What we propose to do in this journal of applied hermeneutics is to take the position delineated by don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian sorcerer from Mexico, and to describe the way ity which he and other sorcerers like himself interpreted the social, historical, psychological, etc., aspects of their world.
We want to at least, let's say, create a critical mass. If a critical mass exists in any kind of endeavor, some kind of change will ensue. We need a critical mass of interested parties that at least take us seriously. And I don't mean seriously as a hobby, I mean seriously as a profound change.
There's many, many meditation techniques that shut off the internal dialog, but that is not enough, that's one thing I would like to say that just to have it quiet inside is fine, but what happens when you go back to work and you're surrounded by people and an angry boss or at home and your children and people are yelling at you? You want to be able to have silence and equanimity and resolve in any situation, so we were always sent back into work situations, into school, academic situations, where we would practice quieting the internal dialog.
The fate of our parents is waiting for us. And we know that; we see it. We can see them get old, ill, lose the clarity, awareness. So sorcerers offer, through their training, an alternative in that they say no, think, grasp for everything that you can possibly be. Don't limit yourself to what you have learned and what your language, your linear mode of thinking says that's all you can be. Because our linear mode, it says it goes from birth and it ends up in death. That's a linear way of thinking, based on our culture. The modality of your day, which is the super-rational, linear and heading for destruction.
A warrior has no self-reflection. S/he can maintain total silence. The "Ethereal man" is a warrior in true silence. In a moment of silence, can reconstruct the world. Our internal dialogue is banality, has nothing to do with life and death. With discipline the warrior is prepared to meet that immensity. "The mind cannot resist persistence." In normal life the fantasy of self-importance helps us fight off the immensity.
It took Don Juan many years to help Carlos bring his energy body in to the point that it was superimposed upon the physical body. Carlos said that who in his lineage would have believed that just in a period of weeks so many people's energy bodies could have returned. He said that the combination of doing the Tensegrity and having his energy body talking directly to our energy bodies caused the reunion. He said that sorcerers teach their students by bypassing the rational mind and talking directly to the energy body. When the energy body unites with the physical body then half the battle is over. Carlos told us that we had become the germination of his lineage. He said that his task was to explode the knowledge of his lineage and it was happening.
Don Juan can pinpoint things. He has the ability to exhaustively laugh at things, and kick one subject until its death. What he lacks is the tragedy of a Western man. By that I mean that most of us are tragic figures, sublime beings grovelling in the mud. Don Juan is not. He's a sublime heing, he told me himself.