Six Explanatory Propositions

 From The Eagle's Gift, by Carlos Castaneda.
 

  In spite of the amazing maneuvers that DJ did with my awareness, along the 
years I stubbornly insisted in trying to intellectually evaluate what he did. 
Although I have written at length about these maneuvers, it has always been 
from a strictly experiential point of view and, besides, from a strictly 
rational perspective. Immersed as I was in my own rationality, I couldn't 
recognize the goals of the teachings of Don Juan. To understand the stretch 
of these goals with a certain degree of precision, it was necessary that I 
lost my human form and arrived to the totality of myself.
  The teachings of Don Juan were meant to guide me through the second stage 
of a warrior's development: the verification and unrestricted acceptance that 
within us lies another type of awareness. This stage was divided into two 
categories. The first one, for which Don Juan required Don Genaro's help, 
dealt with two activities. It consisted of showing me certain procedures, 
actions and methods that were designed to exercise my awareness. The second 
one had to do with the six explanatory propositions.
  Due to the difficulties that I had in adapting my rationality in order to 
accept the plausibility of what he was teaching me, Don Juan presented these 
explanatory propositions in terms of my scholastic records.
  The first thing he did, as an introduction, was to create a division in 
myself by means of a specific blow on the right shoulder blade, a blow which 
made me enter an unusual state of awareness, which I couldn't recall once I 
was back to normality.
  Until the moment in which Don Juan made me enter such state of awareness I 
had an undeniable sense of continuity, which I thought of as a product of my 
vital experience. The idea that I had about myself was that of being a full 
entity that could explain everything it had done. Besides, I was convinced  
that the dwelling of all my awareness, if there was such, was in my head. 
However, Don Juan showed me with his blow that it exists a center in the 
spinal cord, at the height of the shoulder blades, that is obviously a center 
of enhanced awareness.
  When I questioned Don Juan about the nature of this blow, he explained that 
the nagual is a director, a guide who bears the responsibility of opening the 
way, and that he must be impeccable to impregnate his warriors with a sense 
of confidence and clarity. Only under these conditions is a nagual in the 
possibility of giving this blow on the back to force a displacement of 
awareness, because the power of the nagual is what allows the transition. If 
the nagual is not an impeccable practitioner, the displacement doesn't occur, 
as when I tried, unsuccessfully, to put the other apprentices in a state of 
heightened awareness hitting them on the back before we ventured into the 
bridge.
  I asked Don Juan what this displacement of awareness implied. He said that 
the nagual has to strike on a precise spot, which varies from person to 
person but which is always located in the general area of the shoulder 
blades. A nagual has to see to specify the spot, which is located in the 
periphery of one's luminosity and not on the physical body itself; once the 
nagual identifies it, he pushes it in, more that striking it, and thus 
creates a concavity, a depression in the luminous shield. The state of 
heightened awareness resulting from this blow lasts as much as this 
depression lasts. Some luminous shields go back to their original forms by 
themselves, some have to be struck in another point to be restored, and some 
others never go back to their oval shapes.
  Don Juan said that seers see awareness as a peculiar glow. Everyday 
awareness is a glow on the right side, which extends from the physical body's 
exterior to the periphery of our luminosity. Heightened awareness is a more 
intense shine associated with great speed and concentration, a fulgor which 
saturates the periphery of the left side.
  Don Juan said that seers explain what happens with the blow of the nagual 
as a temporal dislodging of a center located in the luminous cocoon of the 
body. The Eagle's emanations are in reality evaluated and selected in that 
center. The blow alters their normal behavior.
  Through their observations, seers have reached the conclusion that warriors 
must be put in that state of disorientation. The change in the way awareness 
works under these conditions makes this state an ideal territory to 
dillucidate the commands of the Eagle: it allows warriors to function as if 
they were in everyday awareness, with the difference that they can 
concentrate in everything they do with unprecedented clarity and strength.
  Don Juan said that my situation was analogous to the one he had 
experienced. His benefactor created a deep division in himself, making him 
move once and once again from the awareness of the right side to the 
awareness of the left side. The clarity and freedom of his left side 
awareness were in direct opposition to the rationalizations and endless 
defenses of his right side. He told me that all warriors are cast into the 
depths of the same situation that polarity molds, and that the nagual creates 
and reinforces the division to be able to lead his apprentices to the 
conviction that there is an awareness in human beings yet unexplored.

