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The Tenant – The Art of Dreaming

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

In this chapter, don Juan Matus informs Carlos Castaneda that his formal instruction in dreaming is over, but he must outline the fourth gate of dreaming. He takes Castaneda to a town in southern Mexico for a final lesson, which is to be delivered by a mysterious visitor. This visitor is revealed to be the “tenant,” an ancient sorcerer also known as the death defier. Castaneda is overcome with panic and revulsion when he discovers the tenant, who he had previously met as a man, is now a woman. Don Juan explains that for such a powerful sorcerer, gender is a matter of choice, achieved by shifting the assemblage point. Castaneda must now face the tenant alone to make a decision about accepting or rejecting the tenant’s “gifts of power,” a choice that every nagual in their lineage has had to make.

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The Woman in the Church – The Art of Dreaming

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

After being left by don Juan, Carlos Castaneda kneels in the church next to the death defier, an ancient sorcerer who appears as a woman. Initially terrified, he is mesmerized by her voice and presence. He offers her his energy freely but refuses her obligatory “gifts of power.” The woman then pulls him into the second attention, revealing the church and town as they existed in a different time, a product of her own intent. She explains the sorcerers’ art of creating veritable realms in dreaming through visualization and the technique of “twin positions.” Castaneda explores this tangible dream world with her, learning that only she generates energy within it. The experience culminates in a terrifying realization that their current reality might also be a shared dream, causing him to lose consciousness in a spinning descent into blackness.

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Flying on the Wings of Intent – The Art of Dreaming

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

After a prolonged encounter with the death defier, Carlos Castaneda awakens to find his fellow apprentice, Carol Tiggs, caring for him. Disoriented and partially paralyzed, he learns from her that he is in a hotel after being found naked near the church. Carol, displaying a new lucidity, explains that they are both intending in the second attention, a gift from the death defier that allows them to dream themselves into another time. Castaneda is consumed by affection for her but is soon pulled into a vortex. He later awakens alone and discovers from a distraught don Juan that he has been missing for nine days and that the real Carol Tiggs was never there. Don Juan deduces that the death defier used her own energy and Castaneda’s to create a “dream Carol” of pure intent, and that both the real Carol and the death defier have now merged and escaped this world, flying on the “wings of intent”—an abstract gift and a fate now shared with Castaneda.

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