“The difficulty,” says Castaneda, “is to learn to perceive with your whole body, not just with your eyes and reason. The world becomes a stream of tremendously rapid, unique events. So you must trim your body to make it a good receptor.  The body is an awareness, and it must be treated impeccably.”

Seeing is an operation – one of the many steps on the way to knowing the energies that comprise the true self.  In his early apprenticeship, Carlos was inducted into this world by means of hallucinogenic substances.  Later his teachers, Juan Matus and Genaro, beckoned him into this world on his own accord – a exercise in testing his impeccability and his art of “saving energy”, two of the admonishments he was given for the life of a warrior.

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.

Early in Carlos Castaneda’s apprenticeship, Don Juan introduced the basics of the second attention.  This was a state of heightened awareness that was distinct and different than our day-to-day state of mind, which was called the first attention.  Besides being an altered state of awareness and perception, it was also a portal or gateway to other realms; for example the threshold crossed in dreaming.

The first attention, our normal modus operandi, is the way we operate, perceive and navigate in daily life.   This state of being (or more appropriately – “doing”) is arrived at through the complex development and layering of the mind-ego conglomerate, with its attendant programs, scripts, justifications, excuses, self-adoration, criticisms, flaws and patterns.  It’s as though our consciousness was on “auto-pilot” and we careen through life, largely unaware of the true nature of self and world.