Version 2006.05.17

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

### 9. The New Area of Exploration

Don Juan told me that in order to see in dreaming not only did I have to intend seeing but I had to put my intent into loud words. For reasons he refused to explain, he insisted that I had to speak up. He conceded that there are other means to accomplish the same result, but he asserted that voicing one's intent is the simplest and most direct way.

The first time I put into words my intent to see, I was dreaming of a church bazaar. There were so many articles that I could not make up my mind which one to gaze at. A giant, conspicuous vase in a corner made up my mind for me. I gazed at it, voicing my intent to see. The vase remained in my view for an instant, then it changed into another object.

I gazed at as many things as I could in that dream. After I voiced my intent to see, every item I had chosen to gaze at vanished or turned into something else, as had happened all along in my dreaming practices. My dreaming attention was finally exhausted, and I woke up tremendously frustrated, almost angry.

For months on end, I actually gazed at hundreds of items in my dreams and deliberately voiced my intent to see, but nothing ever happened. Tired of waiting, I finally had to ask don Juan about it.

"You need to have patience. You are learning to do something extraordinary," he remarked. "You are learning to intend to see in your dreams. Someday you will not have to voice your intent: You'll simply will it, silently."

"I think I have not understood the function of whatever I am doing," I said. "Nothing happens when I shout my intent to see. What does that mean?"

"It means that your dreams, so far, have been ordinary dreams: They have been phantom projections; images that have life only in your dreaming attention."

He wanted to know exactly what had happened to the items on which I had focused my gaze. I said that they had vanished or changed shape or even produced vortexes that eventually changed my dreams.

"It has been like that in all my daily dreaming practices," I said. "The only thing out of the ordinary is that I am learning to yell in my dreams, at the top of my voice."

My last statement threw don Juan into a genuine fit of belly laughter, which I found disconcerting. I failed to find the humor of my statement or the reason for his reaction.

"Someday you'll appreciate how funny all this is," he said as an answer to my silent protest. "In the meantime, don't give up or get discouraged. Keep on trying. Sooner or later, you'll hit the right note."

As usual, he was right. A couple of months later, I hit the jackpot. I had a most unusual dream. It started with the appearance of a scout from the inorganic beings' world. The scouts as well as the dreaming emissary had been strangely absent from my dreams. I had not missed them or pondered their disappearance. In fact, I was so at ease without them, I had even forgotten to ask don Juan about their absence.

In that dream, the scout had been, at first, a gigantic yellow topaz which I had found stuck in the back of a drawer. The moment I voiced my intent to see, the topaz turned into a blob of sizzling energy. I feared that I would be compelled to follow it, so I moved my gaze away from the scout and focused it on an aquarium with tropical fish. I voiced my intent to see and got a tremendous surprise. The aquarium emitted a low, greenish glow and changed into a large surrealist portrait of a bejeweled woman. The portrait emitted the same greenish glow when I voiced my intent to see.

As I gazed at that glow, the whole dream changed. I was walking then on a street in a town that seemed familiar to me: It might have been Tucson. I gazed at a display of women's clothes in a store window and spoke out loud my intent to see. Instantly, a black mannequin, prominently displayed, began to glow. I gazed next at a saleslady who came at that moment to rearrange the window. She looked at me. After voicing my intent, I saw her glow. It was so stupendous that I was afraid some detail in her splendorous glow would trap me, but the woman moved inside the store before I had time to focus my total attention on her. I certainly intended to follow her inside, however, my dreaming attention was caught by a moving glow. It came to me charging, filled with hatred. There was loathing in it and viciousness. I jumped backward. The glow stopped its charge. A black substance swallowed me, and I woke up.

These images were so vivid that I firmly believed I had seen energy and my dream had been one of those conditions that don Juan had called dreamlike, energy-generating. The idea that dreams can take place in the consensual reality of our daily world intrigued me, just as the dream images of the inorganic beings' realm had intrigued me.

"This time, you not only saw energy but crossed a dangerous boundary," don Juan said, after hearing my account.

