THE WAY OF SORCERY

C.C.: Los Angeles 1998 (?)

Knowledge and Sorcery

 
Sorcery is the mastery of intent, the search for total freedom.

Sorcery is a state of awareness.

Sorcery is the ability to perceive something which ordinary perception cannot.

Sorcery is the power hidden within one's own being. It makes available to us energy fields previously inaccessible.

Sorcery is the ability to use those energy fields that are not employed in perceiving the ordinary world we know.

A benefactor introduces the apprentice to the warrior's way, to living like a warrior. This is the glue that joins together everything in a sorcerer's world.

Whenever a sorcerer interrupts the order of the world of consensus reality, the world of reason stops. Then a new world opens itself to the seer.

The main point of teaching is not inculcating data, but moving another person's assemblage point.

Sorcerers know that when an average person's inventory fails, the person either enlarges his inventory or his world of self-reflection collapses. If self-reflection can collapse, a door to the possibility of total freedom opens.

Sorcerers live in a world of will, a world of intent. Intent is focused will power. It can move the person's assemblage point, the place where his ordinary, consensus reality appears for him. When it moves, that reality is replaced by another.

Intent creates edifices before us and invites us to enter them.

Heightened awareness is like a springboard. From it one can jump into infinity.

There is no survival value in heightened awareness; otherwise the whole human race would be there.

Knowledge could not be turned into words. It is there to be felt, to be used, but not to be explained.

Sorcerers say death is the only worthy opponent we have. Death is our challenger. We are born to take that challenge, average men or sorcerers. Sorcerers know about it; average men do not.

Life is the process by means of which death challenges us. Death is the active force. Life is the arena. And in that arena there are only two contenders at any time: oneself and death.

Some sorcerers are storytellers. Storytelling for them is not only the advance runner that probes their perceptual limits but their path to perfection.

Nine Points

 
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.

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, a luminous egg.

4 Only a very small group of the energy fields inside this ball are lit up by a point of intense brilliance on the ball's surface.

5 Perception occurs when the energy fields in that small group surrounding the point of brilliance extend to illuminate identical fields outside the ball. This is the person's assemblage point.

6 The assemblage point can be moved, illumining new areas. This is seeing.

7 The shift of the assemblage point reveals entirely new worlds, previously unforeseen, just as real as any other.

8 Intent is the pervasive force that causes us to perceive.

9 The aim of sorcerers is to reach a state of total awareness, to experience all possibilities available to man, including an alternative way of dying.

Becoming a Man of Knowledge

 
A warrior, a man of knowledge, has unbending intent, clarity of mind, respect, fear, wakefulness, and self-confidence.

To become a man of knowledge is an unceasing process of labor and learning.

The man of knowledge must be prepared to face the four enemies, to wit:

Fear prevents one from ever becoming a man of knowledge. To overcome it, feel fear but don't let it stop you.

Clarity leads to hubris and arrogance. To overcome it, defy it and recognize it as potential trap.

Power leads to cruelty and loss of control. To overcome it, learn self control, and recognize power is not your own.

Fatigue tempts one to rest and give up. To overcome it, become a man of knowledge; resist the temptation.

Luminous Beings & the Bubble of Perception

 
We, the luminous beings, are born with two rings of power, but we use only one to create the world. That ring, which is hooked very soon after we are born, is reason, and its companion is talking. Between the two they concoct and maintain the world.

The secret of the luminous beings is that they have another ring of power which is never used, the will. The trick of the sorcerer is the same trick of the average man. Both have a description; one, the average man, upholds it with his reason; the other, the sorcerer, upholds it with his will. Both descriptions have their rules and their rules are perceivable, but the advantage of the sorcerer is that will is more engulfing than reason.

A warrior learns to tune his will, to direct it to a pinpoint, to focus it wherever he wants. It is as if his will, which comes from the midsection of his body, is one single luminous fiber, a fiber that he can direct at any conceivable place.

Sorcerers say that we are inside a bubble. It is a bubble into which we are placed at the moment of our birth. At first the bubble is open, but then it begins to close until it has sealed us in. That bubble is our perception. We live inside that bubble all of our lives. And what we witness on its round walls is our own reflection.

The secret of luminous beings: We are perceivers. Our mistake is to believe that the bubble of perception we ordinarily live within is fixed, not modifiable, and unquestionable. In fact, it can be opened. When it is opened, the luminous being has a view of his totality.

To lead a person to the totality of himself, the teacher reorders the view of the world, clearing the island of the tonal.

One of the most important goals of sorcery is to reach the luminous cocoon; a goal which is fulfilled through the sophisticated use of dreaming and through a rigorous, systematic exertion called not-doing.

