THEUN MARES

If life can be characterized as a gentle, natural process of evoluon, then Theun Mares is the
embodiment of that process. In the world today, though, there is no such gentle, natural process. The
problems we face are the result of stagnaon, of spurning the process of life, and so the earth and all who
inhabit the earth, are dangerously out of balance. But we know all this. The queson is, how do we, as
individuals, regain our balance? How do we again incorporate into our acons the interrelaonship of all of
life? How do we implement the principles, within our own lives, that will result in a new world coming into
being? One thing we can be sure of, and that is what we have red so far, is clearly not working.

The life of Theun Mares has always been about nding balance; learning it, and also imparng that
knowledge. What is it that causes a lack of balance in each of us? What specically, in a way that is unique
to us, has caused every one of us to be so out of harmony with ourselves, with our relaonships, with the
world around us? From his career as a classical dancer, to his career in educaon, and then wring books
and guiding people, Theun has found the balance and poise within himself, and been able to impart this
uniquely it to others. As Theun says, “What is balance, but a nely-honed applicaon of life’s guiding
principles of intelligent co-operaon?”

“If we can learn what it truly means to co-operate intelligently with all of life, then we can
experience harmony, instead of destrucon. If we allow life to evolve naturally and gently, then we can also
experience regeneraon. Such is the way of the warrior – to touch the world lightly – to learn to be fully
part of the world, but yet not to despoil her.”

Yet, for far too long, our cultures have embodied the corrosive divisiveness that grows out of the
separaveness of a purely raonalisc approach to life. We have forced our views connually on others and
their sociees – man vs man, man vs mature. We even force our views onto our own children. The books of
Theun Mares show how we can overcome the eects of separaveness within ourselves, and within our
lives, and so achieve the balance and harmony we so desire. A balance between spirit and maer, feelings
and mind, male and female, our light sides and our dark sides, a balance between all of the seemingly
opposing forces that threaten to pull us apart. Theun Mares shows that once ALL our aspects have been
brought into alignment; have been reconciled, we nd that our life is evolving harmoniously and we feel
constantly renewed.

However, just as the training of a dancer is not quick, but takes many years of constant pracce for
the many tensions that exist to be integrated, so too is the process of living a life of intelligent co-operaon
also not easy or quick.

To help people experience balance, and intelligent co-operaon in acon – in addion to his many
books and his teaching and guidance websites – Theun has established the Temple of Peace, where sincere
visitors can come to a direct understanding of these principles for themselves, and discover more how
apply them in their daily lives.

Charles Mitchley
 THEUN MARES

THE TOLTEC TEACHINGS

Volume VI

(The Book of Aphorisms)

TM

This logo signifes this work concerns

The Toltec Path o Freedom as expressed by
Theun Mares and serves to dierenate these
Teachings rom Meso-American tradions
O Toltequity, Nagualism and Shamanism.
© Theun Mares 2006

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced

by any means or in any from whatsoever without wrien
permission from the publisher, except for brief quotaons
embodied in literary arcles or reviews.

ISBN 0-958-4675-6-0

Editor: Charles Mitchley

Published by

Renascent Legacy Press

80 Kissias Avenue
115 26 Athens
Greece

Email: support@renascentlegacy.com
www.renascentlegacy.com
 “There are, scaered throughout the world, a handul o thoughul and solitary students, who pass their
lives in obscurity, ar rom the rumours o the world, studying the great problems o the physical and spiritual
universes. They have their secret records in which are preserved the ruits o the scholasc labours o the long line o
recluses whose successors they are.”
H.P. BLAVATSKY
 CONTENTS

The Obligaon

Preface

Magnum Opus Toltecum Vaum

Introducon

The Nine Truths of awareness

Secon I
Secon II
Secon III
Secon IV
Secon V
Secon VI
Secon VII

Postscript
 THE OBLIGATION

Friends, now that we have had bestowed upon us the Sacred Truth there is naught to do other than to honour
the vow we took this day by keeping alive within our hearts the resounding responsibility which is now ours unl the
end o me. Should we ail in keeping the commitment we made, we ail the nagal in us all, and the One Lie will
stand bere o the One Power – a travesty too earul and vile to contemplate. Thereore we dare not ail – we must
not ail – we will not ail! But let us also be clear that in the journey ahead o us we will have naught to assist us but
our strength, our vision and our unwavering commitment to honour we trust bestowed upon us, no maer what the
personal cost to us may be, now or in the uture!
Let us thereore take hands, let us take heart and let us take courage or the long and challenging journey
ahead.
Let us travel light, taking with us only a light to lighten the way ahead, a fre by which to warm our hearts
when darkness alls and an urn, sealed within which is the legacy o our brotherhood. We will take no other
encumbrances, so that our journey may be expedited by swiness o oot and sureness o tread.
Let us urther remember that, implied within the vow we have taken, is the duty to ensure that we train those
guided to us on our way in the art o Atl’aman, so that when death touches us we will have successors to whom we
can entrust the light, the fre and the holy urn we carry with us, in order that they, in their turn, can connue upon the
journey to which we have commied ourselves – a journey that must not be allowed to end unl we have honoured
the Sacred Trust………….
Friends, let us be on our way with open hand and open heart, and as we tread the way may the sound o the
Sacred Trust bestowed upon us resonate or ever within the depths o our hearts………….

May the vow be kept………

…….. may the vow be kept……..
…………..may the vow be kept!

Fidelity……………
…………. fdelity………..
………………..fdelity!