He reiterated that the drill for the third gate of dreaming is to make the energy body move on its own. In my last session, he said, I had unwittingly superseded the effect of that drill and crossed into another world.

"Your energy body moved," he said. "It journeyed by itself. That kind of journeying is beyond your abilities at this moment, and something attacked you."

"What do you think it was, don Juan?"

"This is a predatorial universe. It could have been one of thousands of things existing out there."

"Why do you think it attacked me?"

"For the same reason the inorganic beings attacked you: because you made yourself available."

"Is it that clear-cut, don Juan?"

"Certainly. It's as clear-cut as what you would do if a strange-looking spider crept across your desk while you were writing. You'd squash it out of fright, rather than admire it or examine it."

I was at a loss and searched for words to ask the proper question. I wanted to ask him where my dream had taken place, or what world I was in in that dream. But those questions did not make any sense. I could gather that myself. Don Juan was very understanding.

"You want to know where your dreaming attention was focused, don't you?" he asked with a grin.

This was exactly how I wanted to word my question. I reasoned that in the dream under consideration, I must have been looking at some real object- just like what had happened when I saw in dreams the minute details on the floor or the walls or the door of my room; details that I later had corroborated existed.

Don Juan said that in special dreams, like the one I'd had, our dreaming attention focuses on the daily world, and that it moves instantly from one real object to another in the world. What makes this movement possible is that the assemblage point is on the proper dreaming position. From that position, the assemblage point gives the dreaming attention such fluidity that it can move in a split second over incredible distances, and in doing so it produces a perception so fast, so fleeting that it resembles an ordinary dream.

Don Juan explained that in my dream I had seen a real vase, and then my dreaming attention had moved over distances to see a real surrealist painting of a bejeweled woman. The result, with the exception of seeing energy, had been very close to an ordinary dream in which items, when gazed at, quickly turn into something else.

"I know how disturbing this is," he went on, definitely aware of my bewilderment. "For some reason pertinent to the mind, to see energy in dreaming is more upsetting than anything one can think of."

I remarked that I had seen energy in dreaming before, yet it had never affected me like this.

"Now your energy body is complete and functioning," he said. "Therefore, the implication that you see energy in your dream is that you are perceiving a real world through the veil of a dream. That's the importance of the journey you took. It was real. It involved energy-generating items that nearly ended your life."

"Was it that serious, don Juan?"

"You bet! The creature that attacked you was made of pure awareness and was as deadly as anything can be. You saw its energy. I am sure that you realize by now that unless we see in dreaming, we can't tell a real energy-generating thing from a phantom projection. So, even though you battled the inorganic beings and indeed saw the scouts and the tunnels, your energy body doesn't know for sure if they were real; meaning energy generating. You are ninety-nine but not one hundred percent sure."

Don Juan insisted on talking about the journey I had taken. For inexplicable reasons, I was reluctant to deal with that subject. What he was saying produced an instantaneous reaction in me. I found myself trying to come to grips with a deep, strange fear: It was dark and obsessive in a nagging, visceral way.

"You definitely went into another layer of the onion," don Juan said, finishing a statement to which I had not paid attention.

"What is this other layer of the onion, don Juan?"

"The world is like an onion, it has many skins. The world we know is but one of them. Sometimes, we cross boundaries and enter into another skin; another world, very much like this one, but not the same. And you entered into one all by yourself."

"How is this journey you're talking about possible, don Juan?"

"That is a meaningless question, because no one can answer it. In the view of sorcerers, the universe is constructed in layers which the energy body can cross. Do you know where the old sorcerers are still existing to this day? In another layer; in another skin of the onion."

"For me, the idea of a real, pragmatic journey taken in dreams is very difficult to understand or to accept, don Juan."

"We have discussed this topic to exhaustion. I was convinced you understood that the journey of the energy body depends exclusively on the position of the assemblage point."

"You've told me that, and I have been mulling it over and over. Still, saying that the journey is in the position of the assemblage point doesn't say anything to me."

