we keep the second attention at arm's length.
Dreaming brings down the barriers that surround and insulate
the second attention.
If the inorganic beings
single a dreamer out by reappearing over and over again in
his dreaming , it means that they seek an association. I've
mentioned to you that sorcerers form bonds of friendship with them. Such a
friendship consists of a mutual exchange of energy. The inorganic beings
supply their high awareness, and sorcerers supply their heightened
awareness and high energy. The positive result is an even exchange. The
negative one is dependency on both parties. Once they have singled a
dreamer out the dreamer can summon them in his
normal daily awareness, size them up, and then decide himself what to
do.
You summon them by holding your dream view of
them in your mind. The reason they would saturate a dreamer
with their presence in his dreams is that they want to create a memory of
their shape in his mind.
You can then use that
memory by closing your eyes and visualize their shape until they are just
like they are in your dreams. When you have them in focus, open your eyes,
then get up and grab one of them and don't let go, no matter how it shakes
you. You drop it and you're done for!
If you feel
the inorganic being's energy like water you are not going to have helping
friends among the inorganic beings, but relationships of annoying
dependency. Be, in that case, extremely careful. Watery inorganic beings
are more given to excesses. The old sorcerers believed that they were more
loving, more capable of imitating, or perhaps even having feelings. As
opposed to the other kind, the fiery ones, who were thought to be more
serious, more contained than the others, but also more pompous.
My recommendation is that you vanquish fear from your dreams
and from your life, in order to safeguard your unity.
In matters of the inorganic beings, I am nearly a novice. I refused
that part of the sorcerers' knowledge on the ground that it is too
cumbersome and capricious. I don't want to be at the mercy of any entity,
organic or inorganic. By
means of their dreaming contacts with inorganic beings, the
old sorcerers became immensely well-versed in the manipulation of the
assemblage point, a vast and ominous subject.
The
inorganic beings have never been my cup of tea. My reason for that is the
best reason in the world: we are antithetical. They love slavery, and I
love freedom. They love to buy, and I don't sell.
The best thing to do with inorganic beings is deny their existence but
visit with them regularly and maintain that you are dreaming
and in dreaming anything is possible. This way you don't
commit yourself.
If one is to accept that
inorganic beings are as real as people, where, in the physicality of the
universe, is the realm in which they exist? That realm exists in a
particular position of the assemblage point. Just like our world exists in
the habitual position of the assemblage point.
Upon crossing the first or second gate of dreaming ,
dreamers reach a threshold of energy and begin to see things
or to hear voices. Not really plural voices, but a singular voice.
Sorcerers call it the voice of the dreaming
emissary.
The dreaming emissary is
alien energy that has conciseness. Alien energy that purports to aid
dreamers by telling them things. The problem with the
dreaming emissary is that it can tell only what the sorcerers
already know or should know, were they worth their salt. It's alien
energy. An impersonal force that we turn into a very personal one because
it has a voice. Some sorcerers swear by it. They even see it.
We see it or hear it because we maintain our assemblage
points fixed on a specific new position; the more intense this fixation,
the more intense our experience of the emissary.
This force is capable of materializing itself. It all depends on how fixed
the assemblage point is. But, rest assured, if you are capable of
maintaining a degree of detachment, nothing happens. The emissary remains
what it is: an impersonal force that acts on us because of the fixation of
our assemblage points.
Is its advice safe and
sound? It cannot be advice. It only tells us what's what, and then we draw
the inferences ourselves.
It's just like I said,
the emissary doesn't tell you anything new. Its statements are correct,
but it only seems to be revealing things to you. What the emissary does is
merely repeat what you already know.
You know now
infinitely more about the mystery of the universe than what you rationally
suspect. But that's our human malady, to know more about the mystery of
the universe than we suspect.
The emissary tells
me anything I focus my intent on, things I don't want to take
the trouble of following up myself.
Let's say that
the dreaming emissary is a force that comes from the realm of
inorganic beings. This is the reason dreamers always
encounter it. Every dreamer hears or sees the emissary though
very few see it or feel it. I don't have any explanation for this,
besides, I really don't care about the emissary. At one point in my life,
I had to make a decision whether to concentrate on the inorganic beings
and follow in the footsteps of the old sorcerers or to refuse it all. My
teacher helped me make up my mind to refuse it. I've never regretted that
decision.
The whole realm of inorganic beings is
always poised to teach. Perhaps because inorganic beings have a deeper
consciousness than ours, they feel compelled to take us under their wings.
I didn't see any point in becoming their pupil--their price is to
high--their price is our lives, our energy, our devotion to them. In other
words, our freedom.
They teach things pertinent to
their world. The same way we ourselves would teach them, if we were
capable of teaching them, things pertinent to our world. Their method,
however, is to take our basic self as a gauge of what we need and then
teach us accordingly. A most dangerous affair.
If
someone was going to take your basic self as a gauge, with all your fears
and greed and envy, et cetera, et cetera, and teach you what fulfills that
horrible state of being, what do you think the result would be?
The problem with the old sorcerers was that they learned
wonderful things, but on the basis of their unadulterated lower selves.
The inorganic beings became their allies, and, by means of deliberate
examples, they taught the old sorcerers marvels. Their allies performed
the actions, and the old sorcerers were guided step by step to copy those
actions, without changing anything about their basic nature.
Involvements of this nature curtail our search for freedom
by consuming all our available energy.
If a
sorcerer wants to live in the realm of the inorganic beings, the emissary
is the perfect bridge; it speaks, and its bent is to teach, to
guide.
I neither approve of that realm nor like
it. It belongs to another mood, the old sorcerers' mood. Besides, its
teachings and guidance in our world are nonsense. And for that nonsense
the emissary charges us enormities in terms of energy.
Just because we haven't been taught
to emphasize dreams as a genuine field for exploration doesn't mean they
are not one. Dreams are analyzed for their meaning or are taken as
portents, but never are they taken as a realm of real events.
To my knowledge, only the old sorcerers did that. But at the
end they flubbed it. They got greedy, and when they came to a crucial
crossroads, they took the wrong fork. They put all their eggs in one
basket: the fixation of the assemblage point on the thousands of positions
it can adopt.
Out of all the marvelous things the
old sorcerers learned exploring those thousands of positions, only the art
of dreaming and the art of stalking remain. The
art of dreaming is concerned with the displacement of the
assemblage point. Stalking is the art that deals with the
fixation of the assemblage point on any location to which it is
displaced.
To fixate the assemblage point on any
new spot means to acquire cohesion. An apprentice does just that in his
dreaming practices. He is perfecting his energy body. He is
doing that and much more; he is learning to have cohesion.
Dreaming does it by forcing dreamers to fixate
the assemblage point. The dreaming attention, the energy
body, the second attention, the relationship with inorganic beings, the
dreaming emissary are but by-products of acquiring cohesion;
in other words, they are all by-products of fixating the assemblage point
on a number of dreaming positions .
A
dreaming position is any new position to which the assemblage
point has been displaced during sleep. We fixate the assemblage point on a
dreaming position by sustaining the view of any item in our
dreams, or by changing dreams at will. Through his dreaming
practices, an apprentice is really exercising his capacity to be cohesive;
that is to say, he is exercising his capacity to maintain a new energy
shape by holding the assemblage point fixed on the position of any
particular dream he is having. While exercising his capacity to maintain a
new energy shape, he isn't really maintaining a new energy shape yet, not
exactly, and not because he can't but only because he is shifting the
assemblage point instead of moving it. Shifts of the assemblage point give
rise to minute changes, which are practically unnoticeable. The challenge
of shifts is that they are so small and so numerous that to maintain
cohesiveness in all of them is a triumph.
We know
we are maintaining cohesion by the clarity of our perception. The clearer
the view of our dreams, the greater our cohesion.