  1.-What we perceive as the world are the Eagle's emanations.

  Don Juan explained to me that the world we perceive does not have a 
transcendental existence. Since we are familiarized with it we believe that 
what we perceive is a world of objects which exist such as we perceive them, 
when in reality there is not a world of objects, but, rather, a universe of 
Eagle's emanations.
  These emanations represent the only immutable reality. It is a reality that 
encompasses all that is, perceivable and unperceivable, knowable and 
unknowable.
  Seers who see the Eagle's emanations call them commands because of their 
urging force. All living creatures are urged to use the emanations, and they 
use them without getting to know what they are. Ordinary men interpret them 
as reality. And seers who see the emanations interpret them as the rule.
  In spite that seers see the emanations, they don't have a way of knowing 
what it is they are seeing. Instead of entangling themselves with useless 
conjectures, seers occupy themselves in the functional speculation of how the 
Eagle's commands can be interpreted. Don Juan sustained that to intuit a 
reality which transcends the world we perceive stays at the level of 
conjecture; it is not enough for a warrior to conjecture that the Eagle's 
commands are instantly perceived by all creatures that live on Earth, and 
that none of them perceives them in the same way. Warriors must try to behold 
the flow of emanations and "see" the way in which man and other living beings 
use it to build their perceptual world.
  When I proposed to use the word "description" instead of Eagles's 
emanations, Don Juan said that he was not making a metaphor. He said that the 
word "description" connotes a human agreement, and that what we perceive 
stems from a command in which human agreements do not count.

  2.-Attention is what makes us perceive the Eagle's emanations as the action 
of skimming.

  Don Juan used to say that perception is a physical faculty that living 
creatures groom; the final result of this grooming is known, among seers, as 
"attention". Don Juan described attention as the action of hooking and 
channeling perception. He said that this action is our most singular feat, 
which covers all the spectrum of human alternatives and possibilities. Don 
Juan established a precise distinction between alternatives and 
possibilities. Human alternatives are those that we are enabled to choose as 
persons who function within the social environment. Our landscape of this 
dominion is quite limited. Human possibilities are those that we are capable 
of achieving as luminous beings.
  Don Juan revealed to me a classificatory scheme of three types of 
attention, emphasizing that calling them "types" was erroneous. In fact, they 
are three levels of knowledge: first, second and third attention; each one of 
them an independent dominion, complete in itself.
  For a warrior that is in the initial stages of his learning, the first 
attention is the most important of the three. Don Juan said that his 
explanatory propositions were attempts to bring into first frame the way in 
which the first attention works, something that passes completely unadverted 
to us. He considered imperative for warriors to understand the nature of the 
first attention if they were going to venture into the other two.
  He explained to me that the first attention has been taught how to move 
instantly through a whole spectrum of the Eagle's emanations, without 
emphasizing at all that fact, in order to reach "perceptual units" which all 
of us have learned that are perceivable. Seers call this feat "skimming", 
because it implies the capability of suppressing those emanations which are 
superfluous and selecting which of them must be emphasized.
  Don Juan explained this process taking as an example the mountain that we 
were seeing at that moment. He stressed that my first attention, at the 
moment of seeing the mountain, had skimmed an infinite number of emanations 
to obtain a miracle of perception; a skimming that all human beings know 
because each one of them has attained it by himself.
  Seers contend that everything the first attention suppresses to obtain a 
skimming, cannot be recovered anymore by the first attention under any 
condition. Once we learn to perceive in terms of skimmings, our senses stop 
registering the superfluous emanations. To dillucidate this point he gave me 
the example of the skimming: "human body". He said that our first attention 
is totally unconscious of the emanations that compose the external luminous 
shield of the physical body. Our oval cocoon is not subjected to perception; 
those emanations have been rejected which would make it perceivable in 
benefit of those which allow the first attention to perceive the physical 
body such as we know it.
  Therefore, the perceptual goal that children must achieve as they grow up 
consists in learning to isolate the appropriate emanations to be able to 
channel their chaotic perception and transform it into the first attention; 
in doing so, they learn how to build skimmings. All grown up human beings who 
surround children teach them how to skim. Sooner or later, children learn to 
control their first attention in order to perceive skimmings in terms which 
are alike to those of their teachers.
  Don Juan never ceased to be amazed at the capability of human beings to 
bring order into the chaos of perception. He contended that all of us, by 
his/her own merits, is a magistral magician and that our magic consists in 
rendering reality to the skimmings that our first attention has learned how 
to build. The fact that we perceive in terms of skimmings is the Eagle's 
command, but to perceive the commands as objects is our power, our magical 
gift. Our fallacy, on the other hand, is that we always end up being 
one-sided when forgetting that skimmings are only real in terms that we 
perceive them as real, due to the power that we have to do it. Don Juan 
called this an error in judgment which destroys the richness of our 
mysterious origins.

