One of the fundamental beliefs of Toltec Naguals is that there is a separate reality that we can perceive. This other world is the world of visions, energy and manifest awareness. That alternate reality is often awesome but can be frightening. In order to be able to withstand “the intrusion of the unknown” the seeker needs a qualified teacher. Often the apprentice will repeatedly dream of his/her teacher and receive lessons within a dream. These are called the teachings for the left side. The teachings for the right side concern our awareness, ability to empathise and our energy. The main teachings are known as the mastery of awareness, the art of stalking and the mastery of intent. As the seekers progress on the Path with Heart, they become ever more sophisticated in these three disciplines. The progress is marked by the following four titles: Hunter of Power, Warrior of the Spirit, Man of Knowledge and Seer. Everyone has the capacity to become either one of these four, but few care to try marriage to the Great Spirit since the four natural enemies – fear, clarity, power and old age- must be overcome in order to prove us worthy of the God's attention. This essay is an introduction to Toltec philosophy and is aimed to present a kind of sorcery that is “a return to paradise”.
The Hunter of Power is introduced to his/her duties. These are the remembrance of one’s whole life (Recapitulation) starting with the most recent event until one’s birth. One has to literally relive one’s whole life in the mind. There are few people who have not experienced a traumatic event. It is very important to remember traumatic events, whether they happened in waking or dreaming. According to Toltec lore, we loose our luminosity when we are engaged in negative actions and surrounded by negative people. It is the goal of recapitulation to recapture the lost luminosity. The Hunter of Power often has to be convinced that reality can be perceived differently, to which end the Teacher would often make the neophyte go through a psychedelic experience. When one has found one’s power spot, he/she graduates from Hunter School and may apply for training in the art of the warrior.
There are two kinds of war; the war with others and the war with the self. It is said that one can survive the sorcerer’s world only by adopting the attitude of the Warrior of the Spirit. The warrior starts to appreciate the world once he/she is able to feel and see the aura of other people. Naguals are known to have energetic, vibrating, luminous or fragrant auras, which might go unnoticed by the average person but not so by the warrior. The warrior learns the basics of setting up dreaming and stalking, or to put it in other words “perceiving” and “controlling behaviour”. His enemy is clarity. Clarity is an enemy to the warrior because he sees awing but also terrifying things with such clarity. The warrior is marked by his ruthlessness, cunning, patience and sweetness and is taught these by a nagual. The four moods of stalking when practiced regularly produce what is known as the warrior’s mood, a state of being where everything is possible. When the warrior has found his or her nagual woman, he/she starts remembering the teachings, which have been encoded in one’s DNA, and slowly becomes a Man of Knowledge.
The Man of Knowledge is marked by his infinite love, compassion and ability to help others. Often we mistake the Men of Knowledge to be superior to us, but few Men of Knowledge are happy people, because so few people acknowledge their mastery. The Man of Knowledge is faced with the natural enemy power and having realized that the powers he/she unleashed as a warrior are way too potent to be handled without the loss of sanity and more often then not turn against the self. He/she just waits out the storm with the guts intact. The Person of Knowledge tests his/her wits in the mastery of intent. Not a day passes in which nothing new has been learned.
The Man of Knowledge finally becomes a Seer. Only then can one distinguish between the people who are negative and people who are positive. The seer also sees, or feels, the spots that are energy enhancing. For the seer the meaning of life is “to balance the awe and terror of being human”. The goal of the seer is to change the shape and consistency of his/her aura as to be able to achieve total awareness and burn with the fire from within. The natural enemy of the seer is old age. However old age can hit at any age. That is because the fact that the Spirit needs our energy in order to manifest. Often an encounter with the metaphysical reality will leave one exhausted. By burning with the fire from within, the seer ensures the transference of memory into a new body upon death.
Truly the human being is the most magnificent creature on this planet, with capabilities far beyond our wildest imagination. Although one might go through times of suffering, one can find comfort in the fact that the Cosmic Spirit (Nagual) is everywhere and that each living being is connected to the Spirit via intent. The cosmic spirit reveals itself to each person constantly, but few know how to perceive it and even fewer know how to follow it. Carlos Castaneda has done a hack of a job in presenting the teachings of the Mexican shamans, to which this essay is an introduction. After having undergone the various stages of development one arrives at a state of silent knowledge, where happiness, love and positive energy are a matter of fact.