May out hearts keep our steps steadast, now and or ever more!
 PREFACE

The work contained in this compilaon of Toltec aphorisms is not mine alone, but is the accumulated work of
great many generaons of Toltec nagals, stretched across a vast expanse of me. In addion to myself, every nagal
who has played his part over successive lifemes in leading units of warriors belonging to his lineage has, since me
immemorial unl the present day, been full import of this it is necessary to know the nature of these aphorisms.
Each of the Toltec aphorisms, which range from being of untold anquity, to being relavely new, encapsulate
a vital truth as presented by the Toltec teachings. Yet this immediately raises the queson, “What is truth?”
The Toltec denion of truth is somewhat dierent to that given by most people. The reason for this is that
Toltecs do not uphold the concept of an absolute universe. On the contrary, they view the universe as being a system
that is constantly evolving. However, even within an evolving system, evoluon – if it is to proceed intelligently – is
not a chaoc process that follows a random course, but is instead an ordered process, unfolding according to the
dictates of an inherent intelligence that both circumscribes the eld of evoluon, and denes the process according
to a predetermined purpose. Toltecs term the eld of evoluon; that is, the universe and everything contained within
it, the tonal; and they term the all-pervasive indwelling intelligence animang and direcng the evoluon of the
tonal, the nagal.
It follows that in order for evoluon to proceed according to the purpose of the nagal, it is imperave for the
nagal to govern the process of evoluon by holding all unwaveringly xed within its focused intent, for the enre
duraon of its evoluon. This in turn implies that within the process of evoluon there exist both the evoluon which
is taking place, as well as the factors determining and direcng that evoluon. Toltecs term that which determines
and directs evoluon cosmic law or, quite simply, the law; and they look upon the law as being that which remains
for all me stable, immutable and therefore unwavering. To the law Toltecs have also given the name intent or, more
precisely, the intent of the nagal – the one all-pervasive and eternal force within the universe.
Consequently there is intent, and then there is the result of this intent; namely, evoluon. By virtue of the
fact that it is the one immutable and therefore unwavering force within the universe, intent is righully looked on as
being the One Truth; that is, the law. Intent, however, has many dierent aspects. But because these aspects must by
the denion of intent, likewise be immutable, they form what Toltecs have called the universal laws, each of which
has several subsidiary laws. Notwithstanding this, for the sake of clarity, Toltecs prefer wherever possible to refer to
this universal laws and their subsidiaries, simply as intent – the One Truth – which remains for ever immutable and
unwavering. Intent is therefore the very essence of truth and, at the same me, is also the yardsck by which all
other so-called truths are measured also their authencity, as well as their period of validity, within a universe that is
constantly evolving.
From this is not dicult to see that if the only truth is the inviolable intent of the nagal, then any truth which
emerges as a result of evoluon must of necessity be relave to the process of evoluon. Thus Toltecs have never
looked upon knowledge acquired through experience; that is, through the process of evoluon, as being the absolute
truth – no maer how profound and inviolable this knowledge may appear to be. However, if we were simply to look
on all knowledge gained with suspicion and doubt, the process of evoluon would be seriously impaired, if not
halted altogether. For evoluon to take place it is vital to have a point of departure, and the only point of departure
there is, is whatever knowledge we do have at our disposal. Furthermore, in order to evolve and grow our knowledge
of both ourselves and the universe in which we live and move and have our being, it is equally important for us to
use every bit of knowledge we gain upon our journey of learning, as a stepping stone that leads into an ever greater
understanding of our role within an evolving universe.
This then, is the approach taken by Toltecs towards the concept of truth. Toltecs look upon all knowledge
gained through experience as being of supreme importance, but equally, not something that is writ in stone. If it is to
have any true value whatsoever, knowledge must be of a nature that it enables us; rstly, to acquire new knowledge
as a result of acng upon it; and secondly, to adapt it to the new knowledge gained, in a way that violates neither
itself nor the new knowledge gained. Conversely, any type of knowledge that does not allow for evoluon, in that it
either cannot be evolved, or else contradicts, rather than corroborates, the results of evoluon, is a useless
knowledge, than can at best lead to malpracce based upon superson and an assumed understanding that is fake.
It is primarily because of the Toltec approach towards truth and knowledge that Toltecs have, in the past,
always refrained from recording their teachings in a wrien format. Knowing the human propensity for looking at the
wrien word as being the ulmate and incontestable truth, Toltecs have, since me immemorial, adhered to the
pracce of imparng their teachings and knowledge through the medium of an oral tradion only. This they have
done in order to achieve two principal objecves.
Firstly, by imparng their teachings to their apprences orally, Toltecs achieve their inial objecve; namely,
to insll within their apprences the concept that to knowledge can be absolute. In order to grasp how this is
achieved, it is important to realise that it is only natural for every apprence to hear and absorb the teaching
imparted in a manner that is peculiar to him or her. This means that what one apprence understands of the
teaching imparted will not necessarily be the same as what other apprences have understood from the same
teaching. The result of this apparent dilemma is that once they have discovered that they have dierences in
percepon concerning the teachings, the apprences concerned automacally begin to queson both their own
knowledge, as well as the knowledge of others. As a result, the apprences quickly begin to see for themselves that
any knowledge, including their own, is not inviolable, and therefore, if it is to be proved true, the only way in which
this can be done, is to put it to the test.
Secondly, pung knowledge to the test can only be achieved by acng upon it and learning from the results
achieved. When apprences start to do this, Toltecs achieve their second objecve; namely, the ongoing evoluon of
knowledge – thereby prevenng it from becoming stac and ulmately out-dated. To this end Toltecs make every
eort possible to ensure that each bit of knowledge imparted to apprences is delivered in such a way that it forces
the apprences to acvely live the teaching imparted. In so doing, apprences are not just pung their knowledge
of the parcular teaching to the test, and thus evolving their understanding of it, but they also make the knowledge
gained as a result of this, their own knowledge, earned through their own experience. Naturally, knowledge wrought
from one’s own experience is not knowledge that is stac and caught within a me loop – instead it is a living legacy
that is constantly being evolved and passed on to succeeding generaons.
Set against the necessary backdrop of all of the above, it is now possible to start to explain more fully the
true nature of the Toltec aphorisms. At the outset though, it is important to realise that the Toltec teachings, having
developed over a vast expanse of me, are in their enrety also vast. In addion, every nagal across the ages has had
his own unique way of imparng the teachings. Therefore if these great many accumulated dierences in approach
were to be recorded, it would add considerable bulk to the teachings. Moreover, the various Toltec lineages
throughout the world, and throughout me, have all evolved the teachings according to what was for them the
utmost pressing priority at the me. The results of these dierences within the evoluon of the teachings have not
only immeasurably enriched the teachings as a whole, but have also led to the natural development of specialized
elds within specic areas of the teachings. If such specialized elds were to be recorded, it would once again add
considerable bulk to the whole body of the Toltec teachings. It follows that the biggest challenge facing Toltecs since
me immemorial regarding their teachings, has been how to record them in their enrety, while keeping such
records in a manageable format. The results of this endeavour are what are termed the Toltec aphorisms.
In order to truly grasp the nature of the aphorisms, it is also important to know that every acve Toltec nagal
is a seer, and thus has access to the collecve consciousness of humanity. Within this consciousness it is possible to
access all knowledge gained, imprints itself upon the collecve consciousness. Successive generaons of Toltec seers
have, over the ages, been working with the contents of the collecve consciousness, and have sied from it that
knowledge which has proved to t the criteria for being true. This knowledge they have formulated into what are
known as the aphorisms. Being imprinted upon the collecve consciousness, these aphorisms can therefore be
accessed by anyone who has the capacity to access the collecve consciousness. As a result, Toltecs in me have
come to look upon the knowledge thus collected and formulated, as being the Toltec memory banks. Since they are
part of the collecve consciousness of humanity, these memory banks exist independently of the connes of me
and space, meaning that they have been accessible to Toltec seers, irrespecve whether nagal or not, at all mes,
and from every quarter of the earth. Thus have Toltec seers been able to connue collecng and collang the
knowledge gained within life, both past and present, and in doing so have carried on formulang this knowledge into
aphorisms.
What then are the Toltec aphorisms? The Toltec aphorisms are relavely brief, but exceeding concise, précis
of truths within truth – every aphorism being much like an onion with an innite number of layers – each layer
containing deeper and therefore more profound expression of the truths contained within it. Consequently, the
Toltec aphorisms quite literally encapsulate vast amounts of the Toltec knowledge that has been dislled and
condensed into minute forms; some containing as lile as ve words. It follows that although the aphorisms appear
to the untrained eye to be very easy and self-explanatory, if they are read merely at face value they will reveal
nothing of any real signicance. In this respect it is not incorrect to liken reading the Toltec aphorisms to looking at
the microchip of a computer, for just as the microchip does not reveal the immense knowledge stored within it, to
the naked eye, so too do the Toltec aphorisms not reveal the vast amounts of knowledge contained within them, to
the uniniated reader. It is therefore imperave for the reader of this volume to rst familiarize him or herself fully
with the Toltec teachings, before aempng to make use of the aphorisms; for without an in-depth knowledge of the
Toltec teachings, these aphorisms will fail to do for the reader what they were designed to do.
When working with the Toltec aphorisms it is also important to note the following two guidelines. Firstly,
each word of an aphorism has been chosen within the innite care, so as to convey to the reader the greatest
number of possible, but nevertheless clearly-dened, points of departure, it terms of the truths contained within it. I
say “possible points of departure,” because the aphorisms all loop back to one another in a great many dierent
ways. Consequently, if an apprence takes any one of the aphorisms, and starts to work with the truths contained
within it, those truths will automacally lead him or her to another aphorism, and that aphorism will in turn lead to
yet another, and so on; with the overall eect not only of widening the apprence’s understanding of the knowledge
contained within the aphorisms, but also of deepening the level at which this knowledge is being assimilated and
grasped. This is a most important point, because, as the apprence’s knowledge broadens and deepens, when
returning to the original aphorism with which he or she started, the apprence will now be able to peel back yet
another layer previously not noced, and thereby uncover an even deeper and more profound level of truth. This in
turn will lead the apprence into exploring again those aphorisms which led on from the original point of departure,
and with this new-found depth of understanding he or she will likewise be able to glean from these too a greater
depth of knowledge. And so the process of learning will connue to loop the apprence back from aphorism to
aphorism – each loop enabling the apprence to peel back more and more layers of truth.
Secondly, the true teachings can never be verbalised, for the simple reason that words in themselves are but
an approximaon of truth being conveyed by them. Since approximaons are open to interpretaon, it stands to
reason that the real truth is ever vulnerable to being misconstrued and therefore distorted by the words used to
convey it. Thus no maer how carefully an aphorism is verbalised, the words can at best point the apprence in the
right direcon, by aempng to impart a feeling for the ineable truth underlying the outwardly visible form. From
this it follows that because the words contained within the aphorisms are chosen with enormous care regarding the
implicaons inherent within them, it is incumbent upon the reader also to have a profound knowledge of the
language being ulized, so as to be able to grasp the subtle nuances of these implicaons. This is important, for not
only does this eliminate the danger of an assumed understanding of any one word leading the apprence o on a
wild tangent that has very lile to do with truth; but it also ensures, as far as possible, that the subtlees expressed
in the nuances contained within the implicaons of a word do in fact guide the apprence into gaining a feeling for
the ineable truth veiled by the outer teachings forming an aphorism.
Another point needs to be explained here for the reader who is familiar with the Toltec teachings, is the
concept surrounding the teachings for the right side versus the teachings for the le side, for this is relevant to the
manner in which the aphorisms have been collated in this volume.
In the teachings scheme used by Toltecs, apprences are always taught using two main approaches that are
very dierent, but which complement each other. One approach addresses the raonal thinking principle in the
apprence, by seeking to provide guidance and answers that serve to sasfy and appease his or her mind. This
approach is termed the teachings for the right side. The other approach addresses the irraonal feeling principle,
through speaking to the apprence in a way that will appeal to his or her emoons, so that the emoonal impetus
generated will encourage the apprence to acvate and thereby ulize the intuing principle, termed the heart. This
second, much more dicult approach, is termed the teachings for the le side. Bridging these two approaches is a
mixture of two, chosen at random, specically to force the apprence to queson his or her percepon of what he or
she is being taught. This quesoning has the eect of making the percepon of the apprence much more uid and
therefore more capable of grasping the teachings for the le side, Consequently, it has always been tradional, as far
as possible, to divide the teachings into these approaches.
However, since the eecveness of dividing the teachings into these secons, and of imparng these to the
apprence, is dependent upon the nagal’s understanding of where the percepon of the apprence is at in that
moment, it stands to reason that this approach can only be successful within the context of a personal
apprenceship. Therefore, the approach I have taken in this book, which is being wrien for those not working under
the guidance of nagal, is that instead of classifying the aphorisms into those pertaining to the right side, those
pertaining to the le side, and those that serve as the bridging aphorisms, I have chosen to compile the aphorisms
into seven categories. Each of these categories, numbered from I to VII, relates to the corresponding stage within
what Toltecs term the seven stages in learning. The seven stages in learning are fully explained in the introducon to
this book, and therefore we do not need to dwell upon them there, other than to point out that the teachings
contained within the introducon are an invaluable aid to studying the aphorisms, and should be used as such.
Furthermore, the last paragraph of the introducon is an aphorism belonging to the main body of the teachings, and
thus it should not be overlooked when working with the aphorisms contained in the principal text.
One nal word is called for here. Earlier I pointed out that all of the aphorisms loop back to one another. This
is because the aphorisms compiled to date have been strung together in as close to a seamless progression of Toltec
knowledge across the aeons, as it has been possible to do. Therefore, one aphorism quite naturally links up, not only
with the aphorism following it, but also with all other aphorisms in one way or another. However, because mapping
out the unknown is an innite task, Toltec knowledge is not complete, and thus gaps within their knowledge do exist.
Where such gaps occur I have shown this by a break in the category, in much the same way as a chapter break would
be used in any other book. Although some of the gaps in knowledge as shown in this compilaon may appear to be
of lile consequence, the unknown is such an immeasurable domain, that we have absolutely no idea how small or
great these gaps may not be unl such me as they have been lled. This in itself presupposes that there may well be
gaps within Toltec knowledge that have hitherto gone undetected, awaing some future me in which to become
revealed.
Notwithstanding the apparently seamless nature of Toltec knowledge, there are also a great many aphorisms
which pertain to knowledge that is so highly specialized that these aphorisms have not yet been able to become
incorporated within the greater body of the teachings in a progressively coherent manner. As a result, these
parcular aphorisms are of a stand-alone nature, and can only be viewed within this context. For the purposes of this
book I have eliminated these stand-alone aphorisms, with the excepon of the three given in the postscript. The
aphorisms contained in the postscript have been assembled from research work done comparavely recently, and
although they fall into the category of stand-alone aphorisms, I have nevertheless them because they are of
enormous signicance to humanity at this me in which the Cry of the Eagle has been sounded.
In relaon to the above, I also need to point out that, apart from the stand-alone aphorisms, which pertain to
knowledge which is so very specialised, that it is of no immediate value to humanity, there are a great many
aphorisms within the main body of the teachings that are of such an advanced technical nature as equally to be no
real benet to humanity, now or in the foreseeable future. These aphorisms too have been excluded from this book
because, in having no immediate benet to humanity as a result of their exceedingly advanced technical nature, they
would only serve to cluer any thereby confuse the mind of the apprence of today. Furthermore, since many of
these aphorisms pertain to the training and the specialized knowledge of seers and fully-trained nagals, they are of
lile value to those other than seers. Therefore should this knowledge be required, it can be accessed within the
Toltec memory banks by the seer who needs the knowledge.
In conclusion, I would like to express that it is my deepest hope and my most sincere wish that work on the
Toltec aphorisms will serve the reader in the same deeply inspiring, haunngly poignant and highly movang way
that it has always served an untold number of generaons of Toltecs, throughout the ages of life upon this planet.
The fact that the stupendous honour and the heart-rending privilege of recording the Great Work of the Toltec Seers
has befallen me, is a fact that lls me with an indescribable sense of awe. I can only hope with uer humility that the
compilaon contained within this volume will do jusce to the Great Work of the Toltec Seers.
In honour of my brothers and sisters, who have spent many lifemes, oen enduring unthinkable hardships,
remaining true to their ancient commitment, and thus also giving expression to their deep and unfaltering love of
and for all of live, I sign myself, in the name of service, and as I am known amongst them;

Theun of the Great Waters,

Son of Mara, the One of Tears.