  3.- The skimmings are made sense of by the first ring of power.

  Don Juan used to say that the first ring of power is the force that stems 
from the Eagle's emanations to affect exclusively our first attention. He 
explained that it has been represented as a "ring " because of its dynamism, 
of its uninterrupted movement. It has been called ring "of power" due to, 
first, its compulsive character, and, second, because of its unique ability 
to stop its works, to change them or reverse their direction.
  The compulsive character is better shown in the fact that it doesn't only 
urge the first attention to build and perpetuate skimmings, but it also 
demands a consensus from all the participants. Each one of us is demanded a 
complete agreement upon the faithful reproduction of skimmings, since 
conformity to the first ring of power must be total.
  It is precisely this conformity which gives us the certainty that skimmings 
are objects which exist as such, independent from our perception. Besides, 
the compulsiveness of the first ring of power does not cease after the 
initial agreement, but it demands that we continuously renovate the 
agreement. Our whole life we must operate as if, for example, each one of our 
skimmings was perceptually the first one for each human being, in spite of 
languages and cultures. Don Juan granted that even if all this is too serious 
to be taken jokingly, the urging character of the first ring of power is so 
intense that forces us to believe that if the "mountain" could have an 
awareness of its own, it would consider itself as the skimming that we have 
learned how to build.
  The most valuable feature that the first ring of power bears to a warrior 
is the singular capability of interrupting its flux of energy, or to totally 
suspend it. Don Juan said that this is a latent capability which exists 
within us all as a backup unit. In our narrow world of skimmings, there is no 
need to use it. Since we are so efficiently buttressed and shielded by the 
net of the first attention, we do not realize, not even vaguely, that we have 
hidden resources. However, if another alternative to follow would present 
itself to us, such as is the warrior's option to use the second attention, 
the latent capability of the first ring of power could start to function and 
could be used with spectacular results.
  Don Juan underlined that the biggest feat of sorcerers is the process of 
activating this latent capability; he called it blocking the intent of the 
first ring of power. He explained to me that the Eagle's emanations, which 
have already been isolated by the first attention in order to build the 
everyday world, exert an unbending pressure upon the first attention. For 
this pressure to stop its activity, the intent must be displaced. Seers call 
this an obstruction or an interruption of the first ring of power.

  4.- Intent is the force that moves the first ring of power.

