Carlos Castaneda’s Structural Analysis
Don Juan’s Key Teachings from Castaneda’s Structural Analysis
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Appendix A
Alternate beginning to first four paragraphs beginning in the compilation from The Teachings of don Juan
You will have to make a very deep commitment because this training is
long and arduous.
Power rests on the kind of knowledge one holds. What is the sense
knowing things that are useless?
* * *
Nothing in this world is a gift; whatever there is to learn has to be
learned the hard way.
One can feel with the eyes, when the eyes are not looking right into
things.
You have to be inflexible with yourself if you want to learn.
You must have command over your resources.
There is nothing wrong with being afraid. When you fear, you see
things in a different way.
I am going to teach you the secrets that make up the lot of a man of
knowledge.
You will learn in spite of yourself; that's the rule.
You are a serious person, but your seriousness is attached to what
you do, not to what goes on outside you. You dwell upon yourself too
much. That's the trouble. And that produces a terrible fatigue. Seek
and see the marvels all around you. You will get tired of looking at
yourself alone, and that fatigue will make you deaf and blind to
everything else.
* * *
A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war; wide awake, with fear,
with respect, and with absolute assurance. Going to knowledge or
going to war in any other manner is a mistake, and whoever makes it
will live to regret his steps.
When a man has fulfilled those four requisites there are no mistakes
for which he will have to account; under such conditions his acts
lose the blundering quality of a fool's acts. If such a man fails, or
suffers a defeat, he will have lost only a battle; and there will be
no pitiful regrets over that.
I intend to teach you about an "ally" in the very same way my own
benefactor taught me. An "ally" is a power a man can bring into his
life to help him, advise him, and give him the strength necessary to
perform acts; whether big or small, right or wrong. This ally is
necessary to enhance a man's life, guide his acts, and further his
knowledge. In fact, an ally is the indispensable aid to knowing.
An ally will make you see and understand things about which no human
being could possibly enlighten you. It is neither a guardian nor a
spirit. It is an aid. An ally is tamed and used.
The acquiring of an ally requires the most precise teaching and the
following of stages or steps without a single deviation. There are
many such ally powers in the world. An ally is a power capable of
carrying a man beyond the boundaries of himself. This is how an ally
can reveal matters no human being could. An ally takes you out of
yourself to give you power.
Learning through conversation is not only a waste, but stupidity,
because learning is the most difficult task a man can undertake.
Remember the time you tried to find your "spot," and how you wanted
to find it without doing any work because you expected me to hand out
all the information. If I had done so, you would never have learned.
But now, knowing how difficult it was to find your spot, and above
all knowing that it exists; gives you a unique sense of confidence.
While you remain rooted to your "good spot" nothing can cause you
bodily harm, because you have the assurance that at that particular
spot you are at your very best. You have the power to shove off
anything that might be harmful to you. If, however, I had
told you where it was, you would never have had the
confidence needed to claim it as true knowledge. Thus, knowledge is
indeed power.
Every time a man sets himself to learn he has to labor as hard as you
did to find that spot, and the limits of his learning are determined
by his own nature. Thus I see no point in talking about knowledge.
Certain kinds of knowledge are too powerful for the strength you
have, and to talk about them would only bring harm to you.
Fears are natural; all of us experience them and there is nothing we
can do about it. But on the other hand, no matter how frightening
learning is, it is more terrible to think of a man without an ally,
or without knowledge.
The calling of a name is a serious matter, especially if one is
learning to tame an ally power. Names are reserved to be used only
when one is calling for help; in moments of great stress and need. I
assure you that such moments happen sooner or later in the life of
whoever seeks knowledge.
* * *
Man lives only to learn. And if he learns it is because that is the
nature of his lot, for good or bad.
* * *
A man of knowledge is one who has followed truthfully the hardships
of learning, a man who has, without rushing or without faltering,
gone as far as he can in unravelling the secrets of power and
knowledge. To become a man of knowledge he must challenge and defeat
his four natural enemies. A man can call himself a man of knowledge
only if he is capable of defeating all four of them. Anybody who
defeats them becomes a man of knowledge. Anyone can try to become a
man of knowledge; very few men actually succeed, but that is only
natural. The enemies a man encounters on the path of learning to
become a man of knowledge are truly formidable; most men succumb to
them.
