The Art of Dreaming Read Online Free PDF Page A

tapping my back gently or forcefully
striking it at the height of my shoulder blades. He explained that with his
blows he displaced my assemblage point. From my experiential position, such
displacements meant that my awareness used to enter into a most disturbing
state of unequaled clarity, a state of superconsciousness, which I enjoyed for
short periods of time and in which I could understand anything with minimal
preambles. It was not quite a pleasing state. Most of the time it was like a
strange dream, so intense that normal awareness paled by comparison.
    Don Juan
justified the indispensability of such a maneuver, saying that in normal
awareness a sorcerer teaches his apprentices basic concepts and procedures and
in the second attention he gives them abstract and detailed explanations.
    Ordinarily,
apprentices do not remember these explanations at all, yet they somehow store
them, faithfully intact, in their memories. Sorcerers have used this seeming
peculiarity of memory and have turned remembering everything that happens to
them in the second attention into one of the most difficult and complex
traditional tasks of sorcery.
    Sorcerers
explain this seeming peculiarity of memory, and the task of remembering, saying
that every time anyone enters into the second attention, the assemblage point
is on a different position. To remember, then, means to relocate the assemblage
point on the exact position it occupied at the time those entrances into the
second attention occurred. Don Juan assured me not only that sorcerers have
total and absolute recall but that they relive every experience they had in the
second attention by this act of returning their assemblage point to each of
those specific positions. He also assured me that sorcerers dedicate a lifetime
to fulfilling this task of remembering.
    In the
second attention, don Juan gave me very detailed explanations of sorcery,
knowing that the accuracy and fidelity of such instruction will remain with me,
faithfully intact, for the duration of my life.
    About this
quality of faithfulness he said, "Learning something in the second
attention is just like learning when we were children. What we learn remains
with us for life. "It's second nature with me," we say when it comes
to something we've learned very early in life."
    Judging
from where I stand today, I realize that don Juan made me enter, as many times
as he could, into the second attention in order to force me to sustain, for
long periods of time, new positions of my assemblage point and to perceive
coherently in them, that is to say, he aimed at forcing me to rearrange my
uniformity and cohesion.
    I succeeded
countless times in perceiving everything as precisely as I perceive in the
daily world. My problem was my incapacity to make a bridge between my actions
in the second attention and my awareness of the daily world. It took a great
deal of effort and time for me to understand what the second attention is. Not
so much because of its intricacy and complexity, which are indeed extreme, but
because, once I was back in my normal awareness, I found it impossible to
remember not only that I had entered into the second attention but that such a
state existed at all.
    Another
monumental breakthrough that the old sorcerers claimed, and that don Juan
carefully explained to me, was to find out that the assemblage point becomes
very easily displaced during sleep. This realization triggered another one:
that dreams are totally associated with that displacement. The old sorcerers saw that the greater the displacement, the more unusual the dream or vice versa:
the more unusual the dream, the greater the displacement. Don Juan said that this
observation led them to devise extravagant techniques to force the displacement
of the assemblage point, such as ingesting plants that can produce altered
states of consciousness; subjecting themselves to states of hunger, fatigue,
and stress; and especially controlling dreams.
    In this
fashion, and