Penetration Beyond the Rational. Sublimation. Transformation. A Kaleidoscopic Play of Strange Forms of Consciousness. Metamorphoses.
That which seems unbelievable — like a fairy tale. That which exists. Or that which you’ve always suspected exists…
It’s not a fairy tale. Not an adventure novel. Not a mystical-philosophical treatise. A manual for producing magic, quite accessible to humans. Only, very few believe in it.
Quotes:
Some things in your life matter to you because they are important. Your actions are definitely important to you; but for me, no thing is more important than any of my actions, or the actions of people. Nevertheless, I continue to live, for I have my will, because I have shaped my will through life to such an extent that it has become honed and whole, and now nothing matters to me that doesn’t matter. My will controls the foolishness of my life.
Once a person learns to see, they will find themselves alone in a world where there is only foolishness. Your actions, just as the actions of others, seem important to you because you’ve learned to think that they matter. We learn to think about everything, and then we train our eyes to see things as we think about them. We look at ourselves, already thinking that we are important. And so it happens that we feel important. But then, when a person learns to see, they understand that they can no longer think about the things they look at; and if they cannot think about the things they see, everything becomes insignificant.
We need to look with our eyes in order to laugh. Because only when we look at things can we catch the amusing sides of the world. On the other hand, when our eyes see, nothing matters, and nothing is amusing.
Many people of knowledge do this. One day, they may simply disappear. People may think they were ambushed and killed for their deeds. They choose death because, for them, it doesn’t matter. On the other hand, I chose to live and laugh not because it matters, but because that is the inclination of my nature. The reason I say that I chose this is because I see, but that doesn’t mean I choose to live, despite all that I see. You don’t understand me now because of your habit of thinking as you see and thinking as you think.
…Perhaps one day, you will learn to see, and you will then know whether things matter or not. For me, nothing matters, but perhaps for you, everything will.
A person of knowledge has neither honor, nor greatness, nor family, nor name, nor country – only life to live. And under these circumstances, the only thing that ties them to people is their controlled foolishness. And so, the person of knowledge makes efforts and sweats and pants; and if you look at them, they are exactly like any ordinary person, except that the foolishness of their life is under control.
You think about your actions, so you believe your actions are as important as you think they are. In reality, though, nothing matters that anyone does. Nothing. But then, if nothing really matters, you ask me, how do I keep on living? It would be easier to die, you say, and believe, because you think about life just as you think about everything else, just as you now think about what seeing is. You wanted me to describe it to you so you could start thinking about it the same way you think about everything else. However, in the case of seeing, thinking is not a part of it, so I cannot tell you what it is – seeing. Now you want me to describe the reasons for my controlled foolishness, and I can only tell you that controlled foolishness is very similar to seeing.
But there is no emptiness in the life of the person of knowledge – I tell you. Everything is filled to the brim.
…The person of knowledge loves, and that’s all. They love what they want or who they want, but they use their controlled foolishness to not care about it. The opposite of what you’re doing now.
Loving people or being loved by people is far from all that one can do as a human.
What makes us unhappy is desire. However, if we learn to reduce our desires to zero, the slightest thing we receive will be a true gift.
– I can’t really believe that, Don Juan. How can hunger or pain be just a thought?
– Now for me, they are only thoughts. That’s all I know. I have passed this stage. The strength to overcome it – that is all we have to resist the forces of life; without this strength, we are just trash, dust in the wind.
Our task as individuals is to resist the forces of our life. I’ve told you this countless times; only the warrior can survive. The warrior knows what he waits for, and he knows what he waits for; and when he waits, he doesn’t want anything, so whatever small thing he gets, it’s more than he can take. If he wants to eat, he’ll find a way because he’s not hungry; if something wounds his body, he finds a way to stop it because he doesn’t suffer from pain. To be hungry or to suffer pain means that the person has left themselves, and they are no longer a warrior, and the strength of their hunger or pain destroys them.