  Don Juan explained to me that intent doesn't refer to have an intention, or 
to want one thing or the other, but rather has to do with an imponderable 
force that makes us behave in ways which could be described as intentions, 
wishing, volition, etc. Don Juan didn't bring it forth as a condition of 
being, stemming from oneself, such as is a habit produced by socialization, 
or a biological reaction, but rather brought it forth as a private, intimate 
force that we possess and use individually as a key that makes the first ring 
of power move in acceptable ways. Intent is what directs our first attention 
in order for it to focus on the Eagle's emanations within a certain frame. 
And intent is also what commands the first ring of power to obstruct or 
interrupt its flux of energy.
  Don Juan suggested me to conceive intent as an invisible force which exists 
in the universe, without receiving itself, but still affecting everything: 
force that creates and sustains skimmings.
  He asserted that skimmings must be incessantly recreated to be imbued with 
continuity. In order to recreate them each time with the freshness that they 
need to build a living world, we must intend them each time we build them. 
For instance, we must intend the "mountain" along with all its complexities 
for the skimming to be fully materialized. Don Juan said that, for a 
spectator, who behaves exclusively based upon the first attention without the 
intervention of intent, the "mountain" would appear as an entirely different 
skimming. It could appear as the skimming "geometric form" or "amorphous spot 
of color". For the skimming mountain to be completed, the spectator must 
intend it, whether it is unconsciously through the urging force of the first 
ring of power, or premeditatedly, through the warrior's training.
  Don Juan pointed to me the three ways in which intent comes to us. The most 
predominating one is known by seers as "the intent of the first ring of 
power". This is a blind intent which comes to us by chance. It is as if we 
were in its way, or as if intent was in ours. Inevitably we find ourselves 
trapped in its net without having the least control of what is happening to 
us.
  The second way is when intent comes to us by its own. This requires a 
considerable amount of purpose, a sense of determination on our part. Only in 
our capability as warriors we can put ourselves voluntarily in the way of 
intent; we summon it, so to speak. Don Juan explained to me that his 
insistence in being an impeccable warrior was nothing more than an effort to 
let intent know that he is putting himself in its way.
  Don Juan used to say that warriors call this phenomenon "power".  Thus when 
they speak of having personal power, they are referring to the intent that 
comes to them voluntarily. The outcome, he used to say to me, can be 
described as the facility to find new solutions, or the facility to affect 
people or events. It is as if other possibilities, previously unknown by the 
warrior, suddenly become apparent. In this way, an impeccable warrior never 
plans anything ahead, but his actions are so decisive that it seems as if the 
warrior had calculated beforehand each facet of his activity.
  The third way in which we find intent is the most rare and complex of the 
three; it occurs when intent allows us to harmonize with it. Don Juan 
described this state as the real moment of power: the culmination of a 
lifetime effort in search of impeccability. Only supreme warriors obtain it, 
and as long as they are in such state, intent lets itself be handled by them 
at will. It is as if intent had fused in those warriors, and in doing so it 
transforms them into a pure force, without preconceptions. Seers call this 
state the "intent of the second ring of power", or "will".

  5.- The first ring of power can be stopped by a functional blocking of the 
capability of building skimmings.

