Assemblage point

(See dreaming and second attention)

The decisive finding of the sorcerers of antiquity and the crucial feature of human beings as luminous balls, is a round spot of intense brilliance, the size of a tennis ball, permanently lodged inside the luminous ball, flush with its surface, about two feet back from the crest of a person's right shoulder blade.
The luminous ball is much larger than the human body. The spot of intense brilliance is part of this ball of energy, and it is located on a place at the height of the shoulder blades, an arm's length from a person's back. The old sorcerers named it the assemblage point after seeing what it does. It makes us perceive.

Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming 1993

Out of all the marvelous things the old sorcerers learned exploring those thousands of positions, only the art of dreaming and the art of stalking remain. The art of dreaming is concerned with the displacement of the assemblage point. Stalking is the art that deals with the fixation of the assemblage point on any location to which it is displaced.

To fixate the assemblage point on any new spot means to acquire cohesion. An apprentice does just that in his dreaming practices. He is perfecting his energy body. He is doing that and much more; he is learning to have cohesion. Dreaming does it by forcing dreamers to fixate the assemblage point. The dreaming attention, the energy body, the second attention, the relationship with inorganic beings, the dreaming emissary are but by-products of acquiring cohesion; in other words, they are all by-products of fixating the assemblage point on a number of dreaming positions .

A dreaming position is any new position to which the assemblage point has been displaced during sleep. We fixate the assemblage point on a dreaming position by sustaining the view of any item in our dreams, or by changing dreams at will. Through his dreaming practices, an apprentice is really exercising his capacity to be cohesive; that is to say, he is exercising his capacity to maintain a new energy shape by holding the assemblage point fixed on the position of any particular dream he is having. While exercising his capacity to maintain a new energy shape, he isn't really maintaining a new energy shape yet, not exactly, and not because he can't but only because he is shifting the assemblage point instead of moving it. Shifts of the assemblage point give rise to minute changes, which are practically unnoticeable. The challenge of shifts is that they are so small and so numerous that to maintain cohesiveness in all of them is a triumph.

We know we are maintaining cohesion by the clarity of our perception. The clearer the view of our dreams, the greater our cohesion.

I'm going to tell you about a practical application of what an apprentice learns in dreaming . He focuses his attention, as if he is in a dream, on the foliage of a tree. He doesn't just gaze at it; he does something very special with the foliage. Remember, I've said that in dreaming , once you are able to hold the view of any item, you are really holding the dreaming position of your assemblage point. So then, an apprentice gazes at the leaves of a tree as if he is in a dream, but with a slight yet most meaningful variation: he holds his dreaming attention on the leaves of the tree in the awareness of our daily world.

By staring at the foliage, he accomplishes a minute displacement of his assemblage point. Then, by summoning his dreaming attention through staring at individual leaves, he actually fixates that minute displacement, and his cohesion makes him perceive in terms of the second attention. The process is so simple it is ridiculous.

Our speech faculty is extremely flimsy and attacks of muteness are common among sorcerers who venture this way, beyond the limits of normal perception.

It is not possible for one to rely on one's rationality to understand such an experience as summoning one's dreaming attention through staring at individual leaves. Not because our rationality is in any way impaired but because what takes place is a phenomenon outside the parameters of reason.

Reason is only a by-product of the habitual position of the assemblage point; therefore, knowing what is going to, being of sound mind, having our feet on the ground--sources of great pride to us and assumed to be a natural consequence of our worth--are merely the result of the fixation of the assemblage point on its habitual place. The more rigid and stationary it is, the greater our confidence in ourselves, the greater our feeling of knowing the world, of being able to predict.

[…]

We are back again, harping on the most important topic of the sorcerers' world; the position of the assemblage point. The old sorcerers' curse, as well as mankind's thorn in the side. I say that because both, mankind in general and the old sorcerers, fell prey to the position of the assemblage point: mankind, because by not knowing that the assemblage point exists we are obliged to take the by-product of its habitual position as something final and indisputable. And the old sorcerers because, although they knew all about the assemblage point, they fell for its facility to be manipulated. You must avoid falling into those traps.

Different worlds exist in the position of the assemblage point. You will have two choices. One, to follow mankind's rationales and be faced with a predicament: your experience will tell you that other worlds exist, but your reason will say that such worlds do not and cannot exist. The other, to follow the old sorcerers' rationales, in which case you will automatically accept the existence of other worlds, and your greed alone will make your assemblage point hold on to the position that creates those worlds. The result would be another kind of predicament: that of having to move physically into visionlike realms, driven by expectations of power and gain.

[…]

The dreaming emissary's voice is an impersonal but constant force from the realm of inorganic beings; thus, every dreamer experiences it, in more or less the same terms. And if we choose to take its words as advice, we are incurable fools.