To break the shell of the luminous egg means remembering the other self, and arriving at the totality of oneself.

Techniques

 
The first act of a teacher is to introduce the idea that the world we think we see is only a view, a description of the world.

A teacher must teach the apprentice how to act without believing.

Three techniques to erase personal history include losing self-importance, assuming responsibility, and using death as an advisor.

One can arrive at the totality of oneself only when one understands that the world is merely a view, regardless of whether that view belongs to an ordinary man or to a sorcerer.

What a sorcerer does in journeying into the unknown is very much like dying, except that his cluster of single feelings do not disintegrate but expand a bit without losing their togetherness.

The "wheel of time" is like a tunnel of infinite length and width, with reflective furrows, each infinite; living creatures are compulsorily made by the force of life to gaze into one furrow, to be trapped and to live only in that furrow. To be trapped compulsorily in one furrow of time entails seeing the images of that furrow only as they recede. To be free from the spellbinding force of those grooves means that one can look in either direction, as images recede or as they approach.

To get rid of the self-importance that is rotten requires a masterpiece of strategy. Seers throughout the ages have given the highest praise to those who have accomplished it.

Principles of the art of the warrior include the ability to choose his battleground, the need discard extraneities, to concentrate, to abandon oneself, to retreat for a moment, and to compress time.

Stopping the Internal Dialogue

 
The internal dialogue stops in the same way it begins: by an act of will.

The position of the assemblage point on man's cocoon is maintained by the internal dialogue. It is a flimsy position at best. The more resilient human beings are those whose internal dialogue is more fluid and varied.

Trapping attention means pushing apprentice out of ordinary circumstances by unusual tasks, work, journeys in the desert and so forth. It alters the context of the "ordinary" world and stops the internal dialogue.

The warrior's gaze stops the internal dialogue. Erasing personal history and "dreaming" are also tools to stop the internal dialogue. The right way of walking also stops the internal dialogue by saturating the tonal's attention.

Attention

 
Sorcerers know a three-part division of human consciousness: the first attention, which is the smallest, and limited to mundane everyday awareness, especially the physical body and its ailments; the second attention, which can perceive the luminous cocoon and the nature of energy; but it requires training to bring this attention up from the background; and the third attention, the most vast of all, an immeasurable consciousness which engages indefinable aspects of the world.

The first attention works only with the known. It blocks the unknown; it denies it so fiercely that in the end the unknown doesn't exist for the first attention. This is self absorption.

If you don't focus your first attention on the world, the world collapses.

The surest way to make a direct hit on the 2nd attention is through ritual acts, monotonous chanting, intricate repetitious movements.

The ancient sorcerer's knowledge includes dancing, curing, bewitching, talking, but the new seers also recommend stalking, dreaming, and intent, more sophisticated and individual pursuits which can access the third attention.

The Warrior

 
The most effective way to live is as a warrior.
The warrior preserves his energy to access intent.
The warrior's intent stops the internal dialogue.
When a warrior stops his internal dialogue, his world collapses.
The warrior knows that he can collapse his world and remake it with intent.

The secret of a warrior is that he believes without believing.
An average man cares that things are either true or false, but a warrior doesn't.
A warrior doesn't need to believe; as long as he keeps on acting without believing he is not-doing.
A warrior accepts nonordinary events without accepting, and disregards them without disregarding them.
Warriors know how to use belief and behavior in novel ways for specific purposes.

A warrior has only his will and his patience and with them he builds anything he wants.
A warrior learns to tune his will, to direct it to a pinpoint, to focus it wherever he wants.

A warrior is an impeccable hunter who hunts power.
The warrior seeks only impeccability in his own eyes.
An impeccable warrior can turn anything into his prey; he can even hunt his own weaknesses.
When we become warriors, intent becomes our friend: it lets us be free for a moment.
One of the warrior's tasks is to be alert to his cubic centimeter of chance, & have the prowess to grab it.

War, for a warrior, is that total struggle against the individual self that has deprived man of his power.
Warriors are incapable of feeling sorry for themselves.

Warriors must focus their power on the spirit, on the true flight into the unknown.
If a warrior succeeds in his hunting he becomes a man of knowledge.
When he succeeds, a warrior understands the nature of awareness, and transcends the human condition.
To be a warrior is an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives.

The art of sorcerers is to be outside everything and be unnoticeable.
The art of sorcerers is never to waste their power.

Impeccability

 
Impeccability is freedom and also the only way to scare away the human form. Losing the human form is the essential requirement for unifying the three attentions.

