The method used to achieve the near-surrealist scenes is so simple and ring quite true for psychedelic endeavors undertaken in the desert: the perception of scale is a matter of one’s perspective. As well, in each, there is a clarity regarding that stark but ravishing beauty one encounters in those environs.
The method used to achieve the near-surrealist scenes is so simple and ring quite true for psychedelic endeavors undertaken in the desert: the perception of scale is a matter of one’s perspective. As well, in each, there is a clarity regarding that stark but ravishing beauty one encounters in those environs.
The Power of Silence: Further Lessons of don Juan
Author: Carlos Castaneda
Publication date: 1987
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Cover art: Robert Giusti
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Excerpt from the Introduction
The art of stalking is the riddle of the heart; the puzzlement sorcerers feel upon becoming aware of two things: first that the world appears to us to be unalterably objective and factual because of the peculiarities of our awareness and perception; and second, that if different peculiarities of perception come into play, the very things about the world that seem so unalterably objective and factual change.
The mastery of intent is the riddle of the spirit; the paradox of the abstract; sorcerers' thoughts and actions projected beyond our human condition.
Don Juan’s instructions on both the art of stalking and the mastery of intent depended upon his instruction on the mastery of awareness.
The mastery of awareness was the cornerstone of his teachings, and consists of the following basic premises:
1. The universe is an infinite mass of energy fields resembling threads of light.
2. These energy fields, called the Eagle’s emanations, radiate from a source of inconceivable proportions metaphorically called The Eagle.
3. Human beings are composed of an incalculable number of the Eagle’s emanations in an encased mass. Seers perceive this mass as a ball of light, like a giant luminous egg, the size of the person's body with the arms extended laterally.
4. Only a very small group of the emanations inside this luminous egg are lit up by a point of intense brilliance located near the egg’s surface. This point is where perception is assembled; ‘the assemblage point’.
5. Perception occurs when the emanations lit by the assemblage point extend their light to illuminate identical matching emanations outside the egg. Only the emanations lit by the assemblage point are perceived.
6. The assemblage point can move from its usual position to another on the surface or into the interior. It then lights up a new group of emanations making them perceivable and cancelling the former perceptions.
7. When the assemblage point shifts far enough, it makes possible the perception of an entirely different world as objective and factual as the one we normally perceive. Sorcerers go into those other worlds to get energy, power, solutions to general and particular problems, or to face the unimaginable.
8. Intent is the pervasive force that causes us to perceive. We do not become aware because we perceive; rather, we perceive as a result of the pressure and intrusion of intent.
9. The aim of the new seers is to reach a state of total awareness in order to experience all the possibilities of perception available to man. This state of awareness even implies an alternative way of dying.
A level of practical knowledge was included as part of teaching the mastery of awareness. On that practical level don Juan taught the procedures necessary to move the assemblage point. The two great systems devised by the sorcerer seers of ancient times to accomplish this were: dreaming, the control and utilization of dreams; and stalking, the control of behavior.
Moving one’s own assemblage point was an essential maneuver that every sorcerer had to learn.
The naguals, also learned to move it for others. The naguals dislodge others’ assemblage point from its customary position by pushing it. This push is experienced as a smack on the right shoulder blade-although the body is never touched-and results in a state of heightened awareness.
In compliance with his tradition, it was exclusively in these states of heightened awareness that don Juan carried out the most important and dramatic part of his teachings: the instructions for the left side.