I'm going to tell you about a practical application of what an apprentice
learns in dreaming . He focuses his attention, as if he is in
a dream, on the foliage of a tree. He doesn't just gaze at it; he does
something very special with the foliage. Remember, I've said that in
dreaming , once you are able to hold the view of any item,
you are really holding the dreaming position of your
assemblage point. So then, an apprentice gazes at the leaves of a tree as
if he is in a dream, but with a slight yet most meaningful variation: he
holds his dreaming attention on the leaves of the tree in the
awareness of our daily world.
By staring at the
foliage, he accomplishes a minute displacement of his assemblage point.
Then, by summoning his dreaming attention through staring at
individual leaves, he actually fixates that minute displacement, and his
cohesion makes him perceive in terms of the second attention. The process
is so simple it is ridiculous.
Our speech faculty
is extremely flimsy and attacks of muteness are common among sorcerers who
venture this way, beyond the limits of normal perception.
It is not possible for one to rely on one's rationality to
understand such an experience as summoning one's dreaming
attention through staring at individual leaves. Not because our
rationality is in any way impaired but because what takes place is a
phenomenon outside the parameters of reason.
Reason is only a by-product of the habitual position of the assemblage
point; therefore, knowing what is going to, being of sound mind, having
our feet on the ground--sources of great pride to us and assumed to be a
natural consequence of our worth--are merely the result of the fixation of
the assemblage point on its habitual place. The more rigid and stationary
it is, the greater our confidence in ourselves, the greater our feeling of
knowing the world, of being able to predict.
What
dreaming does is give us the fluidity to enter into other
worlds by destroying our sense of knowing this world.
Dreaming is a journey of unthinkable dimensions, a journey
that, after making us perceive everything we can humanly perceive, makes
the assemblage point jump outside the human domain and perceive the
inconceivable.
We are back again, harping on the
most important topic of the sorcerers' world; the position of the
assemblage point. The old sorcerers' curse, as well as mankind's thorn in
the side. I say that because both, mankind in general and the old
sorcerers, fell prey to the position of the assemblage point: mankind,
because by not knowing that the assemblage point exists we are obliged to
take the by-product of its habitual position as something final and
indisputable. And the old sorcerers because, although they knew all about
the assemblage point, they fell for its facility to be manipulated. You
must avoid falling into those traps.
Different
worlds exist in the position of the assemblage point. You will have two
choices. One, to follow mankind's rationales and be faced with a
predicament: your experience will tell you that other worlds exist, but
your reason will say that such worlds do not and cannot exist. The other,
to follow the old sorcerers' rationales, in which case you will
automatically accept the existence of other worlds, and your greed alone
will make your assemblage point hold on to the position that creates those
worlds. The result would be another kind of predicament: that of having to
move physically into visionlike realms, driven by expectations of power
and gain.
The
dreaming emissary's voice is an impersonal but constant force
from the realm of inorganic beings; thus, every dreamer
experiences it, in more or less the same terms. And if we choose to take
its words as advice, we are incurable fools.
My
interest in telling you about the old sorcerers is not to bad-mouth them
but to pit them against you. Sooner or later, your assemblage point will
be more fluid, but not fluid enough to offset the facility to be like
them: righteous and hysterical.
There is only one
way to avoid all that. Sorcerers call it sheer understanding. I call it a
romance with knowledge. It's the drive sorcerers use to know, to discover,
to be bewildered.
Seeing children's
assemblage points constantly fluttering, as if moved by tremors, changing
their place with ease, the old sorcerers came to the conclusion that the
assemblage points habitual location is not innate but brought about by
habituation. Seeing also that only in adults is it fixed on
one spot, they surmised that the specific location of the assemblage point
fosters a specific way of perceiving. Through usage, this specific way of
perceiving becomes a system of interpreting sensory data.
Since we are drafted into that system by being born into it, from
the moment of our birth we imperatively strive to adjust our perceiving to
conform to the demands of this system, a system that rules us for life.
Consequently, the old sorcerers were thoroughly right in believing that
the act of countermanding it and perceiving energy directly is what
transforms a person into a sorcerer.
I am in
wonder at the greatest accomplishment of our human upbringing: to lock our
assemblage point on its habitual position. For, once it is immobilized
there, our perception can be coached and guided to interpret what we
perceive. In other words, we can then be guided to perceive more in terms
of our system than in terms of our senses. Human perception is universally
homogeneous, because the assemblage points of the whole human race are
fixed on the same spot.
Sorcerers prove all this
to themselves when they see that at the moment the assemblage
point is displaced beyond a certain threshold, and new universal filaments
of energy begin to be perceived, there is no sense to what we perceive.
The immediate cause is that new sensory data has rendered our system
inoperative; it can no longer be used to interpret what we are
perceiving.
Perceiving without our system is, of
course, chaotic. But strangely enough, when we think we have truly lost
our bearings, our old system rallies; it comes to our rescue and
transforms our new incomprehensible perception into a thoroughly
comprehensible new world. Just like what happens to an apprentice when he
gazes at the leaves of a tree and his dreaming attention
comes forth. His perception is chaotic for a while; everything comes to
him at once, and his system for interpreting the world doesn't function.
Then, the chaos clears up and there he is, in front of a new
world. That world exists in the precise position
of his assemblage point at that moment. In order to perceive it, he needs
cohesion, that is, he needs to maintain his assemblage point fixed on that
position. The result is that he totally perceives a new world for a
while.
Others would perceive that same world if
they had uniformity and cohesion. Uniformity and cohesion is to hold, in
unison, the same position of the assemblage point. The old sorcerers
called the entire act of acquiring uniformity and cohesion outside the
normal world "stalking perception."
The art of
stalking , as I have already said, deals with the fixation of
the assemblage point. The old sorcerers discovered, through practice, that
important as it is to displace the assemblage point, it is even more
important to make it stay fixed on its new position, wherever that new
position might be.
If the assemblage point does
not become stationary, there is no way that we can perceive coherently. We
would experience then a kaleidoscope of disassociated images. This is the
reason the old sorcerers put as much emphasis on dreaming as
they did on stalking . One art cannot exist without the
other, especially for the kinds of activities in which the old sorcerers
were involved.
The old sorcerers called them the
intricacies of the second attention or the grand adventure of the unknown.
These activities stem from the displacements of the assemblage point. Not
only had the old sorcerers learned to displace their assemblage points to
thousands of positions on the surface or on the inside of their energy
masses but they had also learned to fixate their assemblage points on
those positions, and thus retain their cohesiveness, indefinitely. We
can't talk about the benefits of that, we can talk only about end
results.
The cohesiveness of the old sorcerers was
such that it allowed them to become perceptually and physically everything
the specific position of their assemblage points dictated. They could
transform themselves into anything for which they had a specific
inventory. An inventory is all the details of perception involved in
becoming, for example, a jaguar, a bird, an insect, et cetera, et cetera.
It is possible, not so much for you and me, but you them. For them, it was
nothing. The old sorcerers had superb fluidity.
All they needed was the slightest shift of their assemblage points, the
slightest perceptual cue from their dreaming , and they would
instantaneously stalk their perception, rearrange their cohesiveness to
fit their new state of awareness, and be an animal, another person, a
bird, or anything.
Sorcerers bring order to the
chaos. Their preconceived, transcendental purpose is to free their
perception. Sorcerers don't make up the world they are perceiving; they
perceive energy directly, and then they discover that what they are
perceiving is an unknown new world, which can swallow them whole, because
it is as real as anything we know to be real.
What
happens as an apprentice gazes at the leaves of a tree is that he began by
perceiving the energy of the tree. On the subjective level, however, he
believes he is dreaming because he employs
dreaming techniques to perceive energy. To use
dreaming techniques in the world of everyday life was one of
the old sorcerers most effective devices. It made perceiving energy
directly dreamlike, instead of totally chaotic, until a moment when
something rearranged perception and the sorcerer found himself facing a
new world. The scenery one views in that case is not a dream, nor is it
our daily world.