The action of rechanneling personal energy is impeccability.

Impeccability is nothing else but the proper use of energy.

Impeccability is not morality. It is simply the best use of our energy level. It calls for frugality, thoughtfulness, simplicity, innocence; above all it calls for lack of self-reflection.

Sorcerers must be impeccable in their effort to change, in order to scare the human form and shake it away.

The human form has no form. It's anything, but in spite of not having form, it possesses us during our lives and doesn't leave us until we die.

A sorcerer is never under siege. A warrior has nothing in the world except his impeccability, and impeccability cannot be threatened.

The course of a sorcerer's destiny is unalterable. The challenge is how impeccable he can be within those rigid bounds.

A sorcerer is in the hands of power and his only freedom is to choose an impeccable life.

A sorcerer cannot be helpless, or bewildered or frightened, under any circumstances. For a sorcerer there is time only for his impeccability; everything else drains his power, impeccability replenishes it.

As a rule of thumb, when you feel and act like an immortal being that has all the time in the world you are not impeccable; at those times you should turn, look around, and then you will realize that your feeling of having time is an idiocy.

The course of a sorcerer's destiny is unalterable. The challenge is how impeccable he can be within those rigid bounds.

It is much harder to be impeccable under normal circumstances than to fare well under conditions of maximum stress.

Awareness and Perception

 

Our familiarity with the world compels us to believe we are surrounded by objects; in fact, there is no world of objects, but a universe of the Eagle's emanations.

The world is not an illusion; it's real on the one hand, and unreal on the other.

We perceive. But what we perceive is not a fact of the same kind, because we learn to perceive.

What's really out there are the Eagle's emanations, fluid, forever in motion, and yet unchanged, eternal.

But there is no Eagle and no Eagle's emanations. What is out there is something that no living creature can grasp.

For a seer, the truth is that all living beings are struggling to die. What stops death is awareness.

The unknown is the superfluous part of the average man, because he doesn't have enough free energy to grasp it.

The Nagual's blow is his ability to push the apprentice's attention from usual to unusual emanations.

Seers who deliberately attain total awareness are a sight to behold. That is the moment when they burn from within. The fire from within consumes them. And in full awareness they fuse themselves to the emanations at large, and glide into eternity.

The mind, for a seer, is nothing but the self-reflection of the inventory of man. If you lose that self-reflection, but don't lose your underpinnings, you actually live an infinitely stronger life than if you had kept it.

Retracing the journey of the assemblage point under the influence of the nagual results in regaining the totality of oneself.

Man has an assemblage point, and that assemblage point aligns emanations for perception. That point moves from its fixed position. The last truth is that once the assemblage point moves beyond a certain limit, it can assemble worlds entirely different from the world we know.

Once the glow of awareness focuses on man's band of emanations and selects some of them for emphasis, it enters into a vicious circle. The more it emphasizes certain emanations, the more stable the assemblage point gets to be. Thus our command becomes the Eagle's command. To break this circle, and get the assemblage point to shift, is a genuine triumph.

To be unbiased witnesses, we begin by understanding that the fixation or the movement of the assemblage point is all there is to us and the world we witness, whatever that world might be.

Will was understood by the new seers as a blind, impersonal, ceaseless burst of energy that makes us behave as we do and accounts for ordinary perception and ordinary placement of the assemblage point; Intent is purposeful guiding of the will.

The old seers saw that the earth has a cocoon. They saw that there is a ball encasing the earth, a luminous cocoon that entraps the Eagle's emanations. The earth is a gigantic sentient being subjected to the same forces we are. The awareness of the earth can give us a boost to align other great bands of emanations, and the force of that new alignment makes the world vanish.

Earth's boost is force of heightening awareness, a blast of unlimited consciousness the new seers call total freedom.

Remember that Seeing also a euphemism for moving the assemblage point.

The mold of man is a huge cluster of emanations in the great band of organic life . . . . it is the portion of the Eagle's emanations that seers can see directly without danger to themselves. Every species has a mold of its own.

To break the barrier of perception is the last task of the mastery of awareness. In order to move your assemblage point to that position you must gather enough energy.

The soundness of the world is not the mirage. The mirage is the fixation of the assemblage point on any spot. When seers shift their assemblage points, they are not confronted with an illusion, they are confronted with another world.

Their energy allows them to channel peace, harmony, laughter, and knowledge directly from the source, from intent, and transmit them to their companions.

The sorcerer knows that everything that surrounds us is an unfathomable mystery. He knows he must try to unravel these mysteries without hoping to do so. Finally he takes his rightful place among mysteries and regards himself as one.