04-16-2011, 12:00 AM
“But before we venture beyond this point a fair warning is required; a teacher is supposed to speak in earnest terms and warn his disciple that the harmlessness and placidity of this moment are a mirage, that there is a bottomless abyss in front of him, and that once the door opens there is no way to close it again.” DJ, Tales Of Power.
So in true stalker fashion DJ issues his warning, remember he also did this when he plunged CC into a demonstration of no pity. These words are announced to CC at the culmination of a fourteen year apprenticeship with DJ, prior to the famous “sorcerer’s explanation”. For those that have not applied themselves with any discipline to a path such as this, the value of an explanation of this kind might have escaped you when you first came across it years ago. At least it did me when I first heard it. So if you would indulge me, perhaps I can dust it off and we can take a fresh look at this “lethal” ingenuity.
“The sorcerer’s explanation, which does not seem like an explanation at all, is lethal, it seems harmless and charming, but as soon as the warrior opens himself to it, it delivers a blow that no one can parry.” DJ, TOP
Now pay attention to that, it is an explanation that doesn’t seem like an explanation at all. Remember CC has been waiting fourteen years for this. DJ wanted to tell him all about it at the beginning but Genaro who was CC’s benefactor was “ a stickler for the rule” and insisted that it come at the end of the apprenticeship. DJ tries to deflate CC’s expectation by saying, “ Wouldn’t it be something if the sorcerer’s explanation turned out to be a dud?” which caused a lot of laughter from those in the know.
Now as we know a “A teacher never seeks apprentices and no one can solicit the teachings!” DJ But how does this play out for us today? We have the books with the teachings in them. Where as the “old fashioned way” required that power usually through an omen selected who was to receive the teachings and yes from a teacher, I know we don’t like that. We hate the idea of submitting to the authority of another. Truth is we do it all the time and really don’t mind, but in matters like this we don’t want to appear like a mere novice or that someone might appear “better” than us in a spiritual sense. Once the selection process is made clear to the teacher, the teacher then “hooks” the unknowing apprentice and as I like to say the process of induction begins by any means necessary.
I am still in the preamble here so those with short attention spans might find this boring and your attention might be better suited wandering elsewhere. For the rest of us I am assuming that if like me you read something like Tales Of Power years ago and have probably not revisited it, yet remember the pertinent stories. But this brings us back to the problem of the teachings. We have the books, who needs a teacher right? At which point I would have to ask how’s that working for you? I think at best what the books provide is a look at another view of the world with which we might become familiar through the words of another. And the books do offer points of corroboration for those undergoing an apprenticeship of this sort. But this is where the teachings garnered through the books can become very slippery. Without the added component of a teacher, a teacher being one who has digested the teachings and has a capacity to impart them, without that component, a would be apprentice is on their own trying to make sense of the
teachings with perhaps the help of other would be apprentices in the same boat.Here is an example of what I am talking about;
“He explained that the art of a teacher was to deviate the apprentices attention from the main issues.” DJ, TOP
DJ did this with CC by focusing his attention on a pseudo task of learning to “see”. DJ was continuously tricking, distracting or tapping CC’s attention as he saw fit sometimes as we see by distracting with teachings that were not really teachings but didactic devices which DJ used a lot. Now for those that do not have the direct personal relationship with and benefit of the author of those teachings and yet have access to his words we run the risk of devoting our time and attention, lost in one of DJ’s didactic devices thinking them to be something other than what they are.
If we find ourselves like CC thinking we are learning to “see” we are chasing a decoy but when such a decoy is skillfully used by a competent teacher it can be used to trap attention, in this case it was used to get CC interested in “erasing personal history” and “dreaming”. But why the use an attention decoy why not just directly introduce CC to those two aspects? Dj had CC doing all kinds of tasks thinking he was learning to see but without telling him what it was he was actually engaging tentatively in personal history erasing and dreaming. Had DJ taught CC directly about dreaming and erasing personal history right off the bat CC would have given these two aspects more attention than they deserve.
“Erasing personal history and dreaming should only be a help.” DJ TOP
Just let that sink in. These are minor aspects. You remember what the old seers did with dreaming. They took off with it and it became their “crowning jewel”. "If dreaming is exercised in its “totality” it is ultimately devastating" (DJ, TOP). Hence the need for the teacher to be cautious with anything which might plunge his apprentice into aberration.
