CARLOS QUOTES

AS DON JUAN SAID TO CARLOS:
Warriors are incapable of feeling compassion because they no longer feel sorry for themselves.
Without the driving force of self-pity, compassion is meaningless."
"Are you saying, don Juan, that a warrior is all for himself?"
"In a way, yes. For a warrior everything begins and ends with himself. However, his contact
with the abstract causes him to overcome his feeling of self-importance. Then the self becomes
abstract and impersonal.

"Sorcerers say that the fourth abstract core happens when the spirit cuts our chains of selfreflection,"
he said. "Cutting our chains is marvelous, but also very undesirible, for nobody wants
to be free."
The sensation of sliding through a tunnel persisted for a moment longer, and then everything
became clear to me. And I began to laugh. Strange insights pent up inside me were exploding into
laughter.
Don Juan seemed to be reading my mind as if it were a book.
"What a strange feeling: to realize that everything we think, everything we say depends on the
position of the assemblage point," he remarked.
And that was exactly what I had been thinking and laughing about.
"I know that at this moment your assemblage point has shifted," he went on, "and you have
understood the secret of our chains. They imprison us, but by keeping us pinned down on our
comfortable spot of self-reflection, they defend us from the onslaughts of the unknown."
I was having one of those extraordinary moments in which everything about the sorcerers'
world was crystal clear. I understood everything.
"Once our chains are cut," don Juan continued, "we are no longer bound by the concerns of the
daily world. We are still in the daily world, but we don't belong there anymore. In order to belong
we must share the concerns of people, and without chains we can't."
Don Juan said that the nagual Elias had explained to him that what distinguishes normal
people is that we share a metaphorical dagger: the concerns of our self-reflection. With this
dagger, we cut ourselves and bleed; and the job of our chains of self-reflection is to give us the
feeling that we are bleeding together, that we are sharing something wonderful: our humanity.
But if we were to examine it, we would discover that we are bleeding alone; that we are not
sharing anything; that all we are doing is toying with our manageable, unreal, man-made
reflection.
"Sorcerers are no longer in the world of daily affairs," don Juan went on, "because they are no
longer prey to their self-reflection."
Don Juan - C.C.

war was he natural state for a warrior, that peace was an anomaly.
"That's right," he admitted. "But war, for a warrior, doesn't mean acts of individual or
collective stupidity or wanton violence. War, for a warrior, is the total struggle against that
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individual self that has deprived man of his power."
Don Juan said then that it was time for us to talk further about ruthlessness - the most basic
premise of sorcery. He explained that sorcerers had discovered that any movement of the
assemblage point meant a movement away from the excessive concern with that individual self
which was the nark of modern man. He went on to say that sorcerers believed it was the position
of the assemblage point which made modern man a homicidal egotist, a being totally involved
with his self-image. Having lost hope of ever returning to the source of everything, man sought
solace in his selfness. And, in doing so, he succeeded in fixing his assemblage point in the exact
position to perpetuate his self-image. It was therefore safe to say that any movement of the
assemblage point away from its customary position resulted in a movement away from man's
self-reflection and its concomitant: self-importance.
Don Juan described self-importance as the force generated by man's self-image. He reiterated
that it is that force which keeps the assemblage point fixed where it is at present. For this reason,
the thrust of the warriors' way is to dethrone self-importance. And everything sorcerers do is
toward accomplishing this goal.
He explained that sorcerers had unmasked self-importance and found that it is self-pity
masquerading as something else.
"It doesn't sound possible, but that is what it is," he said. "Self-pity is the real enemy and the
source of man's misery. Without a degree of pity for himself, man could not afford to be as selfimportant
as he is. However, once the force of self-importance is engaged, it develops its own
momentum. And it is this seemingly independent nature of self-importance which gives it its fake
sense of worth."
His explanation, which I would have found incomprehensible under normal conditions,
seemed thoroughly cogent to me. But because of the duality in me, which still pertained, it
appeared a bit simplistic. Don Juan seemed to have aimed his thoughts and words at a specific
target. And I, in my normal state of awareness, was that target.
He continued his explanation, saying that sorcerers are absolutely convinced that by moving
our assemblage points away from their customary position we achieve a state of being which
could only be called ruthlessness. Sorcerers knew, by means of their practical actions, that as
soon as their assemblage points move, their self-importance crumbles. Without the customary
position of their assemblage points, their self-image can no longer be sustained. And without the
heavy focus on that self-image, they lose their self-compassion, and with it their self-importance.
Sorcerers are right, therefore, in saying that self-importance is merely self-pity in disguise.

