Version 2006.05.17

## "The Art of Dreaming" - ©1993 by Carlos Castaneda

### 2. The First Gate of Dreaming

As a preamble [* preamble- a preliminary introduction] to his first lesson in dreaming, don Juan talked about the second attention as a progression: beginning as an idea that comes to us more like a curiosity than an actual possibility; turning into something that can only be felt, as a sensation is felt; and finally evolving into a state of being, or a realm of practicalities, or a preeminent force that opens for us worlds beyond our wildest fantasies.

When explaining sorcery, sorcerers have two options. One is to speak in metaphorical terms and talk about a world of magical dimensions. The other is to explain their business in abstract terms proper to sorcery. I have always preferred the latter, although neither option will ever satisfy the rational mind of a Western man.

Don Juan told me that what he meant by his 'metaphorical description of the second attention as a progression' was that, 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 point's displacement.

"I am going to teach you the first step to power," don Juan said, beginning his instruction in the art of dreaming. "I'm going to teach you how to set up dreaming."

"What does it mean to set up dreaming?"

"To set up dreaming means to have a precise and practical command over the general situation of a dream. For example, you may dream that you are in your classroom. To set up dreaming means that you don't let the dream slip into something else. You don't jump from the classroom to the mountains, for instance. In other words, you control the view of the classroom and don't let it go until you want to."

"But is it possible to do that?"

"Of course it's possible. 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 to get used to it yourself, you must start by doing something very simple. Tonight, in your dreams, you must look at your hands."

Not much more was said about this in the awareness of our daily world. In my recollection of my experiences in the second attention, however, I found out that we had a more extensive exchange. For instance, I expressed my feelings about the absurdity of the task, and don Juan suggested that I should face it in terms of a quest that was entertaining, instead of solemn and morbid.

"Get as heavy as you want when we talk about dreaming," he said. "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."

Don Juan assured me that he had selected my hands arbitrarily as something to look for in my dreams and that looking for anything else was just as valid. The goal of the exercise was not finding a specific thing but engaging my dreaming attention.

Don Juan described the dreaming attention as 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. In more general terms, he called the dreaming attention 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 that we never have the opportunity to use in everyday life.

My first attempts at looking for my hands in my dreams were a fiasco. After months of unsuccessful efforts, I gave up and complained to don Juan again about the absurdity of such a task.

"There are seven gates," he said as a way of answering, "and dreamers have to open all seven of them; one at the time. You're up against the first gate that must be opened if you are to dream."

"Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"It would've been useless to tell you about the gates of dreaming before you smacked your head against the first one. Now you know that it is an obstacle and that you have to overcome it."

Don Juan explained that there are entrances and exits in the energy flow of the universe and that, 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," he said. "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."

"How do I become aware that I am falling asleep? Are there any steps to follow?"

"No. There are no steps to follow. One just intends to become aware of falling asleep."

"But how does one intend to become aware of it?"

"Intent or intending is something very difficult to talk about. I or anyone else would sound idiotic trying to explain it. Bear that in mind when you hear what I have to say next: Sorcerers intend anything they set themselves to intend, simply by intending it."

"That doesn't mean anything, don Juan."

"Pay close attention. Someday it'll be your turn to explain. The statement seems nonsensical because you are not putting it in the proper context. Like any rational man, you think that understanding is exclusively the realm of our reason; of our mind.

"For sorcerers, because the statement I made pertains to intent and intending, understanding it pertains to the realm of energy. Sorcerers believe that if one would intend that statement for the energy body, the energy body would understand it in terms entirely different from those of the mind. The trick is to reach the energy body. For that you need energy."

"In what terms would the energy body understand that statement, don Juan?"

"In terms of a bodily feeling which is hard to describe. You'll have to experience it to know what I mean."

I wanted a more precise explanation, but don Juan slapped my back and made me enter into the second attention. At that time, what he did was still utterly mysterious to me. I could have sworn that his touch hypnotized me.

I believed he had instantaneously put me to sleep, and I dreamt that I found myself walking with him on a wide avenue lined with trees in some unknown city. It was such a vivid dream, and I was so aware of everything that I immediately tried to orient myself by reading signs and looking at people. It definitely was not any English- or Spanish-speaking city, but it was a Western city. The people seemed to be northern Europeans, perhaps Lithuanians. I became absorbed in trying to read billboards and street signs.

Don Juan nudged me gently. "Don't bother with that," he said. "We are nowhere identifiable. I've just lent you my energy so you would reach your energy body, and with it you've just crossed into another world. This won't last long, so use your time wisely.

