Version 2006.05.15

## "The Power of Silence" - ©1987 by Carlos Castaneda
Part 5. The Requirements of Intent

### Breaking the Mirror of Self-Reflection

We spent a night at the spot where I had recollected my experience in Guaymas. During that night, because my assemblage point was pliable, don Juan helped me to reach new positions, which immediately became blurry non-memories.

The next day I was incapable of remembering what had happened or what I had perceived. I had, nonetheless, the acute sensation of having had bizarre experiences. Don Juan agreed that my assemblage point had moved beyond his expectations, yet he refused to give me even a hint of what I had done. His only comment was that some day I would recollect everything.

Around noon, we continued on up the mountains. We walked in silence and without stopping until late in the afternoon. As we slowly climbed a mildly steep mountain ridge, don Juan suddenly spoke. I did not understand any of what he was saying. He repeated it until I realized he wanted to stop on a wide ledge visible from where we were. He was telling me that we would be protected there from the wind by the boulders and large, bushy shrubs.

"Tell me, which spot on the ledge would be the best for us to sit out all night?" he asked.

Earlier, as we were climbing, I had spotted the almost unnoticeable ledge. It appeared as a patch of darkness on the face of the mountain. I had identified it with a very quick glance. Now that don Juan was asking my opinion, I elected a spot of even greater darkness, one almost black, on the south side of the ledge. The dark ledge and the almost black spot in it did not generate any feeling of fear or anxiety. I felt that I liked that ledge. And I liked its dark spot even more.

"That spot there is very dark, but I like it," I said, when we reached the ledge.

He agreed that that was the best place to sit all night. He said it was a place with a special level of energy, and that he also liked its pleasing darkness.

We headed toward some protruding rocks. Don Juan cleared an area by the boulders and we sat with our backs against them.

I told him that on the one hand I thought it had been a lucky guess on my part to choose that very spot, but on the other I could not overlook the fact that I had perceived it with my eyes.

"I wouldn't say that you perceived it exclusively with your eyes," he said. "It was a bit more complex than that."

"What do you mean by that, don Juan?" I asked.

"I mean that you have possibilities you are not yet aware of," he replied. "Since you're quite careless, you may think that all of what you perceive is simply average sensory perception."

He said that if I doubted him, he dared me to go down to the base of the mountain again and corroborate what he was saying. He predicted that it would be impossible for me to see the dark ledge merely by looking at it.

I stated vehemently that I had no reason to doubt him. I was not going to climb down that mountain.

He insisted that we climb down. I thought he was doing it just to tease me. I got nervous, though, when it occurred to me that he might be serious. He laughed so hard he choked.

He commented on the fact that all animals could detect in their surroundings areas with special levels of energy. Most animals were frightened of these spots and avoided them. The exceptions were mountain lions and coyotes which lay and even slept on such spots whenever they happened upon them. But, only sorcerers deliberately sought such spots for their effects.

I asked him what the effects were. He said that they gave out imperceptible jolts of invigorating energy. He remarked that the average man living in natural settings could find such spots even though he was not conscious about having found them nor aware of their effects.

"How do they know they have found them?" I asked.

"They never do," he replied. "Sorcerers watching men travel on foot trails notice right away that men always become tired and rest right on the spot with a positive level of energy. If, on the other hand, they are going through an area with an injurious flow of energy, they become nervous and rush. If you ask them about it, they will tell you they rushed through that area because they felt energized. But it is the opposite- the only place that energizes them is the place where they feel tired."

He said that sorcerers are capable of finding such spots by perceiving with their entire bodies minute surges of energy in their surroundings. The sorcerers' increased energy, derived from the curtailment of their self-reflection, allows their senses a greater range of perception.

"I've been trying to make clear to you that the only worthwhile course of action, whether for sorcerers or average men, is to restrict our involvement with our self-image," he continued. "What a nagual aims at with his apprentices is the shattering of their mirror of self-reflection."

He added that each apprentice was an individual case, and that the nagual had to let the spirit decide about the particulars.

