...
"So dreaming-awake and heightened awareness are the same?"
More than a question, it was a statement whose meaning escaped me. I shifted in my seat and, pulling my legs under me, sat facing Isidoro Baltazar. The sun outlined his profile. The black curly hair falling over his high forehead, the sculpted cheekbones, the strong nose and chin, and finely chiseled lips gave him a Roman appearance.
"I must be still in heightened awareness," I said, "I never noticed you before."
The car swayed on the road as he threw his head back and laughed.
"You are definitely dreaming-awake," he stated, slapping his thigh. "Don't you remember that I'm short, brown, and homely looking?" I giggled. Not because I agreed with his description but because it was the only thing I remembered him saying in the lecture he gave the day I formally met him.
My merriment was quickly replaced by an odd anxiety. It seemed that months had passed, instead of only two days, since we came to the house of the witches.
"Time passes differently in the sorcerers' world," Isidore Baltazar said as if I had spoken out loud. "And one experiences it differently."
He went on to say that one of the most difficult aspects of his apprenticeship was to deal with sequences of events in terms of time. Often they were all mixed up in his mind; confused images that sank deeper whenever he tried to focus on them.
"Only now, with the nagual's help, do I remember aspects and events of his teachings that took place years ago," he said.
"How does he help you?" I asked. "Does he hypnotize you?"
"He makes me shift levels of awareness," he said. "And when he does, it is not only that I remember past events, but I relive them."
"How does he do that?" I insisted. "I mean, make you shift."
"Until recently I believed that it was accomplished by a sharp pat on my back, between the shoulder blades," he said:
"But now I'm quite certain that his mere presence makes me shift levels of awareness."
"Then he does hypnotize you," I insisted.
He shook his head and said, "Sorcerers are experts at shifting levels of awareness. Some are so adept they can shift the level of awareness of others."
I nodded. Already I had numerous questions, but he gestured for patience.
"Sorcerers," he went on, "make one see that the whole nature of reality is different from what we believe it to be; that is, from what we have been taught it to be. Intellectually, we are willing to tease ourselves with the idea that culture predetermines:
who we are, how we behave, what we are willing to know, or what we are able to feel. But we are not willing to embody this idea; to accept it as a concrete, practical proposition. ''
...
"And the reason for that is that we are not willing to accept that culture also predetermines what we are able to perceive. Sorcery makes us aware of different realities; different possibilities, not only about the world but also about ourselves, to the extent that we no longer are able to believe in even the most solid assumptions about ourselves and our surroundings."
I was surprised that I could absorb his words so easily, when I didn't really understand them.
"A sorcerer is not only aware of different realities," he went on, "but he uses that knowledge in practicalities.
"Sorcerers know- not only intellectually but also practically- that reality, or the world a we know it, consists only of an agreement extracted out of every one of us. That agreement could be made to collapse, since it's only a social phenomenon. And when it collapses, the whole world collapses with it."
Seeing that I couldn't follow his argument, he tried to present it from another angle.
He said that the social world defines perception to us in proportion to its usefulness in guiding us through the complexity of experience in everyday life. The social world sets limits to what we perceive; sets limits to what we are capable of perceiving.
"To a sorcerer, perception can go beyond these agreed-upon parameters," he stressed. "These parameters are constructed and buttressed by words, by language, by thoughts. That is, by agreement."
"And sorcerers don't agree?" I asked tentatively, in an effort to understand his premise. "They do agree," he said, beaming at me, "but their agreement is different. Sorcerers break the normal agreement, not only intellectually but also physically or practically or whatever one wants to call it. Sorcerers collapse the parameters of socially determined perception; and to understand what sorcerers mean by that, one has to become a practitioner. That is, one has to be committed. One has to lend the mind as well as the body.
It has to be a conscious, fearless surrender."
...
Being in dreaming,
Florinda Donner Grau
Post je objavljen 09.07.2015. u 15:54 sati.