Porolio: The Dragon Wolf

Caledon, December MMV Anno Domini

 MAGNUM OPUS

TOLTECUM VATIUM

(The Great Work of the Toltec Seers)

 INTRODUCTION

(The seven Stages in Learning)

The only true learning there is, is learning about the sel, or man is the microcosm o the macrocosm. The
true Scholar has known or even that it is insanity to assume that we can understand lie, and thereore the
world around us, unless we acknowledge that we too are a part o this ineable mystery we look upon as
being lie, and which we are waing to athom and understand. But, being part o this mystery, our every
acon, our every through and our every eeling, aects our percepon o our experience. And what is
knowledge, i it is not that which we perceive as being our experience within lie? Thereore, the act o
learning, like every acon we take within lie, must and does have a direct inuence upon our percepon o
the knowledge which arises rom having taken that acon. It ollows that the act o learning directly aects
how we perceive the knowledge gained in the process o learning. The proound truth that emerges rom
this is that, in learning, we create the answers we seek, according to our percepon o what is revealed to
us during the process o learning. In other words, we create our own reality, whether we are aware o this
or not. So the queson acing everyone who wishes to learn is; «How do we know that the reality we have
created is in act the truth we are seeking» or, more precisely: «How do we corroborate the subjecve
reality, when the only reality we can measure it against is our percepon o the objecve reality to which
we bear witness by virtue o being alive, or is it not this very percepon we are quesoning when we set
out to learn?»
This diculty in learning is a conundrum or which there is no logical soluon, other than to start
the process o learning rom the premise that whatever we experience within lie; that is, whatever to be
actual, is not necessary the objecve reality to which we bear witness, but merely the subjecve reality
which causes us to look upon our experience as being the actual reality we are dealing with. This, however,
does not presuppose that the subjecve reality which arises rom experience is any less true than the
objecve reality we are witnessing. Instead it serves to confrm that the subjecve reality, being dependent
as it is upon our percepon, is what we are experiencing, whereas the objecve reality, which exists
independently o our percepon o it, must best be witnessed without judgement, unl such me as we
have gained the necessary knowledge with which to bridge the gap that exists between our subjecve
experience and an objecve reality that transcends the limitaons o percepon. It is this gap between our
percepon and the objecve reality being witnessed that insls in us, the Observers, the desire to gain the
needed skill with which to fll the gap between the subjecve and the objecve.
I we, as the Observers, are to fll the gap exisng between the subjecve and the objecve, then it
is vital that we bear in mind that the subjecve, by defnion, implies the purely personal, whereas the
objecve, also by defnion, implies that which is transpersonal, and thereore exisng independently o the
purely personal nature o percepon. It ollows that the Observer is not only the point at which percepon
is being assembled in relaon to the experience o the Observer, but that or there to be any experience at
all, the Observer must o necessity also be the catalyst that brings into existence the experience he is having
o the objecve reality to which he bears witness. Consequently, although the Observer starts o by being
an imparal witness to lie around him, the moment he starts to interact with the world he has the choice
o either seeing himsel as being the vicm o circumstance, or else seeing himsel as being the catalyst that
causes objecve reality to start imposing itsel upon the subjecve reality he has created according to his
percepon. The frst opon is clearly anthecal to learning anything o real value, which means that the
true Scholar has no opon other than to see himsel as being the creator o his reality.
Once we are clear on this much, it becomes perectly possible to acquire skill in the technique o
learning, or all that is required in order to gain this skill, is to remember that the Observer is both the
Witness o objecve reality, as well the Experimenter direcng the process entailed in learning how to
relate percepon o that objecve reality to the reality underlying his subjecve experience o it. This is the
theory, and i one adheres to the theory it appears that this should be a relavely simple exercise to
accomplish, given the required me and the due diligence. However, in pracce it is not quite as simple as
the theory would have us believe, or although gaining the skill to learn is undoubtedly within the grasp o
any man or woman, achieving this skill is nonetheless the task o a lieme. The reason or this, as Toltecs
have discovered in mapping out the process o learning, is that acquiring skill in learning entails conquering
seven disnct areas o experience.
Toltecs have given to these seven areas o experience the term «the seven stages in learning, »
because although each area does require experience, the experience gained in the frst area automacally
leads the apprence into the second area, and the experience gained in the second area again leads the
apprence into the third area, and so on. Thereore, although each o these seven areas o learning
demand experience, they are more like stages in learning rather than areas o experse exisng
independently o each other. Furthermore, as with anything else in lie, there are no real divisions as such
within the seven stages o learning, or one stage blends seamlessly into the next. So although, or the sake
o clarity, we delineate, demarcate and speak in terms o one area versus another, in reality the seven
stages in learning overlap one another in a seamless manner.
The frst stage encountered in the process o learning is the concept o learning. Any concept is an
idea or, more accurately, a though orm which, or the sake o brevity, we can simply term a orm that the
apprence is ulizing in the beginning stages o learning. Thus to begin with the apprence simply has an
idea concerning learning; meaning that he holds within his ocus everything he knows at his point in me
about the concept o learning. This includes everything he believes he will learn, as well as about he
believes will be his rewards or what he will be learning.
However, as the apprence begins to work with the concept o learning, whether he is aware o this
or not, he begins to evolve his understanding o what it is to learn, with the result that it is not long beore
he begins to fnd that his personal concept o learning also needs to be expanded i it is not to become a
liming actor to his learning. Technically speaking, the apprence has seen the need to expand his view o
the world, and in aempng to do this, the apprence is beginning to acquire experse in breaking ree
rom the fxaon brought about by the orm, by learning how to adapt the orm into a more suitable vehicle
with which to urther explore the act o learning. At this point though, the apprence is sll very much
involved in gaining the required experse in order to mould, shape and modiy the purely personal confnes
o the orm constung his subjecve reality. This is to say that, although the apprence is gaining
experse in being able to recognise the limitaons o the orm, he nevertheless sll needs to work with a
orm, in order to make sense out o what he is learning.
Once the apprence gains profciency in being able to modiy and adapt his concept o learning, he
begins to see that no maer to what extent he modifes, adapts or re-arranges his concept o learning, he is
sll frmly caught within the confnes o his subjecve reality. Having seen this much, the apprence can
now also begin to see the ulity o connuing to expand his view o the world—or irrespecve o how
broad his view o the world becomes, it is this very view that keeps his percepon o lie intact. Technically
speaking, the apprence now has frst-hand experience o what is meant by the madness o the dream, and
he begins to wonder what it would be like to have the required knowledge to break ree rom any
constraints upon his percepon. It is at this point within the process o learning that the apprence begins
to pay careul aenon to everything he things he knows or, more precisely, he begins to works consciously
at quesoning his concept o what it is to learn.
The only way at this point in which the apprence can queson his concept o learning is to measure
everything he things he knows, that is, his subjecve reality, against what he perceives to be the
transpersonal nature o the objecve reality to which he bears witness. Technically speaking, the apprence
has started to apply his subjecve knowledge to lie around him in the sense o wanng to prove this
knowledge right or wrong. In other words, the apprence has come to the realisaon that he can only
prove or disprove his subjecve knowledge by acng upon it, and thereby learn rom the results achieved.
The result o this is that the apprence begins to stand detached rom the results o his experiments in
applying his subjecve knowledge, or this is the only way in which he can view the results achieved in an
objecve manner.
Once the apprence to learning has achieved a modicum o profciency in being able to queson his
subjecve reality, it becomes possible or the apprence to start taking the approach to learning as
delineated in the Toltec Teachings in a purposeul way, or unl then the apprence is sll too caught up in
the fxaon o his percepon to allow or that percepon to be quesoned by anyone other than himsel.
Having reached this point in his inner search or knowledge, and having gained the necessary experse
within the frst stage o learning, the apprence is now ready to start learning in the true sense o the word.
Once the apprence is ready to commence the true process o learning, the teacher appears. How this
comes about is not important here, other than to say this is the law. It maers not who or what the teacher
may be, or there is but One Lie, and thereore but One Truth. So let it suce to say that irrespecve o
what name is given to that orm known as the teacher, and irrespecve o what name is given to that orm
as taught by that teacher, i the teachings as taught by such a teacher uphold and conorm to the One Lie,
then such teachings constute the One Truth, and such a teacher, in the Old Tongue, is termed Toltec; a
Man o Knowledge.
It is at this point within the process o learning that the apprence reaches the second stage — in
which he has to gain profciency in making every eort to truly live the teachings to the best o his ability, in
order to put his subjecve knowledge to the test. However, through sll being orced to work within his
concept o learning, the apprence can only ulise those aspects o the teachings that tend themselves to
being conceptualised within the confnes o his normal awareness; that is, the teachings or the right side.
Nonetheless, and without at this point being aware o it, by pung his subjecve knowledge to the test,
the apprence is beginning to move rom the purely personal nature o his percepon, towards gaining an
anity with the transpersonal nature o the objecve reality. The result o this is that the apprence begins
to gain frst-hand knowledge concerning the importance o expanding his awareness, as opposed to simply
expanding his view o the world.
Through his struggle to gain profciency in living the teachings or the right-side, whilst at the same
me struggling with the impact that the resultant consequences o his acons are having upon his
percepon, and thereore also upon his view o the world, the apprence starts to gain profciency, lile by
lile, in expanding his awareness to include more and more o the transpersonal nature o the objecve
reality to which he bears witness. As he gains in this profciency it starts to become clear to the apprence
that the process o expanding his awareness is allowing him to see how his awareness is lacking in frst-
hand knowledge o the objecve reality he is trying to come to grips with, and that what is causing in him
this lack o awareness is his concept o learning. Once this realisaon has been made, the apprence starts
to make every eort possible to learn how to break ree rom the limitaons imposed upon his awareness
by his concept o learning — an acon which catapults him frmly into the third stage o learning.
The third stage o learning can best be described as the discovery o one's potenal, or it is
invariably at this stage within the process o learning that the apprence has moved ar enough away rom
idenying solely with his subjecve reality, that he has begun to see or himsel that his percepon o
himsel is also severely lacking in a genuine awareness o sel. As a result, the apprence begins to explore,
in whichever way is open to him, everything he does not yet know about himsel. By doing so, the
apprence slowly begins to gain a glimmer o his true potenal, and with this comes the inevitable
realisaon that his true sel, as revealed by his hidden potenal, is very much part o the objecve reality
which has hitherto appeared to him to be purely transpersonal.
It is at this point in his learning that the apprence begins to grasp the importance o mang his
percepon as uid as possible, i it is not going to connue leading him back into his concept o learning,
rom which he is trying to break ree. In his struggle to make his percepon as uid as he can, the
apprence starts to gain some measure o profciency in wording in the abstract; meaning that he no
longer needs a clear orm in order to make sense out o what he is learning. Technically speaking, the
apprence is learning to work with pure eeling, without the need to frst interpret it according to his
percepon, so as to make it ft his subjecve reality. For the moment, even though the apprence is acutely
aware that this is an unstable state o aairs, he is nevertheless content to live with the act that he can
temporarily no longer reconcile his inner world with his outer world. The result o this is that the apprence
begins to work with the teachings rom the angle o the unknown; meaning that he begins to interpret the
teachings anew, but now rom the angle o pure eeling. Consequently, those aspects o the teachings that
do not lend themselves to conceptualisaon; namely, the teachings or the le side, begin to reveal
themselves to him through the medium o eeling.
As the apprence connues to learn how to work with the teachings or the le side, he slowly
begins to learn that true understanding is not a maer o trying to intellectualise the unknown, but is
rather a state o awareness that grows as a result o a direct encounter with the unknown. Once the
apprence has come to this realisaon he is well on his way to gaining profciency within the ourth stage
o learning, and he can now clearly see that his inability to reconcile his inner world with his outer world is
but the result o a lack o true understanding — an understanding that he could only acquire when he was
willing to orgo, i need be, his subjecve reality. However, with this new-ound awareness, the apprence
can also see how to marry his subjecve reality with his true sel, as it connues to be revealed to him in his
ongoing journey o discovering his own hidden potenal. Having seen this much, the process o learning
now lies wide open to the apprence. This means that there are no more pialls along his way in learning
how to bring about those changes within both his inner lie and his outer lie that will enable him to eect a
true transormaon o all that hinders his progress upon the Path o Knowledge.
Once the apprence embarks upon the act o transmutaon, a chain reacon is set up within him
that can no longer be stopped, or the inevitable result o transmutaon is transormaon, and
transormaon can only be complete once a true transfguraon has been accomplished. This is a universal
law as much as gravity is a universal law. It is just not possible to cast a stone into the air and to arrest the
impact o gravity upon it indefnitely.
Transmutaon, transormaon and transfguraon are respecvely the fh, the sixth and the
seventh stages in learning. Transmutaon is true change; that change which is required in order to make
the shi rom being totally idenfed with the orm-side o lie, to seeing onesel as part o the One Lie that
animates, inhabits and ulises the orm, in order to evolve its awareness. Transormaon is a double-edged
sword, or it is the act o becoming at-one with all o lie. But in doing this, we inevitably come ull circle
because, through being at-one with all o lie, we inadvertently begin to transorm all o that which is within
our sphere o inuence, by virtue o the act that we are the creators o our own reality. Once this has been
realised, the impact upon the sel is devastang — to the extent that there is no way in which to shoulder
the responsibility o what one has become, unl one has brought about a ull transfguraon o all that was
perceived as being the sel during the process o learning, up unl this point o realisaon.
It is simply not possible to live with the knowledge that we are the creators o our own reality,
without being overcome by the most intense desire to dream true to the purpose o the One Lie. Anything
else is an unthinkable responsibility that threatens to tear apart the very abric o one's awareness, let
alone existence. It is once one has entered into this state o awareness that the apprence to learning
righully earns or himsel the tle o Toltec — a Man o Knowledge — and embarks upon the journey o all
journeys; namely, the defnive journey o the warrior. Having embarked upon this journey, the Toltec
becomes a living example o that ineable something termed the 'Toltec Legacy.