"Each of us has a different degree of attachment to our self-reflection," he went on. "And that attachment is felt as need. For example, before I started on the path of knowledge, my life was endless need. And years after the nagual Julian had taken me under his wing, I was still just as needy, if not more so.

"But there are examples of people, sorcerers or average men, who need no one. They get peace, harmony, laughter, knowledge, directly from the spirit. They need no intermediaries. For you and for me, it's different. I'm your intermediary and the nagual Julian was mine. Intermediaries, besides providing a minimal chance- the awareness of intent- help shatter people's mirrors of self-reflection.

"The only concrete help you ever get from me is that I attack your self-reflection. If it weren't for that, you would be wasting your time. This is the only real help you've gotten from me."

"You've taught me, don Juan, more than anyone in my entire life," I protested.

"I've taught you all kinds of things in order to trap your attention," he said. "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, as you well know, depends on increased energy and not on instruction."

He then made an incongruous [* incongruous- lacking in harmony or compatibility or appropriateness] statement. He said that any human being who would follow a specific and simple sequence of actions can learn to move his assemblage point.

I pointed out that he was contradicting himself. To me, a sequence of actions meant instructions; it meant procedures.

"In the sorcerers' world there are only contradictions of terms," he replied. "In practice there are no contradictions. The sequence of actions I am talking about is one that stems from being aware. To become aware of this sequence you need a nagual. This is why I've said that 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."

He explained that the specific sequence he had in mind called 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. He commented that, after all, it was self-reflection that had disconnected man from the spirit in the first place.

"As I have already said to you," don Juan went on, "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."

I told him that his sequence seemed very easy and very simple when he talked about it, but that when I had tried to put it into practice I had found it the total antithesis [* antithesis- exact opposite] of ease and simplicity.

"Our difficulty with this simple progression," he said, "is that most of us are unwilling to accept that we need so little to get on with. We are geared to expect instruction, teaching, guides, or masters. And when we are told that we need no one, we don't believe it. We become nervous, then distrustful, and finally angry and disappointed. If we need help, it is not in methods, but in emphasis. If someone makes us aware that we need to curtail our self-importance, that help is real.

"Sorcerers say we should need no one to convince us that the world is infinitely more complex than our wildest fantasies. So, why are we dependent? Why do we crave someone to guide us when we can do it ourselves? Big question, eh?"

Don Juan did not say anything else. Obviously, he wanted me to ponder the question. But I had other worries in my mind. My recollection had undermined certain foundations that I had believed unshakable, and I desperately needed him to redefine them.

I broke the long silence and voiced my concern. I told him that I had come to accept that it was possible for me to forget whole incidents from beginning to end if they had taken place in heightened awareness. Up to that day, I had had total recall of anything I had done under his guidance in my state of normal awareness. Yet, having had breakfast with him in Nogales had not existed in my mind prior to my recollecting it. And that event simply must have taken place in the world of everyday affairs.

"You are forgetting something essential," he said. "The nagual's presence is enough to move the assemblage point. I have humored you all along with the nagual's blow. The blow between the shoulder blades that I have delivered is only a pacifier. It serves the purpose of removing your doubts. Sorcerers use physical contact as a jolt to the body. It doesn't do anything but give confidence to the apprentice who is being manipulated."

"Then who moves the assemblage point, don Juan?" I asked.

"The spirit does it," he replied in the tone of someone about to lose his patience.

He seemed to check himself and smiled and shook his head from side to side in a gesture of resignation.

"It's hard for me to accept," I said. "My mind is ruled by the principle of cause and effect."

He had one of his usual attacks of inexplicable laughter- inexplicable from my point of view, of course. I must have looked annoyed. He put his hand on my shoulder.

"I laugh like this periodically because you are demented," he said. "The answer to everything you ask me is staring you right in the eyes and you don't see it. I think dementia is your curse."

His eyes were so shiny, so utterly crazy and mischievous, that I ended up laughing myself.

"I have insisted to the point of exhaustion that there are no procedures in sorcery," he went on. "There are no methods, no steps. The only thing that matters is the movement of the assemblage point. And no procedure can cause that. It's an effect that happens all by itself."