I've been saying this to you over
and over, and you think that I am merely repeating myself. I know how
difficult it is for the mind to allow mindless possibilities to become
real. But new worlds exist! They are wrapped one around the other, like
the skins of an onion. The world we exist in is but one of those
skins.
So then, is the goal of my teaching to
prepare you to go into those worlds? No. I don't mean that. We go into
those worlds only as an exercise. Those journeys are the antecedents of
the sorcerers of today. We do the same dreaming that the old
sorcerers used to do, but at one moment we deviate into new ground. The
old sorcerers preferred the shifts of the assemblage point, so they were
always on more or less known, predictable ground. We prefer the movements
of the assemblage point. The old sorcerers were after the human unknown.
We are after the nonhuman unknown. You haven't gotten to that yet. You are
only beginning. And at the beginning everyone has to go through the old
sorcerers' steps. After all, they were the ones who invented
dreaming .
When dreaming
is too easy for you it can be a damnation if you don't watch it. It leads
to the human unknown. As I said to you, modern-day sorcerers strive to get
to the nonhuman unknown; that is, freedom from being human. Inconceivable
worlds that are outside the band of man but that we still can perceive.
This is where modern sorcerers take the side road. Their predilection is
what's outside the human domain. And what are outside that domain are
all-inclusive worlds, not merely the realm of birds or the realm of
animals or the realm of man, even if it be the unknown man. What I am
talking about are worlds, like the one where we live; total worlds with
endless realms.
Those worlds are in different
positions of the assemblage point. But positions sorcerers arrive at with
a movement of the assemblage point, not a shift. Entering into those
worlds is the type of dreaming only sorcerers of today do.
The old sorcerers stayed away from it, because it requires a great deal of
detachment and no self-importance whatsoever. A price they couldn't afford
to pay.
For the sorcerers who practice
dreaming today, dreaming is freedom to perceive
worlds beyond the imagination. Freedom is an adventure with no end, in
which we risk our lives and much more for a few moments of something
beyond words, beyond thoughts or feelings.
What
can be the driving force to do all this? To seek freedom is the only
driving force I know. Freedom to fly off into that infinity out there.
Freedom to dissolve; to lift off; to be like the flame of a candle, which,
in spite of being up against the light of a billion stars, remains intact,
because it never pretended to be more than what it is: a mere
candle. To suspend
judgment and let the inorganic beings come, was in fact, the very
procedure used by the sorcerers of antiquity to attract them. It is very
difficult to make the self give up its strongholds except through
practice. One of the self's strongest lines of defense is indeed our
rationality, and this is not only the most durable line of defense when it
comes to sorcery actions and explanations but also the most threatened.
The existence of inorganic beings is a foremost assailant of our
rationality.
From time to time a projection from
the realm of the inorganic beings, a current of foreign energy, a scout,
will be injected into your dreams. So after you have crossed the first
gate of dreaming , adjust your dreaming
attention and be on the alert.
Scouts are more
numerous when our dreams are average, normal ones. The dreams of
dreamers are strangely free from scouts. When they appear,
they are identifiable by the strangeness and incongruity surrounding them.
Their presence doesn't make any sense.
Only in
average dreams are things nonsensical. I would say that this is so because
more scouts are injected then, because average people are subject to a
greater barrage from the unknown.
In my opinion,
what takes place is a balance of forces. Average people have stupendously
strong barriers to protect themselves against those onslaughts. Barriers
such as worries about the self. The stronger the barrier, the greater the
attack.
Dreamers, by contrast, have
fewer barriers and fewer scouts in their dreams. It seems that in
dreamers ' dreams nonsensical things disappear, perhaps to
ensure that dreamers catch the presence of scouts.
In dreaming , some items are of key importance
because they are associated with the spirit. Others are entirely
unimportant by reason of being associated with our indulging
personality.
The first scout you isolate will
always be present, in any form. Incongruous items are foreign invaders of
your dreams. Upon isolating them, your dreaming attention
always focuses on them with an intensity that does not occur under any
other circumstances.
At that point in your
dreaming , scouts are reconnoiterers sent by the inorganic
realm. They are very fast, meaning that they don't stay long.
They come in search of potential awareness. They have
consciousness and purpose, although it is incomprehensible to our minds,
comparable perhaps to the consciousness and purpose of trees. The inner
speed of trees and inorganic beings is incomprehensible to us because it
is infinitely slower than ours.
Both trees and
inorganic beings last longer than we do. They are made to stay put. They
are immobile, yet they make everything move around them. Inorganic beings
are stationary like trees. What one sees in dreaming as
bright or dark sticks are their projections. What one hears as the voice
of the dreaming emissary is equally their projection. And so
are their scouts.
Trees also have projections like
that. Their projections are, however, even less friendly to us than those
of the inorganic beings. Dreamers never seek them, unless
they are in a state of profound amenity with trees, which is a very
difficult state to attain.
Remember, the realm of
inorganic beings was the old sorcerers' field. To get there, they
tenaciously fixed their dreaming attention on the items of
their dreams. In that fashion, they were able to isolate the scouts. And
when they had the scouts in focus, they voiced their intent
to follow them. The instant the old sorcerers voiced that
intent , off they went, pulled by that foreign energy.
Only follow the
dreaming emissary's guidance when it refers to
dreaming .
The dreaming attention comes from behind the roof of
the mouth. Feel in dreaming that you are pressing the roof of
your mouth with the tip of your tongue.
By living up to my standards of self-examination
with no indulgence, the emissary's voice and what it says will become a
superchallenge for you. You have to avoid, at all cost, succumbing to the
temptation of the emissary's promise of knowledge, and you have to do this
all by yourself.
The diabolical nature of the
inorganic beings' realm is that it might very well be the only sanctuary
dreamers have in a hostile universe.
It really is a haven for some dreamers . Not for me. I don't
need props or railings. I know what I am. I am alone in a hostile
universe, and I have learned to say, So be it!
Under the influence of dreaming ,
reality suffers a metamorphosis. Two options are faced by all
dreamers : either we carefully revamp or we completely
disregard our system of sensory input interpretation.
To revamp our interpretation system means to intend
its reconditioning. It means that one deliberately and carefully attempts
to enlarge its capabilities. By living in accordance with the sorcerers'
way, dreamers save and store the necessary energy to suspend
judgment and thus facilitate that intended revamping. If we
choose to recondition our interpretation system, reality becomes fluid,
and the scope of what can be real is enhanced without endangering the
integrity of reality. Dreaming , then, indeed opens the door
into other aspects of what is real.
If we choose
to disregard our system, the scope of what can be perceived without
interpretation grows inordinately. The expansion of our perception is so
gigantic that we are left with very few tools for sensory interpretation
and, thus, a sense of an infinite realness that is unreal or an infinite
unrealness that could very well be real but is not.
The existence of inorganic beings is the foremost assailant of our
rationality. Only after you have really suspended judgment will you get
any relief.
An
apprentice's energy level, which steadily grows, one day reaches a
threshold that allows him to disregard assumptions and prejudgments about
the nature of man, reality, and perception. That day he becomes enamored
with knowledge, regardless of logic or functional value, and, above all,
regardless of personal convenience.
The inorganic beings are after our awareness.
They'll give us knowledge, but they'll extract a payment: our total
being. Inorganic beings can't force anyone to stay
with them. To live in their world is a voluntary affair. Yet they are
capable of imprisoning any one of us by catering to our desires, by
pampering and indulging us. Beware of awareness that is immobile.
Awareness like that has to seek movement, and it does this, as I've told
you, by creating projections, phantasmagorical projections at
times.
