Arquivos The Active side of Infinity - Page 2 of 2

The Active Side of Infinity – The Intent of Infinity

Ancient Cycle, Authors, Carlos Castaneda, The Active side of Infinity / By Carlos Castaneda / 35 minutes of reading

In this chapter, don Juan asks Carlos Castaneda to recount in great detail his initial journey to find him, specifically his encounters with two men, Jorge Campos and Lucas Coronado. Castaneda describes how his search led him to Guaymas, where he met Jorge Campos, a charismatic but deceitful Yaqui entrepreneur who promised to lead him to don Juan for an exorbitant fee. Campos first introduced him to Lucas Coronado, a truculent Yaqui shaman and mask maker. After a series of manipulative events, Castaneda eventually finds don Juan through Lucas Coronado and his son, Ignacio. Upon hearing the full story, don Juan reveals that Campos and Coronado were not mere obstacles but essential parts of a map laid out by the “intent of infinity.” He explains that Campos, the ruthless con man, and Coronado, the sensitive, suffering artist, represent the two conflicting ends of Castaneda’s own being, and that their actions, guided by infinity, were necessary to bring Castaneda to his path as a sorcerer.

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The Active Side of Infinity – Syntax and The Other Syntax

Ancient Cycle, Authors, Carlos Castaneda, The Active side of Infinity / By Carlos Castaneda / 2 minutes of reading

This consists of two poems that explore the relationship between language and the perception of reality. The first poem, “Syntax,” posits that our scientific understanding of the universe—having a definite beginning (the Big Bang), a development, and an end—is not an objective discovery but a mere reflection of the linear syntax of our language, which structures everything in terms of birth, growth, and death. The second poem, “The Other Syntax,” proposes an alternative worldview based on a different linguistic structure. In this other syntax, the universe is understood not through linear events but through “varieties of intensity.” From this perspective, there are no true beginnings or endings, only endless fluctuations of intensity.

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The Active Side of Infinity – Who Was Juan Matus, Really?

Ancient Cycle, Authors, Carlos Castaneda, The Active side of Infinity / By Carlos Castaneda / 15 minutes of reading

In this chapter, Castaneda reflects on his first true meeting with don Juan, realizing the mental image he had constructed was entirely false. The real don Juan is powerful, athletic, and vital. Upon arriving, don Juan performs a “quasi-slap” without physical contact that instantly brings Castaneda into a state of profound clarity and peace. Don Juan then formally introduces himself as Juan Matus, the “nagual” or leader of a 27-generation lineage of sorcerers. He explains that sorcery is not witchcraft but the ability to perceive energy directly, a state of conscious awareness that sets sorcerers apart. He reveals that their meeting was orchestrated by the “intent of infinity,” which he describes as a palpable “tremor in the air,” and that he has been searching for a successor with a double energetic configuration—the new nagual—whom he has found in Castaneda. He describes past naguals as being “empty,” reflecting not the world, but infinity, a quality Castaneda later realizes don Juan embodies perfectly.

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The Active Side of Infinity – The End of An Era: The Deep Concerns Of Everyday Life

Ancient Cycle, Authors, Carlos Castaneda, The Active side of Infinity / By Carlos Castaneda / 17 minutes of reading

In this chapter, Castaneda, feeling a strange emotional agitation, seeks don Juan’s counsel. Don Juan explains that this turmoil signifies the “end of an era” in his life, as his perception shifts and his time in the ordinary world runs out. At don Juan’s request for a “formal talk,” Castaneda recounts a recent attempt to change his life by moving to a new city for summer school. There, he took a job listening to tapes of people discussing their everyday problems and was horrified to realize their self-absorbed, repetitive complaints were identical to his own, shattering his sense of individuality. His disillusionment was compounded when his boss, a psychiatrist, subjected him to a long, sordid, and self-pitying account of a failed sexual encounter. The final blow came when his pompous anthropology professor made a lewd joke in class, collapsing Castaneda’s world under the weight of the mundane’s “deep concerns.” Overwhelmed, he fled back to Los Angeles, an experience don Juan finds hilarious, explaining it as Castaneda’s old world hitting him with its tail as it comes to an end.

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The Active Side of Infinity – The View I Could Not Stand

Ancient Cycle, Authors, Carlos Castaneda, The Active side of Infinity / By Carlos Castaneda / 11 minutes of reading

In this chapter, Castaneda describes the final disintegration of his old way of life. After his perception was altered by the events of the previous chapter, he finds himself unable to relate to his “family of friends” in Los Angeles as he once did. He suddenly sees them as tense, self-absorbed, and banal, just like the psychiatrist and professor who had horrified him. This new judgmental attitude fills him with guilt. He recounts two final, tragicomic stories of his friends’ self-made dramas—one involving a violent domestic dispute sparked by the snapping of a towel, and another chronicling his friend Rodrigo’s repeatedly failed attempts to escape Los Angeles. Unable to feel his usual empathy, Castaneda is instead galvanized by the finality of the situations and flees to don Juan, confessing his new, critical view of his friends. Don Juan explains that this is a sign of the “end of an era,” which can only be complete when the “king dies”—that is, when Castaneda finally accepts the truth that he is just like the friends he now judges.