To be a man of knowledge has no permanence. One is never a man of
knowledge, not really. Rather, one becomes a man of knowledge for a
very brief instant, after defeating the four natural enemies.
Appendix B
Alternate reading to follow the first two paragraphs from the beginning of A Seperate Reality
In this system of knowledge there is a difference between
seeing and looking. They are two distinct
manners of perceiving. Looking refers to the ordinary way in which we
are accustomed to perceiving the world, while seeing
entails a process by virtue of which a man of knowledge perceives the
essence of the things of the world.
Acquiring the necessary speed to catch a glimpse of that fleeting
world of nonordinary reality is a goal of your training. You may call
it a condition of inapplicability because what you will perceive when
you acquire that necessary speed is incomprehensible and impossible
to interpret by means of our everyday mode of understanding the
world. In other words, the condition of inapplicability entails the
cessation of the pertinence of our normal world view.
Obviously there has to be an endless number of possible sensible
interpretations that are pertinent to sorcery that a sorcerer must
learn to make. In our day-to-day life we are confronted with an
endless number of sensible interpretations pertinent to it. A simple
example could be the no longer deliberate interpretation, which we
make scores of times every day, of the structure we call "room." It
is obvious that we have learned to interpret the structure we call
room in terms of room; thus room is a sensible interpretation because
it requires that at the time we make it we are cognizant, in one way
or another, of all the elements that enter into its composition. A
system of sensible interpretation is, in other words, the process by
virtue of which a person is cognizant of all the units of meaning
necessary to make assumptions, deductions, predictions, etc., about
all the situations pertinent to his activity.
I am attempting to make my system of sensible interpretation
accessible to you. Such an accessibility, in this case, is equivalent
to a process of resocialization in which new ways of interpreting
perceptual data are learned.
You are the stranger, the one who lacks the capacity to make
intelligent and congruous interpretations proper to sorcery. My task,
as a teacher making my system accessible to you is to disarrange a
particular certainty which you share with everyone else, the
certainty that our "common-sense" views of the world are final.
You will see that our ordinary view of the world cannot be final
because it is only an interpretation.
Appendix C
The Rule
Alternate reading instead of the six paragraphs from "Again, human beings ..." through "... ability to forget" (50 paragraphs from the begining) in The Eagle's Gift
I will clarify the previously unimagined world of hidden memories
which you have been recollecting thru dreaming,
memories that you have been incapable of retrieving with your
everyday-life memory. As I've said, human beings are divided in two.
The right side, which is called the tonal, encompasses
everything the intellect can conceive of. The left side, called the
nagual, is a realm of indescribable features: a realm
impossible to contain in words. The left side is perhaps
comprehended, if comprehension is what takes place, with the total
body; thus its resistance to conceptualization. All the faculties,
possibilities, and accomplishments of sorcery, from the simplest to
the most astounding, are in the human body itself.
Taking as a base the concepts that we are divided in two and that
everything is in the body itself, our time together has been divided
between states of normal awareness; on the right side, the
tonal, where the first attention prevails; and states
of heightened awareness, on the left side, the nagual;
the site of the second attention.
I have lead you to the other self by means of the self-control of the
second attention through dreaming. However, I have put
you in direct touch with the second attention through bodily
manipulation in the form of a sound blow on your back. The result of
that blow is entrance into an extraordinary state of clarity. It
seems that everything in that state goes faster, yet nothing in the
world has been changed. That is to say, the world is the same but
sharper. You stay clear until I give you another blow on the same
spot to make you revert back to a normal state of awareness.
In those states of heightened awareness you've had an incomparable
richness of personal interaction, a richness that your body has
understood as a sensation of speeding. The richness of your
perception on the left side has been, however, a post-facto
realization. Your interaction appeared to be rich in the light of
your capacity to remember it. You became cognizant then that in those
states of heightened awareness you had perceived everything in one
clump, one bulky mass of inextricable detail. You've called this
ability to perceive everything at once--intensity. For
years you have found it impossible to examine the separate
constituent parts of those chunks of experience; you have been unable
to synthesize those parts into a sequence that would make sense to
the intellect. Since you were incapable of those syntheses, you could
not remember. Your incapacity to remember was in reality an
incapacity to put the memory of your perception on a linear basis.