“What any apprentice needs to buffer him is temperance and strength. That’s why the teacher introduces the warrior’s way or living like a warrior. This is the glue that joins together everything in a sorcerer’s world. Bit by bit a teacher must forge and develop it. Without the sturdiness and level-headedness of the warrior’s way there is no possibility of withstanding the path of knowledge. DJ, TOPHere’s another example;
“A teacher had to take into consideration the personality of the apprentice, and in my case (cc) he had to be careful because I was violent and would have thought nothing of killing myself out of despair.” TOP
If erasing personal history is engaged without its three supporting techniques, deleterious results occur. CC had been introduced to this in a specific manner tailored to him because of his violent nature.
Some might think I am stressing the need of a teacher in what I am saying here. What I am emphasizing is the highly probable dead end we might find ourselves in when we extract teachings such as these from the system, tradition, methodology or the context that forged them and apply them to ourselves as we see fit. We end up expanding our personal inventory to include the sorcerer’s world view and some even manage to exchange their current world view for the sorcerer’s world view, quite a feat but equally a dead end. But that’s what the books tend to do. That’s what the books are good at.
“Once an apprentice has been hooked, the instruction begins. The first act of a teacher is to introduce the idea that the world we think we see is only a view, a description of the world. Every effort is geared to prove this point to his apprentice. But accepting it seems to be one of the hardest things one can do; we are complacently caught in our particular world view, which compels us us to feel and act as if we knew everything about the world. A teacher from the very first act he performs aims at stopping that world view.” DJ top.
Pay close attention here and be honest with yourselves. Has anybody that you know engaged with you to this degree? “Every effort is geared to prove this point!” Now for DJ this was an arduous task, demanding his every effort with his apprentice, because, “accepting it seems to be one of the hardest things one can do;”. But we have the books. We can just read this and draw the conclusion that the world is not as it appears and think that we have accepted what DJ was talking about. And because we think we have accepted this we become inoculated against it. It was not the hardest thing for us to accept we just read about it and believed. Let me show you what I mean.
DJ goes on to tell us about stopping the internal dialogue. Now in these forums there has been a lot of focus about stopping the internal dialogue. Various techniques are offered from various traditions even. There is nothing really left to say about this except judging from what people are saying in forums such as this the fruit of stopping that internal dialogue seems to be missing. The same world view prevails but has just been modified to include the sorcerer’s world view. Many may believe they are stopping the internal dialogue through the various techniques they employ but it seems to have little effect on the basic description of the world. The modified view goes something like this. The world is not what it appears. If we can stop our internal dialogue for a moment we will see that it is really an energetic universe. Then its back to normal and we rejoice that we now believe this.
But I say that this view of the world as it really is, is not only accessible when we stop the internal dialogue, it is the only view available to those who have been able to really accept what DJ was talking about. Stopping the internal dialogue at the beginning ushers in glimpses of this reality but then the basic world view and the modified world view just overwhelms as soon as the dialogue kicks in again just the same as in dreaming when we lose our 2nd attention. This is why it is one one of the hardest things to accept and demands every effort to move an apprentice beyond this. Just reading that the world is really energetic does little. Science is even saying that.
So you see in listening to DJ’s recapitulation here, we are back at square one the first truth about awareness and the world of objects. You see we have a tendency to think of the normal world view of the average man, as average and then the sorcerer’s world view as superior. The books tend to arouse such a dichotomy. We think that by accepting the sorcerer’s view, which just seems preposterous to the average man, that we accepted what DJ was trying to get across and have penetrated this description of the world. We have penetrated nothing when we do this. All we have done is accepted another world view, a more expansive and exciting world view, but still just another description.
This is why the first truth about awareness is the first truth, not the third or fifth but the first! It is the hardest to accept. Without it the other truths about awareness are distractions and will lead down the path of the old seers.
When a description of the world prevails we are compelled, this is not a choice, we are compelled, “to feel and act as if we knew everything about the world” and this compulsion is evident in everything we say, even when we speak about the sorcerer’s world view! This is not a comment about arrogance or conceit as if DJ were talking about being a “know it all” It is a comment about ignorance! For those familiar with my ravings about emptiness and objects you will remember I said something to the effect that just because we give things names and separate them with our minds and share the same meanings with each other because of language does not mean we know anything at all about what it is we are seeing. Just because we can isolate an object from that vast expanse and then observe it with another isolated part of our minds does not mean we know what that objects is. Look around, pick up an object, hold it in your hand, touch it look at it, I tell you you do not know what it is other than it is empty and non-substantial. Again I would like to point out that Buddhism and DJ and speaking the same language when it comes to this. Those that fail to see this connection probably just don’t get DJ concerning this. Am I saying DJ was a Buddhist or that Nagualism is really Buddhist of course not! But concerning the first truth about awareness Buddhism is not only on the same page as DJ but is far more articulate about it.