The sorcerers' increased energy, derived from the
curtailment of their self-reflection, allows their senses a greater range of perception.
"I've been trying to make clear to you that the only worthwhile course of action, whether for
sorcerers or average men, is to restrict our involvement with our self-image," he continued.
"What a nagual aims at with his apprentices is the shattering of their mirror of self-reflection."
He added that each apprentice was an individual case, and that the nagual had to let the spirit
decide about the particulars.
"Each of us has a different degree of attachment to his self-reflection," he went on. "And that
attachment is felt as need. For example, before I started on the path of knowledge, my life was
endless need. And years after the nagual Julian had taken me under his wing, I was still just as
needy, if not more so.
"But there are examples of people, sorcerers or average men, who need no one. They get
peace, harmony, laughter, knowledge, directly from the spirit. They need no intermediaries. For
you and for me, it's different. I'm your intermediary and the nagual Julian was mine.
Intermediaries, besides providing a minimal chance - the awareness of intent - help shatter
people's mirrors of self-reflection.
"The only concrete help you ever get from me is that I attack your self-reflection. If it weren't
for that, you would be wasting your time. This is the only real help you've gotten from me."
"You've taught me, don Juan, more than anyone in my entire life," I protested.
"I've taught you all kinds of things in order to trap your attention," he said. "You'll swear,
though, that that teaching has been the important part. It hasn't. There is very little value in
instruction. Sorcerers maintain that moving the assemblage point is all that matters. And that
movement, as you well know, depends on increased energy and not on instruction."
He then made an incongruous statement. He said that any human being who would follow a
specific and simple sequence of actions can learn to move his assemblage point.
I pointed out that he was contradicting himself. To me, a sequence of actions meant
instructions; it meant procedures.
"In the sorcerers' world there are only contradictions of terms," he replied. "In practice there
are no contradictions. The sequence of actions I am talking about is one that stems from being
aware. To become aware of this sequence you need a nagual. This is why I've said that the nagual
provides a minimal chance, but that minimal chance is not instruction, like the instruction you
need to learn to operate a machine. The minimal chance consists of being made aware of the
spirit."
He explained that the specific sequence he had in mind called for being aware that selfimportance
is the force which keeps the assemblage point fixed. When self-importance is
curtailed, the energy it requires is no longer expended. That increased energy then serves as the
springboard that launches the assemblage point, automatically and without premeditation, into an
inconceivable journey.
Once the assemblage point has moved, the movement itself entails moving from selfreflection,
and this, in turn, assures a clear connecting link with the spirit. He commented that,
after all, it was self-reflection that had disconnected man from the spirit in the first place.
"As I have already said to you," don Juan went on, "sorcery is a journey of return. We return
victorious to the spirit, having descended into hell. And from hell we bring trophies.
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Understanding is one of our trophies."

************** not doing 8****************

It consisted of introducing a dissonant element into the fabric of everyday behavior for purposes
of halting the otherwise smooth flow of ordinary events - events which were catalogued in our
minds by our reason.
The dissonant element was called "not-doing," or the opposite of doing. "Doing" was anything
that was part of a whole for which we had a cognitive account. Not-doing was an element that did
not belong in that charted whole.
"Sorcerers, because they are stalkers, understand human behavior to perfection," he said. They
understand, for instance, that human beings are creatures of inventory. Knowing the ins and outs
of a particular inventory is what makes a man a scholar or an expert in his field.
"Sorcerers know that when an average person's inventory fails, the person either enlarges his
inventory or his world of self-reflection collapses. The average person is willing to incorporate
new items into his inventory if they don't contradict the inventory's underlying order. But if the
items contradict that order, the person's mind collapses. The inventory is the mind. Sorcerers
count on this when they attempt to break the mirror of self-reflection."