"Your problem is your cynicism. I was just like you. Cynicism doesn't allow us to make drastic changes in our understanding of the world. It also forces us to feel that we are always right."

I understood his point to perfection, but I reminded him about my fight against all that.

"I propose that you do one nonsensical thing that might turn the tide," he said. "Repeat to yourself incessantly that the hinge of sorcery is the mystery of the assemblage point. If you repeat this to yourself long enough, some unseen force takes over and makes the appropriate changes in you."

Don Juan did not give me any indication that he was being facetious. [* facetious- cleverly amusing in tone] I knew he meant every word of it. What bothered me was his insistence that I repeat the formula ceaselessly to myself. I caught myself thinking that all of it was asinine.

"Cut your cynical attitude," he snapped at me. "Repeat this in a bona fide manner.

"The mystery of the assemblage point is everything in sorcery," he continued, without looking at me. "Or rather, everything in sorcery rests on the manipulation of the assemblage point. You know all this, but you have to repeat it."

For an instant, as I heard his remarks, I thought I was going to die of anguish. An incredible sense of physical sadness gripped my chest and made me scream with pain. My stomach and diaphragm seemed to be pushing up, moving into my chest cavity. The push was so intense that my awareness changed levels, and I entered into my normal state. Whatever we had been talking about became a vague thought about something that might have happened, but actually had not according to the mundane reasoning of my everyday-life consciousness.

The next time don Juan and I talked about dreaming, we discussed the reasons I had been unable to proceed with my dreaming practices for months on end. Don Juan warned me that to explain my situation he had to go in a roundabout way. He pointed out, first, that there is an enormous difference between the thoughts and deeds of the men of antiquity and those of modern men. Then he pointed out that the men of ancient times had a very realistic view of perception and awareness because their view stemmed from their observations of the universe around them. Modern men, in contrast, have an absurdly unrealistic view of perception and awareness because their view stems from their observations of the social order and from their dealings with it.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.

"Because you are a modern man involved with the views and observations of men of antiquity," he replied. "And none of those views and observations are familiar to you. Now more than ever you need sobriety and aplomb. [* aplomb- great coolness and composure under strain] I am trying to make a solid bridge- a bridge you can walk on, between the views of men of ancient times and those of modern men."

He remarked that of all the transcendental observations of the men of ancient times, the only one with which I was familiar, because it had filtered down to our day, was the idea of selling our souls to the devil in exchange for immortality; which he admitted sounded to him like something coming straight out of the relationship of the old sorcerers with the inorganic beings. He reminded me how the dreaming emissary had tried to induce me to stay in its realm by offering me the possibility of maintaining my individuality and self-awareness for nearly an eternity.

"As you know, succumbing to the lure of the inorganic beings is not just an idea: It's real," don Juan went on. "But you haven't yet fully realized the implication of that realness. Dreaming, likewise, is real: It is an energy-generating condition. You hear my statements and you certainly understand what I mean, but your awareness hasn't caught up with the total implication of it yet."

Don Juan said that my rationality knew the import of a realization of this nature, and during our last talk it had forced my awareness to change levels. I ended up in my normal awareness before I could deal with the nuances of my dream. My rationality had further protected itself by suspending my dreaming practices.

"I assure you that I am fully aware of what an energy-generating condition means," I said.

"And I assure you that you are not," he retorted. "If you were, you would measure dreaming with greater care and deliberation. Since you believe you are just dreaming, you take blind chances. Your faulty reasoning tells you that no matter what happens, at a given moment the dream will be over and you will wake up."

He was right. In spite of all the things I had witnessed in my dreaming practices, somehow I still retained the general sense that all of it had been a dream.

"I am talking to you about the views of men of antiquity and the views of modern man," don Juan went on, "because your awareness, which is the awareness of modern man, prefers to deal with an unfamiliar concept as if it were an empty ideality.

"If I left it up to you, you'd regard dreaming as an idea. Of course, I'm sure you take dreaming seriously, but you don't quite believe in the reality of dreaming."

"I understand what you are saying, don Juan, but I don't understand why you are saying it."

