“Is it dangerous?”
“And how! Dreaming has to be a very sober affair. No false movement can be afforded. Dreaming is a process of awakening, of gaming control. Our dreaming attention must be systematically exercised, for it is the door to the second attention.”
“What’s the difference between the dreaming attention and the second attention?”
“The second attention is like an ocean, and the dreaming attention is like a river feeding into it. The second attention is the condition of being aware of total worlds, total like our world is total, while the dreaming attention is the condition of being aware of the items of our dreams.”
He heavily stressed that the dreaming attention is the key to every movement in the sorcerers’ world. He said that among the multitude of items in our dreams, there exist real energetic interferences, things that have been put in our dreams extraneously, by an alien force. To be able to find them and follow them is sorcery.
The emphasis he put on those statements was so pronounced that I had to ask him to explain them. He hesitated for a moment before answering.
“Dreams are, if not a door, a hatch into other worlds,” he began. “As such, dreams are a two-way street. Our awareness goes through that hatch into other realms, and those other realms send scouts into our dreams.”
“What are those scouts?”
“Energy charges that get mixed with the items of our normal dreams. They are bursts of foreign energy that come into our dreams, and we interpret them as items familiar or unfamiliar to us.”
“I am sorry, don Juan, but I can’t make heads or tails out of your explanation.”
“You can’t because you’re insisting on thinking about dreams in terms known to you: what occurs to us during sleep. And I am insisting on giving you another version: a hatch into other realms of perception. Through that hatch, currents of unfamiliar energy seep in. Then the mind or the brain or whatever takes those currents of energy and turns them into parts of our dreams.”
He paused, obviously to give my mind time to take in what he was telling me.
“Sorcerers are aware of those currents of foreign energy,” he continued. “They notice them and strive to isolate them from the normal items of their dreams.”
“Why do they isolate them, don Juan?”
“Because they come from other realms. If we follow them to their source, they serve us as guides into areas of such mystery that sorcerers shiver at the mere mention of such a possibility.”
“How do sorcerers isolate them from the normal items of their dreams?”
“By the exercise and control of their dreaming attention. At one moment, our dreaming attention discovers them among the items of a dream and focuses on them, then the total dream collapses, leaving only the foreign energy.”
Art of Dreaming
