Version 2007.11.08

## "Encounters With The Nagual" - ©2004 by Armando Torres
Part II. Warriors' Dialogue

### The Evolution of the Path

That morning, Carlos asked me to choose my question carefully, because he didn't have much time to talk to me before catching his plane.

I said that I had been reading in his books about the cycles of warriors he called old and new seers, but I could not catch the difference between them.

He replied that I had chosen a good topic for conversation, since understanding that difference was a basic requirement to make sure one avoided the errors of the old seers.

He explained that, like everything in this universe, the path of sorcerers is evolutionary. For that reason, a nagual is always forced to refer to the teachings in new ways. As a consequence of that strategy, nagualism as a total system of practices is divided into breeds or cycles.

"Ever since man's adventure in search of the spirit began, and up until today, there have been three breeds of sorcerers at least: those of the first period; the ancient seers; and the new ones. The first sorcerers lived a long time ago, and were very different from us. Today we hardly understand their vision of the world, but we know that they survived under very difficult conditions where any one of us would have succumbed.

"The ancient seers were a refinement of that original kind. They adapted to America's soil and knew how to create there real civilizations. They were formidable men, who used intent at a level that is incomprehensible to us. They were intoxicated with power. They could move gigantic stones, fly, or transform themselves at will. They cohabited with inorganic beings and created a culture to fit them; replete with fabulous stories.

"Legends describe them best. Those sorcerers are the heroes of our mythology. What they sought was to live at any price, and they got it.

"The ancient seers began to move their assemblage points through the consumption of power plants. After that, their inorganic teachers told them how to do things. The ancient seers only needed to focus their interest in order to understand what this world is, and that interest made them design the most extraordinary techniques for the exploration of awareness.

"But don't think that the old seers were just men of action. They were, also very profound thinkers who took the art of comprehending to the limits of attention. Compared to them, we are beasts. Nowadays, modern man is not interested in the reason why he is alive which is why he finds no peace and can not find himself. We have a lot we could learn from those precursors who found the answers which can bring us out of the dead-end we are facing."

"What dead-end are you talking about?"

"Our vision of a world of objects. That vision has been very useful; but at the same time is the worst among our calamities. Modern man's concerns are the same as those of an animal: Use, possess, annihilate. But this animal, man, has been domesticated, and is condemned to live inside a material inventory. Since every one of the objects he uses has a long history, modern man lives his life lost inside his own creation.

"In contrast, what concerned the ancient seers was the relationship between the cosmos and them: the beings that are going to die. They were able to acquire their own vision. They didn't stop at one of the stations along the way, and forget that they were travelers."

I asked him why, if their vision was correct, there came a moment when the old seers were substituted by the cycle of new seers.

He answered that seeing is no guarantee of impeccability.

"The old seers could not separate a great dose of self-importance from their practices.

"Since they enjoyed having power over their fellow men, they were never able to focus clearly on the proposal of total freedom; and although they were unbeatable seers, it was impossible for them to foresee that their enthusiasm to discover the world should end up involving them in commitments that would trap them.

"Most modern sorcerers are the heirs of the old seers; but many modern sorcerers, by ignoring the warrior's principles, have devaluated the knowledge. They have become storytellers, herbalists, healers, or dancers: They have lost control of the assemblage point: In many cases, they do not even remember that the point exists.

"The new seers tried to stop the ancient seers ways. The new seers took what they could use from the vision of the ancients, but the new seers were wiser and more moderate. They cultivated an unbending intent, and turned all their attention towards the way of the warrior. In that way they changed the entire intent of the ancient practices. Upon completing their energy, some of them glimpsed a goal higher than the adventure of the second attention: They pondered the possibility of being free.

"Through their seeing, the new seers discovered something horrifying: That the enthusiasm of the old seers served as nutrition to certain conscious entities who were energy parasites. In the beginning, the contract between these beings and humans seemed very beneficial: We gave them part of our energy and they rewarded us with what was then a novelty: Reason. But in time it became obvious that the contract was a swindle. Reason is only good for making inventories of things, not for understanding them. Also, it has an unpleasant by-product which seers see as a membrane covering our luminosity: Self-importance.

"For the new seers, that was intolerable, because they had a goal in mind which had never occurred to the old seers: The possibility of merging with the universe directly, without using the inorganics as intermediaries.

"The new seers were pragmatic sorcerers; passionate about validation. In their desire to erase from their practices every last vestige of ego, they became distrustful [* distrustful- having the trait of not trusting others] people. Their method was elimination: They suppressed all that didn't point directly to their objective of total freedom. The result was that they became able to fixate their intent on intent itself; becoming one. Unhappily, that method forced them to sacrifice enormous portions of their knowledge.

"So ferocious was their intent that it caused them to close in on themselves. They filled their teaching with secrets. Since social relationships were not important for their objectives, they isolated themselves from society; creating their own, minuscule groups. Almost all of them left to live in the mountains, the forest, or the desert where they remain today acquiring ethnic characteristics. That has certainly not helped them to refine the art of stalking; what's more, in the end it transformed their search for freedom into a purely rhetorical objective."