What is the opposite of silence? It is the one-to-one relationship maintained between the tonal and the elements of its description. The tonal is not a separate object! To focus our attention upon the individuality of an object or many different individual objects establishes tonal. That is why unfocused gazing is so effective because when we do this we loosen the hold that objects have. By not focusing on objects individually or as many our eyes are flooded with all the details that are not represented by those objects as they are normally apprehended. Just on a personal note, my favorite way of doing this is by gazing at grass, the lawn, on a sunny day. It is all but impossible to focus on a single blade of grass anyway. But really once you get the hang of this any object will do, even TV. That is not enough though. One must apply this flood of information from every thing. Or as DJ liked to say the tonal must be swept.
OK we are almost at the “turn”. I just want to reiterate that accepting the larger view of the world common to sorcerer’s is not the same as accepting what DJ has to say about a description of the world. DJ drove this point home when speaking of his benefactor and teacher he said,
“They were men of great power, but they were not men of knowledge. They never broke the bounds of their enormous world views and thus they never arrived at the totality of themselves.” TOP
“I gave you enough of the sorcerer’s view without letting you get hooked by it. I said that only if one pits the two views against each other can one weasel between them to arrive at the real world. I meant that one can arrive at the totality of oneself only when one fully understands that the world is merely a view, regardless of whether that view belongs to an ordinary man or to a sorcerer.” TOP
See here is one of the pitfalls of not having a relationship with a competent teacher. We have the books and we can imbibe the sorcerers view until absolutely drunk on it. And if we are really honest about it who wouldn’t prefer the sorcerer’s world to that of an average man. But those who indulge this lazy method have less chance than DJ’s teacher and benefactor! No these two views must be pitted against each other! Now here lies a benefit of books. The books have introduced us to the world view of a sorcerer. The two views cannot be pitted against each other unless one knows about both views. This in itself is an art! To broach this subject in forums such as this, forums dedicated to Castaneda and the teachings of Don Juan can be a daunting challenge. Whenever this sort of thing is brought up it is treated with suspicion. However as I have pointed out this is a teaching of DJ. The problem lies in the fact that DJ is deviating from tradition, the tradition he has introduced us to through CC. What has happened for many though is they have embraced the tradition without realizing what DJ was doing.
“Here is where I varied from the tradition. After a lifelong struggle I know that what matters is not to learn a new description but to arrive at the totality of oneself.” DJ TOP(I would have loved to have talked to DJ about the particulars of how he came upon this.)
This is where I see many in these forums are at. Many have embraced the world of sorcery but have never got past the descriptions and the activities appropriate to each description. But here lies an opportunity at least we know both views now! And with some effort perhaps we can see for ourselves was DJ was up to.
Alright now we are at the turn. Thank you for bearing with me. I know this is long.
“To be ready for the sorcerer’s explanation is a very difficult accomplishment. It shouldn’t be, but we insist on indulging in our lifelong view of the world. In this respect you and Nestor and Pablito are alike. Nestor hides behind his shyness and gloom, Pablito behind his disarming charm ; and you behind your cockiness and words. All are views that seem unchallengeable; and as long as you three persist in using them your bubbles of perception have not been cleared and the sorcerer’s explanation will have no meaning.” DJ, TOP
So just to be ready for the sorcerer’s explanation is a “very difficult accomplishment”, its not something we can just read about! But then DJ gives us the first hint;
“The mystery, or secret, of the sorcerer’s explanation is that it deals with unfolding the wings of perception.” DJ, TOP.
The totality of oneself illumined by the sorcerer’s explanation is available to those “weasels” who are able slip between the descriptions of the views of the average man and sorcerer. It is not available or made manifest to either, an average man or sorcerer. A competent teacher guides apprentices between these poles safe guarding the apprentice from settling for either position, readying the apprentice for flight. (Not a flight into dreaming!)