The Toltec aphorisms serve to guide us towards a deeper insight in how to master our awareness.
Thus every aphorism has been designed to be both a springboard into the unknown, as we as a beacon
light within the unknown.
 THE NINE TRUTHS OF

AWARENESS

1. The universe consists of an innite number of energy elds resembling threads of light.
2. These threadlike energy elds radiate from a source of unimaginable dimensions metaphorically
called the Eagle. Thus these energy elds are known as the Eagle's Emanaons.
3. Human beings are likewise composed of an innite number of these threadlike energy elds, which
manifest in the shape of a large luminous egg. The height of this egg is equal to the length of a
man's body with his arms fully emended above his head on the vercal axis, and its width is that of
a man with his arms extended outwards from the centre of his body along the horizontal axis. This
egg is known as the cocoon of man.
4. Only a small group of energy elds inside the cocoon are lit up at any one me by a brilliant point of
light located on the surface of the cocoon.
5. Percepon takes place when the energy elds which are illuminated by the point of light extend
their light to illuminate corresponding energy elds outside the cocoon. This point of light is termed
the point where percepon is assembled, normally abbreviated to the assemblage point.
6. It is possible to shi the assemblage point to any other posion on the surface of the cocoon, or
even into its interior: Because the assemblage point illuminates any energy elds with which it
comes into contact, the new energy elds it illuminates as a result of such shiing constute
therefore a new percepon. It is this new level of percepon that is known as seeing.
7. When the assemblage point shis suciently far a totally new world is perceived, which is as real as
the one man normally perceives.
8. There is a mysterious force known as intent which exists throughout the enre universe. It is this
force which brings about percepon, for it is intent which, rstly, aligns the energy elds and
secondly, causes awareness of that alignment.
9. The goal of warriors is to experience all possible percepons available to man. This constutes what
is known as Total Awareness, inherent within which is an alternate way of dying.
 I

Life for average man is a rather vague and monotonous affair - an

existence which is not completely devoid of amusement, but one in which
he listlessly wanders from one type of activity to the next, only to find that
the happiness he is seeking is constantly eluding him. The life of such a
man becomes filled with a sense of emptiness and a dull longing to have
that emptiness filled, but not knowing what it is he seeks, the man
discovers instead a numbing sense of futility creeping into his heart. Then
all too soon he finds his life has slipped through his fingers, spent on the
meaningless trivialities of human pettiness.

The problem is that we are all born fools, for such is our human condition.

Man regards himself as being better than an animal - but mostly he lives
an existence which is worse than that of animals.

People do not like to think of themselves as being mad, but unfortunately

all of us are already mad.

All of mankind has become enslaved to the heinous acts of black magic.
Men and women keep themselves and each other in psychic bondage by
perpetuating the evil of social conditioning - a conditioning designed to
capture and fixate both the thoughts and actions of men and women in a
way that makes it impossible to deviate from the accepted norm. If you
think about this you will see that you are incapable of thinking or acting
other than according to what you have learned through the debilitating
mediocrity born of your social conditioning, and therefore you too are a
slave, and because you uphold the practices of your conditioning you too
are a black magician.

No man can be trapped without his consent.

If you do not want to remain trapped within the debilitating constraints of
your social conditioning, and if you wish to break free from the grip of the
black magicians, you have to choose the disciplined life of the warrior and
you have to learn to hunt for power.

It is not a matter of finding ways in which to five with the circumstances

surrounding your life, for you are the cause of your life. You are not a
victim being forced into tolerating this life - instead you are the creator of
everything which is in your fife; the good, the bad and everything in
between. You think that by complaining about your life you can somehow
find a way in which to change it, but you are wrong. It is only the decision
to join the Warrior's Path that gives one the courage to claim one's life for
what it is. Whilst you continue to indulge in your pettiness and your
confusion, nothing in your life will ever change for the better.

Everything around you, including your challenges, is the world you

created for уourself. It is therefore insane to want to run away from it, for
where will you run to? One cannot escape one's life, any more than one
can escape oneself. The only reason why you are looking for a way out is
because your tonal is involved in an inner battle — but tо do battle with
your own tonal is the height of insanity. What are you hoping to achieve?
The disciplined life of the warrior is designed to end such inane pursuits.

The Warrior’s Path instils in one the need to bring about an inner
harmony; firstly, between decisions and actions and finally, between tonal
and nagal.
The only freedom a warrior has is whether to act impeccably, or to act like
a fool. But because there is no honour or freedom in being a fool,
impeccability is the only option open to the warrior, and it is therefore also
the mark of his spirit.

What you need to do is to coax your tonal into acknowledging that the
only viable decision open to you is your decision to embark upon the
Warrior's Path. The tonal believes that making decisions is its prerogative,
for it doesn't know that decisions are made by the nagal. Whenever we
think we are making a decision, we do not realise that it is the nagal,
forever beyond our grasp, which has brought about those conditions in
which we are forced into acknowledging that we have reached a
crossroad.

There is a marked difference between the apprentice who knows that the
warrior's way is for him an act of survival, as opposed to the apprentice
who is merely trying to solicit the teachings for self-centred gain. The first
takes the guidance given and acts upon it without expecting rewards; the
second takes from that guidance only what suits him, while regarding the
rest as being a distortion of the truth as he sees it.
The best hunters are not those with a natural aptitude for hunting, for
invariably the best hunters do not even like it. Their ability comes from
having struggled long and hard to learn every trick of the trade.

A hunter is an exceptionally disciplined man, for the parameters of his

livelihood are precise, and he therefore cannot rely upon luck.

The art of the hunter lies in his ability to choose both the timing and the
location of his appearance to gain the maximum advantage. This does
not mean that the hunter tries to hide from others by living a life of
secrecy, but that the hunter is never accessible, unless he wants to be.
There is no advantage to be gained from trying to hide behind secrecy,
when it is obvious to everyone that you are hiding.

Not being accessible means that your interactions with the world around
you are calculated and frugal. By being frugal you avoid depleting both
yourself and those around you. The hunter is confident in his abilities as a
hunter and therefore does not feel the need to worry about having his
needs fulfilled. Worry merely causes you to become accessible against
your will, for worry causes you to cling frantically to your world, whatever
that world may be, and by clinging you deplete yourself as well as those
people and things you are clinging to.
The hunter never plunders his world, but takes from it only what he truly
needs, whilst tending to it with warmth and caring for it with love —
irrespective of whether his world consists of people, animals, plants,
possessions or power. In this respect the hunter is intimately familiar with
his world, yet he also remains detached from it. Being detached from his
world, the hunter remains inaccessible to that world, and does not distort
it by manhandling it. The hunter touches his world lightly, enjoys it for as
long as he needs to, and then withdraws, leaving barely anything
disturbed.

The hunter handles his world with such care that he leaves no trail
behind him. To leave a trail would mean becoming hunted by something
more powerful than himself.

To be a hunter implies far more than merely being able to hunt one's
prey, whether hunting means trapping animals, people or power. In order
to trap anything the hunter must be able to outwit his prey by knowing its
habits. This implies that he himself has no habits, but is free,
unpredictable and totally fluid; for it is not possible to take advantage of
the habits of your prey if you are fixed in your own habits. If you behave
like your prey, predictable by being fixed in your habits, you will quickly
become the hunted — the prey of something bigger and stronger than
you. Therefore the art of the true hunter is to stop being the hunted.

In order to be a good hunter it is not enough just to know the habits of

prey, for the hunter must also know that there are superior forces within
this universe which guide him, as well as all other creatures – forces that
dictate our lives and our deaths.

In the final analysis what else is more important than life and death? The
forces which command these truly rule all creatures.

A hunter must live the life of a hunter if he is to benefit from his life, and
this presupposes change. However, true changes are never easy and the
process involved is slow. Consequently man will only ever change under
circumstances that force him to change.

Sometimes even if a man is forced to change he will stupidly refuse,

unless he can see the advantage of changing.

A good hunter will always change his ways whenever the need arises.

True changes are always cataclysmic in quality and are ever triggered by
what appears to be a small and insignificant act. Hunters watch for these
acts, in themselves and in their prey, and therefore are not caught off-
guard by the irrevocable changes brought a6out by these acts.
The only worthwhile changes are those made with sobriety.
 II

Man’s only justification for physical existence is to learn; this is his

destiny which he cannot avoid under any circumstances.

Man’s destiny is to learn. Bur in order to unfold our destiny we have to be

forced into experiencing new worlds that are beyond our perception and
comprehension.

In this universe nothing is for nothing; everything has a price attached to

it. Knowledge is acquired only through the hardships entailed in learning.

One cannot acquire knowledge through conversation, because true

knowledge is to experience the inner self - a most frightening and utterly
consuming pursuit that is unique to every individual.

Knowledge gained from someone else is not true knowledge, for it lacks
the confidence necessary to implement that knowledge. Confidence can
on[y be cultivated through actions taken. Therefore knowledge is indeed
power.

True power is knowledge of the self as a unit of the One Life. There is no
power greater than knowledge of the nagal.
Knowledge is not what most people assume it to be, especially for a
warrior. A warrior knows from experience that knowledge is an inner
knowing that overtakes him, completely absorbs him in the moment and
then mysteriously subsides.

True knowledge is ever incomprehensible, greater and more powerful

than man, and to walk the Path of Knowledge is to fight for survival.
Therefore, if you come to this path to learn, you must be prepared to fight
for your life.
The cost of true knowledge is your life. Knowledge can only be acquired
when you decide to give up the beliefs, the prejudices and the
misconceptions you regard as constituting your life. Therefore knowledge
can only be acquired by dedicating your life to it.

In the beginning, no man ever knows the hardships that learning entails
because he does not know what it is to be man. Thus he sets himself up
to fail by desiring rewards which are mostly in conflict with his destiny and
which therefore cannot be materialised.

Walking the Path of Knowledge does not come naturally to man, and
therefore all learning is forced. Because of this no nagal ever seeks
apprentices, and it is impossible for an apprentice to solicit the true
teachings.

Resistance is as fundamental to the act of perception as friction is to

movement. Without resistance perception would be a meaningless
exercise and experience would be void of knowledge.

That which one needs in terms of learning is provided by power

according to the level of one’s impeccability. Unfortunately though, not
everyone is capable of acting upon a recommendation as simple as this.
Nonetheless, by practising the four principal techniques used within the
teachings, impeccability is the inevitable result, for these techniques
enable one to cleanse and to reconstruct the island of the tonal so as to
become utterly impeccable in every deed. Once impeccability has been
achieved power guides one naturally to the Nagal in the unfoldment of
fate. This is universal law.

