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The Tenant

Ancient Cycle, Authors, Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming, Uncategorized / By Carlos Castaneda / 32 minutes of reading

Don Juan informs Castaneda that his formal dreaming instruction is ending, but before it does, the spirit dictates that he must be told about the fourth gate of dreaming. This gate concerns the energy body’s ability to travel to concrete places, either in this world, out of this world, or to places existing only in another’s intent. For a final lesson, don Juan takes Castaneda to the plaza of a small Mexican town, a place historically connected to the sorcerers of antiquity. There, he reveals that Castaneda is destined to meet the “tenant,” the ancient death-defier who has been giving “gifts of power” to the naguals of don Juan’s line for centuries. Overcoming extreme fear, Castaneda is led to the local church where don Juan points out the tenant—who appears as an unassuming woman. Castaneda bolts in terror, shocked by the revelation. Don Juan explains that for such a sorcerer, gender is a matter of choice, a result of manipulating the assemblage point, and that this is the first part of his lesson. After being goaded by don Juan and the dreaming emissary, Castaneda agrees to face his unavoidable appointment.

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The Woman in the Church

Ancient Cycle, Authors, Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming, Uncategorized / By Carlos Castaneda / 33 minutes of reading

After being overcome with fear, Castaneda is led back to the church by don Juan to finally meet the death defier. He finds himself kneeling next to the mysterious sorcerer, who now appears as a dark, alluring Indian woman between thirty-five and forty years old. Her strangely familiar, raspy voice mesmerizes him. Overcoming his fear, he offers her his energy as a gift but refuses any “gift of power” in return. She explains that she cannot take it for free and must make a payment. She then induces a shift in his awareness, plunging him into the second attention where the church appears as it did in a much earlier time. She reveals that this is not the past, but her *intent*—a fully materialized dream of the past that he is now a part of. She explains this is the mystery of the fourth gate of dreaming: traveling to places that exist only in someone else’s intent. She also reveals the proper way to see energy in a dream is to point with the little finger, a trick don Juan had withheld as a joke at her expense. After a walk through her dream town, she pulls Castaneda into a second dream—her intent of the present-day town—which feels completely real, though nothing in it generates energy except for her. The experience ends when he feels himself pulled into a black, spinning vortex.

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Flying on the Wings of Intent

Ancient Cycle, Authors, Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming, Uncategorized / By Carlos Castaneda / 31 minutes of reading

This chapter details Castaneda’s climactic encounter with the death defier. After a period of emotional turmoil and a second, deeper recapitulation of his life, Castaneda is taken by don Juan to a church to meet the being known as the tenant. The tenant appears as a woman, a fact that deeply unnerves Castaneda. She communicates that for a sorcerer of her power, gender is a matter of choice, a result of manipulating the assemblage point. Castaneda refuses her “gift of power” but agrees to give her his energy freely. She then pulls him into a dream of the same town but from a different era, a world created purely from her intent, explaining this is the true nature of the fourth gate of dreaming. She reveals a new technique for seeing energy—pointing with the little finger—and teaches him about “twin positions” for achieving total perception. The dream shifts, and Castaneda points at various items, confirming only the death defier herself is energy-generating. The experience ends with him waking up in the real church beside the woman.

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The Art of Dreaming – Author’s Note

Ancient Cycle, Authors, Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming, Uncategorized / By Carlos Castaneda / 8 minutes of reading

In this note, Castaneda explains that the sorcery don Juan Matus taught him is not about spells but about specialized premises regarding perception. He called this knowledge sorcery. Don Juan was an intermediary to an unseen world he called the second attention, and his primary method for accessing it was the art of dreaming. He taught that our world is just one of many, like layers of an onion, which we can perceive if we have sufficient energy. Castaneda describes his apprenticeship, including his interaction with two different groups of apprentices, the second of which included Florinda Donner-Grau, Taisha Abelar, and Carol Tiggs. They knew each other only in the second attention until the boundaries of that state began to collapse. It took him fifteen years to store enough energy to linearly recall my dreaming lessons.

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Sorcerers of Antiquity: an Introduction

Ancient Cycle, Authors, Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming, Uncategorized / By Carlos Castaneda / 28 minutes of reading

In this chapter, Castaneda recounts don Juan’s teachings about the sorcerers of antiquity, who, though brilliant, were obsessed with concreteness and power. Their modern counterparts, in contrast, seek the abstract: freedom. Don Juan explained that the ancients’ greatest achievement was learning to perceive energy directly, a capacity called *seeing*. This requires separating oneself from the “social mold” of perception, which dictates that the world is made only of concrete objects. He described the universe as being made of incandescent, conscious filaments of energy, and human beings as luminous egg-shaped balls of that energy. The key to perception, according to these ancient sorcerers, is a spot of intense brilliance on our energy body called the assemblage point, which assembles a certain number of energy filaments into our perceived reality. Displacing this point allows one to perceive other worlds. A “shift” of the point results in perceiving other worlds within the human domain, while a “movement” outside the luminous body leads to perceiving inconceivable, nonhuman worlds. He concluded by explaining that the old sorcerers, upon discovering that the assemblage point shifts easily during sleep, developed the art of dreaming to control this displacement at will.