DJ would have us believe that at birth our attention is fluid and our perception wide open. But we are told what it is we are perceiving, as if the ones telling us actually know, and slowly but surely our “bubble of perception” closes, defined by a description. Once attention has been sealed within this bubble caught by the description, self reflection is established but what “we” don’t realize is, the description is this reflection. Any ideas we have about our “self” that appears to be observing the reflection is merely the refractive activity of attention that is caught or fixed in this bubble. This is difficult to explain and see. So, how ever you come to terms with what DJ is saying about this is fine. There are many different ways of describing this from various traditions. For now just understand that the view from “inside” the bubble of perception prevents us from seeing the totality of ourselves. It is useless to talk about what this totality is, it has to be seen for oneself, however what we can say is; it is not what is perceived by a closed bubble of perception.
Now at this point we have a dilemma. In DJ’s system of teaching, a teacher works with the apprentice rearranging his view from the “inside”, with him, so to speak, preparing the way for a benefactor who is going to re-open the bubble of perception from the “outside”. DJ refers to this preparation by the teacher as a “delicate maneuver”. He also takes full responsibility for “leading a luminous being into the totality of themselves”. Quite simply put if you do not know how to do this for yourself you are in need of a teacher, no matter what you might think about teachers and gurus etc. If most of think we are going to achieve this by a method other than what DJ is proposing here, then that might well be, but don’t confuse your method with that of DJ and say they are the same or that you are on the same path.
“By now you must have realized that cleaning and reordering the island of the tonal means regrouping all its elements on the side of reason. My task has been to disarrange your ordinary view, not to destroy it but to force it to rally on the side of reason.” DJ TOP
I often thought that the tonal sometimes gets a bum rap. Sure it craps outs when the nagual comes forth, but in the end the tonal is equally as mysterious as the nagual. This tonal is made by perception itself! Too often in spiritual circles reason is thought of an enemy of sorts instead of an asset. Reason is only a problem while it thinks it is in charge and can account for everything. Once the elements of tonal and its world view have been grouped around reason then there is the possibility of recognizing a singularity of will. By this I mean that the will is made available without all the entanglements that have been swept to one side. The will is solitary element and needs to be appreciated in its solitude. To give an example here. A Christian often prays to God saying, “Not my will be done but yours.” But usually the Christian has little idea what the will of God is at different times because the Christian’s own will has not been isolated and therefore he will not be able to recognize his own commands as the commands of the Eagle.
So the teacher prepares the apprentice and ready the apprentice awaits with a resolute, isolated will, pure in intention. Now it is time for the benefactor to “break the seal”. It is the will that meets or witnesses the nagual and “reason is not invited to the party”. Now how a benefactor breaks the seal and opens the bubble of perception I really have little idea other than to think he acts directly with that bubble of perception in ways that cannot be accounted for by reason. But lets just go with it .
“We can better explain this by saying that the task of the teacher is to wipe clean one half of the bubble and reorder everything on the other half. The benefactor’s task then is to open the bubble on the side that has been cleaned. ONCE THE SEAL HAS BEEN BROKEN THE WARRIOR IS NEVER THE SAME. HE HAS THEN COMMAND OF HIS TOTALITY.
Half of the is the ultimate center of reason , the tonal. The other half is the ultimate center of will, the nagual. That is the order that should prevail; any other arrangement is nonsensical and petty, because it goes against our nature; it robs us of our magical heritage and reduces us to nothing.” DJ TOP
If I were to ask what does it mean to gain the totality of oneself I am sure that I would get many different answers, chief of which would be “burning from within” and disappearing from the planet or that having command of one’s totality would mean having supernatural miraculous powers. So before we entertain all those exciting possibilities lets just stick with what DJ means by this. Gaining or having command of one’s totality means, according to DJ, having a bubble of perception where all the elements of the tonal have been “rallied around reason” all that is except for the will and that the seal of the bubble of perception has been broken from the outside and the will has witnessed the nagual. “This is the order that should prevail!” Now I don’t wish to belittle this, but that’s all it is. It doesn’t live up to the expectation many of us have when broken down like this. But for those that have rallied in their sobriety this prevailing order is everything!
Let’s just take this a step further. DJ is an impeccable teacher. In his dealings with CC he worked from within and impeccably led him and prepared him to to view his totality. Genaro in his dealings with CC was an impeccable benefactor and he opened CC’s bubble of perception so that he could view his totality. If there are any doubts about this just read the Bubble of Perception chapter in Tales of power. CC vividly tells us what he witnessed when his seal was broken or shattered and his attention could move fluidly, but many still have different ideas about what this means.
