Page:Para leer a Carlos Castaneda.djvu/48

THE WITCHES EXPLANATION
THREE NAGUAL WITNESSES

Every apprentice has a Toltequity teacher of our times. But at a learning time, when the apprentice has saved energy through changing his lifestyle in the everyday world, due to energy savings. The apprentice will find his benefactor, who will introduce him to the wonderful and frightening nagual world.

The first thing a benefactor is making the apprentice "witnessing" the nagual. Thus in his book, Castaneda tells us how Don Genaro makes a "demonstration" on a cliff for Pablito, Nestor and Castaneda, about the nagual world through his body. The objective is the apprentice to verify "with his eyes and senses", that what he learned to call world, "is not so real and is not so there". That the “world” is just a "description" which allows us to socialize with it, and that the world actually is only an infinite number of energy charges and the human being, in that world is just another energy charge.

"It was not a man as I usually see them. Rather it was a ball of white fire, covered by something like light fibers. I shook my head; the double image dissipated, and however the vision of don Juan and don Genaro persisted as luminous beings. I saw two strange elongated objects, made of light. They looked like white, iridescent balloons with fibers and the fibers had their own light.

The two luminous beings shook; saw their fibers tremble, and then disappeared as an exhalation. A long filament pulled them, a spider thread that seemed to emerge from the top of the cliff. The feeling I had was a long beam of light, or a bright line, had come down from the rock to raise them. I saw the sequence with eyes and the body..." C.C.

THE STRATEGY OF A WITCH

Castaneda tells Don Juan about the extraordinary events of the previous day. Don Juan explains the apprentice that he at last "opened his perception wings" and witnessed the nagual. This was possible, since Castaneda was complying with the teachings, by which the teacher seeks to help the apprentice "sweep" and regroup the tonal island, so the benefactor can influence the luminous sphere from outside in the nagual area.

Upon reaching this point, the teacher has to explain what will be "the witches explanation".

—“The years of hard training are only a preparation for the devastating warrior encounter with... He paused again, looked at me with shrinking the eyes, and fumbled his tongue.

—...with what is out there, beyond this point —he said—.

I asked him to explain his ominous phrases.

—The witches explanation, which does not seem an explanation at all, is mortal —said—. Seems harmless and charming, but as soon as the warrior opens to it, it discharges a blow that nobody can stop...

—I will begin by telling you that a teacher never looks for apprentices and no one can apply for the teachings...

The first teacher’s act is to introduce the idea that the world we believe to see is only a vision, a description of the world. Every effort of the teacher goes to prove this point to the apprentice. But to accept it seems to be one of the most difficult things to do; we are complacently trapped in our unique vision of the world, which compels us to feel and act as if we knew everything there is to know about the world. From his first act the teacher intends to stop this vision. Witches call this stopping internal dialogue, and are convinced that this is the most important technique an apprentice can learn.