You could not lay your experiences flat, so to speak, and arrange
them in a sequential order. The experiences were available to you,
but at the same time they were impossible to retrieve, for they were
blocked by a wall of intensity.
The task of remembering, then, is properly the task of joining
our left and right sides, of reconciling those two distinct forms of
perception into a unified whole. It is the task of consolidating the
totality of oneself by rearranging intensity into a
linear sequence.
The pragmatic step that I have taken to aid you in your task of
remembering has been to make you interact with certain people while
you were in a state of heightened awareness. I was very careful not
to let you see those people when you were in a state of normal
awareness. In this way I created the appropriate conditions for
remembering.
Now that you have completed your remembering, you have detailed
knowledge of social interactions which you have shared with my
companions and me. These are not memories in the sense that you would
remember an episode from your childhood; they are more than vivid
moment-to-moment recollections of events. You have reconstructed
conversations that seemed to be reverberating in your ears, as if you
were listening to them. What you have remembered, from the point of
view of your experiential self, was taking place now. Such has been
the character of your remembering.
It is time now to tell you the "rule" as it pertains to the
Nagual and his role, exactly as it was told to me. Being
involved with the rule may be described as living a myth. In my case,
a myth that caught me and made me the Nagual.
The power that governs the destiny of all living beings is called the
Eagle, not because it is an eagle or has anything to do with an
eagle, but because it appears to the seer as an immeasurable
jet-black eagle, standing erect as an eagle stands, its height
reaching to infinity.
As the seer gazes on the blackness that the Eagle is, four blazes of
light reveal what the Eagle is like, The first blaze, which is like a
bolt of lightning, helps the seer make out the contours of the
Eagle's body. There are patches of whiteness that look like an
eagle's feathers and talons. A second blaze of lightning reveals the
flapping, wind-creating blackness that looks like an eagle's wings.
With the third blaze of lightning the seer beholds a piercing,
inhuman eye. And the fourth and last blaze discloses what the Eagle
is doing.
The Eagle is devouring the awareness of all the creatures that, alive
on earth a moment before and now dead, have floated to the Eagle's
beak, like a ceaseless swarm of fireflies, to meet their owner, their
reason for having had life. The Eagle disentangles these tiny flames,
lays them flat, as a tanner stretches out a hide, and then consumes
them; for awareness is the Eagle's food.
The Eagle, that power that governs the destinies of all living
things, reflects equally and at once all those living things. There
is no way, therefore, for man to pray to the Eagle, to ask favors, to
hope for grace. The human part of the Eagle is too insignificant to
move the whole.
It is only from the Eagle's actions that a seer can tell what it
wants. The Eagle, although it is not moved by the circumstances of
any living thing, has granted a gift to each of those beings. In its
own way and right, any one of them, if it so desires, has the power
to keep the flame of awareness, the power to disobey the summons to
die and be consumed. Every living thing has been granted the power,
if it so desires, to seek an opening to freedom and to go through it.
It is evident to the seer who sees the opening, and to the creatures
that go through it, that the Eagle has granted that gift in order to
perpetuate awareness.
For the purpose of guiding living things to that opening, the Eagle
created the Nagual. The Nagual is a double being to whom the rule has
been revealed. Whether it be in the form of a human being, an animal,
a plant, or anything else that lives, the Nagual by virtue of its
doubleness is drawn to seek that hidden passageway.
The Nagual comes in pairs, male and female, A double man and a double
woman become the Nagual only after the rule has been told to each of
them, and each of them has understood it and accepted it in full.
To the eye of the seer, a Nagual man or Nagual woman appears as a
luminous egg with four compartments. Unlike the average human being,
who has two sides only, a left and a right, the Nagual has a left
side divided into two long sections, and a right side equally divided
in two.
The Eagle created the first Nagual man and Nagual woman as seers and
immediately put them in the world to see. It provided them with four
female warriors who were stalkers, three male warriors, and one male
courier, whom they were to nourish, enhance, and lead to freedom.
The female warriors are called the four directions, the four corners
of a square, the four moods, the four winds, the four different
female personalities that exist in the human race.
The first is the east. She is called order. She is optimistic,
lighthearted, smooth, persistent like a steady breeze.
The second is the north. She is called strength. She is resourceful,
blunt, direct, tenacious like a hard wind.
