"elements" are activated through self-energy, but as we are always busy rationally supporting the idea of ourselves and the world through personal importance, it requires an extreme consumption of that energy so that we "have" that energy and perceive ourselves as generators of… energy! This is a world of energy and not of concepts and objects. This is the great legacy of the Toltec culture and is transmitted through the Toltecáyotl.
Don Juan, throughout the education, must use a series of traps or schemes to keep his apprentice attention and interest. Many things that Don Juan taught Castaneda, we believe purposely, does it through the long road. Pure knowledge is simple and direct, and due to its obviousness, people opposes greater resistance. Despite the fact that Toltequity teachings in our days are almost detached from rites and paraphernalia[1], something remains to "deceive" apprentices reason.
We must remember that, due to the spaniards arrival, Toltequity was kept clandestinely. The spaniards never saw, nor touched Toltequity; priests fell in their hands, but not men of knowledge; and with priests fell the sorcerers, witches and probably some warrior who became careless. In the 18th century one of the most important Don Juan lineage characters lived right in the center of the Catholic religion and, moreover, of the Holy Inquisition. It was the Metropolitan Cathedral sacristan in Mexico City. His disguise and location could not be better to protect himself against persecution at that time. A warrior is an impeccable, inaccessible, and flexible being. Don Juan talks about the wonderful opportunity of being unknown.
As part of the techniques Don Juan taught Castaneda to save energy and deceive his reason, is the power walk. The problem with techniques Don Juan taught Castaneda, is that his followers may lose the teachings objectivity. The techniques are only MEANS and not an end in itself. A common man can reach the "world of the nagual" by some fortuitous means, or can reach knowledge through discipline and effort to overcome his personal importance, and even if he knows nothing about it, his energy saving will make him enter knowledge on his own.
The Castaneda reader must be very careful and avoid the author's confusion on the path to knowledge and his own. We must think that for each reader, encountering a nagual as Don Juan shall be different, so that the book shall be taken with great reservation, not by the Toltequity knowledge value, but by Castaneda limitations and confusion, or the way in which he decided to depict the acquired knowledge in his books.
"Death is not like a person." It is rather a presence. But also one could say it is nothing and yet is everything. One would be right in all aspects. Death is anything we wishrsonal power is a feeling… A man of knowledge is someone who has truly followed the learning hardships —he said—. A man who, without hurry nor falter, has gone as far as he can to unravel the personal power secrets... All that a man do revolves around his personal power... A warrior is flawless when he trusts his personal power whether it is small or huge... The path of knowledge and power is
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- ↑ In modern use, the word paraphernalia commonly refers to uses, accessories, apparatus or equipment used or required for a certain activity. The rite catches the attention of the initiate, but its cost is very high, because over time, the "means" becomes the end. The Toltecs having to work underground in recent centuries eliminated many of the Toltec rites.
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