Inorganic beings hook onto
dreamers ' innermost feelings and play them mercilessly. They
create phantoms to please dreamers or frighten them.
Inorganic beings are superb projectionists, who delight in projecting
themselves like pictures on the wall.
The old
sorcerers portrayed the inorganic beings' world as a blob of caverns and
pores floating in some dark space. And they portrayed the inorganic beings
as hollow canes bound together, like the cells of our bodies. Every
dreamer sees that world in the same terms; as it
is.
The inorganic beings create for
dreamers the sense of being unique, exclusive; plus a more
pernicious sense yet: the sense of having power. Power and uniqueness are
unbeatable as corrupting forces. Watch out!
You
can avoid that danger by going to that world a few times, and then never
going back. In the opinion of sorcerers, the universe is predatorial, and
sorcerers more than anyone else have to take this into account in their
daily sorcery activities. Consciousness is intrinsically compelled to
grow, and the only way it can grow is through strife, through
life-or-death confrontations.
The awareness of
sorcerers grows when they do dreaming . And the moment it
grows, something out there acknowledges its growth, recognizes it and
makes a bid for it. The inorganic beings are the bidders for that new,
enhanced awareness. Dreamers have to be forever on their
toes. They are prey the moment they venture out in that predatorial
universe. To be safe, you must be on your toes every second! Don't let
anything or anybody decide for you. That is to say, go to the inorganic
beings' world only when you want to go.
Once you
isolate a scout, a tremendous pull may be exerted on you to go to the
inorganic beings' world. You can consciously stop that pull of the scouts.
Always remember, you can change the course of your dreaming
by intending that course.
With
practice, your capacity to intend journeys into the inorganic
beings' realm will become extraordinarily keen. An increased capacity to
intend brings forth an increased control over your
dreaming attention. This additional control makes one more
daring. Such confidence is very scary because it is the confidence of a
fool.
To be transported bodily is possible. We are
energy that is kept in a specific shape and position by the fixation of
the assemblage point on one location. If that location is changed, the
shape and position of that energy will change accordingly. All the
inorganic beings have to do is to place our assemblage point on the right
location, and off we go, like a bullet, shoes, hat, and all.
It is absurd to trust the inorganic beings. They have their
own rhythm, and it isn't human. Sorcerers' maneuvers are deadly. I beseech
you to be extraordinarily aware. Don't get involved in having some idiotic
confidence in yourself.
One must seriously consider that the inorganic beings have astounding
means at their disposal. Their awareness is superb. In comparison, we are
children, children with a lot of energy, which the inorganic beings
covet.
You already understand that the gates of
dreaming are specific obstacles, but you haven't understood
yet that whatever is given as the exercise to reach and cross a gate is
not really what that gate is all about.
I mean
that it's not true to say, for example, that the second gate is reached
and crossed when a dreamer learns to wake up in another
dream, or when a dreamer learns to change dreams without
waking up in the world of daily life. The second gate of
dreaming is reached and crossed only when a
dreamer learns to isolate and follow the foreign energy
scouts.
Waking up in another dream or changing
dreams is the drill devised by the old sorcerers to exercise a
dreamer 's capacity to isolate and follow a scout.
Following a scout is a high accomplishment and when
dreamers are able to perform it, the second gate is flung
open and the universe that exists behind it becomes accessible to them.
This universe is there all the time but we cannot go into it because we
lack energetic prowess, and in essence, the second gate of
dreaming is the door into the inorganic beings' world, and
dreaming is the key that opens that door.
The rule of the second gate can be described in terms of a series
of three steps: one, through practicing the drill of changing dreams,
dreamers find out about the scouts; two, by following the
scouts, they enter into another veritable universe; and three, in that
universe, by means of their actions, dreamers find out, on
their own, the governing laws and regulations of that universe.
The unavoidable reaction on the part of the inorganic beings
is the attempt to keep the dreamer in their world. The
inorganic beings don't let anyone go, not without a real fight.
You have to continue your dreaming until you
have gone through the universe behind the second gate. I mean that you
alone must either accept or reject the lure of the inorganic
beings.
I was forced to teach you
dreaming only because that is the pattern set out by the old
sorcerers. The path of dreaming is filled with pitfalls, and
to avoid those pitfalls or to fall into them is the personal and
individual affair of each dreamer , and I may add that it is
a final affair.
Those pitfalls are the result of
succumbing to adulation or to promises of power. And not only succumbing
to those, but succumbing to anything offered by the inorganic beings.
There is no way for sorcerers to accept anything offered by them, beyond a
certain point.
That point depends on us as
individuals. The challenge is for each of us to take only what is needed
from that world, nothing more. To know what's needed is the virtuosity of
sorcerers, but to take only what's needed is their highest accomplishment.
To fail to understand this simple rule is the surest way of plummeting
into a pitfall.
If you fall, you pay the price,
and the price depends on the circumstances and the depth of the fall. But
there is really no way of talking about an eventuality of this sort,
because we are not facing a problem of punishment. Energetic currents are
at stake here, energetic currents which create circumstances that are more
dreadful than death. Everything in the sorcerers' path is a matter of life
or death, but in the path of dreaming this matter is enhanced
a hundred fold.
You may come to think you are
extremely disciplined and conscientious with your dreaming
practices. That's the time for you to be even more disciplined and handle
everything related to dreaming with kid gloves. Be, about
all, vigilant, one can't foretell where the attack will come
from.
The universe behind the second gate is the
closest to our own, and our own universe is pretty crafty and heartless.
So the two can't be that different.
The universe
of the inorganic beings is always ready to strike. But so is our own
universe. That's why you have to go into their realm exactly as if you
were venturing into a war zone.
I don't mean that
dreamers always have to be afraid of that world. Once a
dreamer goes through the universe behind the second gate, or
once a dreamer refuses to consider it as a viable option,
there are no more headaches.
Only then are
dreamers free to continue. The universe behind the second
gate is so powerful and aggressive that it serves as a natural screen or a
testing ground where dreamers are probed for their
weaknesses. If they survive the tests, they can proceed to the next gate;
it they do not, they remain forever trapped in that universe.
For dreamers , their feelings alone can stop
their dreaming . Once they have formulated the thought of
reentering dreaming , their practices will continue as if
they had never been interrupted.
If
dreaming is overemphasized, it becomes what it was for the
old sorcerers: a source of inexhaustible indulging. You must exercise all
the care you are able to muster up. The old sorcerers' flaw was that they
took to the inorganic beings' realm like fish take to water. When
dreamers realize that the inorganic beings have no appeal it
is usually too late for them, because by then the inorganic beings have
them in the bag. The inorganic beings are like fishermen; they attract and
catch awareness. You are
suffering from anxiety, you say. That means nothing. Gain back your
energy, and don't worry about nonsense.
The inorganic beings are forever in search of
awareness and energy. The inorganic beings cannot lie.
The third gate of dreaming is
reached when you find yourself in a dream, staring at someone else who is
asleep. And that someone else turns out to be you.
There are two phases to each of the gates of dreaming . The
first, is to arrive at the gate; the second is to cross it. By
dreaming that you see yourself asleep, you arrive at the
third gate. The second phase is to move around once you've seen yourself
asleep.
At the third gate of dreaming
you begin to deliberately merge your dreaming reality with
the reality of the daily world. This is the drill, and sorcerers call it
completing the energy body. The merge between the two realities has to be
so thorough that you need to be more fluid than ever. Examine everything
at the third gate with great care and curiosity.
Our tendency at the third gate is to get lost in detail. To view things
with great care and curiosity means to resist the nearly irresistible
temptation to plunge into detail.
The given drill,
at the third gate, is to consolidate the energy body.
Dreamers begin forging the energy body by fulfilling the
drills of the first and second gates. When they reach the third gate, the
energy body is ready to come out, or perhaps it would be better to say
that it is ready to act. Unfortunately, this also means that it's ready to
be mesmerized by detail.