POSITIONS OF THE A.P.:

silent knowledge was a general position of the assemblage point, that ages ago it had been man's
normal position, but that, for reasons which would be impossible to determine, man's assemblage
point had moved away from that specific location and adopted a new one called "reason."
Don Juan remarked that not every human being was a representative of this new position. The
assemblage points of the majority of us were not placed squarely on the location of reason itself,
but in its immediate vicinity. The same thing had been the case with silent knowledge: not every
human being's assemblage point had been squarely on that location either.
He also said that "the place of no pity," being another position of the assemblage point, was
the forerunner of silent knowledge, and that yet another position of the assemblage point called
"the place of concern," C.C.

*************** DEATH POSITIONS **********

He said that for a seer
human beings were either oblong or spherical luminous masses of countless, static, yet vibrant
fields of energy, and that only sorcerers were capable of injecting movement into those spheres of
static luminosity. In a millisecond they could move their assemblage points to any place in their
luminous mass. That movement and the speed with which it was performed entailed an
instantaneous shift into the perception of another totally different universe. Or they could move
their assemblage points, without stopping, across their entire fields of luminous energy. The force
created by such movement was so intense that it instantly consumed their whole luminous mass.
He said that if a rockslide were to come crashing down on us at that precise moment, he would
be able to cancel the normal effect of an accidental death. By using the speed with which his
assemblage point would move, he could make himself change universes or make himself burn
from within in a fraction of a second. I, on the other hand, would die a normal death, crushed by
the rocks, because my assemblage point lacked the speed to pull me out.
I said it seemed to me that the sorcerers had just found an alternative way of dying, which was
not the same as a cancellation of death. And he replied that all he had said was that sorcerers
commanded their deaths.

the average man, incapable of finding the
energy to perceive beyond his daily limits, called the realm of extraordinary perception sorcery,
witchcraft, or the work of the devil, and shied away from it without examining it further.
"But you can't do that anymore," don Juan went on. "You are not religious and you are much
too curious to discard anything so easily. The only thing that could stop you now is cowardice.
"Turn everything into what it really is: the abstract, the spirit, the nagual. There is no
witchcraft, no evil, no devil. There is only perception."

**************** GAIT OF TRANSFORMATION *************8

"Be gigantic!" he ordered me, smiling. "Do away with reason."
Then I knew exactly what he meant. In fact, I knew that I could increase the intensity of my
feelings of size and ferociousness until I actually could be a giant, hovering over the shrubs,
seeing all around us.
I tried to voice my thoughts but quickly gave up. I became aware that don Juan knew all I was
thinking, and obviously much, much more.
And then something extraordinary happened to me. My reasoning faculties ceased to function.
Literally, I felt as though a dark blanket had covered me and obscured my thoughts. And I let go
of my reason with the abandon of one who doesn't have a worry in the world. I was convinced
that if I wanted to dispel the obscuring blanket, all I had to do was feel myself breaking through
it.
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In that state, I felt I was being propelled, set in motion. Something was making me move
physically from one place to another. I did not experience any fatigue. The speed and ease with
which I could move elated me.
I did not feel I was walking; I was not flying either. Rather I was being transported with
extreme facility. My movements became jerky and ungraceful only when I tried to think about
them. When I enjoyed them without thought, I entered into a unique state of physical elation for
which I had no precedent.

-c.c.

