THE
PHOENIX BOOK STORE - LOS ANGELES - TALK BY CARLOS CASTANEDA;
DREAMING
Don Juan said there
is no evil and that we can't feel compassion. Is that feeling sorry for
someone else? Does that mean that I believe I'm better off than they are?
It's the ego that feels sorry, and the whole idea of feeling sorry is
fraudulent. Use your energy for something else, to free yourself. You
save energy by the exercise of recapitulation. Through recapitulation
you will come to the place where energy becomes visible. Not by sight
but by something incomprehensible. Something incomprehensible because
we have no lexicon for it. When you see it, you realise you were doing
it.
NOT DOING is the
cognitive dissonance that unentangles your awareness. The disarrangement
of the world world by doing something absurd. we must realise the world
is an arrangement. Just the simple act of tying your shoelaces in a different
way, shows you how our daily world is structured on a set of agreements.
Outside of these arrangements the possibilities of our awareness are un-bounded.
THE DREAMER through
the teaching of SORCERY, is a warrior who sees themself as something INDESCRIBABLE,
UNDEFINABLE and open-ended. He has no limitation, no frame. He takes anything
that comes as a challenge, and is never a loser even if he is biting the
dust. One of the most important things for a warrior to do is to keep
an album of Sublime Moments.
Get out of the brain
of the beast. We are repetitious. Where is our sense of pride? We must
examine everything, curtail our routines, throw cognitive dissonance into
them in order to become a sorcerer. We can see energy as it flows, why
permit the brain of the beast to stop us?
The dreamer is capable
of using his dreams as a trap door or a spring board into infinity. But
we've used our dreams only in analytical, psychological, or scientific
ways. To dream as a WARRIOR, is to dream as one who has taken the responsibility
of dying.
Dreams are precise.
Something is drawn to fields of luminosity. The assemblage point becomes
displaced. Fibres of energy are shooting off in thousands of directions.
If the point becomes displaced we move to an entirely different world.
Dreaming is the art of maintaining the assemblage point in a new position.
If we had the opportunity, we could all become first class dreamers. The
further we displace the assemblage point, the more terrifying the dream.
Our mind supplies order on these experiences. When these dreams become
overlaid with demonic images, it's the way we anthropomorphise experience.
Take dreaming as a formal exercise and the demonic disappears. The difficulty
is to discipline ourselves so that nothing that happens in the dream will
be upsetting.
Next we go on to
the STEPS IN DREAMING:
BECOME AWARE THAT
YOU ARE FALLING ASLEEP
Before going to sleep
say "I am a dreamer". It's a matter of stating your intent.
Don't be concerned if you are a dreamer or not, the mind won't know the
difference. It's not lying to yourself. In linear affairs we think of
it as lying. That should be nothing new, we lie to ourselves all the time.
So intend dreaming from the point of view that we are going to die and
it is a matter of life and death.
Don Juan would ask
over and over again;
"What are you
saving yourself for? Senility? Are you waiting to shout "Nurse!"
in a restaurant? What have they done to you?"
It needed to be repeated
because I was stupid.
This is not the best
of all worlds. Something is holding us back from seeing. From the point
of view of one who is going to die, the warrior becomes aware and the
world is never the same. This is incredible. He sees the intruder in his
dreams. They are scouts from inconceivable worlds. They use awareness
as a sea. We can go anywhere if we have the energy, if we get rid of our
self-importance.
A warrior takes leaps
of incalculable lengths because he wants to know. My fate is to roam the
infinite. We are travelers, travelling is our fate. In accepting the responsibility
of his death, the warrior gets an incredible boost. He can put an end
to his self-importance and move to another level. You don't have to lower
your head to anyone.
After finding the
intruder in your dreams, you can stop and ask it where it comes from.
The intruder is compelled to take your awareness to other worlds, stupendous
worlds, a twin universe. The dreamer then becomes a reconnoiter, a scout
himself. The twin universe is alive, it's a world of awareness. The inorganic
beings are teachers from a female universe that is in search for males.
Women are replicas of inorganic beings on earth.
The battle is in
this other world, and we will enter this universe whether we like it or
not. It's unavoidable. The sorcerers are pragmatists (What exactly is
this battle that happens in the other world?). Why wait until you die?
Do it now while you are young and vigorous. Stop being so involved with
your self-importance. Always thinking 'me', and what I want, until we
are too old to do anything else. Until the only thing we can say is "nurse!"
Be aware now. This
is the moment and dreaming is the way.
The dreamer, having
saved enough energy will get the jolt of his life when he enters the other
world:
It's inconceivable.
What are we really? Not what my father told me...
We are something else.
THERE ARE SEVEN STAGES
TO DREAMING
The first is to be
aware you are falling asleep. This is so you will remain conscious during
the dream state, and you can hold it as long as you don't stare. Once
you begin to awaken in your dreams you will begin to get more energy.
you will be stronger the next day.
Become aware in your
dreams, this is the first stage. If you don't insist and set up intent,
your energy will then pull you.
LET IT HAPPEN!
The pull of intent
will break the parameters of historical perception. If you recapitulate
your life seriously, you will get enough energy.
ONLY AS WARRIORS
CAN WE REALIZE WHAT WE ARE
In the first stage
we examine everything, every element in our dreams. We begin by becoming
aware that you are falling asleep. But that's not the goal of the technique.
This is only to fool the mind. The real technique is to become aware of
the elements of our ordinary dreams. In dreaming, we can easily shift
the assemblage point. Even a slight shift of the assemblage point will
create a new person. We are putting an end to the old and becoming a new
person.
Don Juan said the
"here" and the "there" are exchangeable, we do it
all the time with our energy bodies.
THE "ENERGY
BODY” IS THE SUM TOTAL OF OURSELVES PROJECTED OUT
What have they done
to us to make us so resistant? The terrible damage that society has done
to us can be corrected by dreaming.
The next step or
"Gate of Dreaming" is to wake up from the dream into another
dream. Once you have acquired the energy from recapitulation and dreaming,
you can lie down in the dream in the same position that you originally
fell asleep in and move into another dream. When you enter a dream inside
a dream, you enter a state that is inconceivable and will blow your mind.
This is the secret of the "twin positions".
The secret of secrets
is to claim it. We only need energy. This is real, not theory, and as
a practitioner, I say we can all do it. Eventually in dreaming, everything
will shift. One day your attention becomes arrested or fixed by something
in the dream, and you don't know why you won't be able to move until it
releases you. Your attention is caught by an inorganic being. They have
more awareness than us, but we have more energy. We are like powerful
bullets of energy that burn brightly. They last forever and their awareness
can hold us.
Now we will begin
to hear the voice of the Emissary. It will answer any questions. When
we hear its voice as a female, we are hearing its true voice. It is by
nature female. Don't indulge yourself with the dream Emissary. Tell it
to stay out of your affairs. Don't let it feed off you for free.
There is a wave that
hits us and we turn it into sadness. But it's from out there. "I
never thought I was going to live forever. Let's do it. Turn me loose."
Practice the "not
doing of the sublime". Create an album to remind you of your sublime
moments, of things and thoughts that have astounded you. This will create
cognitive dissonance.
The real revolution
is in the next world. It is easy to get involved in political protest,
but what's the point? Do something from the point of view of a man who
is going to die. What have they done to you? What are you doing to yourself?
To your body? Look at how you live. Stop smoking. What have they done
to you? Is it our natural heritage is to live and die like morons?