Version 2007.11.04

## "Encounters With The Nagual" - ©2004 by Armando Torres
Part I. A Romance with Knowledge

### Awareness of Death

Over the years, the need to understand the world had led me to store a lot of scientific or religious explanations on almost everything; which all had one common denominator: A great trust in the continuity of man. By helping me to see the universe with the eyes of a sorcerer, Carlos destroyed that sensation in me. He made me see that death is an irrevocable reality, and that to avoid acknowledging it by applying second-hand beliefs is shameful.

On one occasion, somebody asked him:

"Carlos, what expectations do you have for the future?"

He jumped:

"There are no expectations! Sorcerers don't have a tomorrow!"

That night, a large group of interested people had gathered in the auditorium of a private residence, near the area of San Jeronimo. When I arrived, Carlos was already there. He was smiling, busily answering questions.

His initial topic was what he called 'not-doing': an activity specially designed to banish any trace of every-day habits from our lives. He affirmed that not-doing is the favorite exercise of apprentices because it introduces them to a marvelous environment and creates a very refreshing bewilderment for one's energy. The effect this has on one's awareness they call 'stopping the world.'

In response to some questions, he explained that not-doing cannot be reasoned out. Any effort applied towards understanding it is in fact an interpretation of the teaching- and goes automatically into the field of 'doing'.

"The premise of sorcerers for dealing with this kind of practice is inner silence, and the quality of silence required for something so enormous as stopping the world can only come from direct contact with the great truth of our existence: That we are all going to die."

He advised us:

"If you want to know yourselves, be aware of your personal death. It's not negotiable: It is the only thing that you can seriously own. Everything else may fail, but not death: You can take that as a fact. Learn how to use it to produce real effects in your lives.

"Also, stop believing in fairy tales. Nobody needs you out there. None of us is so important that it justifies inventing something as fantastic as immortality. A humble sorcerer knows that his destiny is the same as that of any other living being on Earth. So, instead of having false hopes, he works concretely and with great effort to escape the human condition, and to reach the only exit we have: The breaking of our perceptual barrier.

"While you listen to death's advice, make yourself responsible for your lives; for the totality of your actions. Explore yourself, recognize yourself, and live intensely; like sorcerers live. Intensity is the only thing that can save us from boredom.

"Once aligned with death, you will be able to take the next step: Reducing your baggage to a minimum. This is a prison world, and we must leave it as fugitives: We can't take anything with us. Human beings are travelers by nature. To fly and to know other horizons is our destiny. Do you take your bed or your dining table with you on a trip? Synthesize your life!"

He made the comment that humanity in our time has acquired a strange habit that is symptomatic of the mental state we live in.

When we travel, we buy all kinds of useless devices in other countries; things that we certainly would never buy in our own country. Once we return home, we store them in a corner and end up forgetting their existence- until one day we notice them by chance, and toss them in the garbage.

"And we behave this way on the journey that is our life. We are like donkeys carrying a bale of useless stuff: There is nothing valuable there. Everything we did, at the end, when old age assaults us, only serves to endlessly repeat some sentence or other, like a scratched record.

"A sorcerer asks himself: What is the sense of all that? Why invest my resources in something which won't help me at all? The appointment of a sorcerer is with the unknown: He cannot commit his energy to nonsense.

"While you walk the Earth, collect something of true value from it, otherwise it wasn't worth it.

"The power that governs us has granted us a choice. Either we spend life prowling around our familiar habits, or we encourage ourselves to get to know other worlds. The only thing which can give us the necessary jolt is the awareness of death.

"An ordinary person spends his whole existence without ever stopping to reflect because he thinks that death is at the end of life: After all, we will always have time for it! But a warrior has discovered that this is not true. Death lives beside us, an arm's length away, permanently alert, looking at us, ready to jump at the smallest provocation. The warrior transforms his animal fear of extinction into an opportunity for joy because he knows that all he has is this moment. Think as warriors. We are all going to die!"

One of the present asked him:

"Carlos, in another lecture you told us that having the spirit of a warrior means seeing death as a privilege. What does that mean?"

He answered:

"It means to leave our mental habits behind."

"We are so accustomed to coexistence that, even face to face with death, we continue thinking in group terms. Religions don't tell us about the individual in contact with the absolute, but of flocks of sheep and goats, who go to heaven or to hell according to their fortune. Even if we are atheists and don't believe that anything happens after death, that 'anything' is generic, we assume it is the same for everybody. We cannot conceive of the idea that the power of an impeccable life can change things.