Will is something very special. It appears mysteriously. There’s no real way to describe how to use it, except that the results of using the will are astonishing. Perhaps the first thing to do is to know that will can be developed. The warrior knows this and continues to wait for the will. Your mistake is that you don’t know that you are waiting for your will.
Will is something else, something very clear and powerful, that can direct our actions. Will is something a person uses, for example, to win a battle that they should, by all calculations, lose.
Stopping asking questions is not will, because it requires thinking and wanting. Will is what makes you win when your thoughts tell you that you are defeated. Will is what makes you invulnerable.
He described the will as the force that is the true link between people and the world. He carefully noted that the world is what we feel, whatever way we do it. Don Juan emphasized that the sensation of the world contains the process of perceiving everything that appears before us. This certain “sensation” is made by our senses and our will.
The detached person who knows that they have no way to defend themselves from their death has only one thing to sustain them – the power of their decision. They must be, so to speak, the master of their choice. They must fully understand that they themselves are completely responsible for their choice, and once they have made it, they have no more time for regrets or reproaches. Their decisions are final simply because their death doesn’t give them time to cling to anything.
…With the awareness of their death, their detachment, and the strength of their decisions, the warrior maps out their life in a strategic way. The knowledge of their death leads them and makes them detached and silently suffering; the power of their final decisions makes them able to choose without regret, and what they choose is always the best strategically; and therefore, they perform everything with taste and passionate efficiency.
When the warrior reaches patience, they are on their way to their will. They know how to wait. Their death sits beside them on their mat, they are friends. Their death mysteriously advises them how to choose, how to live strategically. And the warrior waits! I would say that the warrior learns without haste because they know they are waiting for their will; and one day, they will succeed in accomplishing something that would normally be impossible to accomplish. They may not even notice their unusual action. But as they continue to perform unusual actions, or as unusual things continue to happen to them, they begin to realize that some kind of force is manifesting. A force that emanates from their body as they move along the path of knowledge. At first, it is like an itch in the stomach, or a warm spot that cannot be soothed; then it becomes pain, a great discomfort. Sometimes the pain and discomfort are so great that the warrior experiences convulsions for months; and the stronger the convulsions, the better for them. Great will is always preceded by strong pain. When the convulsions disappear, the warrior notices that they have developed a strange feeling about things. They notice that they can, in fact, touch everything they want with the feeling that emanates from their body, from the point directly below or directly above the navel. This feeling is will, and when they are able to grasp it, one can rightly say that the warrior is a magician and has attained the will.
After they learn to see, they will no longer need to live as a warrior or be a magician. By learning to see, a person becomes everything because they become nothing. They, so to speak, disappear, and yet they are here. I would say that this is the time when a person can be everything or get everything they wish. But they wish for nothing, and instead of playing with the people around them as toys, they meet them in the center of their foolishness.
The only difference between them is that the person who sees controls their foolishness, while the people around them cannot. The person who sees has no more active interest in the people around them. Vision has already detached them absolutely from everything they once knew.
We are humans, and our fate is to learn and be involved in intangible new worlds.
The spirit of the warrior does not connect with self-indulgence and complaints, nor does it connect with victories or defeats. The spirit of the warrior connects only with the struggle, and every effort is the warrior’s final battle on Earth. Thus, the outcome matters very little to them. In their final battle on Earth, the warrior lets their spirit flow freely and clearly. And when they fight their battle, knowing that their will is impeccable, the warrior laughs and laughs.
First and foremost, you must use your ears to relieve some of the load from your eyes. We’ve used our eyes since birth to judge the world. We speak with others and with ourselves, mostly about what we see. The warrior realizes this and listens to the world; they listen to the sounds of the world.
The world is this or that only because we told ourselves it is so. If we stop telling ourselves that the world is this or that, the world will stop being so. At this moment, I don’t think you’re ready for such an instant impact, so you must slowly begin to destroy/open the