  Don Juan used to say that the function of the not-doings is to create an 
obstruction in the usual focus of out first attention. The not-doings are, in 
this sense, maneuvers destined to prepare the first attention for the 
functional blocking of the first ring of power, or, in other words, for the 
interruption of intent.
  Don Juan explained to me that this functional blocking, which is the only 
method to systematically use the latent capability of the first ring of 
power, represents a temporal interruption that the benefactor creates in the 
disciple's capability for building skimmings. It is a premeditated and 
powerful artificial intrusion into the first attention, in order to push it 
beyond the appearances which the known skimmings present to us; this 
intrusion is accomplished by interrupting the intent of the first ring of 
power.
  Don Juan used to say that in order to achieve this interruption, the 
benefactor treats intent as what it really is, a flux, a current of energy 
that can eventually be stopped or reoriented. An interruption of this nature, 
however, implies a commotion of such magnitude that can force the first ring 
of power to stop fully; a situation which is impossible to conceive under our 
normal life conditions. It is unthinkable to us that we can un-walk the steps 
we took when we consolidated our perception, but it is feasible that under 
the impact of this interruption we could place ourselves in a perceptual 
position very similar to the one of our beginnings, when the Eagle's commands 
were emanations which we still had not imbued with significance.
  Don Juan used to say that any procedure the benefactor could use to create 
this interruption must be intimately linked with his personal power. 
Therefore, a benefactor doesn't use any process to handle intent, but rather 
moves it and makes it available to the apprentice trough his personal power.
  In my case, Don Juan achieved the functional blocking of the first ring of 
power through a complex process, which combined three methods: the ingestion 
of hallucinogenic plants, manipulation of the body and maneuvering with 
intent itself.
  In the beginning Don Juan relied strongly upon the ingestion of 
hallucinogenic plants, apparently due to the persistence of my rational side. 
The effect was tremendous, and yet retarded the sought for interruption. The 
fact that the plants were hallucinogenic offered my reason the perfect 
justification to congregate all of its available resources to continue 
exerting control. I was convinced that I could logically explain anything 
that I was experiencing, along with the inconceivable feats that Don Juan and 
Don Genaro used to do to create the interruptions, as perceptual distortions 
caused by the ingestion of hallucinogenics.
  Don Juan used to say that the most remarkable effect of hallucinogenic 
plants was something that every time I ingested them I interpreted as the 
peculiar feeling that everything around me oozed a surprising richness. There 
were colors, forms, details that I had never beheld before. Don Juan used 
this increment in my ability to perceive, and, through a series of commands 
and comments used to force me to enter a state of nervous restlessness. 
Afterwards he manipulated my body and made me shift from one side of 
awareness to the other, until I had created phantasmagorical visions or 
absolutely real scenes with tridimensional creatures that could not possibly 
exist in this world.
  Don Juan explained to me that once the direct relation between intent and 
the skimmings we are constructing is broken, it cannot ever be repaired. From 
that moment on we acquire the ability to catch a current of what he described 
as "phantom intent", or the intent of the skimmings which are not present at 
the moment or place of the interruption, this is to say, an intent put at our 
disposal through some aspect of memory.
  Don Juan asserted that with the interruption of the intent of the first 
ring of power we become receptive and moldable; a nagual can then introduce 
the intent of the second ring of power. Don Juan was convinced that children 
of a certain age find themselves in a similar situation of receptivity; being 
deprived of intent, they are ready to be imprinted with any intent which is 
available to the teachers who surround them.
  After my period of continuos ingestion of hallucinogenic plants, Don Juan 
totally discontinuated its use. However, he obtained new and more dramatic 
interruptions in myself manipulating my body and making me shift states of 
awareness, combining all this with maneuvers with intent itself. Through a 
combination of mesmerizing instructions and adequate comments, Don Juan 
created a current of  "phantom intent" and I was lead to experience common 
skimmings as something unimaginable. He conceptualized all this as "glancing 
into the immensity of the Eagle".
  Don Juan masterfully lead me through countless interruptions of intent 
until he was convinced, as a seer, that my body showed the effects of the 
functional blocking of the first ring of power. He said that he could see a 
unusual activity around the area of the shoulder blades. He described it as a 
little hole that had formed exactly as if the luminosity was a muscular layer 
contracted by a nerve.
  To me, the effect of the functional blocking of the first ring of power was 
that it managed to erase the certainty which I had all my life that what my 
senses reported was "real". Quietly I entered a state of inner silence. Don 
Juan used to say that what gives warriors that extreme uncertainty that his 
benefactor had experienced at the end of his life, that resignation to 
failure that he himself was living, is the fact that one glance into the 
immensity of the Eagle leaves one without hope. Hope is the result of our 
familiarity with skimmings and the idea that we control them. In such moments 
only the warrior's life can help us to persevere in our efforts to discover 
that which the Eagle has concealed from us, but without hope that we can get 
to understand what we discover.

  6.- The second attention.