“What was important was the fact that I had experienced with or in my body the premises of his explanation.” TOP
For CC the wings of his perception unfolded and touched the tonal and the nagual simultaneously without bouncing back and forth. (edit: changed font color of quotes for better visibility. no additions or subtractions from original thread)
So in true stalker fashion DJ issues his warning, remember he also did this when he plunged CC into a demonstration of no pity. These words are announced to CC at the culmination of a fourteen year apprenticeship with DJ, prior to the famous “sorcerer’s explanation”. For those that have not applied themselves with any discipline to a path such as this, the value of an explanation of this kind might have escaped you when you first came across it years ago. At least it did me when I first heard it. So if you would indulge me, perhaps I can dust it off and we can take a fresh look at this “lethal” ingenuity.
“The sorcerer’s explanation, which does not seem like an explanation at all, is lethal, it seems harmless and charming, but as soon as the warrior opens himself to it, it delivers a blow that no one can parry.” DJ, TOP
Now pay attention to that, it is an explanation that doesn’t seem like an explanation at all. Remember CC has been waiting fourteen years for this. DJ wanted to tell him all about it at the beginning but Genaro who was CC’s benefactor was “ a stickler for the rule” and insisted that it come at the end of the apprenticeship. DJ tries to deflate CC’s expectation by saying, “ Wouldn’t it be something if the sorcerer’s explanation turned out to be a dud?” which caused a lot of laughter from those in the know.
Now as we know a “A teacher never seeks apprentices and no one can solicit the teachings!” DJ But how does this play out for us today? We have the books with the teachings in them. Where as the “old fashioned way” required that power usually through an omen selected who was to receive the teachings and yes from a teacher, I know we don’t like that. We hate the idea of submitting to the authority of another. Truth is we do it all the time and really don’t mind, but in matters like this we don’t want to appear like a mere novice or that someone might appear “better” than us in a spiritual sense. Once the selection process is made clear to the teacher, the teacher then “hooks” the unknowing apprentice and as I like to say the process of induction begins by any means necessary.
I am still in the preamble here so those with short attention spans might find this boring and your attention might be better suited wandering elsewhere. For the rest of us I am assuming that if like me you read something like Tales Of Power years ago and have probably not revisited it, yet remember the pertinent stories. But this brings us back to the problem of the teachings. We have the books, who needs a teacher right? At which point I would have to ask how’s that working for you? I think at best what the books provide is a look at another view of the world with which we might become familiar through the words of another. And the books do offer points of corroboration for those undergoing an apprenticeship of this sort. But this is where the teachings garnered through the books can become very slippery. Without the added component of a teacher, a teacher being one who has digested the teachings and has a capacity to impart them, without that component, a would be apprentice is on their own trying to make sense of the
teachings with perhaps the help of other would be apprentices in the same boat.Here is an example of what I am talking about;
“He explained that the art of a teacher was to deviate the apprentices attention from the main issues.” DJ, TOP
DJ did this with CC by focusing his attention on a pseudo task of learning to “see”. DJ was continuously tricking, distracting or tapping CC’s attention as he saw fit sometimes as we see by distracting with teachings that were not really teachings but didactic devices which DJ used a lot. Now for those that do not have the direct personal relationship with and benefit of the author of those teachings and yet have access to his words we run the risk of devoting our time and attention, lost in one of DJ’s didactic devices thinking them to be something other than what they are.
If we find ourselves like CC thinking we are learning to “see” we are chasing a decoy but when such a decoy is skillfully used by a competent teacher it can be used to trap attention, in this case it was used to get CC interested in “erasing personal history” and “dreaming”. But why the use an attention decoy why not just directly introduce CC to those two aspects? Dj had CC doing all kinds of tasks thinking he was learning to see but without telling him what it was he was actually engaging tentatively in personal history erasing and dreaming. Had DJ taught CC directly about dreaming and erasing personal history right off the bat CC would have given these two aspects more attention than they deserve.
“Erasing personal history and dreaming should only be a help.” DJ TOP
Just let that sink in. These are minor aspects. You remember what the old seers did with dreaming. They took off with it and it became their “crowning jewel”. "If dreaming is exercised in its “totality” it is ultimately devastating" (DJ, TOP). Hence the need for the teacher to be cautious with anything which might plunge his apprentice into aberration.