**************** BANDS OF MAN **********************8

the ancient seers' concern with death made them look into the most
bizarre possibilities. The ones who opted for the allies' pattern had in mind, doubtless, a desire for
a haven. And they found it, at a fixed position in one of the seven bands of inorganic awareness.
The seers felt that they were relatively safe there. After all, they were separated from the daily
world by a nearly insurmountable barrier, the barrier of perception set by the assemblage point.
"When the four seers saw that you could shift your assemblage point they took off like bats
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out of hell," he said and laughed.

"I've told you that the glow of awareness in man has different colors." he finally said. "What I
didn't tell you then, because we hadn't gotten to that point yet, was that they are not colors but
casts of amber."
He said that the amber bundle of awareness has an infinitude of subtle variants, which always
denote differences in quality of awareness. Pink and pale-green amber are the most common
casts. Blue amber is more unusual, but pure amber is by far the most rare.
"What determines the particular casts of amber?"
"Seers say that the amount of energy that one saves and stores determines the cast. Countless
numbers of warriors have begun with an ordinary pink amber cast and have finished with the
purest of all ambers. Genaro and Silvio Manuel are examples of that."
"What forms of life belong to the pink and the peach bundles of awareness?" I asked.
"The three bundles with all their casts crisscross the eight bands," he replied. "In the organic
band, the pink bundle belongs mainly to plants, the peach band belongs to insects, and the amber
band belongs to man and other animals.
"The same situation is prevalent in the inorganic bands. The three bundles of awareness
produce specific kinds of inorganic beings in each of the seven great bands."
I asked him to elaborate on the kinds of inorganic beings that existed.
"That is another thing that you must see for yourself," he said. "The seven bands and what
they produce are indeed inaccessible to human reason, but not to human seeing."
I told him that I could not quite grasp his explanation of the great bands, because his
description had forced me to imagine them as independent bundles of strings, or even as flat
bands, like conveyor belts.
He explained that the great bands are neither flat nor round, but indescribably clustered
together, like a pile of hay, which is held together in midair by the force of the hand that pitched
it. Thus, there is no order to the emanations;

"The assemblage point, with even the most minute shifting, creates totally isolated islands of
perception," don Juan said. "Information, in the form of experiences in the complexity of
awareness can be stored there."
"But how can information be stored in something so vague?" I asked.
"The mind is equally vague, and still you trust it because you are familiar with it," he retorted.
"You don't yet have the same familiarity with the movement of the assemblage point, but it is just
about the same."

*************FRAMERATES AND STACKED PERCEPTION,THE ENERGENETIC SATURATIONS KEY IS ONES SPEED ********************

"What I mean is, how is information stored?" I insisted.
"The information is stored in the experience itself," he explained. "Later, when a sorcerer
moves his assemblage point to the exact spot where it was, he relives the total experience. This
sorcerers' recollection is the way to get back all the information stored in the movement of die
assemblage point.
"Intensity is an automatic result of the movement of the assemblage point," he continued. "For
instance, you are living these moments more intensely than you ordinarily would, so, properly
speaking, you are storing intensity. Some day you'll relive this moment by making your
assemblage point return to the precise spot where it is now. That is the way sorcerers store
information."
I told don Juan that the intense recollections I had had in the past few days had just happened
to me, without any special mental process I was aware of.
"How can one deliberately manage to recollect?" I asked.
"Intensity, being an aspect of intent, is connected naturally to the shine of the sorcerers' eyes,"
he explained. "In order to recall those isolated islands of perception sorcerers need only intend the
particular shine of their eyes associated with whichever spot they want to return to. But I have
already explained that."
I must have looked perplexed. Don Juan regarded me with a serious expression. I opened my
mouth two or three times to ask him questions, but could not formulate my thoughts.
"Because his intensity rate is greater than normal," don Juan said, "in a few hours a sorcerer
can live the equivalent of a normal lifetime. His assemblage point, by shifting to an unfamiliar
position, takes in more energy than usual. That extra flow of energy is called intensity."
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I understood what he was saying with perfect clarity, and my rationality staggered under the
impact of the tremendous implication.
Don Juan fixed me with his stare and then warned me to beware of a reaction which typically
afflicted sorcerers - a frustrating desire to explain the sorcery experience in cogent, well-reasoned
terms.
"The sorcerers' experience is so outlandish," don Juan went on, "that sorcerers consider it an
intellectual exercise, and use it to stalk themselves with. Their trump card as stalkers, though, is
that they remain keenly aware that we are perceivers and that perception has more possibilities
than the mind can conceive."
As my only comment I voiced my apprehension about the outlandish possibilities of human
awareness.
"In order to protect themselves from that immensity," don Juan said, "sorcerers learn to
maintain a perfect blend of ruthlessness, cunning, patience, and sweetness. These four bases are
inextricably bound together. Sorcerers cultivate them by intending them. These bases are,
naturally, positions of the assemblage point."