The third is the west. She is called feeling. She is introspective,
remorseful, cunning, sly, like a cold gust of wind.
The fourth is the south. She is called growth. She is nurturing,
loud, shy, warm, like a hot wind.
The three male warriors and the courier are representative of the
four types of male activity and temperament.
The first type is the knowledgeable man, the scholar; a noble,
dependable, serene man, fully dedicated to accomplishing his task,
whatever it may be.
The second type is the man of action, highly volatile, a great
humorous fickle companion.
The third type is the organizer behind the scenes, the mysterious,
unknowable man. Nothing can be said about him because he allows
nothing about himself to slip out.
The courier is the fourth type. He is the assistant, a taciturn,
somber man who does very well if properly directed but who cannot
stand on his own.
In order to make things easier, the Eagle showed the Nagual man and
Nagual woman that each of these types among men and woman of the
earth has specific features in its luminous body.
The scholar has a sort of shallow dent, a bright depression at his
solar plexus. In some men it appears as a pool of intense luminosity,
sometimes smooth and shiny like a mirror without a reflection.
* * *
The man of action has some fibers emanating from the area of the
will. The number of fibers varies from one to five, their size
ranging from a mere string to a thick, whiplike tentacle up to eight
feet long. Some have as many as three of these fibers developed into
tentacles.
The man behind the scenes is recognized not by a feature but by his
ability to create, quite involuntarily, a burst of power that
effectively blocks the attention of seers. When in the presence of
this type of man, seers find themselves immersed in extraneous detail
rather than seeing.
The assistant has no obvious configuration. To seers he appears as a
clear glow in a flawless shell of luminosity.
In the female realm, the east is recognized by the almost
imperceptible blotches in her luminosity, something like small areas
of discoloration.
The north has an overall radiation; she exudes a reddish glow, almost
like heat.
The west has a tenuous film enveloping her, a film which makes her
appear darker than the others.
The south has an intermittent glow; she shines for a moment and then
gets dull, only to shine again.
The Nagual man and the Nagual woman have two different movements in
their luminous bodies. Their right sides wave, while their left sides
whirl.
In terms of personality, the Nagual man is supportive, steady,
unchangeable. The Nagual woman is a being at war and yet relaxed,
ever aware but without strain. Both of them reflect the four types of
their sex, as four ways of behaving.
The first command that the Eagle gave the Nagual man and Nagual woman
was to find, on their own, another set of four female warriors, four
directions, who were the exact replicas of the stalkers but who were
dreamers.
Dreamers appear to a seer as having an apron of hairlike fibers at
their midsections. Stalkers have a similar apronlike feature, but
instead of fibers the apron consists of countless small, round
protuberances.
The eight female warriors are divided into two bands, which are
called the right and left planets. The right planet is made up of
four stalkers, the left of four dreamers. The warriors of each planet
were taught by the Eagle the rule of their specific task: stalkers
were taught stalking; dreamers were taught dreaming.
The two female warriors of each direction live together. They are so
alike that they mirror each other, and only through impeccability can
they find solace and challenge in each other's reflection.
The only time when the four dreamers or four stalkers get together is
when they have to accomplish a strenuous task; but only under special
circumstances should the four of them join hands, for their touch
fuses them into one being and should be used only in cases of dire
need, or at the moment of leaving this world.
The two female warriors of each direction are attached to one of the
males, in any combination that is necessary. Thus they make a set of
four households, which are capable of incorporating as many warriors
as needed.
The male warriors and the courier can also form an independent unit
of four men, or each can function as a solitary being, as dictated by
necessity.
Next the Nagual and his party were commanded to find three more
couriers. These could be all males or all females or a mixed set, but
the male couriers had to be of the fourth type of man, the assistant,
and the females had to be from the south.
In order to make sure that the first Nagual man would lead his party
to freedom and not deviate from that path or become corrupted, the
Eagle took the Nagual woman to the other world to serve as a beacon,
guiding the party to the opening.
The Nagual and his warriors were then commanded to forget. They were
plunged into darkness and were given new tasks: the task of
remembering themselves, and the task of remembering the Eagle.
The command to forget was so great that everyone was separated. They
did not remember who they were. The Eagle intended that if they were
capable of remembering themselves again, they would find the totality
of themselves. Only then would they have the strength and forbearance
necessary to seek and face their definitive journey.