“What any apprentice needs to buffer him is temperance and strength. That’s why the teacher introduces the warrior’s way or living like a warrior. This is the glue that joins together everything in a sorcerer’s world. Bit by bit a teacher must forge and develop it. Without the sturdiness and level-headedness of the warrior’s way there is no possibility of withstanding the path of knowledge. DJ, TOPHere’s another example;
“A teacher had to take into consideration the personality of the apprentice, and in my case (cc) he had to be careful because I was violent and would have thought nothing of killing myself out of despair.” TOP
If erasing personal history is engaged without its three supporting techniques, deleterious results occur. CC had been introduced to this in a specific manner tailored to him because of his violent nature.
Some might think I am stressing the need of a teacher in what I am saying here. What I am emphasizing is the highly probable dead end we might find ourselves in when we extract teachings such as these from the system, tradition, methodology or the context that forged them and apply them to ourselves as we see fit. We end up expanding our personal inventory to include the sorcerer’s world view and some even manage to exchange their current world view for the sorcerer’s world view, quite a feat but equally a dead end. But that’s what the books tend to do. That’s what the books are good at.
“Once an apprentice has been hooked, the instruction begins. The first act of a teacher is to introduce the idea that the world we think we see is only a view, a description of the world. Every effort is geared to prove this point to his apprentice. But accepting it seems to be one of the hardest things one can do; we are complacently caught in our particular world view, which compels us us to feel and act as if we knew everything about the world. A teacher from the very first act he performs aims at stopping that world view.” DJ top.
Pay close attention here and be honest with yourselves. Has anybody that you know engaged with you to this degree? “Every effort is geared to prove this point!” Now for DJ this was an arduous task, demanding his every effort with his apprentice, because, “accepting it seems to be one of the hardest things one can do;”. But we have the books. We can just read this and draw the conclusion that the world is not as it appears and think that we have accepted what DJ was talking about. And because we think we have accepted this we become inoculated against it. It was not the hardest thing for us to accept we just read about it and believed. Let me show you what I mean.
DJ goes on to tell us about stopping the internal dialogue. Now in these forums there has been a lot of focus about stopping the internal dialogue. Various techniques are offered from various traditions even. There is nothing really left to say about this except judging from what people are saying in forums such as this the fruit of stopping that internal dialogue seems to be missing. The same world view prevails but has just been modified to include the sorcerer’s world view. Many may believe they are stopping the internal dialogue through the various techniques they employ but it seems to have little effect on the basic description of the world. The modified view goes something like this. The world is not what it appears. If we can stop our internal dialogue for a moment we will see that it is really an energetic universe. Then its back to normal and we rejoice that we now believe this.
But I say that this view of the world as it really is, is not only accessible when we stop the internal dialogue, it is the only view available to those who have been able to really accept what DJ was talking about. Stopping the internal dialogue at the beginning ushers in glimpses of this reality but then the basic world view and the modified world view just overwhelms as soon as the dialogue kicks in again just the same as in dreaming when we lose our 2nd attention. This is why it is one one of the hardest things to accept and demands every effort to move an apprentice beyond this. Just reading that the world is really energetic does little. Science is even saying that.
So you see in listening to DJ’s recapitulation here, we are back at square one the first truth about awareness and the world of objects. You see we have a tendency to think of the normal world view of the average man, as average and then the sorcerer’s world view as superior. The books tend to arouse such a dichotomy. We think that by accepting the sorcerer’s view, which just seems preposterous to the average man, that we accepted what DJ was trying to get across and have penetrated this description of the world. We have penetrated nothing when we do this. All we have done is accepted another world view, a more expansive and exciting world view, but still just another description.
This is why the first truth about awareness is the first truth, not the third or fifth but the first! It is the hardest to accept. Without it the other truths about awareness are distractions and will lead down the path of the old seers.
When a description of the world prevails we are compelled, this is not a choice, we are compelled, “to feel and act as if we knew everything about the world” and this compulsion is evident in everything we say, even when we speak about the sorcerer’s world view! This is not a comment about arrogance or conceit as if DJ were talking about being a “know it all” It is a comment about ignorance! For those familiar with my ravings about emptiness and objects you will remember I said something to the effect that just because we give things names and separate them with our minds and share the same meanings with each other because of language does not mean we know anything at all about what it is we are seeing. Just because we can isolate an object from that vast expanse and then observe it with another isolated part of our minds does not mean we know what that objects is. Look around, pick up an object, hold it in your hand, touch it look at it, I tell you you do not know what it is other than it is empty and non-substantial. Again I would like to point out that Buddhism and DJ and speaking the same language when it comes to this. Those that fail to see this connection probably just don’t get DJ concerning this. Am I saying DJ was a Buddhist or that Nagualism is really Buddhist of course not! But concerning the first truth about awareness Buddhism is not only on the same page as DJ but is far more articulate about it.