The energy body is like a
child who's been imprisoned all its life. The moment it is free, it soaks
up everything it can find, and I mean everything. Every irrelevant, minute
detail totally absorbs the energy body.
The most
asinine detail becomes a world for the energy body. The effort that
dreamers have to make to direct the energy body is
staggering. I know that it sounds awkward to tell you to view things with
care and curiosity, but that is the best way to describe what you should
do. At the third gate, dreamers have to avoid a nearly
irresistible impulse to plunge into everything, and they avoid it by being
so curious, so desperate to get into everything that they don't let any
particular thing imprison them.
My
recommendations, which I know sound absurd to the mind, are directly aimed
at your energy body. Your energy body has to unite all its resources in
order to act.
Your entire energy body has to be
engaged to perform the drill of the third gate. Therefore, to make things
easier for your energy body, you must hold back your
rationality.
At the third gate, rationality is
responsible for the insistence of our energy bodies on being obsessed with
superfluous detail. At the third gate, then, we need irrational fluidity,
irrational abandon to counteract that insistence.
The position of the assemblage point is like
a vault where sorcerers keep their records. Sorcerers are capable of
leaving accurate records of their findings in the position of the
assemblage point. When it comes to getting to the essence of a written
account, we have to use our sense of sympathetic or imaginative
participation to go beyond the mere page into the experience itself.
However, in the sorcerers' world, since there are no written pages, total
records, which can be relived instead of read, are left in the position of
the assemblage point.
With the inorganic beings, once you get to play with them, you are
hooked. They'll always be after you. Or, what's worse yet, you'll always
be after them.
To be
ready for a true merging of your dreaming reality and your
daily reality you must recapitulate your life further.
The recapitulation of our lives never ends, no matter how well
we've done it once. The reason average people lack volition in their
dreams is that they have never recapitulated and their lives are filled to
capacity with heavily loaded emotions like memories, hopes, fears, et
cetera, et cetera.
Sorcerers, in contrast, are
relatively free from heavy, binding emotions, because of their
recapitulation. And if something stops them, the assumption is that there
still is something in them that is not quite clear.
Recapitulating and dreaming go hand in hand. As we
regurgitate our lives, we get more and more airborne.
The recapitulation consists of reliving the totality of one's life
experiences by remembering every possible minute detail of them. It's the
essential factor in a dreamer 's redefinition and
redeployment of energy. The recapitulation sets free energy imprisoned
within us, and without this liberated energy dreaming is not
possible.
Make a list of all the people you have
met in your life, starting at the present. Arrange your list in an orderly
fashion, breaking it down into areas of activity, such as jobs you have
had, schools you have attended. Then go, without deviation, from the first
person on your list to the last one, reliving every one of your
interactions with them.
Recapitulating an event
starts with one's mind arranging everything pertinent to what is being
recapitulated. Arranging means reconstructing the event, piece by piece,
starting by recollecting the physical details of the surroundings, then
going to the person with whom one shared the interaction, and then going
to oneself, to the examination of one's feelings.
The recapitulation is coupled with a natural, rhythmical breathing. Long
exhalations are performed as the head moves gently and slowly from right
to left; and long inhalations are taken as the head moves back from left
to right. This act of moving the head from side to side is called "fanning
the event." The mind examines the event from beginning to end while the
body fans, on and on, everything the mind focuses on.
The sorcerers of antiquity, the inventors of the recapitulation,
viewed breathing as a magical, life-giving act and used it, accordingly,
as a magical vehicle; the exhalation, to eject the foreign energy left in
them during the interaction being recapitulated and the inhalation to pull
back the energy that they themselves left behind during the
interaction.
It is more involved than an
intellectual psychoanalysis. The recapitulation is a sorcerer's ploy to
induce a minute but steady displacement of the assemblage point. The
assemblage point, under the impact of reviewing past actions and feelings,
goes back and forth between its present site and the site it occupied when
the event being recapitulated took place.
The old
sorcerers' rationale behind the recapitulation was their conviction that
there is an inconceivable dissolving force in the universe, which makes
organisms live by lending them awareness. That force also makes organisms
die, in order to extract the same lent awareness, which organisms have
enhanced through their life experiences. The old sorcerers believed that
since it is our life experience this force is after, it is of supreme
importance that it can be satisfied with a facsimile of our life
experience: the recapitulation. Having had what it seeks, the dissolving
force then lets sorcerers go, free to expand their capacity to perceive
and reach with it the confines of time and space.
Dreaming requires every bit of our available energy. If there
is a deep preoccupation in our life, there is no possibility of
dreaming . If you think you are deeply preoccupied and your
practices are not interrupted, it would be that you are only egomaniacally
disturbed. To be preoccupied, for sorcerers, means that all your energy
sources are taken on.
There is a second round of
the recapitulation. It consists of a new recapitulation pattern. Construct
a jigsaw puzzle by recapitulating, without any apparent order, different
events of your life.
It'll be a mess if you let
your pettiness choose the events you are going to recapitulate. Instead,
let the spirit decide. Be silent, and then get to the event the spirit
points out.
There are two basic rounds to the
recapitulation, the first is called formality and rigidity, and the second
fluidity.
When
dreaming you are seeing your body you have to establish some
valid guide to find out whether you are actually seeing your body asleep
in your bed. Remember, you must be in your actual room, seeing your actual
body. Otherwise, what you are having is merely a dream. If that's the
case, control that dream, either by observing its detail or by changing
it. Figure out a way to validate the fact that you are looking at
yourself. Use your own judgment.
Dreamers have to be imaginative to move their energy bodies.
Sorcerers say that at the third gate the entire energy body can move like
energy moves: fast and directly. Their energy bodies know exactly how to
move. They can move as they move in the inorganic beings' world. When your
energy body learns to move by itself, you'll be thoroughly out of the
inorganic beings' reach.
Be impeccable. I have told you this dozens of times. To be
impeccable means to put your life on the line in order to back up your
decisions, and then to do quite a lot more than your best to realize those
decisions. When you are not deciding anything, you are merely playing
roulette with your life in a helter-skelter way.
Instead of struggling to walk in
dreaming , one wills oneself to
move. It takes sorcerers forever to learn to move the energy body with
their own volition. Once you've learned how to move your energy body by
yourself, you should continue moving. Moving your energy body opens up a
new area of extraordinary exploration.
Again, one
must come up with an idea to validate the faithfulness of one's
dreams.
To be transported by a scout is the real
dreaming task of the second gate. It is a very serious
matter, but not as serious as forging and moving the energy body.
Therefore, when the time comes, you have to make sure, by some means of
your own, whether you are actually seeing yourself asleep or whether you
are merely dreaming that you're seeing yourself asleep. One's
new extraordinary exploration hinges on really seeing oneself
asleep.
Dreamers take a very long
time to perfect their energy bodies. And this is exactly what's at stake
here: perfecting your energy body. The reason the energy body is compelled
to examine detail and get inextricably stuck in it is its inexperience,
its incompleteness. Sorcerers spend a lifetime consolidating the energy
body by letting it sponge up everything possible.
Until the energy body is complete and mature, it is self-absorbed. It
can't get free from the compulsion to be absorbed by everything. But if
one takes this into consideration, instead of fighting the energy body,
one can lend it a hand by directing its behavior, that is to say, by
stalking it.
Since everything related
to the energy body depends on the appropriate position of the assemblage
point, and since dreaming is nothing else but the means to
displace it, stalking is, consequently, the way to make the
assemblage point stay put on the perfect position, in this case, the
position where the energy body can become consolidated and from which it
can finally emerge.
The moment the energy body can
move on its own, sorcerers assume that the optimum position of the
assemblage point has been reached. The next step is to stalk it, that is,
to fixate it on that position in order to complete the energy body. The
procedure is simplicity itself. One intends to stalk
it.