He pushed me as if to straighten my shoulders, and then he peered at me, looking right into my eyes. My attention became riveted to his words.

"Let us see how you figure this out," he said. "I have just said that the movement of the assemblage point happens by itself. But I have also said that the nagual's presence moves his apprentice's assemblage point; and that the way the nagual masks his ruthlessness either helps or hinders that movement. How would you resolve this contradiction?"

I confessed that I had been just about to ask him about the contradiction, for I had been aware of it, but that I could not even begin to think of resolving it. I was not a sorcery practitioner.

"What are you, then?" he asked.

"I am a student of anthropology, trying to figure out what sorcerers do," I said.

My statement was not altogether true, but it was not a lie.

Don Juan laughed uncontrollably.

"It's too late for that," he said. "Your assemblage point has moved already. And it is precisely that movement that makes one a sorcerer."

He stated that what seemed a contradiction was really the two sides of the same coin. The nagual entices the assemblage point into moving by helping to destroy the mirror of self-reflection. But that is all the nagual can do. The actual mover is the spirit, the abstract; something that cannot be seen or felt; something that does not seem to exist, and yet does.

For this reason, sorcerers report that the assemblage point moves all by itself. Or they say that the nagual moves it. The nagual, being the conduit of the abstract, is allowed to express the spirit through his actions.

I looked at don Juan questioningly.

"The nagual moves the assemblage point, and yet it is not he himself who does the actual moving," don Juan said. "Or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that the spirit expresses itself in accordance with the nagual's impeccability. The spirit can move the assemblage point with the mere presence of an impeccable nagual."

He said that he had wanted to clarify this point, because, if it was misunderstood, it led a nagual back to self-importance and thus to his destruction.

He changed the subject and said that, because the spirit had no perceivable essence, sorcerers deal rather with the specific instances and ways in which they are able to shatter the mirror of self-reflection.

Don Juan noted that in this area it was important to realize the practical value of the different ways in which the naguals masked their ruthlessness. He said my mask of generosity, for example, was adequate for dealing with people on a shallow level, but useless for shattering their self-reflection because it forced me to demand an almost impossible decision on their part. I expected them to jump into the sorcerers' world without any preparation.

"A decision such as that jump must be prepared for," he went on. "And in order to prepare for it, any kind of mask for a nagual's ruthlessness will do, except the mask of generosity."

Perhaps because I desperately wanted to believe that I was truly generous, his comments on my behavior renewed my terrible sense of guilt. He assured me that I had nothing to be ashamed of, and that the only undesirable effect was that my pseudo-generosity did not result in positive trickery.

In this regard, he said, although I resembled his benefactor in many ways, my mask of generosity was too crude, too obvious to be of value to me as a teacher. A mask of reasonableness, such as his own, however, was very effective in creating an atmosphere propitious [* propitious- likely to result in success] to moving the assemblage point. His disciples totally believed his pseudo reasonableness. In fact, they were so inspired by it that he could easily trick them into exerting themselves to any degree.

"What happened to you that day in Guaymas was an example of how the nagual's masked ruthlessness shatters self-reflection," he continued. "My mask was your downfall. You, like everyone around me, believed my reasonableness. And, of course, you expected, above all, the continuity of that reasonableness.

"When I faced you with not only the senile behavior of a feeble old man, but with the old man himself, your mind went to extremes in its efforts to repair my continuity and your self-reflection. And so you told yourself that I must have suffered a stroke.

"Finally, when it became impossible to believe in the continuity of my reasonableness, your mirror began to break down. From that point on, the shift of your assemblage point was just a matter of time. The only thing in question was whether it was going to reach the place of no pity."

I must have appeared skeptical to don Juan because he explained that the world of our self-reflection or of our mind was very flimsy and was held together by a few key ideas that served as its underlying order. When those ideas failed, the underlying order ceased to function.

"What are those key ideas, don Juan?" I asked.

"In your case regarding that particular instance, as in the case of the audience of that healer we talked about, continuity was the key idea," he replied.

"What is continuity?" I asked.

"The idea that we are a solid block," he said. "In our minds, what sustains our world is the certainty that we are unchangeable.