If it is a man's fate to learn the ways of the warrior, power guides him to a
nagal. Once power has made it clear to the nagal that it is the man's fate
to become a warrior, it is the duty of the nagal to hook him in some way.
Unless hooked, true learning is not possible, for every apprentice resists
learning at every turn, whilst even professing his willingness to learn.

Every nagal knows the hardships entailed in learning, and therefore

never assumes that an apprentice will succeed in the task of learning,
unless he ensures that the apprentice has no option other than to learn.
The only viable way to achieve this is for the nagal to trap and hold the
attention of the apprentice, by making it clear to him that perhaps he is
being tricked. Because of a strange quirk of human reasoning this always
has the desired effect, in that while the apprentice suspects he is being
tricked in some way, he will always assume that it is his mind that is being
tricked. As a result, the apprentice becomes totally caught up in trying to
figure out how he is being tricked, without realising how this entraps and
holds his attention. With his attention trapped, and having become fully
absorbed in figuring out if and how he is being tricked, the apprentice is
now suitably open to the impact of learning.

A nagal knows from experience that all of us are complete idiots, in that
none of us ever wish to give up voluntarily our obsession with wanting to
be in control. Consequently, in order to learn in spite of our refusal to give
up our perception of what we are learning, we have to be tricked in some
way. Therefore the art of the nagal lies in his ability to deviate the
apprentice's attention from the real issues involved in learning. In order to
do this the nagal sets the apprentice a task, the outcome of which is
highly desirable for the apprentice, but impossible to attain other than
through mastering the art of learning. The advantage of this strategy is
that the apprentice’s attention becomes mostly deviated from the
hardships entailed in learning by his desire to attain the outcome, and
therefore little by little he begins to master what he would otherwise find
to be an impossible task. This in turn enables the nagal to accomplish two
things which are equally impossible to achieve whilst the apprentice has
no read understanding of what is entailed in true learning. Firstly, the
nagal can now begin to introduce the apprentice to a direct experience of
the Nagal; and secondly, because fie has successfully deviated the
apprentice's attention from assuming an understanding of what he is
supposed to be learning, he can begin to introduce the apprentice to the
true teachings without ever mentioning them.

The techniques used within the teachings, when practised with diligence,
are completely devastating, and it is therefore the responsibility of the
nagal to take care that the dedicated apprentice does not unwittingly do
anything that will cause him to plunge into a state of illusion and misery,
due to his limited understanding of what is entailed in using these
techniques. Accordingly the nagal ensures that the apprentice is equipped
both with strength and a sober sense of discrimination - attributes that
can only be acquired by living like a warrior. Without true strength, which
the nagal must tirelessly build within the apprentice by ruthlessly
challenging him at every turn, and without a sober sense of
discrimination, which the nagal must repeatedly enforce upon him every
step of the way, it is impossible for any apprentice to enter the World of
Sorcerers without falling apart. Only with the clear sobriety and the solid
grounding in utter practicality that comes from living the Warrior’s Path,
can the apprentice withstand the devastating impact of the Path of
Knowledge.
Learning to become a warrior requires the attention of the apprentice to
be trapped, rather than deviated. The most successful way to do this is
for the nagal to push the apprentice out of his normal perception,
whenever he is with him. This means that the apprentice's ordinary world
becomes unsettled, forcing him to focus on the actions of the nagal.

At first the whole concept of being a warrior is for the apprentice nothing
more than a romantic ideal. Then, as he starts to learn, he begins to
wonder if the tasks assigned to him are really possible to accomplish. As
a result, the apprentice is no longer as convinced about anything as he
was when he first started out. But in his loss of conviction, the apprentice
walks neatly into the trap set for him by the nagal. Without even realising
it, the apprentice has started to look upon the Warrior's Path as being
something of a myth. The moment the nagal becomes aware of this, he
begins to challenge the apprentice's sense of conviction in every way
possible, and having no other recourse but to fight back, the apprentice
will try his utmost to convince the nagal that he is trying his best.
However, by doing so, the apprentice gets caught up in the myth which he
himself has created. Being caught in that myth, the apprentice
unconsciously starts living the myth in his efforts to be impeccable, until
eventually he has lived the myth for so long, that he becomes the myth.
One cannot become a warrior simply by wishing. To become a warrior is
the struggle of a lifetime. No man is born a warrior, any more than he is
born a reasoning being - we choose to become either one or the other.

Although it is man's destiny to learn and therefore to hunt for power, it is

not up to us to decide whether or not we will become warriors, rather than
be hunters, for this decision lies with those forces that guide the lives of
all creatures.

A hunter differs from a warrior in that a hunter is learning what it means

to hunt for power, whilst the warrior is an accomplished hunter fully
familiar with the mysterious ways of power. The hunter lives by hunting for
power; the warrior lives by flowing with the unpredictable dictates of
power.

Power is an indispensable part of the warrior's life. Yet, to begin with

power is inexplicable and seemingly unbelievable, since it defies human
logic, and cannot even be conceived of by the rational mind.
Nevertheless, gradually and over time, power makes its presence felt.
Even if one does not have power at one's command, or even if one does
not know what it is, one can nonetheless sense the presence of some
thing of which one was not aware before. However, an awareness of
power is enough to cause it to start manifesting. At first it manifests as an
uncontrollable force that seems to come to one of its own accord, and all
too often in ways that are strange and unfathomable, so that it is never
really possible to explain what power actually is or how it worlds. When
looked at objectively, power appears to be nothing at all, and yet it brings
about occurrences within one's life that are truly extraordinary and
miraculous. Eventually, though, one comes to the realisation that power is
not really an external force dictating one's actions, but is rather a force
that arises from within oneself moulded and directed by one’s will.
Knowledge is power. It takes a long time and a great deal of strenuous
effort to accumulate enough personal power before one can even talk
about power.

Power is weird. In order to command power one must have power to start
with. Yet, it is possible to gather power little by little, and to save it, until
finally one has enough personal power to engage oneself in a battle for
power.

Power is always unnoticeable whilst it is being gathered and saved.

We speak about personal power, but in reality power does not belong to
anyone. The hunter can gather it and, once gathered, it can be used for
anything the warrior wants, and in this sense it is indeed his power. But
power is never the hunter's to give to someone else, for the only way in
which one can give one's power to someone else is by using it to help
that person to gather and store his own power.

Hunting for power is a most peculiar pursuit, in that one must first
conceive of it, and next one has to set it up most carefully, only for it then
just to happen — seemingly of its own accord. Hunting for power is not
something that can be planned or thought out, but this is precisely why it
is such an exciting pursuit. All the hunter can do is to act as if he does
have a strategy for hunting for power, and in doing so he trusts that the
personal power he does have will cause him to act in the most
impeccable way in hunting for power.
The hunter trusts his personal power, for this is all he has in this vast and
utterly mysterious world.

What average man calls chance or good luck is in reality power at work.
However, power is weird and inexplicable. The only way to explain what
power is, is to say that it is a fleeting moment of chance. All of us
experience such moments in our lives, but people are normally far too
busy, too preoccupied, too stupid, or else just too lazy to seize their
fleeting moments of chance. Yet a hunter, being ever fully alert and ready,
has the required speed and skill with which to seize his fleeting moment
of chance, since this is something the hunter is always waiting for.

Personal power is just as weird as power. It is nothing more than a

feeling - a particular kind of mood which some would term being lucky.
The warrior makes his own mood.

To acquire the mood of the warrior is not an easy accomplishment, for it

requires seeing all of life, including one's fellow men, as equals - an
achievement which is a truly magnificent act of the warrior's spirit. It takes
a great deal of personal power to do that.

To succumb to negativity, to complain about life, or to feel justified in

complaining by believing one is a victim, comes very easily to all of us.
But to enter into the mood of the warrior, and to know that no-one is doing
anything to anybody, is quite the hardest thing, for we all love to indulge in
feeling like helpless victims.

Self-pity is a poor companion in the face of power. The mood of the

warrior demands that he must be in control of himself at all times, and at
the same time abandon himself to his fate.

A warrior is first and foremost a hunter, and therefore he calculates

everything. This is control. But once he has calculated his moves, the
warrior acts. This is abandon. As a result, the warrior is not a leaf at the
mercy of the wind, for no-one can force him into doing anything that goes
against his knowledge of himself and of life. The warrior is attuned to
survival, and thus he strives to survive in the most impeccable way
possible.
It is up to us as individuals to oppose the forces within our lives, but we
can only do this if we are warriors. To grasp this you must know that a
warrior waits, that he knows what he is waiting for, and that while he waits
he is in need of nothing. Therefore, whatever little bit a warrior gets is
always much more than he can take. So if he needs to eat, the warrior
finds a way, for he is not hungry. If his body suffers pain he finds a way to
stop it, for he is not in pain. A man who suffers hunger or pain is not a
warrior, for such a man is not waiting, but has instead abandoned himself
to the forces within his life, and those forces, whether of hunger or pain or
anything else, will destroy him.

What makes us miserable is wanting something. But it is possible to

learn to want nothing, and once we cease wanting then even the smallest
thing we get is always a wonderful gift. From this it follows that to be poor
is merely a thought, as is hunger, pain, love or hate.

Not being in want is a warrior’s greatest achievement. However, there is

a fine line between not wanting anything and not liking anything. Not liking
anything is stupid, for by not liking anything you turn your life into
something that is dull, empty and boring.

You can only survive the unfathomable and mysterious world of power if
you are a warrior wanting nothing.
Everyone can sense that the world is a frightening place, filled with all
sorts of dangers, and that we are in reality helpless creatures surrounded
by forces which are a mystery and at the same time relentless. The
average man, in his arrogance and ignorance, believes that these forces
can be explained and therefore changed. He has no clue how to do this,
but in his fear he chooses to believe that the actions of mankind will
explain them and change them sooner or later. The Man of Knowledge,
on the other hand, like the sorcerer, does not waste his time thinking
about explaining them or changing them. Instead he sets about learning
how to use these forces, by changing and adapting himself, so as to flow
with them, rather than fighting against them. This is his advantage, and
herein too lies the crux of sorcery. There is very little to sorcery once this
has been grasped and implemented.

A Man of Knowledge is not much better off than the average man, for
knowledge does not allow him to live a better life — on the contrary, it
serves to burden him, by making his life even more unstable and
insecure. Through having opened himself to knowledge the Man of
Knowledge becomes far more vulnerable than the average man. On the
one hand, his fellow men fear and mistrust him because of his power, and
so pose a very real threat to his continued well-being; and on the other
hand, the mysterious and relentless forces which surround us all, just
because we are alive, are for the Man of Knowledge even more
dangerous. To be attacked by a fellow man is indeed painful, but to fall
prey to the onslaughts of power is deadly. In all of this the Man of
Knowledge has only one means of survival; namely, his intent, and
therefore he must live like a warrior in his every thought, feeling and
action. Only as a warrior can one survive the Path of Knowledge.
Therefore, the real advantage of the Man of Knowledge is not his
knowledge as such, but his strength in being a warrior.
In order to become a Man of Knowledge one must first be a warrior. It is
not possible to withstand the impact of the Path of Knowledge whilst one
is still an infantile coward who cannot face his challenges with strength,
courage and impeccability. It takes a warrior to fight without giving in to
apathy, to win and lose without complaints, and to struggle against
impossible odds without recoiling, until, finally, one has learned to see;
only to realise then that none of one's ordeals have ever mattered. The
only thing that has ever mattered is that one needed to learn in order to
become a Man of Knowledge.

