The Assemblage Point is a challenging concept to assimilate and understand. The entire picture of the energetic structure of man needs to be accepted and experienced to some degree before this concept can be realized. This is not a subject for the language of debate or intellectual understanding; it is a vivid realization to be internalized and held at an experiential level.

Through different exercises in shifting awareness, Carlos was made to “see” energy and to understand “reality” – as we know it – to be a relatively arbitrary ‘branding’ and coagulation of perceptive trainings that are superimposed on our will, from the moment we are born. This is intended by all who surround us… who have been similarly formed to maintain “reality” in the same way: by their perceptive awareness being forcibly channelled and constrained, to “agree” with the perceived “reality” held by all those in the current cultural milieu.

The Nagual is the teacher who becomes the gateway, the doorway, the intermediate between the world of the “seeker” or apprentice, and the world of the spirit. The Nagual has been described as being “empty” – devoid of ego and the personal self that modern mans attention and devotion is trapped by. The Nagual reflects only the infinite, and is a pure conduit for the commands of the spirit.

The Nagual has been described as a peculiar energetic configuration, of a different structure than the “egg-shaped” luminous bodies of your average man. He is described as a compounded set of 4 luminous quadrants. In this respect, Castaneda was an anomaly: a configuration of 3 compressed luminous spheres, rather than the traditional four.

In the book, The Power of Silence, Don Juan talks about “Silent Knowledge” as a state of awareness that mankind was once anchored in. It was described as a position of the assemblage point that was governed not by reason, but by intent. He went on to say how humanity was now anchored in the place of “reason” – rather than silent knowledge – but that due to our true nature as humans, we still long for the place we have lost, the place of deeper wisdom and knowing the infinity of human potential that is embodied in the expression, “silent knowledge”.

In the book, Tales of Power, Don Juan Matus reveals a significant truth in the roles that he and Don Genaro Flores were playing in Carlos Castaneda’s apprenticeship.  To understand the contrast of these two roles, one must first understand the concepts of first and second attention, and the juxtaposition of tonal and nagual.

In following Don Juan’s teachings through Castaneda’s 4 books – up to and including Tales of Power – one develops the understanding that Juan Matus is the main teacher and benefactor to Carlos.  Genaro is seen as somewhat of an oddity: one who is imbued with the 2nd attention, or permanently trapped in his dreaming body; and in being such an enigma – a constant source of terror and mystery to Carlos (and entertainment to us)!

So, halfway though the 4th book, Juan Matus drops this bombshell on Carlos: no, he is not the “benefactor”, he is a mere teacher – one who is cleaning and preparing the island of the tonal, for the ‘real’ lessons of the nagual himself, who happens to be Don Genaro.

“A man of knowledge is one who has followed truthfully the hardships of learning, a man who has, without rushing or faltering, gone as far as he can in unraveling the secrets of personal power.”

~ Don Juan Matus – from Journey to Ixtlan