Their last task, after they had regained the totality of themselves,
was to get a new pair of double beings and transform them into a new
Nagual man and a new Nagual woman by virtue of revealing the rule to
them. And just as the first Nagual man and Nagual woman had been
provided with a minimal party, they had to supply the new pair of
Naguals with four female warriors who were stalkers, three male
warriors, and one male courier.
When the first Nagual and his party were ready to go through the
passageway, the first Nagual woman was waiting to guide them. They
were ordered then to take the new Nagual woman with them to the other
world to serve as a beacon for her people, leaving the new Nagual man
in the world to repeat the cycle.
While in the world, the minimal number under a Nagual's leadership is
sixteen: eight female warriors, four male warriors, counting the
Nagual, and four couriers. At the moment of leaving the world, when
the new Nagual woman is with them, the Nagual's number is seventeen.
If his personal power permits him to have more warriors, then more
must be added in multiples of four.
The rule is endless and covers every facet of a warrior's behavior.
The interpretation and the accumulation of the rule is the work of
seers whose only task throughout the ages has been to
see the Indescribable Force called the
Eagle, to observe its ceaseless flux. From their observations, the
seers have concluded that, providing the luminous shell that
comprises one's humanness has been broken, it is possible to find in
the Indescribable Force the faint reflection of man. The
Indescribable Force 's irrevocable dictums can then be
apprehended by seers, properly interpreted by them, and accumulated
in the form of a governing body.
The rule is not a tale. To cross over to freedom does not mean
eternal life as eternity is commonly understood--that is, as living
forever. What the rule states is that one can keep the awareness
which is ordinarily relinquished at the moment of dying. I cannot
explain what it means to keep that awareness. My benefactor told me
that at the moment of crossing, one enters into the third attention,
and the body in its entirety is kindled with knowledge. Every cell at
once becomes aware of itself, and also aware of the totality of the
body.
* * *
This kind of awareness is meaningless to our compartmentalized minds.
Therefore the crux of the warrior's struggle is not so much to
realize that the crossing over stated in the rule means crossing to
the third attention, but rather to conceive that there exists such an
awareness at all.
There is a common error, that of overestimating the left-side
awareness, of becoming dazzled by its clarity and power. To be in the
left-side awareness does not mean that one is immediately liberated
from one's folly--it only means an extended capacity for perceiving,
and above all, a greater ability to forget.
Appendix D
Alternate reading to the paragraph from The Fire From Within "Any warrior can be successful with people provided that he moves his assemblage point to a position where it is immaterial whether people like him, dislike him, or ignore him."
The purpose of stalking is twofold: first, to move the
assemblage point as steadily and safely as possible, and nothing can
do the job as well as stalking; second, to imprint its
principles at such a deep level that the human inventory is bypassed;
for example the human inventory's natural reaction of refusing and
judging something that may be offensive to reason.
The new seers saw that there are two main groups of
human beings: those who care about others and those who do not. In
between these two extremes they saw an endless mixture
of the two. The nagual Julian belonged to the category of men who do
not care; I belong to the opposite category. The nagual Julian was
generous, he would give you the shirt off his back. Not only was he
generous; he was also utterly charming, winning. He was always deeply
and sincerely interested in everybody around him. He was kind and
open and gave away everything he had to anyone who needed it, or to
anyone he happened to like. He was in turn loved by everyone, because
being a master stalker, he conveyed to them his true
feelings: he didn't give a plugged nickel for any of them.
That's stalking. The nagual Julian didn't care about
anyone. That's why he could help people. And he did; he gave them the
shirt off his back, because he didn't give a fig about them.
The only ones who help their fellow men are those who don't give a
damn about them. That's what stalkers say. The nagual
Julian, for instance, was a fabulous curer. He helped thousands and
thousands of people, but he never took credit for it. He let people
believe that a woman seer of his party was the curer. Now, if he had
been a man who cared for his fellow men, he would've demanded
acknowledgment. Those who care for others care for themselves and
demand recognition where recognition is due. Since I belong to the
category of those who care for their fellow men, I have never helped
anyone: I feel awkward with generosity; I can't even conceive being
loved as the nagual Julian was, and I would certainly feel stupid
giving anyone the shirt off my back. I care so much for my fellow man
that I don't do anything for him. I wouldn't know what to do. And I
would always have the nagging sense that I was imposing my will on
him with my gifts. Naturally, I have overcome all these feelings with
the warriors' way. Any warrior can be successful with people, as the
nagual Julian was, provided that he moves his assemblage point to a
position where it is immaterial whether people like him, dislike him,
or ignore him. But that's not the same.