To become a Man of Knowledge you must become totally proficient in the

three areas of activity arising from the three principal techniques, for only
then will you be able to solve the three riddles encountered upon the
Warrior's Path. The first area of activity is the Mastery of Awareness,
incorporated within which is the Art of Dreaming. The Mastery of
Awareness is the riddle of the mind. This is the awesome infinity warriors
perceive when they realise the incomprehensible mystery and extent of
man's awareness. The second area of activity is the Art of Stalking,
known as the riddle of the heart. This is the bafflement warriors
experience when they become aware, firstly, that the world appears to be
what it is only because of our perception and, secondly, that if a different
perception is brought to bear upon the world, then our view of the world,
which seems to be so inviolable, changes dramatically. The third area of
activity is the Mastery of Intent, known as the riddle of the spirit of man.
This is the ultimate paradox; in that it is within the ability of man to project
his actions; physical, emotional and mental, beyond normal human
comprehension.
When one sees, the world of everyday life changes dramatically. Instead
of appearing to be so stable and permanent, one sees that it is in reality a
fleeting world in which everything fluctuates and changes constantly. No
two moments are ever identical.

Without speed you will never see the real world. Without speed you can
only look at the world.

To acquire speed you need to learn to listen so that you do not rely
merely on your eyes. Ever since we were born we were taught to use our
eyes with which to perceive the world, and so we talk to others and to
ourselves only about what we see in our outer and inner world. A warrior,
on the other hand, listens to the world and most especially to its sounds.

Everything has meaning for the warrior. Sounds are not just sounds.
Sounds, like everything else around us, are vibrations of sorts. Average
man does not have the speed with which to perceive these vibrations,
and therefore goes through life with no protection at all. Yet, once we
have the necessary speed to grasp the messages, everything around us
can tell us unimaginable things.

Seeing only takes place in the absence of internal dialogue.

Seeing is a true inner silence within which something of the self extends
outward to meet and identify with the form of that which is under
observation.

It is not possible to see without first having learned how to stop the world.
Stopping the word is a state of awareness that is brought about whenever
the continuous interpretation of the world, as it is normally perceived, is
halted through the cancelling of that interpretation by the unknown.

Seeing must be clear, for no warrior has the time to work out what it is he
is seeing. The advantage of seeing is that it cuts through all
complications to reveal the bottom line.

Seeing reveals the simplicity inherent within complexities.

Seeing is often accompanied by visual impacts. Yet these visions are not
reality — they are simply the mind's interpretation of the unknown. Paying
heed to these visions is what causes the visionary to become lost in a
quagmire of illusions. The art of the true seer lies in his ability to reach for
that which lies beyond the visions, for only then can the identification of
the observer and the observed take place, and thereby bring about a
direct knowing.

Seeing is not intent. Intent is a force, and therefore, rightfully power,

while seeing is an acquired ability to perceive the reality underlying
everything. This means that a Man of Knowledge perceives the world with
his senses, his intent and also his seeing.

Seeing is not sorcery, even though it is simple to confuse the two. It is

easy for a Man of Knowledge who sees, to become a sorcerer, should he
wish to do so. Yet, although any man can easily learn how to manipulate
certain techniques, and thereby become a sorcerer, he will never learn
through sorcery how to become a seer and a Man of Knowledge.

The secret of sorcery is learning how to apply one's intent to the core of
anything. Sorcery is therefore nothing more than interrupting the natural
order of things. The sorcerer hunts for and finds the core of that which he
wishes to affect, and then applies his intent to it. Yet in order to use one's
intent it is not necessary to see. It follows that seeing is contrary to
sorcery, for when one sees one knows that nothing is important, whereas
sorcery is all-important to the sorcerer.

To be a sorcerer is a most debilitating burden. It is infinitely better to learn

to see. A man who sees is everything, whereas the sorcerer is a
wretched and miserable creature, confined to spending his life
manipulating the natural order of things. But there is no freedom to be
found in manipulation, for the effects of manipulation are ephemeral, in
that life forever strives to maintain the order that is inherent within it.

The warrior is a being who believes in his divine abilities as a magical

being of the universe. The sorcerer, on the other hand, does not believe
in his godlike potential, and therefore feels the need to seek out whatever
he can use as a substitute for the power he things he lacks.
Once one has learned to see, nothing of what one knows remains. Once
one sees, one's normal perception of the world falls away - only then
does one know that everything we are witnessing is new and has never
happened before. The real world is an incredible mystery, for nothing in
the world is waiting to happen; it simply is happening. Yet neither is
anything ever finished, for nothing is ever resolved. The world merely
keeps realigning itself to itself.

We train ourselves to think about everything, and we also train our eyes
to perceive the world in the same way in which we think about everything
we are looking at. This makes us look at ourselves as being important,
and so we also feel important. As a result, we look upon our acts, as well
as the acts of others, as being important, because this is what we have
trained ourselves to believe. But once the warrior has learned to see he
realises he can no longer think about what he is looking at as being real,
and if it is not real, then everything becomes unimportant. Therefore,
once he has learned to see, the warrior finds himself alone in the world
surrounded by nothing but folly.

The way a warrior chooses to look at the world enables him to laugh or
cry; be happy or sad, for when he sees the world, he sees that everything
is equal and therefore unimportant. The result is that nothing any longer
matters, and because it doesn't matter, there is nothing to laugh or to cry
about.

To learn to see before one is a warrior is a terrible misfortune, for without

the fortitude of a warrior, seeing brings about a sense of false humility,
coupled with an intense desire to retreat from the world through becoming
indifferent to life. Yet, once he has learned to see, a Man of Knowledge
does not have to live like a warrior, or like anything else, for he can see
life for what it really is and therefore he directs his actions accordingly.

The predilection of a Man of Knowledge is to act in a way that will enable

him to know.

Only by seeing can a Man of Knowledge know, for he lives by acting; not
by thinking about acting, not about thinking about what the future will hold
for hint once he has acted. A Man of Knowledge simply chooses a Path
with a Heart, and treads it for as long as he is alive, and in doing so he
looks and he rejoices and he laughs, for he sees and therefore he knows
that nothing is more important than anything else. Because he sees, he
knows he is not going anywhere, and that just like everyone else, his life
is going to be over all too soon. Therefore for a Man of Knowledge, there
is nothing other than life to be lived. Everything else, life his family, his
name, his country, his work, his dignity, his honour and even his courage
and his strength, amounts to nothing other than his controlled folly. Thus
the controlled folly of a Man of Knowledge is his only tie to his fellow men
and to the world around him.

A Man of Knowledge labours, sweating blood and tears, and. striving with
every fibre of his being to achieve his goals — so much so, that he
appears to be just an ordinary man. And yet there is a difference, a very
important difference, and this difference lies in the fact that his folly, unlike
that of his fellow men, is controlled and calculated. What this means is
that, because nothing is ever more important than anything else, a Man of
Knowledge chooses any of the acts open to him, and engages in it as if it
matters the whole world to him - and in a sense it does matter, for his
controlled folly makes him say that it matters, and makes him act as if it
does indeed matter, even though within his innermost being he knows it
doesn't matter at all. Consequently, when а Man of Knowledge has
brought his endeavours to completion, he retreats in peace, knowing that
no matter what the outcome of his actions may be, nothing is any more
important than anything else.

Controlled folly is in the nature of a calculated outburst followed by a

calculated quietness.

A Man of Knowledge cannot possibly act towards his fellow men in ways
that are life-destructive, for by the time he has mastered the art of seeing,
and therefore having become cognisant of his own luminous being, he no
longer harbours any such desires. Having learned to see, a Man of
Knowledge becomes everything by becoming nothing. To all intents and
purposes he simply disappears, without disappearing. Because he sees,
he knows, and therefore he can become anything he chooses, and
achieve anything he desires. Yet, he desires nothing and therefore rather
than playing with his fellow men as if they are mere puppets, he strives
instead to meet them in the midst of their folly.

The Man of Knowledge is always willing to meet his fellow men in the
midst of their folly, keen to utilise their doings for mutual benefit. For the
folly of man, if correctly understood and utilised, is a veritable treasure
trove yielding vast amounts of personal power.
Any warrior can become a Man of Knowledge. A Man of Knowledge is a
warrior who has actively pursued the hardships involved in learning,
without evasion or equivocation; who has therefore done all he can in
order to learn the mysterious ways of power, and claim the knowledge
thus gained in terms of personal power.

In order to have personal power you must claim the power you dream in.
To do so entails having to face and defeat the four natural enemies.

To begin with all learning is slow; but in time it gathers momentum, to

create a snowball effect. However, since true learning is a far cry from
what it is generally assumed to be, the apprentice soon finds himself at
odds with his own thoughts and emotions. Not learning what he expected
to learn, the apprentice becomes the victim of his own doubts and
suspicions, and before long he is overcome by a debilitating sense of fear
- a fear which escalates with alarming rapidity, as he focuses upon it in
his efforts to understand its cause. Without realising it, the apprentice has
encountered his first natural enemy — fear. Under the impact of his fear,
the apprentice's sense of purpose and direction begins to crumble,
leaving him with the uncomfortable feeling that his reason is being
threatened and has somehow been assaulted.

The rational mind finds yielding to fear an irresistible temptation; but by

indulging in this temptation, the mind slays itself.

The only way to handle fear is deliberately to face it — to go with the fear
and yet not submit to it. This means that you must acknowledge your fear
fully, and yet proceed with your task of learning as if you are not afraid. If
you do this, the moment will come when you realise you have been
handling your fear for so long that it no longer terrifies you. From that
moment on you will be free from fear for the rest of your life. The
realisation of being free from fear comes in a flash of insight, but the
process of vanquishing fear is a long, nightmarish experience of
exercising the will to stand firm, no matter what may come.

Fear can only prevail in the absence of sufficient sobriety. In the full light
of sobriety fear evaporates like mist before the sun.

Once an apprentice has eliminated fear, he settles into a state of

complete sobriety, in which all is brought into sharp focus. Under the
impact of this focus, the apprentice discerns his life clearly and
determines with great accuracy the way he should proceed. This new-
found ability to discern accurately the purpose of his life naturally
engenders in the apprentice a feeling of being invincible, and unless he is
sufficiently awake to realise that he has entered the battle against
sobriety, he will be struck down by sobriety at the very moment he is
anticipating success.

It is never easy to achieve sobriety and yet, once achieved, it cannot be

allowed free rein. Instead it must be brought into its proper perspective. If
the apprentice makes the mistake of indulging in sobriety, he will never
learn to discriminate with wisdom, but will assume that in the light of his
sobriety his decisions are infallible. Becoming enmeshed in self-
importance, and believing that everything now stands revealed to him, the
apprentice unconsciously begins to twist the truth into what he feels it
should be, rather than seeing it for what it really is. Such an apprentice
therefore becomes the victim of his own sense of infallibility and self-
importance.
Sobriety is not seeing, nor is it true power - it is merely an aid to
achieving power and the ability to see. It should therefore be used only as
a tool, and if this is done, the apprentice will in time come to understand
that sobriety is nothing more than the mind's own built-in microscope.
Whatever is brought into focus under this microscope is seen in minute
detail. However, by focussing on what is held under the light of sobriety,
the greater whole must perforce be excluded. Obviously the warrior
cannot act with limited vision and hope to survive the onslaughts of
power. To survive in this world, the warrior needs detail, but also an all-
encompassing vision of the greater whole.

Once an apprentice has conquered his fear and brought sobriety into its
proper perspective, his progress upon the Warrior's path becomes greatly
accelerated. His learning now proceeds with the sure and easy steps of a
man who knows without a doubt what his purpose in life encompasses.
Consequently a quietness of life surrounds the apprentice — an inner
state of serenity in which it is no longer difficult for him to gather and store
personal power. Having acquired patience, and no longer fretting over
impossible expectations, the apprentice now continues to work quietly,
without hurry, but also without wasting precious time and personal power.
Then, one day, while performing a very mundane act, the apprentice
suddenly becomes aware that his actions are now imbued with a quality
that has never before been present. At that moment he knows, without
anyone having to tell him, that the power he has been struggling to
acquire so long is finally at his command.