Let your energy body intend to
reach the optimum dreaming position . Then, let your energy
body intend to stay at that position and you will be
stalking .
Intending is
the secret. Sorcerers displace their assemblage points through
intending and fixate them, equally, through
intending . And there is no technique for
intending . One intends through usage.
The ideal spot and the fixation of the assemblage point are
metaphors. They have nothing to do with the words used to describe
them.
What comes next is a sorcerer's gem, the
real task; seeing energy in your dreaming with
your energy body.
Dreamers have a
rule of thumb. If their energy body is complete, they see
energy every time they gaze at an item in the daily world. In dreams, if
they see the energy of an item, they know they are dealing
with a real world, no matter how distorted that world may appear to their
dreaming attention. If they can't see the energy
of an item, they are in an ordinary dream and not in a real
world.
What is a real world? A world that
generates energy; the opposite of a phantom world of projections, where
nothing generates energy, like most of our dreams, where nothing has an
energetic effect.
Another definition of
dreaming is: a process by which dreamers isolate
dream conditions in which they can find energy-generating elements.
Dreaming is the process by which we intend to
find adequate positions of the assemblage point, positions that permit us
to perceive energy-generating items in dreamlike states.
The energy body is also capable of perceiving energy that is quite
different from the energy of our own world, as in the case of items of the
inorganic beings' realm, which the energy body perceives as sizzling
energy. In our world nothing sizzles; everything here wavers.
From a certain point the issue of your dreaming
will be to determine whether the items on which you focus your
dreaming attention are energy generating, mere phantom
projections, or generators of foreign energy.
Seeing energy is the gauge to determine whether or not you
are observing your real body asleep.
In order to see in dreaming not
only do you have to intend seeing but you have
to put your intent into words. You have to speak up. There
are other means to accomplish the same result, but voicing one's
intent is one of the simplest and most direct way.
You need to have patience. You are learning to do something
extraordinary, you are learning to intend to see
in your dreams. Someday you will not have to voice your
intent ; you'll simply will it, silently.
If nothing happens when you voice your intent
to see it means that your dream is an ordinary dream; phantom
projections; images that have life only in your dreaming
attention.
Don't give up or get discouraged. Keep
on trying. Sooner or later, you'll hit the right note.
The drill for the third gate of dreaming is to make
the energy body move on its own.
In special
dreams, our dreaming attention focuses on the daily world,
and it moves instantly from one real object to another in the world. What
makes this movement possible is that the assemblage point is on the proper
dreaming position . From that position, the assemblage point
gives the dreaming attention such fluidity that it can move
in a split second over incredible distances, and in doing so it produces a
perception so fast, so fleeting that it resembles an ordinary
dream.
When your energy body is complete and
functioning, the implication that you see energy in your
dream is that you are perceiving a real world, through the veil of a
dream.
Unless we see in
dreaming , we can't tell a real, energy-generating thing from
a phantom projection.
The world is like an onion, it has many skins. The world we know is
but one of them. Sometimes, we cross boundaries and enter into another
skin: another world, very much like this one, but not the same.
In the view of sorcerers, the universe is constructed in
layers, which the energy body can cross. Do you know where the old
sorcerers are still existing to this day? In another layer, in another
skin of the onion.
The idea of a real, pragmatic
journey, taken in dreams, is very difficult to understand or to accept.
The journey of the energy body depends exclusively on the position of the
assemblage point.
Our problem is our cynicism.
Cynicism doesn't allow us to make drastic changes in our understanding of
the world. It also forces us to feel that we are always right.
I propose that you do one nonsensical thing that might turn
the tide. Repeat to yourself incessantly that the hinge of sorcery is the
mystery of the assemblage point. If you repeat this to yourself long
enough, some unseen force takes over and makes the appropriate changes in
you.
Cut your cynical attitude! Repeat this in a
bona fide manner. The mystery of the assemblage point is everything in
sorcery. Or rather, everything in sorcery rests on the manipulation of the
assemblage point. You may know all this, but you have to repeat
it.
There is an
enormous difference between the thoughts and deeds of the men of antiquity
and those of modern men. The men of ancient times had a very realistic
view of perception and awareness because their view stemmed from their
observations of the universe around them. Modern men, in contrast, have an
absurdly unrealistic view of perception and awareness because their view
stems from their observations of the social order and from their dealings
with it.
You are a modern man involved with the
views and observations of men of antiquity. And none of those views and
observations are familiar to you. Now more than ever you need sobriety and
aplomb. I am trying to make a solid bridge, a bridge you can walk on,
between the views of men of ancient times and those of modern
men.
Of all the transcendental observations of the
men of ancient times, the only one with which you are familiar, because it
has filtered down to our day, is the idea of selling our souls to the
devil in exchange for immortality, which sounds to me like something
coming straight out of the relationship of the old sorcerers with the
inorganic beings.
Succumbing to the lure of the
inorganic beings is not just an idea; it's real. Dreaming ,
likewise, is real; it is an energy-generating condition. You hear my
statements and you may understand what I mean, but your awareness hasn't
caught up with the total implication of it yet.
When you are fully aware of what an energy-generating condition means you
will measure dreaming with the greatest care and
deliberation. When you believe you are just dreaming , you
take blind chances. Faulty reasoning tells you that no matter what
happens, at a given moment the dream will be over and you will wake
up.
I am talking to you about the views of men of
antiquity and the views of modern man because your awareness, which is the
awareness of modern man, prefers to deal with an unfamiliar concept as if
it were an empty ideality.
If I left it up to you,
you'd regard dreaming as an idea. Of course, I'm sure you
take dreaming seriously, but you don't quite believe in the
reality of dreaming .
I am saying all
this because the time will come when you are in the proper position to
understand that dreaming is an energy-generating condition.
Then, you will understand that ordinary dreams are the honing devices used
to train the assemblage point to reach the position that creates this
energy-generating condition we call dreaming .
Since dreamers touch and enter real worlds of
all-inclusive effects, they ought to be in a permanent state of the most
intense and sustained alertness; any deviation from total alertness
imperils the dreamer in ways more than dreadful.
Regard dreaming as something extremely
dangerous. And begin that now.
When you can
displace your assemblage point quickly and easily that ease can have the
tendency to make the displacement erratic. Then you must bring that ease
to order. And don't allow yourself even a fraction of an inch
leeway.
Faithfully and daily repeat what I asked
you to repeat, that everything in sorcery rests on the manipulation of the
assemblage point. The results of your litany-like invocation will be
incredible. It has the same effect on one's awareness that exercise has on
the muscles of the body. Your assemblage point becomes more agile, which
means that seeing energy in dreaming becomes the
sole goal of your practices. A moment then comes when you are able just to
intend seeing , without saying a word, and
actually experience the same result as when you voice out loud your
intent to see . The energy of
our world wavers. It scintillates. Not only living beings but everything
in our world glimmers with an inner light of its own. The energy of our
world consists of layers of shimmering hues. The top layer is whitish;
another, immediately adjacent to it, is chartreuse; and another one, more
distant yet, is amber. You will see glimmers of them whenever
items that you encounter in your dreamlike states change shapes. However,
a whitish glow is always the initial impact of seeing
anything that generates energy.
There is an
endless number of different hues, but for the purposes of a beginning
order, you should be concerned with those three. Later on, you can get as
sophisticated as you want and isolate dozens of hues, if you are able to
do it. The whitish layer is the hue of the present
position of mankind's assemblage point. Let's say that it is a modern hue.
Sorcerers believe that everything man does nowadays is tinted with that
whitish glow. At another time, more distant yet, it made it amber. The
color of sorcerers' energy is amber, which means that they are
energetically associated with the men who existed in a distant
past.
