DREAMING
Dreaming is an art, discovered by the sorcerers of ancient
Mexico, by means of which ordinary dreams are transformed into bona-fide
entrances to other worlds of perception. Dreaming attention,
is the capacity to pay a special kind of attention, or to place a special kind
of awareness on the elements of an ordinary dream.
Carlos
Castaneda, The Active Side of Infinity 1999
Sorcery is the act of embodying some
specialized theoretical and practical premises about the nature and role of
perception in molding the universe around us.
Our world is only one in a cluster of
consecutive worlds, arranged like the layers of an onion. Even though we have
been energetically conditioned to perceive solely our world, we still have the
capability of entering into those other realms, which are as real, unique,
absolute, and engulfing as our own world is.
For us to perceive those other realms,
not only do we have to covet them but we need to have sufficient energy to
seize them. Their existence is constant and independent of our awareness, but
their inaccessibility is entirely a consequence of our energetic conditioning.
In other words, simply and solely because of that conditioning, we are
compelled to assume that the world of daily life is the one and only possible
world.
Believing that our energetic conditioning is correctable, sorcerers of ancient
times developed a set of practices designed to recondition our energetic
capabilities to perceive. They called this set of practices the art of dreaming . It's the gateway
to infinity.
Through dreaming we can perceive other worlds, which
we can certainly describe, but we can't describe what makes us perceive them.
Yet we can feel how dreaming
opens up those other realms. Dreaming
seems to be a sensation--a process in our bodies, an awareness in our minds.
Dreaming
instruction is divided into two parts. One is about dreaming procedures, the
other about the purely abstract explanations of these procedures: an interplay
between enticing one's intellectual curiosity with the abstract principles of dreaming and guiding one to
seek an outlet in its practices.
Carlos
Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming 1993
The assemblage point
becomes very easily displaced during sleep. Dreams are totally associated with
that displacement. The greater the displacement, the more unusual the dream or
vice versa: the more unusual the dream, the greater the displacement.
Sorcerers view dreaming as an extremely
sophisticated art; the art of displacing the assemblage point at will from its
habitual position in order to enhance and enlarge the scope of what can be
perceived.
The art of dreaming is anchored on five
conditions in the energy flow of human beings.
Through discipline
it is possible to cultivate and perform, in the course of sleep and ordinary
dreams, a systematic displacement of the assemblage point.
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Being a by-product of a displacement of
the assemblage point, the second attention does not happen naturally but must
be intended, beginning with intending it as an idea and ending up with
intending it as a steady and controlled awareness of the assemblage points
displacement.
The first step to power is to set up
dreaming . To set up dreaming means to have a precise and practical command
over the general situation of a dream.
This control is no different from the
control we have over any situation in our daily lives. Sorcerers are used to it
and get it every time they want or need to. In order for you to get used to it
yourself I taught you to look at your hands while dreaming .
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Explanations always call for deep thought. But when you actually dream, be
as light as a feather. Dreaming has to be performed with integrity and
seriousness, but in the midst of laughter and with the confidence of someone
who doesn't have a worry in the world. Only under these conditions can our
dreams actually be turned into dreaming .
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I selected your hands as something to
look for in your dreams because they will always be there. Looking for anything
else is just as valid provided that you pick one thing in advance and stay with
it night after night until you succeed in finding it. The goal of the exercise
is not finding a specific thing but engaging your dreaming attention.
The dreaming attention is the control one
acquires over one's dreams upon fixating the assemblage point on any new
position to which it has been displaced during dreams. The dreaming attention
is an incomprehensible facet of awareness that exists by itself, waiting for a
moment when we would entice it, a moment when we would give it purpose; it is a
veiled faculty that every one of us has in reserve but never has the
opportunity to use in everyday life.
There are seven gates and dreamers have
to open all seven of them, one at a time. There are entrances and exits in the
energy flow of the universe. In the specific case of dreaming , there are seven
entrances, experienced as obstacles, which sorcerers call the seven gates of
dreaming .
The first gate is a threshold we must
cross by becoming aware of a particular sensation before deep sleep. A
sensation which is like a pleasant heaviness that doesn't let us open our eyes.
We reach that gate the instant we become aware that we're falling asleep,
suspended in darkness and heaviness. There are no steps to follow. One just
intends to become aware of falling asleep.
