Page:Para leer a Carlos Castaneda.djvu/19

and concludes that it is not important what he does, but his warrior impeccability drives him to act as if what is really important, which constitutes "his controlled folly".^[1]

Castaneda makes great efforts trying to understand the strange knowledge of Don Juan, which breaks all his cultural patterns and challenges his inflexible need to find a rational explanation to everything he sees, feels and hears. Don Juan tells him that at that point in time he should already know that a man of knowledge lives from acting and not from thinking about acting and then analyzing his performance. He tells him that it is the reason why a man of knowledge chooses a path with a heart and follows it; looks and rejoices he then “sees” and realizes that his life will end in an instant; he knows that he and everyone else are going nowhere, and because he "sees", knows that nothing is more important than everything else. For this reason a man of knowledge has nothing except life to live, and his unique relationship with the others is his controlled folly. As nothing matters more than anything else, a man of knowledge performs any and all acts as if they mattered, but he knows that in reality it does not matter; so when it is completed, he withdraws in peace, without any concerns about the outcome of his act, because at the end, victory and defeat are equal for him.

Don Juan tells Castaneda that to knowledge one goes with fear and respect, but with self-confidence. To be a man of knowledge he has to act as a warrior and begin the fight without surrender, without complaints or hesitation, until he "sees" and realize that nothing matters.

Don Juan explained that the most amazing part of the ovoid creatures is a group of luminous fibers that arise around the navel. He says that the fibers of weak people are short and almost invisible and that, on the contrary, strong people fibers are long and bright. Thanks to these fibers a man who can "see" realizes the state and nature of any person; he can even tell if the person can also "see".

Slowly the idea of "seeing" becomes an obsession for Castaneda, who decides to restart his encounters with "Humito". The Don Juan acts to bring him to this decision were deliberate, because he says according to Castaneda, there is little time to convey his knowledge and only "Humito" may provide the necessary speed to capture "the fleeting movement of the world".

After each meeting with "Humito" Castaneda advances in understanding, or rather, the discovery of another reality, ably led by Don Juan who, in turn, crashes again and again in the Castaneda rational barrier. Don Juan tells Castaneda that he has already giving him all that his benefactor had taught him in his own first stage of learning; so that Castaneda has done all that has to be done to "see" and yet he couldn't, even though who "see", such as Don Genaro, would think Castaneda could do so.

Here we open a parenthesis to explain the fact that on his books Castaneda manages different levels of knowledge, from which much confusion arises. Don Juan himself says that the path of knowledge offers many dangers "of understanding", basically because his knowledge is not about "understanding".

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1. Don Juan said the controlled folly of a witch is to know that all his acts are useless and should however strive to act as if he did not know that his acts are useless. He said all he does is real, but at the same time it is a controlled folly, because he knows that it is useless and yet does so impeccably. Don Juan instead of using the term "controlled blunder" said "controlled fuck up", an expression with more depth.(Sp. pendejada controlada)