Page:Para leer a Carlos Castaneda.djvu/50

 Therefore, the "witches" explanation is one of the important points in the apprentice path. The explanation is not something that can or should be understood; it is, something that has to be lived, intimately and deeply, with the entire body. To enter this explanation we will say that for the Toltec world consists of energy charges; as a result, every human being is an energy charge, a luminous egg composed of a multiplicity of luminous fibers; this "egg" has two parts: one called tonal call and another nagual, and all the energy available to man is used in sustaining the world —both, of objects and concepts— through his reason.

The tonal has a permanent relationship with the energy charges surrounding him; he sort of turns them into objects and to do so uses all the energy he has; Don Juan also calls this "the first power ring". The apprentice must regroup the elements of the tonal island, for which he will need to change the view of the world he had from birth; to achieve this he needs to "stop the internal dialogue", for example stop using energy in sustaining the world of "objects and concepts" that adjust to our reason.

—What do you mean by clean up and rearrange the tonal island? —I asked—. —I mean the total change of which I have spoken from the first day we met —said—. I have told you countless times that you needed a drastic change if you wanted to succeed in the knowledge path. This change is not a change of mood, attitude, or what one expects in life; this change implies the transformation of the tonal island. You have accomplished that task. C.C.

To achieve this, Don Juan taught Castaneda two techniques or activities: erasing personal history and "reverie". However, points out that these two techniques are noting but support, because what an apprentice needs is sobriety and inner strength that are implicit in the warrior path.

To help erase personal history, the apprentice is taught three other support techniques, these are: losing personal importance, take responsibility and use death as an adviser. And, for "reverie" there are other three support techniques: breaking life routines, the power walk and the "not do". When applying these techniques impeccably in everyday life, the tonal island regroups when clean, the apprentice will learn how to save energy and this will give him a strange power which Don Juan called "will" and its located in the lower part of the navel. The will is the strength or the means by which the warrior can act in the nagual. Don Juan says that witches, when using the will, expand their vision of the world, use a resource that has always been there, but we never learn to use.

Witches explanation says that men live in a bubble, that we were put there the moment of our birth, which was then open, but that gradually closed down. That bubble is the perception and we live inside our entire life and all we find in its walls is a reflection of ourselves; this reflection is "our world vision". This vision description, when we were kids, was given to us by our family and human beings surrounding us, so our entire attention is trapped in it and that description, since adolescence, we transform into "our own vision of the world".

The task of a teacher is to prepare the apprentice to rearrange that vision,