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The goal of dreaming is to intend the
energy body. In this particular instance, since we're talking about the first
gate of dreaming , the goal of dreaming is to intend that your energy body
becomes aware that you are falling asleep. Don't try to force yourself to be
aware of falling asleep. Let your energy body do it. To intend is to wish
without wishing, to do without doing.
Accept the challenge of intending . Put
your silent determination, without a single thought, into convincing yourself
that you have reached your energy body and that you are a dreamer . Doing this
will automatically put you in the position to be aware that you are falling
asleep.
When you hear that you have to convince
yourself, you automatically become more rational. How can you convince yourself
you are a dreamer when you know you are not? Intending is both: the act of
convincing yourself you are indeed a dreamer , although you have never dreamt before,
and the act of being convinced.
I don't mean you have to tell yourself
you are a dreamer and try your best to believe it. It isn't that.
Intending is much simpler and, at the
same time, infinitely more complex than that. It requires imagination, discipline,
and purpose. In this case, to intend means that you get an unquestionable
bodily knowledge that you are a dreamer . You feel you are a dreamer with all
the cells of your body.
You must reach your energy body on your own. Intending the first gate of
dreaming is one of the means discovered by the sorcerers of antiquity for
reaching the second attention and the energy body.
To ask a dreamer to find a determined
item in his dreams is a subterfuge. The real issue is to become aware that one
is falling asleep. And, strange as it may seem, that doesn't happen by
commanding oneself to be aware that one is falling asleep but by sustaining the
sight of whatever one is looking at in a dream.
Dreamers take quick, deliberate glances
at everything present in a dream. If they focus their dreaming attention on
something specific, it is only as a point of departure. From there, dreamers
move on to look at other items in the dream's content, returning to the point
of departure as many times as possible.
All that is required is your awareness of
falling asleep. Dreaming has to be a very sober affair. No false movement can
be afforded. Dreaming is a process of awakening, of gaining control. Our
dreaming attention must be systematically exercised, for it is the door to the
second attention.
The difference between the dreaming
attention and the second attention is that the second attention is like an
ocean, and the dreaming attention is like a river feeding into it. The second
attention is the condition of being aware of total worlds, total like our world
is total, while the dreaming attention is the condition of being aware of the
items of our dreams.
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Reaching, with
deliberate control, the first gate of dreaming is a way of arriving at the
energy body. But to maintain that gain is predicated on energy alone. Sorcerers
get that energy by redeploying, in a more intelligent manner, the energy they
have and use for perceiving the daily world.
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A dreaming teacher must create a didactic
synthesis in order to emphasize a given point. In essence, what I wanted with
your first task was to exercise your dreaming attention by focusing it on the
items of your dreams. To this effect I used as a spearhead the idea of being
aware of falling asleep. My subterfuge was to say that the only way to be aware
of falling asleep is to examine the elements of one's dreams.
Exercising the dreaming attention is the
essential point in dreaming . To the mind, however, it seems impossible that
one can train oneself to be aware at the level of dreams. The active element of
such training is persistence. The mind and all its rational defenses cannot
cope with persistence. Sooner or later, the mind's barriers fall, under its
impact, and the dreaming attention blooms.
As you practice focusing and holding your
dreaming attention on the items of your dreams your entering into the second
attention. This calls for even more sobriety on your part. Go slowly, but don't
stop, and about all, don't talk about it. Just do it.
If one takes short glances at everything
in a dream, the images do not dissolve. The difficult part is to break the
initial barrier that prevents us from bringing dreams to our conscious
attention.
This barrier is in part a psychological
one created by our socialization, which puts a premium on disregarding dreams.
But the barrier is more than socialization. It's the first gate of dreaming .
The first gate of dreaming has to do with the flow of energy in the universe.
It's a natural obstacle.
The energy needed to release our dreaming
attention from its socialization prison comes from redeploying our existing
energy. The emergence of our dreaming attention is a direct corollary of
revamping our lives. Since we have no way to plug into any external source for
a boost of energy, we must redeploy our existing energy, by any means available.
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The capability of
examining the contents of one's dreams is the product of a natural
configuration of our being, similar to our capability of walking. We are physically
conditioned to walk only in one manner, bipedally, yet it takes a monumental
effort for us to learn to walk.
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You reach the second gate of dreaming
when you wake up from a dream into another dream. You can have as many dreams
as you want or as many as you are capable of, but you must exercise adequate
control and not wake up in the world we know.