My interest in telling you about the old sorcerers is not to bad-mouth them but to pit them against you. Sooner or later, your assemblage point will be more fluid, but not fluid enough to offset the facility to be like them: righteous and hysterical.

There is only one way to avoid all that. Sorcerers call it sheer understanding. I call it a romance with knowledge. It's the drive sorcerers use to know, to discover, to be bewildered.Seeing children's assemblage points constantly fluttering, as if moved by tremors, changing their place with ease, the old sorcerers came to the conclusion that the assemblage points habitual location is not innate but brought about by habituation. Seeing also that only in adults is it fixed on one spot, they surmised that the specific location of the assemblage point fosters a specific way of perceiving. Through usage, this specific way of perceiving becomes a system of interpreting sensory data.

Since we are drafted into that system by being born into it, from the moment of our birth we imperatively strive to adjust our perceiving to conform to the demands of this system, a system that rules us for life. Consequently, the old sorcerers were thoroughly right in believing that the act of countermanding it and perceiving energy directly is what transforms a person into a sorcerer.

I am in wonder at the greatest accomplishment of our human upbringing: to lock our assemblage point on its habitual position. For, once it is immobilized there, our perception can be coached and guided to interpret what we perceive. In other words, we can then be guided to perceive more in terms of our system than in terms of our senses. Human perception is universally homogeneous, because the assemblage points of the whole human race are fixed on the same spot.

Sorcerers prove all this to themselves when they see that at the moment the assemblage point is displaced beyond a certain threshold, and new universal filaments of energy begin to be perceived, there is no sense to what we perceive. The immediate cause is that new sensory data has rendered our system inoperative; it can no longer be used to interpret what we are perceiving.

Perceiving without our system is, of course, chaotic. But strangely enough, when we think we have truly lost our bearings, our old system rallies; it comes to our rescue and transforms our new incomprehensible perception into a thoroughly comprehensible new world. Just like what happens to an apprentice when he gazes at the leaves of a tree and his dreaming attention comes forth. His perception is chaotic for a while; everything comes to him at once, and his system for interpreting the world doesn't function. Then, the chaos clears up and there he is, in front of a new world.

That world exists in the precise position of his assemblage point at that moment. In order to perceive it, he needs cohesion, that is, he needs to maintain his assemblage point fixed on that position. The result is that he totally perceives a new world for a while.

Others would perceive that same world if they had uniformity and cohesion. Uniformity and cohesion is to hold, in unison, the same position of the assemblage point. The old sorcerers called the entire act of acquiring uniformity and cohesion outside the normal world "stalking perception."

The art of stalking…deals with the fixation of the assemblage point. The old sorcerers discovered, through practice, that important as it is to displace the assemblage point, it is even more important to make it stay fixed on its new position, wherever that new position might be.

If the assemblage point does not become stationary, there is no way that we can perceive coherently. We would experience then a kaleidoscope of disassociated images. This is the reason the old sorcerers put as much emphasis on dreaming as they did on stalking . One art cannot exist without the other, especially for the kinds of activities in which the old sorcerers were involved.

The old sorcerers called them the intricacies of the second attention or the grand adventure of the unknown. These activities stem from the displacements of the assemblage point. Not only had the old sorcerers learned to displace their assemblage points to thousands of positions on the surface or on the inside of their energy masses but they had also learned to fixate their assemblage points on those positions, and thus retain their cohesiveness, indefinitely. We can't talk about the benefits of that, we can talk only about end results.

The cohesiveness of the old sorcerers was such that it allowed them to become perceptually and physically everything the specific position of their assemblage points dictated. They could transform themselves into anything for which they had a specific inventory. An inventory is all the details of perception involved in becoming, for example, a jaguar, a bird, an insect, et cetera, et cetera. It is possible, not so much for you and me, but you them. For them, it was nothing.

The old sorcerers had superb fluidity. All they needed was the slightest shift of their assemblage points, the slightest perceptual cue from their dreaming , and they would instantaneously stalk their perception, rearrange their cohesiveness to fit their new state of awareness, and be an animal, another person, a bird, or anything.

Sorcerers bring order to the chaos. Their preconceived, transcendental purpose is to free their perception. Sorcerers don't make up the world they are perceiving; they perceive energy directly, and then they discover that what they are perceiving is an unknown new world, which can swallow them whole, because it is as real as anything we know to be real.

