become tasteless and breaks these "predatory consciences" scheme, as if not devoured, allows it to grow. Don Juan said that trick the Toltec invented is "overloading the fliers mind with discipline and inner silence."
The truth is that the issue of "predatory consciences" breaks all schemes of our fragile and haughty existential arrogance. It is the most demolishing blow that our ego can receive, as humans emanating from the Judeo-Christian culture, where human beings were created at the "image and likeness of God”, who gave us the world to dominate, exploit and transform.
What the Toltec propose is to cease complying with a destiny for which our opinion was never asked. So our ancestors created our parents and them us to be food, but we have never had the opportunity to be aware of this fact and we have meekly stultified, becoming docile creatures that are bred to be food. As the chickens and pigs, that in a farm do not realize the fate of their lives.
“—The fliers are an essential part of the universe —continued—, and must be taken as what they really are: amazing, monstrous. They are the means by which the universe test us.
—We are probes created by the universe —continued, as if I was not present—, and it is because we are energy conscience possessors, we are the means by which the universe becomes self-conscious. The fliers are implacable challengers. They cannot be considered in any other way. If we succeed, the universe allows us to continue...
—The weird idea —slowly said, measuring his words effect—, is that every human being on Earth seems to have the same reactions, the same thoughts, the same feelings. They seem to respond the same way to the same stimuli. These reactions seem to be somewhat cloudy by the language they speak, but if we dig the surface, these are exactly the same reactions that beset every human being on Earth. I wish this would cause curiosity as a social scientist, of course, and you see if you can explain this homogeneity...
The predator don Juan had described was not benevolent. It was extremely heavy, vulgar, indifferent. I felt his disregard for us. Certainly had crushed us in the past, making us, as don Juan had said, weak, vulnerable and docile. I took off my wet clothes, covered with a poncho, sat on the bed and cried inconsolably, but not for me. I had my anger, my unyielding attempt to not be eaten. I cried for my peers, especially my father. I never knew, until that time, I loved him so much.
—He never had the choice —I heard myself repeat over and over, as if the words were not really mine. My poor father, the most generous being I knew, so tender, so gentle, so defenseless…" C.C.
UNDERTAKING THE DEFINITE JOURNEY
Castaneda returns to the central point of his experience as Don Juan apprentice or "warrior of the florid battle", as the Toltec called it. The leap into a chasm from the top of a mountain, worked by hand as a huge pyramid by the ancient grandparents and which today is called "cerro de las cenizas" in the highest part of the Zapotec area of the Sierra Juarez in Oaxaca (named central Mexico in the Castaneda works).
The complete Castaneda works revolves around this unprecedented event. As in the Toltec world there is no linear time. This event is the point in which converges "past, present and future". In the same way, Castaneda again speaks of
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