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The Active Side of Infinity – The Unavoidable Appointment

Ancient Cycle, Authors, Carlos Castaneda, The Active side of Infinity / By Carlos Castaneda / 12 minutes of reading

In this chapter, Castaneda is consumed by guilt and depression over the death of his anthropologist friend, Bill, to whom he never replied to his last letter. He seeks out don Juan, who reveals he “saw” the moment of Bill’s death and had previously warned Castaneda about his friend’s declining state by describing the open “gap” in his luminous body, a sign visible to a sorcerer. Don Juan chastises Castaneda for his lack of “sobriety” and for believing he had infinite time, which led him to postpone thanking his friend, leaving him “stuck with a ghost on his tail.” The only recourse, he explains, is to keep his friend’s memory alive. He then teaches Castaneda about the nature of sadness for a sorcerer, explaining it as an impersonal, abstract force from infinity that affects them because they have no shields. To illustrate this, he tells the story of the Great Garrick, the world’s funniest comedian, who, when advised to see his own show to cure his melancholy, reveals his identity, showing he has no external cure for his profound sadness.

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The Active Side of Infinity – The Breaking Point

Ancient Cycle, Authors, Carlos Castaneda, The Active side of Infinity / By Carlos Castaneda / 20 minutes of reading

In this chapter, don Juan explains that sorcerers need a “breaking point” for inner silence to truly set in. He tells Castaneda that his breaking point is to leave his friends and his entire way of life, proposing that he “die” by isolating himself in a dilapidated hotel room until his “person”—his mind and its attachments—is gone. Castaneda initially refuses, and don Juan leaves him, seemingly for good. After a period of feeling elated and free, Castaneda’s old life resumes until his complete and frightening identification with a self-sabotaging friend pushes him to his own breaking point. He spontaneously rents a room in a Hollywood hotel and stays for months until his old self “dies.” Later, mired in a new, meaningless life and contemplating suicide, don Juan reappears. He tells Castaneda that he has finally reached his breaking point and gives him one hour to dissolve his current life before meeting him in Mexico. Failing to meet the deadline, Castaneda uses a technique to achieve inner silence and “dreams” he is with don Juan, who confirms he made the journey not through a dream, but through his inner silence.

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The Active Side of Infinity – The Measurements of Cognition

Ancient Cycle, Authors, Carlos Castaneda, The Active side of Infinity / By Carlos Castaneda / 20 minutes of reading

In this chapter, Castaneda explores the clash between two cognitive worlds: the academic world of Professor Lorca and the sorcerers’ world of don Juan. He becomes an admirer of Professor Lorca, a brilliant academic who lectures on the insular nature of different cognitive systems. Don Juan cautions him against admiring from afar and urges him to “test” the professor to see if he lives as a “being who is going to die,” arguing that this acceptance is the only way to have a true grip on the world. Professor Lorca, though intellectually brilliant, proposes a scientific study to measure and quantify the cognition of shamans. Don Juan finds this laughable, explaining that sorcerers’ cognition—based on perceiving energy directly—is experiential and cannot be measured by the tools of the everyday world. He concludes that the professor is an “immortal scientist” who, by not truly accepting his own mortality, cannot grasp the sorcerers’ path. Don Juan uses the metaphor of a Roman slave whispering “all glory is fleeting” to a victorious general, stating that for a sorcerer, death is that infallible advisor.

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The Active Side of Infinity – Saying Thank You

Ancient Cycle, Authors, Carlos Castaneda, The Active side of Infinity / By Carlos Castaneda / 19 minutes of reading

In this chapter, don Juan assigns Castaneda a final task before he can be “swallowed by infinity”: to atone for his personal indebtedness, he must find two women from his past, Patricia Turner and Sandra Flanagan, and give each a gift that will leave him penniless. Castaneda recounts his chaotic and emotionally devastating three-way relationship with them, which ended with all three fleeing from each other. After hiring a private investigator, he finds them both in New York. He meets with each woman, and in emotional reunions, he fulfills his task by buying Patricia a mink coat and Sandra a station wagon. However, instead of feeling liberated, he is overwhelmed by a renewed sense of loss and self-pity. When he reports this to don Juan, he is told to vanquish his self-pity. Castaneda then has a final realization: the true purpose of the task was not for his personal feelings, but to perform an act of magic in the spirit of a warrior-traveler—saying thank you and good-bye by storing the memory of what he loved in his silence.

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