What happens as an apprentice gazes at the leaves of a tree is that he began by perceiving the energy of the tree. On the subjective level, however, he believes he is dreaming because he employs dreaming techniques to perceive energy. To use dreaming techniques in the world of everyday life was one of the old sorcerers most effective devices. It made perceiving energy directly dreamlike, instead of totally chaotic, until a moment when something rearranged perception and the sorcerer found himself facing a new world. The scenery one views in that case is not a dream, nor is it our daily world.
Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming, 1993

The position of the assemblage point is like a vault where sorcerers keep their records. Sorcerers are capable of leaving accurate records of their findings in the position of the assemblage point. When it comes to getting to the essence of a written account, we have to use our sense of sympathetic or imaginative participation to go beyond the mere page into the experience itself. However, in the sorcerers' world, since there are no written pages, total records, which can be relived instead of read, are left in the position of the assemblage point.
Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming, 1993

The idea of a real, pragmatic journey, taken in dreams, is very difficult to understand or to accept. The journey of the energy body depends exclusively on the position of the assemblage point.

Our problem is our cynicism. Cynicism doesn't allow us to make drastic changes in our understanding of the world. It also forces us to feel that we are always right.

I propose that you do one nonsensical thing that might turn the tide. Repeat to yourself incessantly that the hinge of sorcery is the mystery of the assemblage point. If you repeat this to yourself long enough, some unseen force takes over and makes the appropriate changes in you.

Cut your cynical attitude! Repeat this in a bona fide manner. The mystery of the assemblage point is everything in sorcery. Or rather, everything in sorcery rests on the manipulation of the assemblage point. You may know all this, but you have to repeat it.

Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming, 1993

As the energy that is ordinarily used to maintain the fixed position of the assemblage point becomes liberated, it focuses automatically on that connecting link. There are no techniques or maneuvers for a sorcerer to learn beforehand to move energy from one place to the other. Rather it is a matter of an instantaneous shift taking place once a certain level of proficiency has been attained.

The level of proficiency is pure understanding. In order to attain that instantaneous shift of energy, one needs a clear connection with intent , and to get a clear connection one needs only to intend it through pure understanding.
Pure understanding is a sorcerer's advance runner probing that immensity out there.
Carlos Castaneda, The Power of Silence, 1987

In order to let the mysteries of sorcery reveal themselves it is necessary for the spirit to descend. The spirit chooses a moment when a man is distracted, unguarded, and, showing no pity, the spirit lets its presence by itself move the man's assemblage point to a specific position. This spot is known to sorcerers as the place of no pity. Ruthlessness becomes, in this way, the first principle of sorcery.

The first principle should not be confused with the first effect of sorcery apprenticeship, which is the shift between normal and heightened awareness.

To all appearances, having the assemblage point shift is the first thing that actually happens to a sorcery apprentice. So, it is only natural for an apprentice to assume that this is the first principle of sorcery. But it is not. Ruthlessness is the first principle of sorcery.

What we need to do to allow magic to get hold of us is to banish doubt from our minds. Once doubts are banished, anything is possible.

[…]

The eyes of all living beings can move someone else's assemblage point, especially if their eyes are focused on intent . Under normal conditions, however, peoples eyes are focused on the world, looking for food... looking for shelter...

For sorcerers to use the shine of their eyes to move their own or anyone else's assemblage point they have to be ruthless. That is, they have to be familiar with that specific position of the assemblage point called the place of no pity. This is especially true for the naguals.

Each nagual develops a brand of ruthlessness specific to him alone. Naguals mask their ruthlessness automatically, even against their will. I'm not a rational man, I only appear to be because my mask is so effective. What you perceive as reasonableness is my lack of pity, because that's what ruthlessness is: a total lack of pity.

Move your assemblage point to the precise spot where pity disappears. That spot is known as the place of no pity. The problem that sorcerers have to solve is that the place of no pity has to be reached with only minimal help.

Everything sorcerers do is done as a consequence of a movement of their assemblage points, and such movements are ruled by the amount of energy sorcerers have at their command.
Carlos Castaneda, The Power of Silence, 1987

I've taught you all kinds of things in order to trap your attention. 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 depends on increased energy and not on instruction.

Any human being who would follow a specific and simple sequence of actions can learn to move his assemblage point. The sequence of actions I am talking about is one that stems from being aware. 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.

The specific sequence I have in mind calls for being aware that self-importance 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 self-reflection, and this, in turn, assures a clear connecting link with the spirit. After all, it is self-reflection that has disconnected man from the spirit in the first place.

As I have already said to you, sorcery is a journey of return. We return victorious to the spirit, having descended into hell. And from hell we bring trophies. Understanding is one of our trophies.
Carlos Castaneda, The Power of Silence, 1987

One of the most dramatic things about the human condition is the macabre connection between stupidity and self-reflection.

It is stupidity that forces us to discard anything that does not conform with our self-reflective expectations. For example, as average men, we are blind to the most crucial piece of knowledge available to a human being: the existence of the assemblage point and the fact that it can move.

For a rational man it's unthinkable that there should be an invisible point where perception is assembled.

Carlos Castaneda, The Power of Silence, 1987