"I am saying all this because you are now, for the first time, in the proper position to understand that dreaming is an energy-generating condition. For the first time, you can understand now that ordinary dreams are the honing devices used to train the assemblage point to reach the position that creates this energy-generating condition we call dreaming."

He warned me that since dreamers touch and enter real worlds of all-inclusive effects, they ought to be in a permanent state of the most intense and sustained alertness: Any deviation from total alertness imperils the dreamer in ways more than dreadful.

I began again, at this point, to experience a movement in my chest cavity, exactly as I had felt the day my awareness changed levels by itself. Don Juan forcibly shook me by the arm.

"Regard dreaming as something extremely dangerous!" he commanded me. "And begin that now! Don't start any of your weird maneuvers."

His tone of voice was so urgent that I stopped whatever I was, unconsciously, doing.

"What is going on with me, don Juan?" I asked.

"What's going on with you is that you can displace your assemblage point quickly and easily," he said. "Yet that ease has the tendency to make the displacement erratic. Bring your ease to order; and don't allow yourself even a fraction of an inch leeway."

I could easily have argued that I did not know what he was talking about; but I knew. I also knew I had only a few seconds to round up my energy and change my attitude; and I did.

This was the end of our exchange that day. I went home, and for nearly a year I faithfully and daily repeated what don Juan had asked me to say; that the hinge of sorcery is the mystery of the assemblage point.

The results of my litany-like invocation were incredible. I was firmly convinced that it had the same effect on my awareness that exercise has on the muscles of the body. My assemblage point became more agile; which meant that seeing energy in dreaming became the sole goal of my practices. My skill at intending to see grew in proportion to my efforts. A moment came when I was able just to intend seeing without saying a word; and actually experience the same result as when I voiced out loud my intent to see.

Don Juan congratulated me on my accomplishment. I, naturally, assumed he was being facetious. He assured me that he meant it, but beseeched me to continue shouting- at least whenever I was at a loss. His request did not seem odd to me. On my own, I had been yelling in my dreams at the top of my voice every time I deemed it necessary.

I discovered that the energy of our world wavers. It scintillates. Not only living beings but everything in our world glimmers with an inner light of its own. Don Juan explained that the energy of our world consists of layers of shimmering hues.

The top layer is whitish; another, immediately adjacent to it, is chartreuse; and another one, more distant yet, is amber.

I found all those hues, or rather I saw glimmers of them whenever items that I encountered in my dreamlike states changed shapes. However, a whitish glow was always the initial impact of seeing anything that generated energy.

"Are there only three different hues?" I asked don Juan.

"There is an endless number of them," he replied, "but for the purposes of a beginning order, you should be concerned with those three. Later on, you can get as sophisticated as you want and isolate dozens of hues if you are able to do it.

"The whitish layer is the hue of the present position of mankind's assemblage point," don Juan continued. "Let's say that it is a modern hue. Sorcerers believe that everything man does nowadays is tinted with that whitish glow. At another time, the position of mankind's assemblage point made the hue of the ruling energy in the world chartreuse; and at another time, more distant yet, it made it amber. The color of sorcerers' energy is amber; which means that they are energetically associated with the men who existed in a distant past."

"Do you think, don Juan, that the present whitish hue will change someday?"

"If man is capable of evolving. The grand task of sorcerers is to bring forth the idea that, in order to evolve, man must first free his awareness from its bindings to the social order. Once awareness is free, intent will redirect it into a new evolutionary path."

"Do you think sorcerers will succeed in that task?"

"They have already succeeded. They themselves are the proof. To convince others of the value and import of evolving is another matter."

The other kind of energy I found present in our world but alien to it was the scouts' energy; the energy don Juan had called sizzling. I encountered scores of items in my dreams that, once I saw them, turned into blobs of energy that seemed to be frying; bubbling with some heatlike inner activity.

