dreamer said:
You can read about a mirror in "The Fire From Within", chapter 6: Inorganic Beings.
An ally is an inorganic being. I think the ally that contacted Carlos was a STS being. Throughout the books he tells how many of them want to steal his luminosity. In the text of "The Fire From Within":
" He asserted that just because he had different views did not mean the old seers' practices were invalid. Their interpretations were wrong, but their truths had practical value for them.
In the instance of the water practices, they were convinced that it was humanly possible to be transported bodily by the fluidity of water anywhere between
this level of ours and the other seven levels below; or to be transported in essence anywhere on this level, along the watercourse of a river in either direction. They used, accordingly, running water to be transported on this level of ours and the water of deep lakes or that of waterholes to be transported to the depths.
"What they pursued with the technique I'm showing you was twofold," he went on. "On the one hand, they used the fluidity of the water to be transported to the first level below. On the other, they used it to have a face-to-face meeting with a living being from that first level. The headlike shape in the mirror was one of those creatures that came to look us over."
"So, they really exist!" I exclaimed.
"They certainly do," he retorted.
Another way of knowing other realities and non ordinary beings is through the dream.
In the book "The Wheel of Time" Carlos Castaneda says: "Don Juan told me: You will not be complete until you are able to receive orders from a woman without detriment of your being. But that woman can not be any ordinary woman. It must be someone special, someone who has power and is ruthless enough to prevent you from being the boss you imagine yourself to be. "
Carlos on his path to becoming Nagual received the knowledge of several women like the "hermanitas": Rosa, Lydia, Josefina and Elena whom they called la Gorda (Fat). It was they who taught him the "art of the dreamer".
The art of the dreamer is to preserve the image of the dream, to retain the image of what we see, not only to look but to preserve the image and to interact in the dream.
In the book "The second ring of power" Carlos relates the initiation in charge of the sisters:
La Gorda said: Genaro told me that he has tried innumerable times to make you know the art of the dreamer. He displayed before him his other body: that of dreaming, and an occasion made you to be in two places simultaneously, but your emptiness did not allow you to SEE what he indicated. Apparently, all your efforts escape through the hole you have in your center ...
(Note: Previously Lidia had said that Carlos had a hole caused by a woman and that it had emptied him. Don Juan said that men do not know who has emptied them, not so women who know for certain: a woman, a man or a child, thus a complete person has either closed his hole or has no children, while an incomplete person has children or has not closed his hole)
"The Nagual [Don Juan] taught us, you and me, to be dispassionate. I am more dispassionate than you because I lack form. You still have it and you are empty. I mean, you have all sorts of problems. Someday, however, you will be full again ...
(Note: Don Juan talked about changing habits, breaking routines, erasing history and personal importance ... etc. "Not an apex is changed as long as the human form is preserved ... men and women must be impeccable in their effort to change, in order to frighten the human form ... " said Don Juan)
Carlos began calling the allies by means of a sound that he called "the call of the moths" that seems to have been the beginning or the jump to a state of non ordinary reality that affected both Carlos and the little sisters.
Then Lidia, Rosa and Josefina performed a kind of dance, spinning around a table and then collapsing and dragging it to a chamber or room that belonged to la Gorda.
Carlos describes the situation:
The three sisters lay in the center of a broad, white, square body with a brick floor. There were four oil lamps, one on each wall, placed on recessed shelves about two meters off the ground. The ceiling beams had been darkened and the effect was that of a huge place ... I noticed that the walls corresponded in their orientation with the cardinal points.
Lidia, Rosa, and Josefina walked around the room several times, rolling in the opposite direction of the clock ... Finally, the little sisters stopped to sit with their backs against the wall, each under a lamp. Lydia stuck to the east wall, Rosa to the north and Josefina to the west ... La Gorda returned to the south wall.
Carlos called again to the allies thus initiating another jump to a state of non-ordinary reality, perceived their bodies as lumps in the air without sensory reference points, a situation that caused him to lose his balance and fall to the ground causing him great pain. La Gorda woke him up but the five of them were now on a rocky, arid hill "about a mile east of the house." Carlos's reason dictated that the little sisters had taken him there, taking advantage of his unconsciousness while intuition told him another thing. "I was almost in a position of attentive observer, before the struggle of my reason to give with logical foundations, whereas a part of my person lacked interest to explain nothing" wrote Carlos ... the five returned walking home.
Carlos later recalled that he saw the little sisters enter the crack that separates the worlds, and grab hold of the lines or fibers of the world. The reason he had lost his balance at the end of his exhibition was because he had seen them as dizzying lights that tugged at the navel.
Carlos had not remembered this when he finished the dream because he
worried about looking not for remembering what he saw. La Gorda said to him:
"The Nagual said that we could all see and choose, however, not having memory of what was seen. Now I understand how right he was.
We are all able to see: some more than others.
Dreaming and remembering what you see develops attention. The art of the dreamer is the art of attention.
This is what differentiates man from knowledge of the ordinary man: Ordinary people only perceive the "attention of the tonal," that is, the capacity to perceive and place the consciousness in the ordinary world of everyday life. This is the first ring of power, while the "attention of the nagual" is the capacity of the man of knowledge to situate his consciousness in the nonordinary world or the second ring of power.