"In the view of such ignorance, it is normal for an ordinary man to feel panic regarding his end, and try to deal with it with prayers and medicines, or confuse himself with the noise of the world.

"Human beings have an egocentric and extremely simplistic vision of the universe. We never stop to consider our destiny as transitory beings. However, our obsession with the future betrays us.

"The sincerity or cynicism of our convictions makes no difference, because, deep down we all know what is going to happen. That's why we all leave signs behind. We build pyramids, skyscrapers, make children, write books, or, at the very least, we draw our initials in the bark of a tree. It is the ancestral fear; the silent knowledge of death which is behind that subconscious impulse.

"But there is one group of human beings who have been able to face that fear. As opposed to ordinary people, sorcerers eagerly seek out any situation that will take them beyond social interpretations. What better opportunity than their own extinction! Thanks to their frequent excursions into the unknown, they know that death is not natural; it is magical. Natural things are subject to laws, but death is not. To die is always a personal event, and for that sole reason it is an act of power.

"Death is the gateway to infinity; a door made to the exact measure of each of us which we will all pass through someday; returning to our origin. Our lack of understanding impels us to see it as a common reducer. But no, there is nothing common about it"

A girl who took part in this conversation was clearly affected by his words, and commented that the obsessive presence of death in his teachings was a detail that contributed to darken them. She would have liked a more optimistic emphasis; more focused on life and its accomplishments.

Carlos smiled and replied:

"Oh sweetheart! Your words show a lack of deep experience with life. Sorcerers are not negative: They don't seek the end. But they know that what gives value to life is having an objective worth dying for.

"The future is unpredictable and inevitable. Some day you won't be here anymore, like this, you will be gone. Do you know that the tree for your coffin has probably been cut already?

"For the warrior and for an ordinary man, the urgency of living is the same because neither knows when they will take the last step. For that reason we have to be attentive to death. It can jump at us from any corner. I knew a guy who went up on a bridge and urinated above a passing electric train. The urine touched the high voltage cables which gave him an electrical shock and burned him to cinders on the spot.

"Death is not a game. It is reality. Without death, there would not be any power in what sorcerers do. It involves you personally whether you want it to or not. You can be so cynical that you discard other topics of these teachings, but you cannot make fun of your end because it is beyond your power to decide, and it is implacable.

"Destiny's coach will take all of us without distinction. But there are two kinds of travelers: warriors who can leave with the totality of themselves because they have fine-tuned every detail of their lives, and ordinary people with boring existences without creativity whose only hope is in the repetition of their stereotypes until the end; people whose end won't make any difference whether this end happens today or in thirty years. We are all there waiting on the platform of eternity, but not everyone knows it. Awareness of death is a great art.

"When a warrior has put an end to his routines; when he doesn't care anymore whether he has company or is alone because he has heard the silent whisper of the spirit, then you can say that, truly, he has died. From that point on, even the simplest things in life become extraordinary for him.

"For this, a sorcerer learns how to live again. He tastes each moment as if it were the last one. He doesn't waste any effort on feeling dissatisfied, nor does he throw away his energy. He doesn't wait until he becomes old to ponder the mysteries of the world. He is ahead: He explores: He knows and marvels.

"If you want to make space for the unknown, you must be aware of your personal extinction. Accept your destiny as the unavoidable fact that it is. Purify that feeling. Become responsible for the incredible event of being alive. Don't beg in the presence of death: It will not condescend to those who give in. Invoke it, aware that you came to this world to know it. Challenge it, even knowing that whatever we do, we don't have the smallest chance of conquering it. She is as gentle with the warrior as it is merciless with the ordinary man."

After this lecture, Carlos gave us an exercise.

"It concerns an inventory of your loved ones; of everybody who concerns you. Once you have classified them according to the degree of feeling that you have for each, you will take them, one by one, and pass them through death."

A murmur of consternation rippled through the listeners.

Making a soothing gesture, Carlos added:

"Don't get scared! There is nothing macabre about death. What is macabre is that we cannot face it with deliberation.

"You should do this exercise at midnight when the fixation of our assemblage point is loosened, and we are willing to believe in ghosts. It is very simple: You will evoke your dear beings through their inevitable end. Don't think about how or when they will die. Simply make yourself aware that some day they won't be there anymore. One by one they will leave, God knows in which order, and it doesn't matter what you try to do to avoid it.

"When evoking them in this way, you won't harm them; on the contrary! You will be seeing them in the appropriate perspective. The focal point of death is prodigious: It restores the true values of life."