I'm not saying that you should never wake
up in this world. But I have to tell you that that is an alternative. The
sorcerers of antiquity used to do that, never wake up in the world we know. It
certainly can be done, but I don't recommend it. What I want is for you to wake
up naturally when you are through with dreaming , but while you are dreaming ,
I want you to dream that you wake up in another dream.
This control is no different from the
control we have over any situation in our daily lives.
There's one problem with the second gate.
It's a problem that can be serious, depending on one's bent of character. If
our tendency is to indulge in clinging to things or situations, we are in for a
sock in the jaw.
Imagine yourself going from dream to
dream, watching everything, examining every detail. It's very easy to realize
that one may sink to mortal depths. Especially if one is given to indulging.
Wouldn't the body or the brain naturally
put a stop to it? Yes, if it's a natural sleeping situation, meaning normal.
But this is not a normal situation. This is dreaming . A dreamer on crossing
the first gate has already reached the energy body. So what is really going
through the second gate, hopping from dream to dream, is the energy body.
The implication is that on crossing the
second gate you must intend a greater and more sober control over your dreaming
attention: the only safety valve for dreamers .
You will find out for yourself that the
true goal of dreaming is to perfect the energy body. A perfect energy body,
among other things of course, has such a control over the dreaming attention
that it makes it stop when needed. This is the safety valve dreamers have. No
matter how indulging they might be, at a given time, their dreaming attention
must make them surface.
Crossing the second gate is a very
serious affair; it requires a most disciplined effort.
I told you that one has to wake up in
another dream, but what I meant is that one has to change dreams in an orderly
and precise manner.
There are two ways of properly crossing
the second gate of dreaming . One is to wake up in another dream, that is to
say, to dream that one is having a dream and then dream that one wakes up from
it. The alternative is to use the items of a dream to trigger another dream;
that is, zoom from a definite item accessible to your immediate dreaming
attention to another one, not quite accessible. Or gaze at any item of a dream,
maintaining the gaze until the item changes shape and, by changing shape, pulls
you into another dream.
Carlos
Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming 1993
Think about dreaming
in these terms: dreaming is perceiving more than what we believe it is possible
to perceive.
Carlos
Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming 1993
Just because we
haven't been taught to emphasize dreams as a genuine field for exploration
doesn't mean they are not one. Dreams are analyzed for their meaning or are
taken as portents, but never are they taken as a realm of real events.
To my knowledge, only
the old sorcerers did that. But at the end they flubbed it. They got greedy,
and when they came to a crucial crossroads, they took the wrong fork. They
put all their eggs in one basket: the fixation of the assemblage point on the thousands of positions it can
adopt.
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What dreaming does
is give us the fluidity to enter into other worlds by destroying our sense of
knowing this world. Dreaming is a journey of unthinkable dimensions, a journey
that, after making us perceive everything we can humanly perceive, makes the
assemblage point jump outside the human domain and perceive the inconceivable.
Carlos
Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming 1993
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.
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So then, is the goal
of my teaching to prepare you to go into those worlds? No. I don't mean that.
We go into those worlds only as an exercise. Those journeys are the antecedents
of the sorcerers of today. We do the same dreaming that the old sorcerers used
to do, but at one moment we deviate into new ground. The old sorcerers
preferred the shifts of the assemblage point, so they were always on more or
less known, predictable ground. We prefer the movements of the assemblage
point. The old sorcerers were after the human unknown. We are after the
nonhuman unknown. You haven't gotten to that yet. You are only beginning. And
at the beginning everyone has to go through the old sorcerers' steps. After
all, they were the ones who invented dreaming .
When dreaming is too
easy for you it can be a damnation if you don't watch it. It leads to the human
unknown. As I said to you, modern-day sorcerers strive to get to the nonhuman
unknown; that is, freedom from being human. Inconceivable worlds that are
outside the band of man but that we still can perceive. This is where modern
sorcerers take the side road. Their predilection is what's outside the human
domain. And what are outside that domain are all-inclusive worlds, not merely
the realm of birds or the realm of animals or the realm of man, even if it be
the unknown man. What I am talking about are worlds, like the one where we
live; total worlds with endless realms.
Those worlds are in
different positions of the assemblage point. But positions sorcerers arrive at
with a movement of the assemblage point, not a shift. Entering into those
worlds is the type of dreaming only sorcerers of today do. The old sorcerers
stayed away from it, because it requires a great deal of detachment and no
self-importance whatsoever. A price they couldn't afford to pay.