What is the opposite of silence? It is the one-to-one relationship maintained between the tonal and the elements of its description. The tonal is not a separate object! To focus our attention upon the individuality of an object or many different individual objects establishes tonal. That is why unfocused gazing is so effective because when we do this we loosen the hold that objects have. By not focusing on objects individually or as many our eyes are flooded with all the details that are not represented by those objects as they are normally apprehended. Just on a personal note, my favorite way of doing this is by gazing at grass, the lawn, on a sunny day. It is all but impossible to focus on a single blade of grass anyway. But really once you get the hang of this any object will do, even TV. That is not enough though. One must apply this flood of information from every thing. Or as DJ liked to say the tonal must be swept.
OK we are almost at the “turn”. I just want to reiterate that accepting the larger view of the world common to sorcerer’s is not the same as accepting what DJ has to say about a description of the world. DJ drove this point home when speaking of his benefactor and teacher he said,
“They were men of great power, but they were not men of knowledge. They never broke the bounds of their enormous world views and thus they never arrived at the totality of themselves.” TOP
“I gave you enough of the sorcerer’s view without letting you get hooked by it. I said that only if one pits the two views against each other can one weasel between them to arrive at the real world. I meant that one can arrive at the totality of oneself only when one fully understands that the world is merely a view, regardless of whether that view belongs to an ordinary man or to a sorcerer.” TOP
See here is one of the pitfalls of not having a relationship with a competent teacher. We have the books and we can imbibe the sorcerers view until absolutely drunk on it. And if we are really honest about it who wouldn’t prefer the sorcerer’s world to that of an average man. But those who indulge this lazy method have less chance than DJ’s teacher and benefactor! No these two views must be pitted against each other! Now here lies a benefit of books. The books have introduced us to the world view of a sorcerer. The two views cannot be pitted against each other unless one knows about both views. This in itself is an art! To broach this subject in forums such as this, forums dedicated to Castaneda and the teachings of Don Juan can be a daunting challenge. Whenever this sort of thing is brought up it is treated with suspicion. However as I have pointed out this is a teaching of DJ. The problem lies in the fact that DJ is deviating from tradition, the tradition he has introduced us to through CC. What has happened for many though is they have embraced the tradition without realizing what DJ was doing.
“Here is where I varied from the tradition. After a lifelong struggle I know that what matters is not to learn a new description but to arrive at the totality of oneself.” DJ TOP(I would have loved to have talked to DJ about the particulars of how he came upon this.)
This is where I see many in these forums are at. Many have embraced the world of sorcery but have never got past the descriptions and the activities appropriate to each description. But here lies an opportunity at least we know both views now! And with some effort perhaps we can see for ourselves was DJ was up to.
Alright now we are at the turn. Thank you for bearing with me. I know this is long.
“To be ready for the sorcerer’s explanation is a very difficult accomplishment. It shouldn’t be, but we insist on indulging in our lifelong view of the world. In this respect you and Nestor and Pablito are alike. Nestor hides behind his shyness and gloom, Pablito behind his disarming charm ; and you behind your cockiness and words. All are views that seem unchallengeable; and as long as you three persist in using them your bubbles of perception have not been cleared and the sorcerer’s explanation will have no meaning.” DJ, TOP
So just to be ready for the sorcerer’s explanation is a “very difficult accomplishment”, its not something we can just read about! But then DJ gives us the first hint;
“The mystery, or secret, of the sorcerer’s explanation is that it deals with unfolding the wings of perception.” DJ, TOP.
The totality of oneself illumined by the sorcerer’s explanation is available to those “weasels” who are able slip between the descriptions of the views of the average man and sorcerer. It is not available or made manifest to either, an average man or sorcerer. A competent teacher guides apprentices between these poles safe guarding the apprentice from settling for either position, readying the apprentice for flight. (Not a flight into dreaming!)
DJ would have us believe that at birth our attention is fluid and our perception wide open. But we are told what it is we are perceiving, as if the ones telling us actually know, and slowly but surely our “bubble of perception” closes, defined by a description. Once attention has been sealed within this bubble caught by the description, self reflection is established but what “we” don’t realize is, the description is this reflection. Any ideas we have about our “self” that appears to be observing the reflection is merely the refractive activity of attention that is caught or fixed in this bubble. This is difficult to explain and see. So, how ever you come to terms with what DJ is saying about this is fine. There are many different ways of describing this from various traditions. For now just understand that the view from “inside” the bubble of perception prevents us from seeing the totality of ourselves. It is useless to talk about what this totality is, it has to be seen for oneself, however what we can say is; it is not what is perceived by a closed bubble of perception.