**************** THE HUANTED HOUSE OF AWARENESS ************

ritual forced the
average man to construct huge churches that were monuments to self-importance, ritual also
forced sorcerers to construct edifices of morbidity and obsession. As a result, it was the duty of
every nagual to guide awareness so it would fly toward the abstract, free of liens and mortgages.
"What do you mean, don Juan, by liens and mortgages?" I asked.
"Ritual can trap our attention better than anything I can think of," he said, "but it also demands
a very high price.
That high price is morbidity; and morbidity could have the heaviest liens and mortgages on
our awareness."
Don Juan said that human awareness was like an immense haunted house. The awareness of
everyday life was like being sealed in one room of that immense house for life. We entered the
room through a magical opening: birth. And we exited through another such magical opening:
death.
Sorcerers, however, were capable of finding still another opening and could leave that sealed
room while still alive. A superb attainment. But their astounding accomplishment was that when
they escaped from that sealed room they chose freedom. They chose to leave that immense,
haunted house entirely instead of getting lost in other parts of it.
Morbidity was the antithesis of the surge of energy awareness needed to reach freedom.
Morbidity made sorcerers lose their way and become trapped in the intricate, dark byways of the
unknown.
I asked don Juan if there was any morbidity in the Tulios.
"Strangeness is not morbidity" he replied. "The Tulios were performers who were being
coached by the spirit itself."

*************** Don Juan's instruction on the art of stalking and the mastery of intent depended upon his
instruction on the mastery of awareness, which was the cornerstone of his teachings, and which
consist of the following basic premises: ******************

1. The universe is an infinite agglomeration 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.
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3. Human beings are also composed of an incalculable number of the same threadlike energy
fields. These Eagle's emanations form an encased agglomeration that manifests itself as a
ball of light the size of the person's body with the arms extended laterally, like a giant
luminous egg.
4. Only a very small group of the energy fields inside this luminous ball are lit up by a point of
intense brilliance located on the ball's surface.
5. Perception occurs when the energy fields in that small group immediately surrounding the
point of brilliance extend their light to illuminate identical energy fields outside the ball.
Since the only energy fields perceivable are those lit by the point of brilliance, that point is
named "the point where perception is assembled" or simply "the assemblage point."
6. The assemblage point can be moved from its usual position on the surface of the luminous
ball to another position on the surface, or into the interior. Since the brilliance of the
assemblage point can light up whatever energy field it comes in contact with, when it
moves to a new position it immediately brightens up new energy fields, making them
perceivable. This perception is known as seeing.
7. When the assemblage point shifts, it makes possible the perception of an entirely different
world - as objective and factual as the one we normally perceive. Sorcerers go into that
other world 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 sorcerers 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 assemblage point was an essential maneuver that every sorcerer had to learn.
Some of them, the naguals, also learned to perform it for others. They were able to dislodge the
assemblage point from its customary position by delivering a hard slap directly to the assemblage
point. This blow, which was experienced as a smack on the right shoulder blade - although the
body was never touched - resulted in a state of heightened awareness.

being offended is succombing to another,'falling' for the trap set by 'man' doesnt affect those 'snared by spirit',we would never 'fall for it' plain and simple.we see through the bullshit to say,period. -7CROW