The present whitish hue may change someday
if man is capable of evolving. The grand task of sorcerers is to bring
forth the idea that, in order to evolve, man must first free his awareness
from its bindings to the social order. Once awareness is free,
intent will redirect it into a new evolutionary path.
Sorcerers have succeeded in that task. They themselves are
the proof. To convince others of the value and import of evolving is
another matter.
The other kind of energy present
in our world but alien to it is the scouts energy, the energy that
sizzles.
Bear in mind that not every scout you are
going to find belongs to the realm of inorganic beings. Some of the scouts
you will encounter are going to be not from the inorganic beings' realm
but from other, even more distant levels of awareness.
Since scouts are aware of themselves, they make contact with us
when we are awake. But our great misfortune is to have our consciousness
so fully engaged that we don't have time to pay attention. In our sleep,
however, the two-way-traffic trapdoor opens: we dream. And in our dreams,
we make contact.
The way to tell whether the
scouts are from a level besides the inorganic beings' world is: the
greater their sizzling, the farther they come from. It sounds simplistic,
but you have to let your energy body tell you what is what. I assure you,
it'll make very fine distinctions and unerring judgments when faced with
alien energy.
Unless you know exactly what you are
doing and what you want out of alien energy, you have to be content with a
brief glance. Anything beyond a glance is as dangerous and as stupid as
petting a rattlesnake.
Scouts are always very
aggressive and extremely daring. They have to be that way in order to
prevail in their explorations. Sustaining our dreaming
attention on them is tantamount to soliciting their awareness to focus on
us. Once they focus their attention on us, we are compelled to go with
them. And that, of course, is the danger. We may end up in worlds beyond
our energetic possibilities.
There are many types
of scouts, but at a beginning level of energy one can only focus on three.
The first two types are the easiest to spot. Their disguises in our dreams
are so outlandish, that they immediately attract our dreaming
attention. The scouts of the third type are the most dangerous, in terms
of aggressiveness and power, and because they hide behind subtle
disguises.
One of the strangest things
dreamers find, which you yourself will find, is this third
type of scout. The most ferocious scout hides behind people in our dreams.
It's annoying that they are always associated with the dream images of our
parents or close friends. Perhaps that's why we often feel ill at ease
when we dream of them. A rule of thumb for dreamers is to
assume that the third type of scout is present whenever they feel
perturbed by their parents or friends in a dream. Sound advice is to avoid
those dream images. They are sheer poison.
Blue
energy doesn't sizzle. It is like ours; it wavers, but it is blue instead
of white. Blue energy doesn't exist in a natural state in our
world.
The deadly scouts of the third type are
bright orange.
The
inorganic beings only show themselves at the beginning. After their scouts
take us to their world, there is no necessity for the inorganic beings'
projections. If we want to see the inorganic beings, a scout
takes us there. For no one, and I mean no one, can journey by himself to
their realm.
Their world is sealed. No one can
enter or leave without the consent of the inorganic beings. The only thing
you can do by yourself once you are inside is, of course, voice your
intent to stay. To say it out loud means to set in motion currents
of energy that are irreversible. In olden times, words were incredibly
powerful. Now they are not. In the inorganic beings' realm, they haven't
lost their power.
There is one last issue related
to that world that we haven't discussed. In the final analysis my aversion
to the old sorcerers' activities is very personal. As a nagual, I detest
what they did. They cowardly sought refuge in the inorganic beings' world.
They argued that in a predatorial universe, poised to rip us apart, the
only possible haven for us is in that realm.
They
believed that because it's true. Since the inorganic beings can't lie, the
sales pitch of the dreaming emissary is all true. That world
can give us shelter and prolong our awareness for nearly an
eternity.
When the emissary's sales pitch, even if
it's the truth, has no appeal to you, and you are ready to chance a road
that might rip you apart, you will be ready for this one final statement
about that world. The most dreadful statement I can make.
The energy necessary to move the assemblage points of sorcerers
comes from the realm of inorganic beings.
This is
the truth and the legacy of the old sorcerers to us. The inorganic beings
have us pinned down to this day. This is the reason I don't like them. I
resent having to dip into one source alone. Personally, I refuse to do it.
And I am trying to steer you away from it.
We
can't have dealings with them. And yet we can't stay away from them. My
solution has been to take their energy but not give into their influence.
This is known as the ultimate stalking . It is done by
sustaining the unbending intent of freedom, even though no
sorcerer knows what freedom really is.
The reason
sorcerers have to take energy from the realm of inorganic beings is
because there is no other viable energy for sorcerers. In order to
maneuver the assemblage point in the manner they do, sorcerers need an
inordinate amount of energy. As I've said, a redeployment of energy is
necessary in order to do dreaming . To start
dreaming sorcerers need to redefine their premises and save
their energy, but that redefining is valid only to have the necessary
energy to set up dreaming . To fly into other realms, to
see energy, to forge the energy body, et cetera, et cetera,
is another matter. For those maneuvers, sorcerers need loads of dark,
alien energy.
They take it from the inorganic
beings' world by the mere act of going to that world. All the sorcerers of
our line have to do this.
Awareness is an endless area of exploration for sorcerers and man in
general. In order to enhance awareness, there is no risk we should not
run, no means we should refuse. Bear in mind, however, that only in
soundness of mind can awareness be enhanced.
I'm
going to propose a line of action for you. It's the last task of the third
gate of dreaming , and it consists of stalking
the stalkers , a most mysterious maneuver. To stalk the
stalkers means to deliberately draw energy from the inorganic
beings' realm in order to perform a sorcery feat. A journey--a journey
that uses awareness as an element of the environment.
In the world of daily life, water is an element of the environment
that we use for traveling. Imagine awareness being a similar element that
can be used for traveling. Through the medium of awareness, scouts from
all over the universe come to us, and vice versa; via awareness, sorcerers
go to the ends of the universe.
Awareness is an
energetic element. You have to make that distinction. For sorcerers who
see , awareness is a glow. They can hitch their energy body
to that glow and go with it.
The difference
between a physical and an energetic element is that physical elements are
part of our interpretation system, and energetic elements are not.
Energetic elements, like awareness, exist in our universe. But we, as
average people, perceive only the physical elements because we were taught
to do so. Sorcerers perceive the energetic elements for the same reason:
they were taught to do so.
The use of awareness as
an energetic element of our environment is the essence of sorcery. In
terms of practicalities, the trajectory of sorcery is, first, to free the
existing energy in us by impeccably following the sorcerers' path; second,
to use that energy to develop the energy body by means of
dreaming ; and, third, to use awareness as an element of the
environment in order to enter with the energy body and all our physicality
into other worlds.
There are two kinds of energy
journeys into other worlds. One is when awareness picks up the sorcerer's
energy body and takes it wherever it may, and the other is when the
sorcerer decides, in full consciousness, to use the avenue of awareness to
make a journey. It takes an enormous discipline to do the
second.
In the life of sorcerers there are issues
that require masterful handling, and dealing with awareness, as an
energetic element open to the energy body, is the most important, vital,
and dangerous of those issues.
With enough energy
you can perform the last task of the third gate of dreaming :
to break the boundaries of the normal world and, using awareness as an
energetic element, enter into another. This breaking and entering amounts
to stalking the stalkers . Using awareness as an
element of the environment bypasses the influence of the inorganic beings,
but it still uses their energy.
In a pinch, your energy body is perfectly capable of taking
care of itself.
After getting into a state of total inner silence, slip gently into
dreaming , voicing your intent to go to the
realm of the inorganic beings. Once you are in the world of the inorganic
beings, you have to voice your intent to transfer your normal
awareness to your energy body. What is important is that you
intend the transfer of the total awareness of your daily
world to your energy body.