From the moment an apprentice has discovered his power he is an

apprentice no more, but has become a master in his own right, worthy of
being called a warrior. No longer just an ordinary man at the mercy of the
world around him, the warrior steps forward lightly with the full authority
and power of a leader. His command is instinctively recognised and
obeyed. His vitality engenders in those around him a sense of hope and
excitement, while his daring moves foster in them an inspiration and a
respect which quickly makes of his word the law. At this point the warrior's
power is such that it enables him to do whatever he sees fit, but it is also
in this moment that he is brought face to face with the challenges of the
third natural enemy - power.

Power is a formidable enemy, and a man or woman must be a very fine

warrior indeed to overcome it. Many a good warrior has lost in the battle
against power; but to lose this battle is also to lose one's freedom. A
warrior who has lost the battle against power never learns how to wield
his power impeccably, and consequently becomes an implacable dictator
who will lash out with brutal cruelty, merely to satisfy a whim. For such a
man power is no longer an ally, but a forceful manipulator that destroys
him little by little, until finally fie has lost all sense of humanness. Having
lost his sense of humanness, the man now rapidly loses also his sense of
justice, and therefore can no longer distinguish between right and wrong.
From this point on power begins to erase the man's awareness until only
a bitterly twisted caricature remains — a foul burnt-out husk of vile
corruption spewing forth the deadly poisons of doubt and suspicion.

Power in itself is simply power, and therefore neither good nor bad. It is
the intent with which power is wielded that makes it either life-destructive
or life-enhancing. To be life-enhancing in one's actions is to gain power,
but to be life-destructive is to have power over — a most bizarre use of
power that is utterly draining of one's personal power.
Only by listening attentively to every command from his heart can the
warrior hope to gain the advantage over power. There is no other way to
survive the unrelenting attacks staged by power against the warrior
striving to gain command over it. The warrior must never, not even for one
instant, lose sight of the fact that power is not the sole property of any
individual, to be used for selfish gain - power may only be used for the
benefit of all life, since the individual unit is but a fragment of the greater
whole. If the warrior holds his intent unwaveringly upon this knowledge
throughout his battle, then there comes a moment when he slips into a
second state of serenity and, in that new quietness of life, grasps the
purpose of the Eagle. It is then that the warrior's command becomes the
command of the Eagle, and from this moment on the warrior is free of the
horrendous temptations posed by power. Finally the battle is over, and the
power which the warrior has been struggling to control now quietly
submits to his will. This is that true command of power which makes the
warrior who walks the Path of Freedom an utterly invincible being.

Having bested his fear, having control over sobriety, and being able to
keep his power in check the warrior finally comes to that crossroad known
as the fourth natural enemy - old age. It depends very much upon each
individual's level of personal power as to when he will be confronted by
this enemy. For some it comes only towards the end of their lives,
because it has taken them this long to vanquish the other three enemies;
but for those who have been able to conquer the first three enemies fairly
quickly, it can come at a relatively young age.

Old age is a crossroad at which two forces cross at right angles. One
force is the unyielding temptation to rest; the other is the determination to
go on. If the warrior surrenders to the temptation to rest, the ageing
process of the tonal drains his personal power, until in no time at all he
has become just as feeble as any old man. If , on the other hand, the
warrior fights off the temptation to rest, he performs yet another miracle
by bringing about a ninety degree shift in his awareness - a shift that
enables him to embark upon the definitive journey of a warrior.

The ninety degree shift does not cancel the effects of old age upon the
tonal, but the warrior uses it to fight to retain full control of his faculties,
his knowledge, sobriety and power, right up to, and even beyond, the
moment of death. This is the warrior’s reward for having been willing to
fight impeccably until his final breath.

Only after the warrior has brought about the ninety degree shift can he in
all honesty accept the title of Toltec. Thus the career of the true-blooded
Toltec is short by any standard, and yet it is time enough in which to
rejoice in his full power. Having chosen to tread the Path of Freedom the
warrior knows that he cannot defeat old age for ever — he can only fight it
off impeccably until his death takes him. Consequently, being a Man of
Knowledge is not a permanent affair, for the warrior has to face and
conquer the four natural enemies in every lifetime.

One can only be defeated by the four natural enemies if one ceases to
struggle against them. If, on the other hand, one struggles to learn in spite
of one's fear, or clarity, or power, or old age, by never submitting to them,
one does eventually conquer them.

It is the conscious use of will that enables both the sorcerer and the Man
of Knowledge to perform extraordinary feats, but the difference between
them is that the sorcerer never learns to conquer the four natural
enemies. As a result, they consume his strength for the entire duration of
his life, and therefore, when old age starts to overtake him, the sorcerer
has already become too weak and feeble to continue commanding his
will in fighting off his death. Consequently his will begins to fade, and as
it fades the sorcerer loses his ability to focus his power and maintain his
grip upon his life. No longer being in command of his will, and no longer
being able to focus his power or maintain his grip upon life, the sorcerer's
life, like that of the average old man, begins to disintegrate into an
uncontained ephemeral fog of uncertainties, until finally death overtakes
him completely.
A warrior is ever guided by his unwavering sense of purpose, and
because he has learned to live by challenges he can fend off anything. So
although a Man of Knowledge can be injured and hurt, he can never be
offended, for the simple reason that he is a warrior who has learned to
live by challenge. If one lives by challenge, one cannot possibly be
offended by the actions of one's fellow men, for these are merely
challenges to be met.

No-one can undermine the security and well-being of a Man of

Knowledge, for he sees, and therefore he takes the necessary
precautions to avoid falling prey to any ill-intent that may be directed at
him. As a result, a Man of Knowledge controls everything without
controlling anything.

If one is going to stop one's fellow men, one must be on the outside of the
circle which confines their lives, for only then is it possible to direct,
control and apply the natural pressure caused by that circle. That
pressure is the innate desire to win, rather than to lose; a most deadly
hook. Therefore whenever a Man of Knowledge has to interact with his
fellow men, he adopts the Doing of Strategy. The Doing of Strategy
means that one is never at the mercy of other people's actions. Yet
because doing implies action, one also cannot become hooded to the
outcome of one's actions, for that would necessitate being on the inside
of the circle.

Being hooked to the outcome of an action is a foolish waste of one's life,

for any pursuit is just like any other pursuit, in that they are all equal. At
the end of the day, victor and victim meet, and the only thing that really
matters then is that life was over all too quickly for both of them.
Every apprentice always seeks explanations, but seeking explanations is
merely the result of the tonal’s obsession with wanting to have everything
under its control. Yet whenever the explanation given brings the tonal
hard up against the fact that it is going to have to forfeit its control, it at
first becomes momentarily confused, and then opens itself up to death
like an utter jerk. The tonal would rather perish than forfeit its insane
sense of having to remain in control.

One of the advantages of the warrior's training is that it gradually

diminishes the tonal's fear of the unknown, until finally the warrior can
accept everything without accepting anything. This allows the warrior to
act as if he knows what he is doing, when in reality he knows nothing.

A warrior has to be fluid — shifting his perception continuously in order to

flow with the world around him, irrespective of whether this is the world of
reason, or the world of intent. But the danger in this shifting is when the
world is between that of reason and intent, and therefore neither one nor
the other. The only way of surviving such shifting is by acting as if one
believes. In other words, the true art of the warrior is that he believes
without believing. Yet the warrior cannot just believe for the sake of
believing, for to do so would mean that he is not taking responsibility for
his circumstances. Instead the warrior must believe because he chooses
to believe, meaning that his belief must be an act of his innermost
feelings. A warrior doesn't believe for the sake of believing — a warrior
has to believe.

The prerequisite for a warrior is that he has to believe, for believing is an

essential condition of his beingness. Without belief the warrior cannot
activate his intent positively.
It is only the presence of death that enables us to believe, for where there
is not an awareness of death everything becomes mundane and trivial.
Only when we are aware that death is stalking us do we start to recognise
the mystery surrounding us all.

Having to believe means that you must take careful stock of everything
you know about yourself and your whole life. Then you should consider
that everything you think you know about yourself could just be what you
want to believe; meaning that it could all be false, and therefore that
instead of taking your chances and fighting for your life, you may well be
going to your doom, content in your sense of complacency.

We must all take responsibility for living in a weird world. For you the
world is weird, because when you are not at odds with it, you are bored
with it. But for a Man of Knowledge the world is weird, because it is
awesome, mysterious and inexplicable. You must learn to make every act
count, for you are going to be in this world only for a brief while — far too
brief to witness all of its stupendous secrets.

This act of yours, whatever it may be, could be your last act on earth.
Whatever battle you are facing right now could be your last battle in this
lifetime. None of us have a guarantee that we are going to live beyond
this moment.
Acts hold power, but especially when one knows that these acts are
one's last battle. Such acts bring with them a melancholic and all-
consuming joy through the knowledge that whatever one is engaged in
may well be one's final engagement with life.

Whenever things become unclear the warrior reflects upon his death.
The reality of death is the only thing that fortifies our spirit.

Death is our constant companion. It is always just to our left, just within
reach.

Whenever you feel that life has become too much of a burden, you
should turn to your left and seek counsel from your death. All sense of
pettiness is dropped instantly, should you catch a glimpse of your death,
or should it gesture to you, or even if you can just sense your constant
companion watching you.

Death is the only wise advisor we have. Whenever you feel you are about
to be destroyed in some way, turn to your death and ask it if this is true.
Your death will tell you that you are indulging in your weaknesses, and
that it is only its touch that matters. Your death will whisper, "I have not yet
touched you."

You should bring your focus to bear upon the relationship between you
and your death, without becoming morbid or sad. Hold your attention on
the fact that you don’t have time, and let your actions reflect this. Let each
of your acts be your last act upon earth, for it is only then that your
actions will hold true power. Without this approach, your actions will for
ever be the acts of a timid man who has no real power.

If you make your every act your last act on earth, you will enter into the
mood of the warrior. The mood of the warrior is not an emotional state,
but is instead an acute awareness of how our impending death is stalking
our every move. Living with this awareness, the warrior's mood pervades
his every thought, feeling and action, to the extent that he casts all
caution to the wind, not in a reckless fashion, but in a way that gives
expression to his great love for and of life; an expression that is akin to a
kind of dance — a dance in which the warrior embraces his death as the
only witness that matters to him. Toltecs term this dance, dancing the
edge; a way of life that makes of each of the warrior’s acts his last act on
earth. Thus it is that the warrior enters the Temple of Death, not because
he is seeking to die, but because he knows that anything touched by
death turns into true power.
Timidity causes us to cling to the illusions of the mind. Timidity gives us a
false sense of safety, well-being and peace for as long as life is unfolding
smoothly. But then suddenly the awesome vastness of the world engulfs
us, and we find out too late that our safe-haven was not a safe-haven at
all. Timidity merely prevents us from exploring our fate.

Average man is timid, and therefore he goes from one act to another
without any thought or care. A warrior, on the other hand, assesses every
act with the utmost care, and because he is intimately aware of his death,
he moves prudently, as if every act is his last battle. Only a fool would fail
to see what an advantage this is. A warrior gives his last battle his full
respect, for it is only right that his last act on earth should be his finest act
and a reflection of his impeccability. It makes his act a joyful act, and it
takes the edge off his fear.

Approaching knowledge is to enter into a battle for one’s life. Hence one
should only approach knowledge with full alertness, with fear, with respect
and with absolute assurance. Any man foolish enough not to approach
knowledge in this way will regret his error bitterly. But if he is wise enough
to acknowledge that his search for knowledge is a matter of life and death
he will have no cause for regrets, for such an approach cancels out the
careless actions of the fool. Should such a man fail in any particular
pursuit of knowledge he is not defeated, because in walking the Path of
Knowledge we fight many battles — some we win, some we lose.
Success lies not in how many battles we have won, but in how well we
have fought.