"Look at everything, but without being obvious. Don't let anyone notice you."

We walked in silence. It was a block-long walk which had a remarkable effect on me. The more we walked, the greater my sensation of visceral anxiety. My mind was curious, but my body was alarmed. I had the clearest understanding that I was not in this world.

When we got to an intersection and stopped walking, I saw that the trees on the street had been carefully trimmed. They were short trees with hard-looking, curled leaves. Each tree had a big square space for watering. There were no weeds or trash in those spaces, as one would find around trees in the city, only charcoal black, loose dirt.

The moment I focused my eyes on the curb, before I stepped off it to cross the street, I noticed that there were no cars. I tried desperately to watch the people who milled around us; to discover something about them that would explain my anxiety. As I stared at them, they stared back at me. In one instant a circle of hard blue and brown eyes had formed around us.

A certainty hit me like a blow: This was not a dream at all. We were in a reality beyond what I know to be real. I turned to face don Juan. I was about to realize what was different about those people, but a strange dry wind that went directly to my sinuses hit my face, blurred my view, and made me forget what I wanted to tell don Juan.

The next instant, I was back where I had started from: don Juan's house. I was lying on a straw mat, curled up on my side.

"I lent you my energy, and you reached your energy body," don Juan said matter-of-factly.

I heard him talk, but I was numb. An unusual itching on my solar plexus kept my breaths short and painful. I knew that I had been on the verge of finding something transcendental about dreaming and about the people I had seen, yet I could not bring whatever I knew into focus.

"Where were we, don Juan?" I asked. "Was it all a dream? A hypnotic state?"

"It wasn't a dream," he replied. "It was dreaming. I helped you reach the second attention so that you would understand intending as a subject not for your reason but for your energy body.

"At this point, you can't yet comprehend the importance of all this; not only because you don't have sufficient energy, but because you're not intending anything. If you were, your energy body would comprehend immediately that the only way to intend is by focusing your intent on whatever you want to intend. This time I focused it for you on reaching your energy body."

"Is the goal of dreaming to intend the energy body?" I asked, suddenly empowered by some strange reasoning.

"One can certainly put it that way," he said. "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," he went on. "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."

"How can I convince myself that I am a dreamer when I am not?"

"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."

"Do you mean I have to tell myself I am a dreamer and try my best to believe it? Is that it?"

"No, it isn't. 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."

Don Juan added in a joking tone that he did not have sufficient energy to make me another loan for intending, and that the thing I should do was reach my energy body on my own. He assured me that intending the first gate of dreaming was one of the means discovered by the sorcerers of antiquity for reaching the second attention and the energy body.

After telling me this, he practically threw me out of his house; commanding me not to come back until I had intended the first gate of dreaming.

I returned home, and every night for months I went to sleep intending with all my might to become aware that I was falling asleep and to see my hands in my dreams. The other part of the task, to convince myself that I was a dreamer and that I had reached my energy body, was totally impossible for me.

Then, one afternoon while taking a nap, I dreamt I was looking at my hands. The shock was enough to wake me up. It proved to be a unique dream that could not be repeated. Weeks went by, and I was unable either to become aware that I was falling asleep or to find my hands. I began to notice, however, that I was having in my dreams a vague feeling that there was something I should have been doing but could not remember. This feeling became so strong that it kept on waking me up at all hours of the night.

When I told don Juan about my futile attempts to cross the first gate of dreaming, he gave me some guidelines.

"To ask a dreamer to find a determined item in his dreams is a subterfuge," he said. "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."

He told me that 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.

After a great effort, I indeed found hands in my dreams, but they never were mine. They were hands that only seemed to belong to me, hands that changed shape, becoming quite nightmarish at times. The rest of my dreams' content, nonetheless, was always pleasantly steady. I could almost sustain the view of anything I focused my attention on.

It went on like this for months until one day when my capacity to dream changed seemingly by itself. I had done nothing special besides my constant earnest determination to be aware that I was falling asleep and to find my hands.

I dreamt I was visiting my hometown. Not that the town I was dreaming about looked at all like my hometown, but somehow I had the conviction that it was the place where I was born. It all began as an ordinary, yet very vivid dream. Then the light in the dream changed. Images became sharper. The street where I was walking became noticeably more real than a moment before. My feet began to hurt. I could feel that things were absurdly hard. For instance, on bumping into a door, not only did I experience pain on the knee that hit the door, but I was also enraged by my clumsiness.

I realistically walked in that town until I was completely exhausted. I saw everything I could have seen had I been a tourist walking through the streets of a city. There was no difference whatsoever between that dream walk and any walk I had actually taken on the streets of a city I visited for the first time.