We may accept that our behavior can be modified, and that our reactions and opinions can be modified. But the idea that we are malleable to the point of changing appearances- to the point of being someone else- that is not part of the underlying order of our self-reflection. Whenever a sorcerer interrupts that order, the world of reason stops."

I wanted to ask him if breaking an individual's continuity was enough to cause the assemblage point to move. He seemed to anticipate my question. He said that that breakage was merely a softener. What helped the assemblage point move was the nagual's ruthlessness.

He then compared the acts he performed that afternoon in Guaymas with the actions of the healer we had previously discussed. He said that the healer had shattered the self-reflection of the people in her audience with a series of acts for which they had no equivalents in their daily lives- the dramatic spirit possession, changing voices, cutting the patient's body open. As soon as the continuity of the idea of themselves was broken, their assemblage points were ready to be moved.

He reminded me that he had described to me in the past the concept of stopping the world. He had said that stopping the world was as necessary for sorcerers as reading and writing was for me. It consisted of introducing a dissonant element into the fabric of everyday behavior for purposes of halting the otherwise smooth flow of ordinary events- events which were catalogued in our minds by our reason.

The dissonant element was called 'not-doing', or the opposite of doing. 'Doing' was anything that was part of a whole for which we had a cognitive account. Not-doing was an element that did not belong in that charted whole.

"Sorcerers, because they are stalkers, understand human behavior to perfection," he said. They understand, for instance, that human beings are creatures of inventory. Knowing the ins and outs of a particular inventory is what makes a man a scholar or an expert in his field.

"Sorcerers know that when an average person's inventory fails, the person either enlarges his inventory or his world of self-reflection collapses. The average person is willing to incorporate new items into his inventory if they don't contradict the inventory's underlying order. But if the items contradict that order, the person's mind collapses. The inventory is the mind. Sorcerers count on this when they attempt to break the mirror of self-reflection."

He explained that that day he had carefully chosen the props for his act to break my continuity. He slowly transformed himself until he was indeed a feeble old man, and then, in order to reinforce the breaking of my continuity, he took me to a restaurant where they knew him as an old man.

I interrupted him. I had become aware of a contradiction I had not noticed before. He had said, at the time, that the reason he transformed himself was that he wanted to know what it was like to be old. The occasion was propitious and unrepeatable. I had understood that statement as meaning that he had not been an old man before. Yet at the restaurant they knew him as the feeble old man who suffered from strokes.

"The nagual's ruthlessness has many aspects," he said. "It's like a tool that adapts itself to many uses. Ruthlessness is a state of being. It is a level of intent that the nagual attains.

"The nagual uses it to entice the movement of his own assemblage point or those of his apprentices. Or he uses it to stalk. I began that day as a stalker, pretending to be old, and ended up as a genuinely old, feeble man. My ruthlessness, controlled by my eyes, made my own assemblage point move.

"Although I had been at the restaurant many times before as an old, sick man, I had only been stalking, merely playing at being old. Never before that day had my assemblage point moved to the precise spot of age and senility."

He said that as soon as he had intended to be old, his eyes lost their shine, and I immediately noticed it. Alarm was written all over my face. The loss of the shine in his eyes was a consequence of using his eyes to intend the position of an old man. As his assemblage point reached that position, he was able to age in appearance, behavior, and feeling.

I asked him to clarify the idea of intending with the eyes. I had the faint notion I understood it, yet I could not formulate even to myself what I knew.

"The only way of talking about it is to say that intent is intended with the eyes," he said. "I know that it is so. Yet, just like you, I can't pinpoint what it is I know. Sorcerers resolve this particular difficulty by accepting something extremely obvious: Human beings are infinitely more complex and mysterious than our wildest fantasies."

I insisted that he had not shed any light on the matter.

"All I can say is that the eyes do it," he said cuttingly. "I don't know how, but they do it. They summon intent with something indefinable that they have; something in their shine. Sorcerers say that intent is experienced with the eyes, not with the reason."