For the sorcerers
who practice dreaming today, dreaming is freedom to perceive worlds beyond the
imagination. Freedom is an adventure with no end, in which we risk our lives
and much more for a few moments of something beyond words, beyond thoughts or
feelings.
What can be the
driving force to do all this? To seek freedom is the only driving force I know.
Freedom to fly off into that infinity out there. Freedom to dissolve; to lift
off; to be like the flame of a candle, which, in spite of being up against the
light of a billion stars, remains intact, because it never pretended to be more
than what it is: a mere candle.
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Under the influence
of dreaming , reality suffers a metamorphosis. Two options are faced by all
dreamers : either we carefully revamp or we completely disregard our system of
sensory input interpretation.
To revamp our
interpretation system means to intend its reconditioning. It means that one
deliberately and carefully attempts to enlarge its capabilities. By living in
accordance with the sorcerers' way, dreamers save and store the necessary
energy to suspend judgment and thus facilitate that intended revamping. If we
choose to recondition our interpretation system, reality becomes fluid, and the
scope of what can be real is enhanced without endangering the integrity of
reality. Dreaming , then, indeed opens the door into other aspects of what is
real.
If we choose to
disregard our system, the scope of what can be perceived without interpretation
grows inordinately. The expansion of our perception is so gigantic that we are
left with very few tools for sensory interpretation and, thus, a sense of an
infinite realness that is unreal or an infinite unrealness that could very well
be real but is not.
Carlos Castaneda,
The Art of Dreaming, 1993
When dreaming you are seeing your body
you have to establish some valid guide to find out whether you are actually
seeing your body asleep in your bed. Remember, you must be in your actual room,
seeing your actual body. Otherwise, what you are having is merely a dream. If
that's the case, control that dream, either by observing its detail or by
changing it. Figure out a way to validate the fact that you are looking at
yourself. Use your own judgment.
Dreamers have to be imaginative to move
their energy bodies. Sorcerers say that at the third gate the entire energy
body can move like energy moves: fast and directly. Their energy bodies know
exactly how to move. They can move as they move in the inorganic beings' world.
When your energy body learns to move by itself, you'll be thoroughly out of the
inorganic beings' reach.
Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming, 1993
Instead of
struggling to walk in dreaming , one wills oneself to move. It takes sorcerers
forever to learn to move the energy body with their own volition. Once you've
learned how to move your energy body by yourself, you should continue moving.
Moving your energy body opens up a new area of extraordinary exploration.
Again, one must come up with an idea to validate the faithfulness of one's
dreams.
To be transported by
a scout is the real dreaming task of the second gate. It is a very serious
matter, but not as serious as forging and moving the energy body. Therefore,
when the time comes, you have to make sure, by some means of your own, whether
you are actually seeing yourself asleep or whether you are merely dreaming that
you're seeing yourself asleep. One's new extraordinary exploration hinges on
really seeing oneself asleep.
Dreamers take a very
long time to perfect their energy bodies. And this is exactly what's at stake
here: perfecting your energy body. The reason the energy body is compelled to
examine detail and get inextricably stuck in it is its inexperience, its
incompleteness. Sorcerers spend a lifetime consolidating the energy body by
letting it sponge up everything possible.
Until the energy
body is complete and mature, it is self-absorbed. It can't get free from the
compulsion to be absorbed by everything. But if one takes this into
consideration, instead of fighting the energy body, one can lend it a hand by
directing its behavior, that is to say, by stalking it.
Since everything
related to the energy body depends on the appropriate position of the
assemblage point, and since dreaming is nothing else but the means to displace
it, stalking is, consequently, the way to make the assemblage point stay put on
the perfect position, in this case, the position where the energy body can
become consolidated and from which it can finally emerge.
The moment the
energy body can move on its own, sorcerers assume that the optimum position of
the assemblage point has been reached. The next step is to stalk it, that is,
to fixate it on that position in order to complete the energy body. The
procedure is simplicity itself. One intends to stalk it.
Let your energy body
intend to reach the optimum dreaming position . Then, let your energy body
intend to stay at that position and you will be stalking .
Intending is the
secret. Sorcerers displace their assemblage points through intending and fixate
them, equally, through intending . And there is no technique for intending .
One intends through usage.
The ideal spot and
the fixation of the assemblage point are metaphors. They have nothing to do
with the words used to describe them.
What comes next is a
sorcerer's gem, the real task; seeing energy in your dreaming with your energy
body.