"I think you went a bit too far," don Juan said after listening to my account. "All that was required was your awareness of falling asleep. What you've done is equivalent to bringing a wall down just to squash a mosquito sitting on it."

"Do you mean, don Juan, that I flubbed it?"

"No. But apparently you're trying to repeat something you did before. When I made your assemblage point shift, and you and I ended up in that mysterious city, you were not asleep. You were dreaming, but not asleep; meaning that your assemblage point didn't reach that position through a normal dream. I forced it to shift.

"You certainly can reach the same position through dreaming, but I wouldn't advise you to do that at this time."

"Is it dangerous?"

"And how! 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 because it is a door to the second attention."

"What's the difference between the dreaming attention and the second attention?"

"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."

He heavily stressed that the dreaming attention is the key to every movement in the sorcerers' world. He said that among the multitude of items in our dreams, there exist real energetic interferencesl; things that have been put in our dreams extraneously by an alien force. To be able to find them and follow them is sorcery.

The emphasis he put on those statements was so pronounced that I had to ask him to explain them. He hesitated for a moment before answering.

"Dreams are, if not a door, a hatch into other worlds," he began. "As such, dreams are a two-way street. Our awareness goes through that hatch into other realms, and those other realms send scouts into our dreams."

"What are those scouts?"

"Energy charges that get mixed with the items of our normal dreams. They are bursts of foreign energy that come into our dreams, and we interpret them as items familiar or unfamiliar to us."

"I am sorry, don Juan, but I can't make heads or tails out of your explanation."

"You can't because you're insisting on thinking about dreams in terms known to you; as what occurs to us during normal sleep.

"And I am insisting on giving you another version: a hatch into other realms of perception. Through that hatch, currents of unfamiliar energy seep in. Then the mind or the brain or whatever takes those currents of energy and turns them into parts of our dreams."

He paused, obviously to give my mind time to take in what he was telling me.

"Sorcerers are aware of those currents of foreign energy," he continued. "They notice them and strive to isolate them from the normal items of their dreams."

"Why do they isolate them, don Juan?"

"Because they come from other realms. If we follow them to their source, they serve us as guides into areas of such mystery that sorcerers shiver at the mere mention of such a possibility."

"How do sorcerers isolate them from the normal items of their dreams?"

"By the exercise and control of their dreaming attention. At one moment, our dreaming attention discovers them among the items of a dream and focuses on them. Then the total dream collapses; leaving only the foreign energy."

Don Juan refused to explain the topic any further. He went back to discussing my dreaming experience and said that, all in all, he had to take my dream as being my first genuine attempt at dreaming; and that this meant I had succeeded in reaching the first gate of dreaming.

During another discussion at a different time, he abruptly brought up the subject again. He said, "I'm going to repeat what you must do in your dreams in order to pass the first gate of dreaming.

"First you must focus your gaze on anything of your choice as the starting point. Then shift your gaze to other items and look at them in brief glances. Focus your gaze on as many things as you can. Remember that if you glance only briefly, the images don't shift. Then go back to the item you first looked at."

"What does it mean to pass the first gate of dreaming?"

"We reach the first gate of dreaming by becoming aware that we are falling asleep, or by having, like you did, a gigantically real dream. Once we reach the gate, we must cross it by being able to sustain the sight of any item of our dreams."

"I can almost look steadily at the items of my dreams, but they dissipate too quickly."

"This is precisely what I am trying to tell you. In order to offset the evanescent [* evanescent- tending to vanish like vapour] quality of dreams, sorcerers have devised the use of the starting point item.

"Every time you isolate it and look at it, you get a surge of energy, so at the beginning don't look at too many things in your dreams. Four items will suffice. Later on, you may enlarge the scope until you can cover all you want; but as soon as the images begin to shift and you feel you are losing control, go back to your starting point item and start all over again."

"Do you believe that I really reached the first gate of dreaming, don Juan?"

"You did, and that's a lot. You'll find out, as you go along, how easy it'll be to do dreaming now."

I thought don Juan was either exaggerating or giving me incentive. But he assured me he was being on the level.

"The most astounding thing that happens to dreamers," he said, "is that on reaching the first gate, they also reach the energy body."

"What exactly is the energy body?"

"It's the counterpart of the physical body. A ghostlike configuration made of pure energy."

"But isn't the physical body also made out of energy?"

"Of course it is. The difference is that the energy body has only appearance but no mass. Since it's pure energy, it can perform acts that are beyond the possibilities of the physical body."

