Page:Para leer a Carlos Castaneda.djvu/63

 And they are more ferocious than I am. Their bodies are impenetrably closed, are not worried about sex. I am. That weakens me. I am sure that your concern about sex is what makes it so difficult for you to retract your knowledge. The fat lady continued talking about the debilitating sex effects...C.C.

THE QUASI MEMORIES OF THE OTHER SELF

The occidental culture bases its knowledge and superiority in reason; it is a world of ideas, and not feelings. For the Toltecs the world and reality are also perceived with the body. The body registers and stores knowledge; what happens is that we never use that information consciously.

Don Juan teachings, as a result, have much to do with the body. One of his constant concerns about Castaneda was the ill treatment he gave his body and the poor state it was in. With small jokes always pointed to the need of having a "good tonal". Generally occidental philosophy fights its battles in the mind and through reason. Toltequity fought their battles in the apprentice body. Apprentices who follow the warrior path see their bodies transform. The body stamina and strength are samples of the of knowledge path advance.

The “fat lady” tells Castaneda they should wait, that the body should be given an opportunity to find a solution to the "remembering" task, as the warrior does not remember the mind but with the body. Must await for the right time for the body to "discharge" all that it "knows" and has stored. "After hearing my story, Nestor was amazed of how different their reverie was to mine. They had specific reverie tasks. Theirs was to find cures for everything what grieved a human body. Benigno was predicting, anticipating, finding solutions to anything that was a human concern. Pablito challenge was finding ways to build. Nestor said that because of these tasks he negotiated with medicinal plants; Benigno had an Oracle and Pablito was a carpenter…" C.C.  SHIFTING AFFECTION BORDERS

In the knowledge path there is a time in which the warrior must dismiss the world of feelings and emotions that accompanied him throughout his life. The teacher teaches the apprentice to gradually let go, releasing all the things that the apprentice hangs onto; however, there are always a few the apprentice must keep a few, that provide at the required times, happiness and well-being. But when the time comes, also these things must be released. When he no longer lives "hooked" to everyday life feelings, is called "losing the human form".

That is why, since a warrior knows what awaits for him, he wants nothing. While he waits enjoys his eyes with everything he sees in the world; when a warrior "watches" the world, he laughs.

One of the techniques Don Juan taught his apprentices was that they should consider the group as an organism alive. It is common in the Anahuac cultures to exemplify human organizations with some animals. On page 87 of Lopez Austin book Human Body and Ideology, it is written: "in the [Nahua] texts a metaphor appears with which Macehualtin [the people] are designated: 'the tail, the wing'; as if the toltecáyotl was a large eagle in which commoners had the sustainment