Now at this point we have a dilemma. In DJ’s system of teaching, a teacher works with the apprentice rearranging his view from the “inside”, with him, so to speak, preparing the way for a benefactor who is going to re-open the bubble of perception from the “outside”. DJ refers to this preparation by the teacher as a “delicate maneuver”. He also takes full responsibility for “leading a luminous being into the totality of themselves”. Quite simply put if you do not know how to do this for yourself you are in need of a teacher, no matter what you might think about teachers and gurus etc. If most of think we are going to achieve this by a method other than what DJ is proposing here, then that might well be, but don’t confuse your method with that of DJ and say they are the same or that you are on the same path.
“By now you must have realized that cleaning and reordering the island of the tonal means regrouping all its elements on the side of reason. My task has been to disarrange your ordinary view, not to destroy it but to force it to rally on the side of reason.” DJ TOP
I often thought that the tonal sometimes gets a bum rap. Sure it craps outs when the nagual comes forth, but in the end the tonal is equally as mysterious as the nagual. This tonal is made by perception itself! Too often in spiritual circles reason is thought of an enemy of sorts instead of an asset. Reason is only a problem while it thinks it is in charge and can account for everything. Once the elements of tonal and its world view have been grouped around reason then there is the possibility of recognizing a singularity of will. By this I mean that the will is made available without all the entanglements that have been swept to one side. The will is solitary element and needs to be appreciated in its solitude. To give an example here. A Christian often prays to God saying, “Not my will be done but yours.” But usually the Christian has little idea what the will of God is at different times because the Christian’s own will has not been isolated and therefore he will not be able to recognize his own commands as the commands of the Eagle.
So the teacher prepares the apprentice and ready the apprentice awaits with a resolute, isolated will, pure in intention. Now it is time for the benefactor to “break the seal”. It is the will that meets or witnesses the nagual and “reason is not invited to the party”. Now how a benefactor breaks the seal and opens the bubble of perception I really have little idea other than to think he acts directly with that bubble of perception in ways that cannot be accounted for by reason. But lets just go with it .
“We can better explain this by saying that the task of the teacher is to wipe clean one half of the bubble and reorder everything on the other half. The benefactor’s task then is to open the bubble on the side that has been cleaned. ONCE THE SEAL HAS BEEN BROKEN THE WARRIOR IS NEVER THE SAME. HE HAS THEN COMMAND OF HIS TOTALITY.
Half of the is the ultimate center of reason , the tonal. The other half is the ultimate center of will, the nagual. That is the order that should prevail; any other arrangement is nonsensical and petty, because it goes against our nature; it robs us of our magical heritage and reduces us to nothing.” DJ TOP
If I were to ask what does it mean to gain the totality of oneself I am sure that I would get many different answers, chief of which would be “burning from within” and disappearing from the planet or that having command of one’s totality would mean having supernatural miraculous powers. So before we entertain all those exciting possibilities lets just stick with what DJ means by this. Gaining or having command of one’s totality means, according to DJ, having a bubble of perception where all the elements of the tonal have been “rallied around reason” all that is except for the will and that the seal of the bubble of perception has been broken from the outside and the will has witnessed the nagual. “This is the order that should prevail!” Now I don’t wish to belittle this, but that’s all it is. It doesn’t live up to the expectation many of us have when broken down like this. But for those that have rallied in their sobriety this prevailing order is everything!
Let’s just take this a step further. DJ is an impeccable teacher. In his dealings with CC he worked from within and impeccably led him and prepared him to to view his totality. Genaro in his dealings with CC was an impeccable benefactor and he opened CC’s bubble of perception so that he could view his totality. If there are any doubts about this just read the Bubble of Perception chapter in Tales of power. CC vividly tells us what he witnessed when his seal was broken or shattered and his attention could move fluidly, but many still have different ideas about what this means.
“What was important was the fact that I had experienced with or in my body the premises of his explanation.” TOP
For CC the wings of his perception unfolded and touched the tonal and the nagual simultaneously without bouncing back and forth. (edit: changed font color of quotes for better visibility. no additions or subtractions from original thread)