Carlos had a great ability to turn conversations towards the practical side of things. In spite of the extraordinary sharpness of his intellect, he hated it if conversations sank to the level of mere speculations. I often watched how he in an ingenious but firm manner would unravel the argumentation of the most rigid speakers, confronting them with the topic of results.
In my case, his method for silencing my attacks of rationality consisted of reducing everything to an immediate proposition and, according to him, something not very difficult: The control of dreams.
However, for me dreaming was the hardest aspect of his teaching. First, because I could not distinguish the concept of 'dreaming' from ordinary dreams, which are two totally different things for a sorcerer. Second, because the idea of focusing my attention on sleeping instead of on awakening was contrary to everything that I had learned in my philosophical search.
Both these considerations very quickly made me avoid dreaming, without ever accepting it as an authentic and reachable possibility. Whenever I listened to him talking about it, I was filled with apprehension. And I justified all this by saying to myself that such an irrational topic wasn't even worth the pain of trying to analyze it.
That afternoon he asked how my practice was going. I admitted that my prejudices had prevented me from making a serious decision and, not surprisingly, I had not obtained any positive result.
He commented:
"Maybe you just haven't been lucky. My teacher said that each human being brings his basic inclination with him at birth. Not
everybody can be a good dreamer, some find stalking easier. The important thing is that you insist."
But his words didn't console me. I began explaining to him that my incredulity seemed to be the result of some mental block, implanted in my earliest childhood.
He didn't allow me to finish. Making an imperative gesture with his hand, he replied:
"You have not done enough. If you promise yourself that you will not eat, or pronounce a single word, until you dream, you will see what happens! Something in your interior becomes soft, the dialogue gives in and... kaboom!
"Keep in mind that, for you, dreaming is not just an option, it's something basic. If you don't accomplish it, you cannot continue on the path."
Alarmed by his words, I asked:
"But what do I have to do to achieve it?"
"You must want to do it!" he answered. "It is as simple as that. You are exaggerating the difficulty of this exercise. Dreaming is open to everybody, because to start, it barely requires the minimum of deliberation that is necessary to learn how to type or to drive a car."
I commented that it was very difficult for me to understand how the handling of dreams could take us to internal awakening.
He observed:
"You are confused by the words. When sorcerers speak of dreaming and awakening, the terms don't have anything to do with the physical states you know. I don't have any choice but to use your language, because otherwise you would not understand me at all. But if you don't do your part, and put aside everyday meanings
and try to penetrate the meaning of what I'm telling you, you will never get out of this state of mistrust.
"I can only guarantee you that, once you discard the laziness that prevents you from facing the challenge, and attack dreaming directly and without hesitations, your mental mess will clear up by itself."
I apologized for my stubbornness and asked him to elucidate the meaning of dreaming once more.
Instead of getting involved in a theoretical explanation, which was what I wanted, Carlos gave me an illustration.
"Imagine a confirmed believer, one of those who cannot do anything without requesting permission from his god beforehand. Once he falls asleep, what happens with his convictions, where do they go?"
I didn't know what to answer. He continued:
"They turn off, like the flame of a candle in the wind. When you dream, you are not the owner of yourself. Your visions are isolated bubbles, without connections to each other and without memory of the self. Of course, the force of habit will almost always take you to dreams where you are yourself, but you might be brave or a coward, young or old, man or woman. Truly, you are only an assemblage point which moves at random, nothing personal.
"For the ordinary man, the difference between being awake and dreaming is that in the first state his attention flows with continuity, and in the second it flows in a disordered manner; but in both experiences, the degree of participation from the will is minimal. A person will wake up in the place where, as always, he puts on his personality like a shirt and goes out to fulfill his routine tasks. Upon falling asleep, gets disconnected again, because he doesn't know he can do something else.
"The everyday wakefulness doesn't leave us room to stop and wonder if this world that we are perceiving now is as real as it seems. And the same thing must be said of any ordinary dream; while it lasts, we accept it as an unquestionable fact, we never judge it; or, to put it in more practical terms, we never intend to remember, while inside the dream, some command or agreement made while awake.
"But there is another way of directing attention, and the result of that can neither be called 'dreaming' nor 'awake', because it starts from a deliberate use of intent. What happens there is that we take charge of our awareness, and it is the same whether we are sleeping or awake, because it is something that transcends both states. That is the true awakening, to take charge of our attention!
"The Toltec teachings emphasize dreaming. It doesn't matter how it is described, the result is that the perceptive chaos of an ordinary dream is transformed into a practical space, where we can act intelligently."
"A practical space?"
"That's right. A dreamer can remember himself under any circumstance. He always has a password on hand, a pact he has made with his will, which lets him align with the warrior's intent in a microsecond. He can sustain the vision of his dream, whatever it may be, and return to it as many times as he wants, to explore and analyze it. And better still, within that vision, he can meet other warriors; that is what sorcerers call 'stalking in dreaming'.
"This technique allows us to intend objectives and pursue actions, just as we do in the daily world. We can solve problems and learn things. What you learn there is coherent; it works. Maybe you cannot explain how you received that knowledge, but you won't forget it."
I asked him what kind of knowledge he was talking about. He answered:
"Life is learned by living it. The same happens in dreams, but there we learn how to dream. But those on the path sometimes hit upon other abilities. Don Juan, for example, used to use his dreaming body to look for hidden treasures, buried things from the war. The products of those operations were invested in various things, like petroleum, plantations of tobacco..."
My face must have shown the mixture of astonishment and incredulity I felt, because he exclaimed:
"It is not so extraordinary! We can all carry out similar feats; it is not even difficult to understand how it happens! Imagine somebody teaches you a new language while you sleep; the result is that you learn that language and you can remember it when you wake up. In the same way, if you witness something in that state, like a lost object or an event that is happening somewhere else, you can go and verify it later; if it is just as you dreamt it, then it was a dream.
"Learning in dreaming is a resource much used by sorcerers. I learned much about plants in that way and I still remember all of it.
"Don't underestimate your resources. Everything the spirit has put inside us has a transcendent meaning. It means dreams are there to be used; if it were not so, they would not exist. The techniques I have described to you are not speculations; I have personally checked them out. The art of dreaming is my message to people, but nobody pays any attention!"
When I heard the sad tone of this last observation, I was suddenly struck by the unbearable timidity of my imagination. For years and years, without fail, he had encouraged us to expand our vision, not out of any selfish concern on his part, but for the sheer pleasure of transmitting to us his superior state of awareness. And here I was, wallowing in my second-hand beliefs and my habitual doubts!
I wanted to be on his side in the world. I got up from the bench with the intention of shaking his hand to show my gratitude. I was about to promise him something, but he stopped me.
"Better don't say anything, don't waste your time! Maybe it's not your destiny to be a brilliant flying warrior, but you don't have any excuses. Like everyone, you too are splendidly equipped for dreaming. If you don't get it, it is because you don't want to."