"Such as what for example, don Juan?"

"Such as transporting itself in one instant to the ends of the universe. And dreaming is the art of tempering the energy body; of making it supple and coherent by gradually exercising it.

"Through dreaming, we condense the energy body until it's a unit capable of perceiving. Its perception, although affected by our normal way of perceiving the daily world, is an independent perception. It has its own sphere."

"What is that sphere, don Juan?"

"Energy. The energy body deals with energy in terms of energy. There are three ways in which it deals with energy in dreaming: it can perceive energy as it flows; or it can use energy to boost itself like a rocket into unexpected areas; or it can perceive as we ordinarily perceive the world."

"What does it mean to perceive energy as it flows?"

"It means to 'see'. It means that the energy body sees energy directly as a light; or as a vibrating current of sorts; or as a disturbance. Or it feels it directly as a jolt, or as a sensation that can even be pain."

"What about the other way you talked about, don Juan? The energy body using energy as a boost."

"Since energy is its sphere, it is no problem for the energy body to use currents of energy that exist in the universe to propel itself. All it has to do is isolate them, and off it goes with them."

He stopped talking and seemed to be undecided as if he wanted to add something, but was not sure about it. He smiled at me, and just as I was beginning to ask him a question, he continued his explanation.

"I've mentioned to you before that sorcerers isolate in their dreams scouts from other realms," he said. "Their energy bodies do that. They recognize energy and go for it. But it isn't desirable for dreamers to indulge in searching for scouts. I was reluctant to tell you about it because of the facility with which one can get swayed by that search."

Don Juan then quickly went on to another subject. He carefully outlined for me an entire block of practices. At the time, I found that on one level it was all incomprehensible to me. Yet on another level it was perfectly logical and understandable.

He reiterated that 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.

When I urged don Juan to explain it more clearly, he added that we all have a determined quantity of basic energy. That quantity is all the energy we have, and we normally use all of it for perceiving and dealing with our engulfing world.

He repeated various times, to emphasize it, that there is no more energy for us anywhere. And since our available energy is already engaged, there is not a single bit left in us for any extraordinary perception; such as dreaming.

"Where does that leave us?" I asked.

"It leaves us to scrounge energy for ourselves wherever we can find it," he replied.

Don Juan explained that sorcerers have a scrounging method. They intelligently redeploy their energy by cutting down anything they consider superfluous [* superfluous- serving no useful purpose; having no excuse for being] in their lives. They call this method the sorcerers' way. In essence, the sorcerers' way, as don Juan put it, is a chain of behavioral choices for dealing with the world; choices much more intelligent than those our progenitors [* progenitor- an ancestor in the direct line] taught us. These sorcerers' choices are designed to revamp our lives by altering our basic reactions about being alive.

"What are those basic reactions?" I asked.

"There are two ways of facing our being alive," he said. "One is to surrender to it, either by acquiescing to its demands or by fighting those demands. The other is by molding our particular life situation to fit our own configurations."

"Can we really mold our life situation, don Juan?"

"One's particular life situation can be molded to fit one's specifications," don Juan insisted. "Dreamers do that. A wild statement? Not really, if you consider how little we know about ourselves."

He said that his interest as a teacher was to get me thoroughly involved with the themes of life and being alive- that is to say, with the difference between life, as a consequence of biological forces; and the act of being alive, as a matter of cognition.

"When sorcerers talk about molding one's life situation," don Juan explained, "they mean molding the awareness of being alive. Through molding this awareness, we can get enough energy to reach and sustain the energy body, and with it we can certainly mold the total direction and consequences of our lives."

Don Juan ended our conversation about dreaming by admonishing [* admonishing- counsel in terms of someone's behaviour] me not merely to think about what he had told me, but to turn his concepts into a viable way of life by a process of repetition.

He claimed that everything new in our lives, such as the sorcerers' concepts he was teaching me, must be repeated to us to the point of exhaustion before we open ourselves to it. He pointed out that repetition is the way our progenitors socialized us to function in the daily world.

As I continued my dreaming practices, I gained the capability of being thoroughly aware that I was falling asleep, as well as the capability of stopping in a dream to examine at will anything that was part of that dream's content. To experience this was for me no less than miraculous.

Don Juan stated that as we tighten the control over our dreams, we tighten the mastery over our dreaming attention. He was right in saying that the dreaming attention comes into play when it is called; when it is given a purpose.

Its coming into play is not really a process as one would normally understand a process as an ongoing system of operations, or a series of actions or functions that bring about an end result.

The dreaming attention is rather an awakening. Something dormant becomes suddenly functional.