He refused to add anything and went back to explaining my recollection. He said that once his assemblage point had reached the specific position that made him genuinely old, doubts should have been completely removed from my mind. But due to the fact that I took pride in being super-rational, I immediately did my best to explain away his transformation.

"I've told you over and over that being too rational is a handicap," he said. "Human beings have a very deep sense of magic. We are part of the mysterious. Rationality is only a veneer with us. If we scratch that surface, we find a sorcerer underneath. Some of us, however, have great difficulty getting underneath the surface level; others do it with total ease. You and I are very alike in this respect- we both have to sweat blood before we let go of our self-reflection."

I explained to him that, for me, holding onto my rationality had always been a matter of life or death. Even more so when it came to my experiences in his world.

He remarked that that day in Guaymas my rationality had been exceptionally trying for him. From the start he had had to make use of every device he knew to undermine it. To that end, he began by forcibly putting his hands on my shoulders and nearly dragging me down with his weight. That blunt physical maneuver was the first jolt to my body. And this, together with my fear caused by his lack of continuity, punctured my rationality.

"But puncturing your rationality was not enough," don Juan went on. "I knew that if your assemblage point was going to reach the place of no pity, I had to break every vestige of my continuity. That was when I became really senile and made you run around town, and I finally got angry at you and slapped you.

"You were shocked, but you were on the road to instant recovery when I gave your mirror of self-image what should have been its final blow. I yelled 'bloody murder'. I didn't expect you to run away. I had forgotten about your violent outbursts."

He said that in spite of my on-the-spot recovery tactics, my assemblage point reached the place of no pity when I became enraged at his senile behavior. Or perhaps it had been the opposite: I became enraged because my assemblage point had reached the place of no pity. It did not really matter. What counted was that my assemblage point did arrive there.

Once it was there, my own behavior changed markedly. I became cold and calculating and indifferent to my personal safety.

I asked don Juan whether he had seen all this. I did not remember telling him about it. He replied that to know what I was feeling, all he had to do was introspect and remember his own experience.

He pointed out that my assemblage point became fixed in its new position when he reverted to his natural self. By then, my conviction about his normal continuity had suffered such a profound upheaval that continuity no longer functioned as a cohesive force. And it was at that moment, from its new position, that my assemblage point allowed me to build another type of continuity, one which I expressed in terms of a strange, detached hardness- a hardness that became my normal mode of behavior from then on.

"Continuity is so important in our lives that if it breaks it's always instantly repaired," he went on. "In the case of sorcerers, however, once their assemblage points reach the place of no pity, continuity is never the same.

"Since you are naturally slow, you haven't noticed yet that since that day in Guaymas you have become, among other things, capable of accepting any kind of discontinuity at its face value- after a token struggle of your reason, of course."

His eyes were shining with laughter.

"It was also that day that you acquired your masked ruthlessness," he went on. "Your mask wasn't as well developed as it is now, of course, but what you got then was the rudiments of what was to become your mask of generosity."

I tried to protest. I did not like the idea of masked ruthlessness, no matter how he put it.

"Don't use your mask on me," he said, laughing. "Save it for a better subject: someone who doesn't know you."

He urged me to recollect accurately the moment the mask came to me.

"As soon as you felt that cold fury coming over you," he went on, "you had to mask it. You didn't joke about it, as my benefactor would have done. You didn't try to sound reasonable about it, like I would. You didn't pretend to be intrigued by it, like the nagual Elias would have. Those are the three nagual's masks I know. What did you do then? You calmly walked to your car and gave half of your packages away to the guy who was helping you carry them."

Until that moment I had not remembered that indeed someone helped me carry the packages. I told don Juan that I had seen lights dancing before my face, and I had thought I was seeing them because, driven by my cold fury, I was on the verge of fainting.

"You were not on the verge of fainting," don Juan answered. "You were on the verge of entering a dreaming state and seeing the spirit all by yourself; like Talia and my benefactor."

I said to don Juan that it was not generosity that made me give away the packages but cold fury. I had to do something to calm myself, and that was the first thing that occurred to me.

"But that's exactly what I've been telling you. Your generosity is not genuine," he retorted and began to laugh at my dismay.