In Carlos Castaneda‘s system, perception is the key to ordinary magic. Our perception is not the sum of the impressions received by our five senses, as one usually thinks. In the vision of the sorcerers, we perceive the world through a small luminous point, a sort of photographic objective – or rather a cursor, as we shall see.
The AP Bowl
This luminous spot is called the assembly point (AP). Through this precise point, we assemble the ordinary world. The reality of this or that world depends only on the position of the assembly point. The assembly point is located somewhere in our brightness, ie that of our aura. According to Castaneda and his mentor Don Juan Matus, the assembly point is on our back, 20cm behind the right scapula. This is the standard position adopted by virtually all present humanity.
We all perceive the same world because our assembly point at all is located rigorously in the same location. By force, a kind of small cuvette has hollowed out in the luminosity, which prevents the point of assembly to change position. This has not always been the case. In our aura, in what nagualism calls our luminosity, there is room for billions of different positions for the point of assembly. Each of these positions corresponds to another world. Two questions arise: Why are we all tuned to the same assembly point? And first, what is the assembly point?
For nagualism, the human being can evolve in five planes and in an infinity of universes, parallel or not. By dint of intention, the Spirit touched you. Your assembly point is out of its housing, it walks around the small bowl dug in your brightness. An accomplished wizard no longer has a bowl, he controls the smallest displacements of his assembly point, which allows him to change physical and psychic form.
Devic and the AP
The bowl in the brightness is a real inconvenience for the inner fluidity of the warrior. It opposes the precision of the AP displacements, it can also fix it firmly if it is deeply dug. An accomplished sorcerer no longer has a bowl, he controls the smallest movements of his assembly point, which allows him to change physical and psychic form. Silvio Manuel, one of the sorcerers of the clan of Juan Matus, gives a perfect example. A total fluidity allowed him to become invisible in his darkened home.
My friend Devic has worked on this all his life. He’s had some great successes. Once, on a dam of the Val Sans RetourNo return Vale in Brocéliande, he made invisible a group of five warriors. The walkers passed close enough to touch us, without noticing us. As if we didn’t exist. Invisible! The five of us were frozen. The first surprise passed, we played the game. Silence, stillness, permeability. People were literally going through us. When I think back, I think that we could have danced a jig or a nasturtium, there was more bread in our house and they wouldn’t have paid any more attention to us.
Hell of a Devic! Stealthily he could move the AP of several warriors with a remarkable set and precision. The APs moved in the same movement, in the same direction. Thus he exercised almost total control over the astral voyage of small groups. He had trained in group dynamics at the Boy Scouts, then in a theatre group that he had founded and which brought together a good sixty teenagers. As a matter of fact, Scouting and theatre have close links with the nagual.
First Outing
Thanks to practice, or not — you have awakened. Death was not the rendezvous, but life. In its luminosity, the small basin is almost leveled, forming a protuberance where once there was a hollow, and on this protuberance glides the assembly point in uncontrolled movements. This gives you a disagreeable sensation of blurry, incomplete moving. You feel tossed by an uncontrolled fluctuation. Everything is moving, streaked with waves, everything is undulatory and the most minute vibrations are infinitely perceptible to you. In your relations with the normal world, you feel foreign. An unusual distance widens his gap between you and your old world. A new continuity, fragile, began for you. The old is lurking in the shade.
You sometimes have clear ideas – surprisingly clear and precise. Trap of certainties! Invaded by this superhuman clarity, remember that she is the first enemy of the warrior. Immediate knowledge is not a feat, it is only a step. Do not attach importance to it. Soon the powers will come to you. Receive them in indifference, do not identify with them. You experience the first conquest on the path, implacability. Sorcerers call this state of consciousness the place without pity. This pleasant state does not last, you renew too quickly with your inner dizziness.
The reign of confusion
Confusion takes years to dissipate. Our world is an absolute source of confusion. It benefits materialists. It discredits any effort of the mind. Be really stupid, veautez,see the quote that follows sheep on the ski and the beach, swallow the flies and fake news, consume more useless shit, forget your divine origin. Forget your innate magic. Forget why you are in the world.
If the vote had been of any use, it would have been prohibited a long time ago.
So we all have this opaque layer lining the bottom of the bowl. If the AP stays there, this fog causes confusion in his mind. The warrior, through daily effort and constant discipline, develops the mobility of his AP. He can therefore leave the zone of confusion. At the same time, it leaves reason, since the AP of today’s humanity is strictly located there. This implies that the most rational beings are the least able to awaken.
You wake up, you know that. The clarity that floods you at times gives you joy, an inner fullness that contrasts with the emptiness of your head. Now you no longer think, you are thought. But active thought. Spirit on the move, consciousness on the fly.
A New Reality
Welcome to your ordinary magic. With it begins your new continuity, which has nothing to do with the one in which you have lived so far. Magical journeys with the sorcerer miss you less and less, because you can live them alone, they have become your daily bread.
Yesterday’s reality is dead. Your new reality shines with a thousand lights that dazzle you. Temper its brilliance. Trivialize. With humility, acknowledge your weakness. Neither you nor anything has the slightest importance. What are you risking, if not your life? Defense of marking, you must trivialize.
Like the cowardice, enthusiasm is inappropriate. It exposes yourself to the hardest disappointments. To marvel at everything betrays a lack of moderation. The second step is to acquire it. Tempered by temperance, implacability will allow you to go beyond the blurred period to learn to direct yourself into that immensity out there.
Did I say outside? It’s in there… too. That’s where immensity starts. And if you want to find the door, visualize your AP. Be interested in that bright spot behind your back. That flashing star in your brightness, in your aura. The door is in it. Your personal spaceship to explore inner space, which is also outer space.
The Doors are so called in reference to this quote…