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The First Gate of Dreaming

Ancient Cycle, Authors, Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming, Uncategorized / By Carlos Castaneda / 22 minutes of reading

Don Juan began Castaneda’s formal instruction in the art of dreaming by teaching him about the first of seven gates. He told him he had to learn to “set up dreaming,” which meant taking control of a dream and not letting it shift. The first task was to look at his hands in his dreams. After months of failure, don Juan explained that Castaneda had encountered the first gate of dreaming, which is crossed by becoming aware of the sensation of falling asleep. To do this, one must *intend* it, a concept he explained was understood not by the rational mind but by the “energy body.”

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The Second Gate of Dreaming

Ancient Cycle, Authors, Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming, Uncategorized / By Carlos Castaneda / 33 minutes of reading

After mastering the first gate of dreaming, Castaneda began to hear a nagging voice in his dreams, which don Juan identified as an entity from another world. Don Juan instructed him to command it to stop, which he did successfully. This marked my readiness for the second gate: waking up from a dream into another dream. This task proved difficult, but eventually, he found himself being pulled from one dream scene to another, and then another, a process he confirmed was the correct way to cross the second gate. He then introduced Castaneda to the concept of inorganic beings—conscious, energy-based life forms that are long, opaque, and candle-like. Don Juan explained that by crossing the first two gates, he had set bait for them and that the jolts of fear he was experiencing were their way of making contact.

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The Fixation of the Assemblage Point

Ancient Cycle, Authors, Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming, Uncategorized / By Carlos Castaneda / 38 minutes of reading

In this chapter, don Juan discusses the manipulation of the assemblage point, leading to a story about the “tenant” or “death defier,” an ancient sorcerer who made a pact with the naguals of don Juan’s lineage, trading “gifts of power” for their energy. A few months later, Castaneda begin to hear a disembodied voice in his waking life, which don Juan identifies as the “dreaming emissary”—an alien, conscious energy from the realm of the inorganic beings that dreamers encounter. The emissary offers him knowledge and flattery, which he ultimately rejects. Don Juan then explains that fixating the assemblage point is the key to acquiring “cohesion,” which is the true goal of the dreaming practices.

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The Blue Scout

Ancient Cycle, Authors, Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming, Uncategorized / By Carlos Castaneda / 19 minutes of reading

After rashly giving his energy to the blue scout, Castaneda finds himself in don Juan’s house, completely drained of energy and memory. Florinda Grau explains that he was energetically wounded in a mortal combat with the inorganic beings. Don Juan later reveals the full extent of the event: the inorganics had lured Castaneda into a trap, consumed his energy body, and then pulled his physical body into their realm, a yellow-fog world. He was rescued only because don Juan, Carol Tiggs, and the others journeyed physically into that world, guided there by the now-freed blue scout. While recovering, Castaneda is visited by the scout in the form of a small girl, an event witnessed by all of don Juan’s companions. Don Juan explains that the inorganics’ trap played on Castaneda’s inherent need to break chains, which led him to free the scout at the cost of his own freedom. The scout had to take all of Castaneda’s energy to escape, and in exchange for letting it go, the inorganic beings kept him. The chapter ends with don Juan telling him that the responsibility of truly freeing the scout now rests with him and Carol Tiggs, and the way to learn how is to ask the dreaming emissary.

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Stalking the Stalkers

Ancient Cycle, Authors, Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming, Uncategorized / By Carlos Castaneda / 25 minutes of reading

After becoming ill from the cognitive dissonance of meeting his fellow apprentices in the world of everyday life, Castaneda is given the final task of the third gate of dreaming by don Juan: a maneuver called “stalking the stalkers.” This involves deliberately drawing energy from the inorganic realm to make a physical journey into another world, using awareness itself as an energetic medium for travel. Because the feat requires immense energy, Castaneda must perform it with Carol Tiggs. In a Mexico City hotel, they attempt the maneuver, but instead of the intended controlled process, they are violently hurled into another world, waking up naked in a primitive shack. They realize they are in a trap set by the inorganic beings, where the world’s overpowering realness threatens to erase their memories of their origin. By shedding the world’s clothes and maintaining their focus, they manage to escape, waking up in their hotel room eighteen hours later. Don Juan explains that they succeeded in traveling physically but failed the task’s true intent, as the inorganic beings had hijacked the maneuver to trap them, just as they had trapped the sorcerers of antiquity.

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