  Don Juan explained to me that the examination of the second attention must 
begin with the realization that the force of the first ring of power, which 
boxes us in, is a physical, concrete edge. Seers have described it as a wall 
of fog, a barrier that can be systematically brought to our awareness by 
means of the blocking of  the first ring of power; and then can be perforated 
by means of the warrior's training.
  After perforating this wall of fog, one enters a broad intermediate state. 
The task of the warriors then consists in going through it until they reach 
the next divisory line, which must be perforated in order to enter what it is 
properly the other self or the second attention.
  Don Juan used to say that the two divisory lines are perfectly 
recognizable. When warriors perforate the wall of fog they feel that their 
bodies are squeezed, or they feel an intense shaking in the cavity of their 
bodies, generally to the right of the stomach or through the middle part, 
from right to left. When warriors perforate the second line, they feel an 
acute crack on the upper part of the body, something like the sound of a dry 
bough that is broken in two.
  The two lines that box in both attentions, and individually seal them, are 
known to seers as the parallel lines. These seal both attentions by means of 
the fact that they extend into infinity, without ever allowing the crossing 
unless they are perforated.
  Between both lines there exists an area of specific awareness that seers 
call limbo, or the world between the parallel lines. It is a real space 
between two huge orders of the Eagle's emanations; emanations which are 
within the human possibilities of awareness. One is the level which creates 
the self of everyday life, and the other is the level which creates the other 
self. Since the limbo is a transitional zone, there both fields of emanations 
extend one upon the other. The fraction of the level which is known to us, 
that extends into that area, hooks a portion of the first ring of power; and 
the capability of the first ring of power to build skimmings makes us 
perceive a series of skimmings in the limbo which are almost as those of 
everyday life, except that they appear grotesque, uncanny and contorted. In 
this manner the limbo has specific features that do not change arbitrarily 
each time that one goes into it. There exist in it physical features which 
resemble the skimmings of everyday life.
  Don Juan sustained that the feeling of heaviness experienced in the limbo 
is due to the growing burden that has been placed on the first attention. In 
the area located right behind the wall of fog we can still behave as we do 
normally; it is as if we were in a grotesque but recognizable world. As we 
penetrate further into it, beyond the wall of fog, it becomes progressively 
difficult to recognize the features or to behave in terms of the known self.
  He explained to me that it was possible to make that instead of the wall of 
fog anything else appeared, but that seers have opted for accentuating that 
which consumes less energy: to visualize the wall of fog does not demand any 
effort.
  What exists beyond the second divisory line is known by seers as the second 
attention, or the other self, or the parallel world; and the action of going 
through both edges is known as "crossing the parallel lines".
  Don Juan thought that I could assimilate this concept more firmly if he 
described each dominion of awareness as a specific perceptual predisposition. 
He told me that in the territory of everyday awareness we are inescapably 
entangled into the specific perceptual predisposition of the first attention. 
 From the moment in which the first ring of power begins to build skimmings, 
the way of building them becomes our normal perceptual predisposition. 
Breaking the unifying force of the first attention implies to break the first 
divisory line. The normal perceptual predisposition passes then into the 
intermediate area which is between the parallel lines. One keeps building 
almost normal skimmings for some time. But as one approaches what seers call 
the second divisory line, the perceptual predisposition of the first 
attention begins to recede, it loses strength. Don Juan used to say that this 
transition is marked by a sudden incapability of remembering or understanding 
what one is doing.
  When one gets closer to the second divisory line, the second attention 
begins to act on the warriors who undertake the voyage. If they are 
inexperienced, their awareness gets emptied, it goes blank. Don Juan held 
that this occurs because they are approaching a spectrum of the Eagle's 
emanations which has not yet a systematized perceptual predisposition. My 
experiences with la Gorda and the nagual woman beyond the wall of fog were an 
example of this incapability. I traveled as far as the other self, but I 
couldn't account on what we had done for the simple reason that my second 
attention was still unformulated and it did not give me the opportunity of 
formulating all I had perceived.
  Don Juan explained to me that one begins to activate the second ring of 
power by forcing the second attention to wake from its slumber. The 
functional blocking of the first ring of power achieves this. Then, the task 
of the teacher consists in recreating the condition which started the first 
ring of power, the condition of being saturated with intent. The first ring 
of power is put in motion by the force of the intent given by those who teach 
how to skim. As my teacher he was giving me, then, a new intent which would 
create a new perceptual environment.
  Don Juan said that it takes a lifetime of unceasing discipline, which seers 
call unbending intent, to prepare the second ring of power to be able to 
build skimmings which belong to another level of the Eagle's emanations. To 
dominate the perceptual predisposition of the parallel self is a feat of 
peerless value which few warriors achieve. Silvio Manuel was one of those few.
  Don Juan warned me that one must not attempt to deliberately dominate it. 
If this happens, it must be through a natural process which unfolds itself 
without much effort from our part. He explained to me that the reason for 
this indifference lies on the practical consideration that when it is 
dominated it simply becomes very difficult to break, since the goal that 
warriors actively pursuit is to break both perceptual predispositions to 
enter the final freedom of the third attention.