"Bear in mind that not every scout you are going to find belongs to the realm of inorganic beings," don Juan remarked. "Every scout you have found so far, except for the blue scout, has been from that realm; but that was because the inorganic beings were catering to you. They were directing the show. Now you are on your own. Some of the scouts you will encounter are going to be, not from the inorganic beings' realm, but from other even more distant levels of awareness."

"Are the scouts aware of themselves?" I asked.

"Most certainly," he replied.

"Then why don't they make contact with us when we are awake?"

"They do. But our great misfortune is to have our consciousness so fully engaged that we don't have time to pay attention. In our sleep, however, the two-way-traffic trapdoor opens: We dream. And in our dreams, we make contact."

"Is there any way to tell whether the scouts are from a level besides the inorganic beings' world?"

"The greater their sizzling, the farther they come from. It sounds simplistic, but you have to let your energy body tell you what is what. I assure you, it'll make very fine distinctions and unerring judgments when faced with alien energy."

He was right again. Without much ado, my energy body distinguished two general types of alien energy. The first was the scouts from the inorganic beings' realm. Their energy fizzled mildly. There was no sound to it, but it had all the overt appearance of effervescence, or of water that is starting to boil.

The energy of the second general type of scouts gave me the impression of considerably more power. Those scouts seemed to be just about to burn. They vibrated from within as if they were filled with pressurized gas.

My encounters with the alien energy were always fleeting because I paid total attention to what don Juan recommended. He said, "Unless you know exactly what you are doing and what you want out of alien energy, you have to be content with a brief glance. Anything beyond a glance is as dangerous and as stupid as petting a rattlesnake."

"Why is it dangerous, don Juan?" I asked.

"Scouts are always very aggressive and extremely daring," he said. "They have to be that way in order to prevail in their explorations. Sustaining our dreaming attention on them is tantamount to soliciting their awareness to focus on us. Once they focus their attention on us, we are compelled to go with them. And that, of course, is the danger. We may end up in worlds beyond our energetic possibilities."

Don Juan explained that there are many more types of scouts than the two I had classified, but that at my present level of energy I could only focus on three. He described the first two types as the easiest to spot. Their disguises in our dreams are so outlandish, he said, that they immediately attract our dreaming attention. He depicted the scouts of the third type as the most dangerous in terms of aggressiveness and power- and because they hide behind subtle disguises.

"One of the strangest things dreamers find, which you yourself will find presently," don Juan continued, "is this third type of scout. So far, you have found samples of only the first two types, but that's because you haven't looked in the right place."

"And what is the right place, don Juan?"

"You have again fallen prey to words; this time the culprit word is 'items', which you have taken to mean only things, objects. Well, the most ferocious scout hides behind people in our dreams. A formidable surprise was in store for me in my dreaming when I focused my gaze on the dream image of my mother. After I voiced my intent to see, she turned into a ferocious, frightening bubble of sizzling energy."

Don Juan paused to let his statements sink in. I felt stupid for being disturbed at the possibility of finding a scout behind the dream image of my mother.

"It's annoying that they are always associated with the dream images of our parents or close friends," he went on. "Perhaps that's why we often feel ill at ease when we dream of them." His grin gave me the impression that he was enjoying my turmoil. "A rule of thumb for dreamers is to assume that the third type of scout is present whenever they feel perturbed by their parents or friends in a dream. Sound advice is to avoid those dream images. They are sheer poison."

"Where does the blue scout stand in relation to the other scouts?" I asked.

"Blue energy doesn't sizzle," he replied. "It is like ours; it wavers, but it is blue instead of white. Blue energy doesn't exist in a natural state in our world.

"And this brings us to something we've never talked about. What color were the scouts you've seen so far?"

Until the moment he mentioned it, I had never thought about this. I told don Juan that the scouts I had seen were either pink or reddish. And he said that the deadly scouts of the third type were bright orange.

I found out myself that the third type of scout is outright scary. Every time I found one of them, it was behind the dream images of my parents, especially of my mother. Seeing it always reminded me of the blob of energy that had attacked me in my first deliberate seeing dream. Every time I found it, the alien exploring energy actually seemed about to jump on me. My energy body used to react with horror even before I saw it.