Appendix E
Structural Analysis
Compiled from Carlos Castaneda's first book, The Teachings Of Don Juan: A Yaque Way Of Knowledge
MAN OF KNOWLEDGE
The goal of my teachings is to show how to become a man of
knowledge. The following seven concepts are its proper components:
(1) to become a man of knowledge is a matter of learning; (2) a man
of knowledge has unbending intent; (3) a man of
knowledge has clarity of mind; (4) to become a man of knowledge is a
matter of strenuous labor; (5) a man of knowledge is a warrior; (6)
to become a man of knowledge is an unceasing process; and (7) a man
of knowledge has an ally.
These seven concepts are themes. They run through the
teachings, determining the character of my entire knowledge. Inasmuch
as the operational goal of my teachings is to produce a man of
knowledge, everything I teach is imbued with the specific
characteristics of each of the seven themes. Together they construe
the concept "man of knowledge" as a way of conducting oneself, a way
of behaving that is the end result of a long and hazardous training.
"Man of knowledge," however, is not a guide to behavior, but a set of
principles encompassing all the unordinary circumstances pertinent to
the knowledge being taught.
Each one of the seven themes is composed, in turn, of various other
concepts, which cover their different facets.
To Become a Man of Knowledge Is a Matter of Learning
Learning is the only possible way of becoming a man of
knowledge, and that in turn implies the act of making a resolute
effort to achieve an end. To become a man of knowledge is the end
result of a process, as opposed to an immediate acquisition through
an act of grace or through bestowal by supernatural powers. The
plausibility of learning how to become a man of knowledge warrants
the existence of a system for teaching one how to accomplish it.
A Man of Knowledge Has Unbending Intent.
The idea that a man of knowledge needs unbending
intent refers to the exercise of volition. Having
unbending intent means having the will to execute a
necessary procedure by maintaining oneself at all times rigidly
within the boundaries of the knowledge being taught. A man of
knowledge needs a rigid will in order to endure the obligatory
quality that every act possesses when it is performed in the context
of my knowledge.
The obligatory quality of all the acts performed in such a context,
and their being inflexible and predetermined, are no doubt unpleasant
to any man, for which reason a modicum of unbending
intent is sought as the only covert requirement needed by a
prospective apprentice.
Unbending intent is composed of (1) frugality, (2)
soundness of judgment, and (3) lack of freedom to innovate.
A man of knowledge needs frugality because the majority of the
obligatory acts deal with instances or with elements that are either
outside the boundaries of ordinary everyday life, or are not
customary in ordinary activity, and the man who has to act in
accordance with them needs an extraordinary effort every time he
takes action. It is implicit that one be capable of such an
extraordinary effort by being frugal with any other activity that
does not deal directly with such predetermined actions.
Since all acts are predetermined and obligatory, a man of knowledge
needs soundness of judgment. This concept does not imply common
sense, but does imply the capacity to assess the circumstances
surrounding any need to act. A guide for such an assessment is
provided by bringing together, as rationales, all the parts of the
teachings which are at one's command at the given moment in which any
action has to be carried out. Thus, the guide is always changing as
more parts are learned; yet it always implies the conviction that any
obligatory act one may have to perform is, in fact, the most
appropriate under the circumstances.
Because all acts are preestablished and compulsory, having to carry
them out means lack of freedom to innovate. My system of imparting
knowledge is so well established that there is no possibility of
altering it in any way.
A Man of Knowledge Has Clarity of Mind
Clarity of mind is the theme that provides a sense of direction. The
fact that all acts are predetermined means that one's orientation
within the knowledge being taught is equally predetermined; as a
consequence, clarity of mind supplies only a sense of direction. It
reaffirms continuously the validity of the course being taken through
the component ideas of (1) freedom to seek a path, (2) knowledge of
the specific purpose, and (3) being fluid.
