Page:Para leer a Carlos Castaneda.djvu/129

 being a slave of the mind and thoughts that make up a boring and frightening world. The human being is free of perceiving "reality" in many amazing ways, without the mind chains.

At the plaza of Hermosillo, Sonora, Don Juan asks Castaneda to leave his friends and his cozy and sweet world, if he wishes to continue the lessons. He asks his person die, not his body. Don Juan says that these are different things, because essentially the body has very little to do with the person. The body is made of energy and puts ideas others have given us.

Don Juan tells Castaneda a devastating metaphor, which has to do with a dirty and dilapidated hotel they once visited, which he buys with his pointless and boring life he is asked to change.

"—That hotel —don Juan said, pointing at it with his finger—, for me is the true life representation on this earth common persons. If you are lucky or ruthless, you get a room overlooking the street, where you can watch the endless parade of human misery. If you are not as lucky or are not as ruthless, you will have an inside room, with windows overlooking the walls of the adjacent building. Think about spending a lifetime between these two views, envying the street view if you are inside, and envying the wall seen if you are outside, ''tired of watching the street..." C.C.''

THE COGNITION MEASURES

Castaneda writes that since the lessons beginning, Don Juan tried to introduce him to the cognitive Anahuac Toltec world. Don Juan claimed that the way the cognitive process took place between the Toltecs and the occidental was completely different.

Castaneda said that for him, during these moments, cognition was a way to communicate through a particular language. For the Toltec is different, because they perceive the world as an infinite number of energy fields that make up the universe as luminous filaments. The luminous filaments that are in the energy egg, act as an organism.

The common human being, when receiving the world that surrounds them energy stimulus transforms them into ideas. The Toltec perceive the world around them just as energy and free themselves from the slavery of the ideas descriptions. That is why common human beings live their ideas and the Toltec his acts. This is the reason why the Toltec world has no equivalent in the everyday world.

Castaneda tells Don Juan of the excellent impression he had of a professor who was an expert on the cognition phenomenon. Castaneda is captivated by Professor Lorca speech and becomes his devoted pupil. Don Juan tells him that people should not be admired from the distance, because it is the surest way to create mythological beings. Invites him to meet him as a human being and tells him that, if what he says ends up being just words, he is not worth anything.

Don Juan suggests it to go and understand that the Professor already gave everything he could give him. Don Juan says that one of highest Toltec arts is knowing when to withdraw. He said that what distinguished the Toltec from common human beings is that the first know they en-route to death and the latter behave like immortal, that they have all the time in the world to err, get angry and waste time.