During our next discussion of dreaming, I queried don Juan about the total absence of inorganic beings in my dreaming practices.

"Why don't they show up anymore?" I asked.

"They only show themselves at the beginning," he explained. "After their scouts take us to their world, there is no necessity for the inorganic beings' projections. If we want to see the inorganic beings, a scout takes us there. For no one, and I mean no one, can journey by himself to their realm."

"Why is that so, don Juan?"

"Their world is sealed. No one can enter or leave without the consent of the inorganic beings. The only thing you can do by yourself once you are inside is, of course, voice your intent to stay. To say it out loud means to set in motion currents of energy that are irreversible. In olden times, words were incredibly powerful. Now they are not. But in the inorganic beings' realm, words haven't lost their power."

Don Juan laughed and said that he had no business saying anything about the inorganic beings' world because I really knew more about it than he and all his companions combined.

"There is one last issue related to that world that we haven't discussed," he said.

He paused for a long while, as if searching for the appropriate words.

"In the final analysis," he began, "my aversion to the old sorcerers' activities is very personal. As a nagual, I detest what they did. They cowardly sought refuge in the inorganic beings' world. They argued that in a predatorial universe poised to rip us apart, the only possible haven for us is in that realm."

"Why did they believe that?" I asked.

"Because it's true," he said. "Since the inorganic beings can't lie, the sales pitch of the dreaming emissary is all true. That world can give us shelter and prolong our awareness for nearly an eternity."

"The emissary's sales pitch, even if it's the truth, has no appeal to me," I said.

"Do you mean you will chance a road that might rip you apart?" he asked with a note of bewilderment in his voice.

I assured don Juan that I did not want the inorganic beings' world no matter what advantages it offered. My statement seemed to please him to no end.

"You are ready then for one final statement about that world. The most dreadful statement I can make," he said, and tried smile, but did not quite make it.

Don Juan searched in my eyes, I suppose for a glimmer agreement or comprehension. He was silent for a moment.

"The energy necessary to move the assemblage points of sorcerers comes from the realm of inorganic beings," he said, as if he were hurrying to get it over with.

My heart nearly stopped. I felt a vertigo and had to stomp my feet on the ground not to faint.

Don Juan went on, "This is the truth, and the legacy of the old sorcerers to us. They have us pinned down to this day. This is the reason I don't like them. I resent having to dip into one source alone. Personally, I refuse to do it.

"And I have tried to steer you away from it; but with no success because something pulls you to that world, like a magnet."

I understood don Juan better than I could have thought. Journeying to that world had always meant to me, at an energetic level, a boost of dark energy. I had even thought of it in those terms, long before don Juan voiced his statement.

"What can we do about it?" I asked.

"We can't have dealings with them," he answered, "and yet we can't stay away from them. My solution has been to take their energy but not give in to their influence. This is known as the ultimate stalking. It is done by sustaining the unbending intent of freedom even though no sorcerer knows what freedom really is."

"Can you explain to me, don Juan, why sorcerers have to take energy from the realm of inorganic beings?"

"There is no other viable energy for sorcerers. In order to maneuver the assemblage point in the manner they do, sorcerers need an inordinate amount of energy."

I reminded him of his own statement: that a redeployment of energy is necessary in order to do dreaming.

"That is correct," he replied. "To start dreaming sorcerers need to redefine their premises and save their energy, but that redefining is valid only to have the necessary energy to set up dreaming. To fly into other realms, to see energy, to forge the energy body, et cetera, et cetera, is another matter. For those maneuvers, sorcerers need loads of dark, alien energy."

"But how do they take it from the inorganic beings' world?"

"By the mere act of going to that world. All the sorcerers of our line have to do this. However, none of us is idiotic enough to do what you've done. But this is because none of us has your proclivities." [* proclivities- natural inclinations]

Don Juan sent me home to ponder what he had revealed to me. I had endless questions, but he did not want to hear any of them.

"All the questions you have, you can answer yourself," he said as he waved good-bye to me.