It is believed that one has the freedom to seek a path. Having the
freedom to choose is not incongruous with the lack of freedom to
innovate; these two ideas are not in opposition nor do they interfere
with each other. Freedom to seek a path refers to the liberty to
choose among different possibilities of action which are equally
effective and usable. The criterion for choosing is the advantage of
one possibility over others, based on one's preference. As a matter
of fact, the freedom to choose a path imparts a sense of direction
through the expression of personal inclinations.
Another way to create a sense of direction is through the idea that
there is a specific purpose for every action performed in the context
of the knowledge being taught. Therefore, a man of knowledge needs
clarity of mind in order to match his own specific reasons for acting
with the specific purpose of every action. The knowledge of the
specific purpose of every action is the guide he uses to judge the
circumstances surrounding any need to act.
Another facet of clarity of mind is the idea that a man of knowledge,
in order to reinforce the performance of his obligatory actions,
needs to assemble all the resources that the teachings have placed at
his command. This is the idea of being fluid. It creates a sense of
direction by giving one the feeling of being malleable and
resourceful. The compulsory quality of all acts would imbue one with
a sense of stiffness or sterility were it not for the idea that a man
of knowledge needs to be fluid.
To Become A Man of Knowledge is a Matter of Strenuous
Labor
A man of knowledge has to possess or has to develop in the course of
his training an all-round capacity for exertion. To become a man of
knowledge is a matter of strenuous labor. Strenuous labor denotes a
capacity (1) to put forth dramatic exertion; (2) to achieve efficacy;
and (3) to meet challenge.
In the path of a man of knowledge drama is undoubtedly the
outstanding single issue, and a special type of exertion is needed
for responding to circumstances that require dramatic exploitation;
that is to say, a man of knowledge needs dramatic exertion. Taking my
behavior as an example, at first glance it may seem that my dramatic
exertion is only my own idiosyncratic preference for histrionics. Yet
my dramatic exertion is always much more than acting; it is rather a
profound state of belief. I impart through dramatic exertion the
peculiar quality of finality to all the acts I perform. As a
consequence, then, my acts are set on a stage in which death is one
of the main protagonists. It is implicit that death is a real
possibility in the course of learning because of the inherently
dangerous nature of the items with which a man of knowledge deals;
then, it is logical that the dramatic exertion created by the
conviction that death is an ubiquitous player is more than
histrionics.
* * *
Exertion entails not only drama, but also the need of efficacy.
Exertion has to be effective; it has to possess the quality of being
properly channeled, of being suitable. The idea of impending death
creates not only the drama needed for overall emphasis, but also the
conviction that every action involves a struggle for survival, the
conviction that annihilation will result if one's exertion does not
meet the requirement of being efficacious.
Exertion also entails the idea of challenge, that is, the act of
testing whether, and proving that, one is capable of performing a
proper act within the rigorous boundaries of the knowledge being
taught.
A Man of Knowledge Is a Warrior
The existence of a man of knowledge is an unceasing struggle, and the
idea that he is a warrior, leading a warrior's life, provides one
with the means for achieving emotional stability. The idea of a man
at war encompasses four concepts: (1) a man of knowledge has to have
respect; (2) he has to have fear; (3) he has to be wide-awake; (4) he
has to be self-confident. Hence, to be a warrior is a form of
self-discipline which emphasizes individual accomplishment; yet it is
a stand-in which personal interests are reduced to a minimum, as in
most instances personal interest is incompatible with the rigor
needed to perform any predetermined, obligatory act.
A man of knowledge in his role of warrior is obligated to have an
attitude of deferential regard for the items with which he deals; he
has to imbue everything related to his knowledge with profound
respect in order to place everything in a meaningful perspective.
Having respect is equivalent to having assessed one's insignificant
resources when facing the Unknown.
If one remains in that frame of thought, the idea of respect is
logically extended to include oneself, for one is as unknown as the
Unknown itself. The exercise of so sobering a feeling of respect
transforms the apprenticeship of this specific knowledge, which may
otherwise appear to be absurd, into a very rational alternative.
Another necessity of a warrior's life is the need to experience and
carefully to evaluate the sensation of fear. The ideal is that, in
spite of fear, one has to proceed with the course of one's acts. Fear
must be conquered and there is a time in the life of a man of
knowledge when it is vanquished, but first one has to be conscious of
being afraid and duly to evaluate that sensation. One is capable of
conquering fear only by facing it.
