"Castaneda, Carlos - Don Juan 05 - The Second Ring of Power" - читать интересную книгу автора (Castaneda Carlos)

6
The Second Attention



Preface

A flat, barren mountaintop on the western slopes of the Sierra
Madre in central Mexico was the setting for my final meeting
with don Juan and don Genaro and their other two appren-
tices, Pablito and Nestor. The solemnity and the scope of
what took place there left no doubt in my mind that our ap-
prenticeships had come to their concluding moment, and that
I was indeed seeing don Juan and don Genaro for the last time.
Toward the end we all said good-bye to one another, and then
Pablito and I jumped together from the top of the mountain
into an abyss.

Prior to that jump don Juan had presented a fundamental
principle for all that was going to happen to me. According
to him, upon jumping into the abyss I was going to become
pure perception and move back and forth between the two
inherent realms of all creation, the tonal and the nagual.

In my jump my perception went through seventeen elastic
bounces between the tonal and the nagual. In my moves into
the nagual I perceived my body disintegrating. I could not
think or feel in the coherent, unifying sense that I ordi-
narily do, but I somehow thought and felt. In my moves
into the tonal I burst into unity. I was whole. My perception
had coherence. I had visions of order. Their compelling
force was so intense, their vividness so real and their complex-
ity so vast that I have not been capable of explaining them to
my satisfaction. To say that they were visions, vivid dreams
or even hallucinations does not say anything to clarify their
nature.

After having examined and analyzed in a most thorough and
careful manner my feelings, perceptions and interpretations
of that jump into the abyss, I had come to the point where I
could not rationally believe that it had actually happened. And
yet another part of me held on steadfast to the feeling that it
did happen, that I did jump.

Don Juan and don Genaro are no longer available and their
absence has created in me a most pressing need, the need to
make headway in the midst of apparently insoluble contra-
dictions.