Transferring awareness
is purely a matter of voicing your intent and having the
necessary amount of energy to tip the scales. That means to be able to add
one's total physical mass to the energy body. Using awareness as a medium
to make the journey into another world is not the result of applying any
techniques but is the corollary of intending and having
enough energy to be energetically capable of pulling our physicality and
placing it on the energy body in order to make that journey.
In order to enter into that other world your total physical
mass has to be added to your energy body. The great difficulty of this
maneuver is to discipline the energy body. Lack of discipline is the only
reason you may fail in performing this feat of ultimate
stalking . Sometimes, as a fluke, an average person ends up
performing it and entering into another world. But this is immediately
explained away as insanity or hallucination.
Forget the self and you will fear
nothing.
During an
experience of stalking the stalkers one realizes
that perceiving is an all-inclusive act when the assemblage point has been
immobilized on one position. I have told you that the power our daily
world has over us is a result of the fact that our assemblage point is
immobile on its habitual position. This immobility is what makes our
perception of the world so inclusive and overpowering that we cannot
escape from it. If you want to break this totally inclusive force, all you
have to do is dispel the fog, that is to say, displace the assemblage
point by intending its displacement.
You yourself will understand what I mean the moment you have to bring your
assemblage point to another position in order to dispel that world's fog
which will begin to swallow you during a maneuver of stalking
the stalkers . The reentry into our world is automatic if we
don't let the fog set in.
Ordinarily
dreamers experience the whole maneuver as a series of slow
transitions, and they have to voice their intent to use
awareness as an element. Ordinarily, dreamers are merely
voyeurs.
The old sorcerers' damnation was that the
inorganic beings took them to worlds from which they could not
return.
Since they entered into that world with
all their physicality, the fixation of their assemblage points on the
position preselected by the inorganic beings was so overpowering that it
created a sort of fog that obliterated any memory of the world they came
from. The natural consequence of such an immobility, is that the
dreamer 's assemblage point cannot return to its habitual
position.
Think about this. Perhaps this is
exactly what is happening to all of us in the world of daily life. We are
here, and the fixation of our assemblage point is so overpowering that it
has made us forget where we came from, and what our purpose was for coming
here. The task is to sneak by the inorganic beings, not be run by
them.
Perhaps you will stalk the
stalkers when you have the strength. Or perhaps you'll never
accomplish it. It doesn't really matter; if one thing doesn't work,
another will. Sorcery is an endless challenge.
In
order to use awareness as an element of the environment,
dreamers first have to make a journey to the inorganic
beings' realm. Then they have to use that journey as a springboard, and,
while they are in possession of the necessary dark energy, they have to
intend to be hurled through the medium of awareness into
another world.
In your dreaming
practices, see energy in energy-generating dreamlike states.
When you are able to see everything that presents itself to
you, you may become incapable of rendering intelligently what you
see . It may be then, as though you have reached states of
perception for which you have no lexicon.
Such
incomprehensible and indescribable visions would be your energy body using
awareness as an element not for journeying, because you wouldn't yet have
enough energy, but for entering into the energy fields of inanimate matter
or of living beings. At
the fourth gate of dreaming , the energy body travels to
specific, concrete places. There are three ways of using the fourth gate:
one, to travel to concrete places in this world; two, to travel to
concrete places out of this world; and, three, to travel to places that
exist only in the intent of others. Whether or not you can
cross the fourth gate by yourself is up to the spirit.
Modern-day sorcerers have realized that only if they remain totally
detached can they have the energy to be free. Theirs is a peculiar type of
detachment, which is born not out of fear or indolence but out of
conviction.
Stretch
your arms in front of you, to the sides, and then behind you. It relaxes
the body.
For
modern-day sorcerers to perceive energy directly is a matter of personal
attainment. We maneuver the assemblage point through
self-discipline.
Your energy body has endless
resources. Modern-day sorcerers do not know the details of the thousands
of possible positions of the assemblage point. By details I mean
particular ways of treating the energy body in order to maintain the
assemblage point fixed on specific positions.
Most
of the shifts modern-day sorcerers experience are mild shifts within a
thin bundle of energetic luminous filaments inside the luminous egg, a
bundle called the band of man, or the purely human aspect of the
universe's energy. Beyond that band, but still within the luminous egg,
lies the realm of the grand shifts. When the assemblage point shifts to
any spot on that area, perception is still comprehensible to us, but
extremely detailed procedures are required for perception to be
total.
Every grand shift has different inner
workings which modern sorcerers could learn if they knew how to fixate the
assemblage point long enough at any grand shift.
By inducing a systematic displacement of the
assemblage point, dreaming liberates perception, enlarging
the scope of what can be perceived.
For the
sorcerers of my party, dreaming has not only opened the doors
of other perceivable worlds but prepared us for entering into those realms
in full awareness.
The second attention has
endless treasures to be discovered. The initial position in which the
dreamer places his body is of key importance. The old
sorcerers used to call this the twin positions. The initial position in
which a dreamer holds his physical body to begin
dreaming is mirrored by the position in which he holds his
energy body, in dreams, to fixate his assemblage point on any spot of his
choosing. The two positions make a unit.
The
position in which one places the body is of utmost importance. Start your
dreaming by lying on your right side, with your knees a bit
bent. The discipline is to maintain that position and fall asleep in it.
In dreaming , then, the exercise is to dream that you lie
down in exactly the same position and fall asleep again.
It makes the assemblage point stay put, and I mean really stay put,
in whatever position it is at the instant of that second falling asleep.
The result of this exercise is total perception.
The four variations of the exercise are to fall asleep lying on the right
side, the left, the back, and the stomach. Then in dreaming
the exercise is to dream of falling asleep a second time in the same
position as the dreaming had been started.
I came from a line of sorcerers who knew how to move about in the
second attention by projecting their intent . They practiced
the art of projecting their thoughts in dreaming in order to
accomplish the truthful reproduction of any object or structure or
landmark or scenery of their choice.
The sorcerers
of my line used to start by gazing at a simple object and memorizing every
detail of it. They would then close their eyes and visualize the object
and correct their visualization against the true object until they could
see it, in its completeness, with their eyes shut.
The next thing in their developing scheme was to dream with the object and
create in the dream, from the point of view of their own perception, a
total materialization of the object. This act is called the first step to
total perception.
From a simple object, those
sorcerers went on to take more and more complex items. Their final aim was
for all of them together to visualize a total world, then dream that world
and thus re-create a totally veritable realm where they could
exist.
When any of the sorcerers of my line were
able to do that they could easily pull anyone into their
intent , into their dream.
Whole
populations disappeared dreaming like that. It's possible
because they visualized and then re-created in dreaming the
same scenery.
To cross the fourth gate and travel
to places that exist only in someone else's intent is
perilous, since every item in such a dream has to be an ultimately
personal item.
The essence of my explanation is
that if you were, for instance, dreaming of your hometown and
your dream had started when you lay down on your right side, you could
very easily stay in the town of your dream if you would lie on your right
side, in the dream, and dream that you had fallen asleep. The second dream
not only would necessarily be a dream of your hometown, but would be the
most concrete dream one can imagine.
The only way
to have absolute control of dreams is to use the technique of the twin
positions. And don't ask me why. It just happens. Like everything
else.
The thought of
evil cannot withstand examination. In the universe only energy exists;
evil is merely a concatenation of the human mind, overwhelmed by the
fixation of the assemblage point on its habitual position. Logically,
there is really nothing to be afraid of.
There is no past or future in the universe. There
is only the moment. Think for a moment, in the universe there is only
energy, and energy has only a here and now, an endless and ever-present
here and now.
The
secret of the twin positions is that the second dream is
intending in the second attention: the only way to cross the
fourth gate of dreaming .
To make a
dream an all-inclusive reality is the art of the old sorcerers. This is
dreaming . You should know by now that its transactions are
final.
You have been given an abstract gift: the
possibility of flying on the wings of
intent.
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