As a warrior, a man of knowledge also needs to be wide-awake. A man
at war has to be on the alert in order to be cognizant of most of the
factors pertinent to the two mandatory aspects of awareness: (1)
awareness of intent (2) awareness of the expected flux.
Awareness of intent is the act of being cognizant of the factors
involved in the relationship between the specific purpose of any
obligatory act and one's own specific purpose for acting. Since all
the obligatory acts have a definite purpose, a man of knowledge has
to be wide-awake; that is, he needs to be capable at all times of
matching the definite purpose of every obligatory act with the
definite reason that he has in mind for desiring to act.
A man of knowledge, by being aware of that relationship, is also
capable of being cognizant of what is believed to be the expected
flux. What I call the awareness of the expected flux refers to the
certainty that one is capable of detecting at all times the important
variables involved in the relationship between the specific purpose
of every act and one's specific reason for acting. By being aware of
the expected flux one is able to detect the most subtle changes. That
deliberate awareness of changes accounts for the recognition and
interpretation of omens and of other unordinary events.
The last aspect of the idea of a warrior's behavior is the need for
self-confidence, that is, the assurance that the specific purpose of
an act one may have chosen to perform is the only plausible
alternative for one's own specific reasons for acting. Without
self-confidence, one would be incapable of fulfilling one of the most
important aspects of the teachings: the capacity to claim knowledge
as power.
To Become a Man of Knowledge Is an Unceasing Process
Being a man of knowledge is not a condition entailing permanency.
There is never the certainty that, by carrying out the predetermined
steps of the knowledge being taught, that you will become a man of
knowledge. It is implicit that the function of the steps is only to
show how to become a man of knowledge. Thus, becoming a man of
knowledge is a task that cannot be fully achieved; rather, it is an
unceasing process comprising (1) the idea that one has to renew the
quest of becoming a man of knowledge; (2) the idea of one's
impermanency; and (3) the idea that one has to follow a path with
heart.
The constant renewal of the quest of becoming a man of knowledge is
expressed in the theme of the four symbolic enemies encountered on
the path of learning: fear, clarity, power, and old age. Renewing the
quest implies the gaining and the maintenance of control over
oneself. A true man of knowledge is expected to battle each of the
four enemies, in succession, until the last moment of his life, in
order to keep himself actively engaged in becoming a man of
knowledge. Yet, despite the truthful renewal of the quest, the odds
are inevitably against man; he would succumb to his last symbolic
enemy. This is the idea of impermanency.
Offsetting the negative value of one's impermanency is the notion
that one has to follow the path with heart. The path with heart is a
metaphorical way of asserting that in spite of being impermanent one
still has to proceed and has to be capable of finding satisfaction
and personal fulfilment in the act of choosing the most amenable
alternative and identifying oneself completely with it.
The rationale of my whole knowledge is synthesized in the metaphor
that the important thing for me is to find a path with heart and then
travel its length, meaning that the identification with the amenable
alternative is enough for me. The journey by itself is sufficient;
any hope of arriving at a permanent position is outside the
boundaries of my knowledge.
A Man of Knowledge has an Ally.
The idea that a man of knowledge has an ally is the most important of
the seven component themes, for it is the only one that is
indispensable to explaining what a man of knowledge is. In my
classificatory scheme a man of knowledge has an ally, whereas the average man does not, and having an ally is what makes
him different from ordinary men.
An ally is a power capable of transporting a man beyond the
boundaries of himself; that is to say, an ally is a power which
allows one to transcend the realm of ordinary reality. Consequently,
to have an ally implies having power; and the fact that a man of
knowledge has an ally is by itself proof that the operational goal of
the teaching is being fulfilled. Since that goal is to show how to
become a man of knowledge, and since a man of knowledge is one who
has an ally, another way of describing the operational goal of my
teachings is to say that it also shows how to obtain an ally. The
concept "man of knowledge," as a sorcerer's philosophical frame, has
meaning for anyone who wants to live within that frame only insofar
as he has an ally.
Introduction
1. The Teachings of don Juan
2. A Separate Reality
3. Journey to Ixtlan
4. Tales Of Power
5. The Second Ring of Powerr
6. The Eagle's Gift
7. The Fire From Within
8. The Power of Silence
9. The Art of Dreaming
12. The Active Side of Infinity
13. Appendix A thru E