Dreamers have a rule
of thumb. If their energy body is complete, they see energy every time they
gaze at an item in the daily world. In dreams, if they see the energy of an
item, they know they are dealing with a real world, no matter how distorted
that world may appear to their dreaming attention. If they can't see the energy
of an item, they are in an ordinary dream and not in a real world.
What is a real
world? A world that generates energy; the opposite of a phantom world of
projections, where nothing generates energy, like most of our dreams, where
nothing has an energetic effect.
Another definition
of dreaming is: a process by which dreamers isolate dream conditions in which
they can find energy-generating elements. Dreaming is the process by which we
intend to find adequate positions of the assemblage point, positions that
permit us to perceive energy-generating items in dreamlike states.
The energy body is
also capable of perceiving energy that is quite different from the energy of
our own world, as in the case of items of the inorganic beings' realm, which
the energy body perceives as sizzling energy. In our world nothing sizzles;
everything here wavers.
From a certain point
the issue of your dreaming will be to determine whether the items on which you
focus your dreaming attention are energy generating, mere phantom projections,
or generators of foreign energy.
Seeing energy is the
gauge to determine whether or not you are observing your real body asleep.
Carlos Castaneda,
The Art of Dreaming, 1993
In order to see in
dreaming not only do you have to intend seeing but you have to put your intent
into words. You have to speak up. There are other means to accomplish the same
result, but voicing one's intent is one of the simplest and most direct way.
You need to have
patience. You are learning to do something extraordinary, you are learning to
intend to see in your dreams. Someday you will not have to voice your intent ;
you'll simply will it, silently.
If nothing happens
when you voice your intent to see it means that your dream is an ordinary
dream; phantom projections; images that have life only in your dreaming
attention.
Don't give up or get discouraged. Keep on trying. Sooner or later, you'll hit
the right note.
The drill for the
third gate of dreaming is to make the energy body move on its own.
In special dreams,
our dreaming attention focuses on the daily world, and it moves instantly from
one real object to another in the world. What makes this movement possible is
that the assemblage point is on the proper dreaming position . From that
position, the assemblage point gives the dreaming attention such fluidity that
it can move in a split second over incredible distances, and in doing so it
produces a perception so fast, so fleeting that it resembles an ordinary dream.
When your energy
body is complete and functioning, the implication that you see energy in your
dream is that you are perceiving a real world, through the veil of a dream.
Unless we see in dreaming , we can't tell a real, energy-generating thing from
a phantom projection.
Dreaming
is
an energy-generating condition. You hear my statements and you may understand
what I mean, but your awareness hasn't caught up with the total implication of
it yet.
When you are fully aware of what an
energy-generating condition means you will measure dreaming with the greatest
care and deliberation. When you believe you are just dreaming , you take blind
chances. Faulty reasoning tells you that no matter what happens, at a given
moment the dream will be over and you will wake up.
I am talking to you about the views of
men of antiquity and the views of modern man because your awareness, which is
the awareness of modern man, prefers to deal with an unfamiliar concept as if
it were an empty ideality.
If I left it up to you, you'd regard dreaming as an idea. Of
course, I'm sure you take dreaming
seriously, but you don't quite believe in the reality of dreaming .
I am saying all this because the time
will come when you are in the proper position to understand that dreaming is an
energy-generating condition. Then, you will understand that ordinary dreams are
the honing devices used to train the assemblage point to reach the position
that creates this energy-generating condition we call dreaming .
Since dreamers touch and enter real worlds of
all-inclusive effects, they ought to be in a permanent state of the most
intense and sustained alertness; any deviation from total alertness imperils
the dreamer in
ways more than dreadful.
Regard dreaming as something extremely dangerous. And
begin that now.
When you can displace your assemblage
point quickly and easily that ease can have the tendency to make the
displacement erratic. Then you must bring that ease to order. And don't allow
yourself even a fraction of an inch leeway.
Faithfully and daily repeat what I asked
you to repeat, that everything in sorcery rests on the manipulation of the
assemblage point. The results of your litany-like invocation will be
incredible. It has the same effect on one's awareness that exercise has on the
muscles of the body. Your assemblage point becomes more agile, which means that
seeing energy
in dreaming
becomes the sole goal of your practices. A moment then comes when you are able
just to intend seeing , without saying a
word, and actually experience the same result as when you voice out loud your intent to see .
Carlos Castaneda,
The Art of Dreaming, 1993