Page:Para leer a Carlos Castaneda.djvu/69

 unsupported narratives." (Vol. 1, PP. 173).

Oral tradition describes the Toltec not as a culture but as men of knowledge, as wise and knowledge generators. Their great teacher was Quetzalcoatl, common in ancient Mexico, the center from which Toltecáyotl departed, was the city of Teotihuacán.

Laurette Séjourné, in her superb book "Thought and Religion in Ancient Mexico", tells us: ''"Teotihuacan sank its roots in a fragmented universe of archaic times, only the vision of the spirit vastness of the divine spark which bequeaths and harmonizes, could generate the active power that presided over the founding of the city built to the glory of the Feathered Serpent that is the conscious man. [... ] Thus, far from implying coarse polytheistic beliefs, the Teotihuacan term evokes the concept of human divinity and points out that the city of the gods was not other than the site where the snake miraculously learned to fly, that is, where the individual reached a celestial category from internal elevation." ''

Don Juan claimed to be Toltec cultural heir and supposedly was born in Arizona, rom Yuma and Yaqui descent. Don Juan divided consciousness into three parts. The first and smallest part he called "first attention"; this awareness is "common", that we all have and whit which we face the everyday world, and is related to the physical body consciousness. The following consciousness part, much larger in size, he called the "second attention", and is what men perceives as a luminous cocoon, the world as energy, and that allows us to act as "luminous beings". The second attention always stays in the "back" of our consciousness and comes out through directed and disciplined work, or by means of an accidental trauma that can trigger it into operation. The third attention, which is the last part and the largest in size, is consciousness of the physical and luminous bodies.

The first attention forces to perceive the energy world a world of ideas and objects, but in reality, we are beings capable of becoming aware of our luminosity (second attention) and through Toltequity could attempt penetrating the third attention. In fact all men before dying get "full" of their totality, to immediately enter the third attention and being "devoured by the Eagle".

Toltequity proposes, through its teachings, reaching self-totality, and before dying, entering at "will" the third attention, but without losing self-consciousness (without being devoured by the Eagle, receiving the eagle’s gift).

It is important to note that Don Juan tells Castaneda that the origin and purpose of the Toltequity or witchcraft lies in the human body. For this reason, the body divided it into two parts: the tonal or right part, which contains everything that the reason or intellect is capable of creating or designing. The left side, or nagual, is indescribable, something inexplicable with words; perhaps only "understand", if this involves the whole body ability to know.

Don Juan said that the apprentice shifting between the left and right sides allows him to understand that the right side is slow and spends much energy for life continuation; while the left side is inherent to energy and speed economy. The precise ability to perceive everything in an instant and at once, Don Juan called it INTENSITY.