The only failure in life is the failure to fight.

You cannot walk the Path of Knowledge without living that knowledge;
therefore your commitment to the Path of Knowledge must be absolute.

Once we have embarked upon the Path of Knowledge, we gradually

become aware that ordinary life as we knew it before has been left behind
for ever — for there is simply no way back. With this awareness comes
the realisation that knowledge is indeed a most frightening pursuit; that
we can no longer use our normal doings for protection; and that we must
therefore find a new way of life, if we are going to survive. The first action
we should take once we have achieved this awareness is to make the
decision to become a warrior— the most important decision we can ever
make. The fearsome nature of knowledge leaves us with no option other
than to become a warrior.

By the time we have come to realise that knowledge is terrifying, we are

also aware that death is our constant companion. To follow the Path of
Knowledge means having to face impending destruction at every turn,
and we therefore become acutely aware of death stalking us. Without this
keen awareness of our death we would be just average people doing
average things, for we would lack the necessary personal power and
motivation with which to transform our ordinary lives into the gathering of
magical power. Every bit of new knowledge gained becomes power, since
it has death at its core, for anything touched by death becomes power.

To live the impeccable life of the warrior we must at all times be aware of
the fact that death is our constant companion. Yet if we were to focus only
on our death, we would become totally self-centred — the very antithesis
of what it is to be a warrior. Therefore another requirement for being a
warrior is detachment, for it is only by being thoroughly detached that we
can avoid becoming obsessed with our impending death. Thus upon the
Path of Knowledge death is the warrior's best advisor, and detachment is
his staff.

The warrior is detached from everything, even from his death. But this
does not mean that he withdraws from the world by becoming separative.
To be separative is to indulge the tonal. A man who is separative is not
detached, for he deliberately induces himself in being separative.
Indulgence is not detachment.

Detachment means we do not indulge ourselves in anything, or deny

ourselves anything. Only by remaining acutely aware of death stalking us
can we become sufficiently detached not to abandon ourselves to
anything, but also not to deny ourselves anything. The warrior who has
this type of detachment does not pine for anything — since he has
acquired an inner lust for life and for all the many richnesses of life.
Because he knows that his time on earth will be over all too soon, he
savours all of life’s richnesses — without ever becoming attached to any
of them to the exclusion of the others.
The warrior who is detached knows that his death is stalking him, and
also knows he has only one possibility of surviving; namely, the power of
his decisions. He knows he must be in charge of his choices, and so he
understands that his decisions are his responsibility. Once he has made a
decision there is no more time for regrets, doubts or recriminations. The
warrior's decision is final, in that his death does not allow him to cling to
anything, and neither does his heart allow him to indulge in anything.

There are only right and wrong decisions. If you make the wrong decision
your heart knows it, and so does the heart of everyone around you. If, on
the other hand, you make the right decision, your heart knows this too. It
then relaxes and immediately forgets there was a decision to make, for it
is already preparing for the next decision that will have to be taken
because of the inevitable consequences of the decision you have just
made. Therefore if, having made a decision, you start to have doubts or
regrets, your heart can no longer assist you in making the decision again,
for it has already moved on to the next decision.

Think and assess very carefully before you make a decision, but once
you have made your decision then be on your way free from all worry and
thought; for there will still be millions of decisions awaiting you at every
turn of your way. Such is the life of the warrior. When the warrior makes a
decision he must follow it through all the way, by taking responsibility for
what he does. Irrespective of what he does, the warrior must first know
why he is doing it, and then he must proceed with his actions
unequivocally, for to assume responsibility for one's actions means that
one is prepared to die for them.
Only an immortal man has the time to doubt his decisions, to regret them
or to cancel them. But in a world in which death is the hunter, none of us
have time for doubts or regrets. We only have time for decisions.
It never matters what our decisions are, for the simple reason that nothing
can ever be more or less important than anything else. In a world in which
death is the hunter there are no big or small decisions. All decisions are
merely decisions we make in the face of our inevitable death.
To make a decision means that the warrior has honed his spirit into
becoming an impeccable warrior, and that he has therefore done
everything to be worthy of knowledge and power. Being worthy of
knowledge means that there is not a right or a wrong time to make a
decision — there is only the moment in which the warrior has to make the
decision.

Knowledge is power. Once the warrior has embarked upon the Path of
Knowledge he is no longer liable for what may happen to those whose
fate brings them into contact with him. Therefore the warrior has no
remorse about anything he has done, because he knows that were he to
see his acts as being vile or evil, he would be making his own actions
more important than the fate of others.

The warrior never apologises, for he knows that apologies are a stupid
waste of time and personal power. The only thing that matters is being an
impeccable warrior. However, one cannot be impeccable when one is
feeling self-important. Self-importance makes one heavy, inept and vain.
To be a Man of Knowledge one must be an impeccable warrior who is
light and fluid.

In order to succeed upon the Path of Knowledge an all-encompassing

change is required. Such a change is not merely a change in thinking, or
bias, or belief; instead, you must transform the island of the tonal.
 III

The tonal is like a physical island existing within the boundless ocean of
pure being — the nagal. On this island is everything the incarnated
individual needs for life upon the physical plane.

Man incarnates as a dual being, with two distinct polarities to his

beingness; the one polarity—pure spirit — is eternal, and is termed the
nagal, whilst the other polarity — purely physical — is transient, and is
called the tonal. These two polarities become fully interactive at the
moment of birth.

At birth man is a pure nagal being, for his tonal is, to all intents and
purposes, undeveloped. But from the moment he is born man can feel
that, in order to function within the physical world, he needs a physical
counterpart. This sense of being incomplete forces man to focus his
attention exclusively on the development and the functionality of the tonal,
to such an extent that the tonal and its functionality become all-
consuming, and the nagal is ignored. The result is that by the time the
tonal is fully developed and he has achieved full functionality within the
world, man is so utterly identified with the tonal, that he has become all
tonal .Yet this causes him to start feeling incomplete again, for he now
senses that an essential part of him is missing.

The tonal of man is the product of incarnation, for we only start to

develop it at birth. Our very first breath upon the physical plane is an act
of power that gives the tonal life, and brings it into manifestation. Until that
first breath the tonal is a form which cannot exist independently of the
womb in which it was formed. Therefore the tonal starts at birth and ends
at death.

The tonal is everything we are. If we can name it, it is the tonal. It follows
that, because the tonal is everything, including its own doings, everything
also falls into the realm of the tonal. As a result, it is the tonal that
organises the world into one coherent whole - a truly monumental task. If
it were not for the tonal's ability to do this, nothing in the world would
make sense. For example, it is your tonal which is reading this aphorism,
and trying to make sense out of it; for unless your tonal were doing this,
the aphorism would be an unintelligible collection of strange squiggles
and lines on paper that would mean nothing to you. Therefore everything
we know, and everything we do, is only possible because of the work
being done by the tonal.

In a strange kind of way the tonal creates the world in which we live,
because it creates the rules with which it interprets and comprehends the
world. But to say that the tonal creates the world is not really true, for the
tonal does not have the power to create or change anything; it can only
witness, assess and judge according to the rules it has set up for itself.
And yet, since the tonal assesses and judges the world, it does create it
in a manner of speaking.

All of us have a personal tonal, and all of humanity has a collective tonal
which, being dependent upon the collective awareness of humanity at any
point in time is termed the tonal of the times.
The tonal of the times, that is, the collective tonal of humanity, makes us
all alike, in the same way as the tonal of an inn-keeper makes all the
tables in his inn alike. Yet each of these tables has its own tonal, just like
every person has a personal tonal. But the important point to grasp is that
everything, whether personal or collective, is still the tonal.

The tonal of our time decrees that everything pertaining to our thoughts
and our feelings occurs privately within us. The tonal of the warrior, on the
other hand, decrees that this is not true. But in the final analysis it does
not matter who is right and who is wrong, for what difference does it make
if our thoughts and feelings are private or not? The only real difference
lies in how different tonals interpret these possibilities within the context of
their rules.

The fact that the tonal constitutes everything we know and do makes it an
all-consuming affair.

The tonal is an animal guardian — a guardian that is very much a

protector, for it protects something that is priceless; namely, our true
being. Unfortunately though, being a protector, the tonal has a tendency
to be secretive and covetous about its doings, and because its doings are
the most important aspect of our fives, it is inevitable that the tonal should
gradually change from being a benevolent guardian who is empathetic
and understanding, to a despotic guard that is petty, small-minded and
thoroughly self-centred.
The tonal cannot operate efficiently without being able to talk to itself as
well as to other tonals. It therefore constructed terms such as "I" and
"myself" for the purposes of upholding its view of reality.

Every person's tonal has an objective and a subjective side to it. The
objective side is the outer tangible form of the tonal, or what one may call
the surface of the island, and which deals with action and re-action. This
is the tough and resilient side of the tonal. The subjective side, on the
other hand, is an inner and intangible complexity dealing with assessing,
judging and decision-making, and which is not nearly as tough or resilient
as its outer side.

A proper tonal is one in which its objective and subjective sides have
been merged into a harmonious and balanced unity.

Only a warrior is capable of forging his tonal into a proper tonal. Average
men and women can at best have tonals which are just right for them in
terms of where their lives are at.

Understanding the tonal of any person implies that we must stop judging
that person in a moral sense, and stop excusing him on the assumption
that he is a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No-one is ever hopeless or
helpless, and thus we can assess the tonal without either condemning or
forgiving the person concerned. For example, a man’s tonal does not
become weak if he becomes an alcoholic; instead, it is the other way
round, in that the man becomes an alcoholic because his tonal is weak. It
is therefore not incorrect to say that, because the tonal forces itself to
follow its own judgements, it is the weaknesses within the tonal that force
us into becoming what we are. This, however, is only a partial truth. It is
far more true to say that we become what we are, not only because of our
identification with the tonal and its judgements, but also because, as a
result of this identification, we pamper the tonal into becoming pathetically
weak. Such are the consequences of indulgence.

Any man knows when he is indulging, because he knows that if he is to

maintain order he has to be a perfect tonal, and to be a perfect tonal
implies that he is fully aware at all times of everything transpiring upon his
island. But most people can't be bothered to be this aware, and therefore
when they claim that they are arguing a point so as to maintain order,
they are lying, for they are only making this claim to win an argument.

Man's biggest mistake is to insist upon remaining within the limited and
boring restrictions of his comfortable island. This is the work of the tonal,
and yet the tonal's rules should never be allowed to become the law.
A warrior treats his tonal with total respect.

The tonal, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, is actually very

vulnerable and therefore easily destroyed through maltreatment.

It is the tonal that rules in the life of the average man, but it is a very
delicate and vulnerable ruler, for the tonal can easily die if seriously
threatened. Therefore the tonal has to be protected all costs, because if it
dies, the man dies too. For the warrior this state of affairs is a very real
dilemma, since on the one hand, the tonal must be forced to give up its
control, while on the other hand, it must be maintained and protected as a
guardian. The only way around this is to make the nagal surface, in order
to support the tonal. Yet this too constitutes a problem, for the nagal
rarely — if ever — acts, but when it does act, it terrifies the tonal to the
point of death.

The art of the warrior is a very delicate and difficult balancing act, in
which the tonal must be coaxed, bit by bit, into gradually being able to
accept and then withstand the impact of the eventual emergence of the
nagal, without succumbing to death. The only way of accomplishing this
most difficult balancing act is to live the impeccable life of the warrior, so
as to gain the required personal power to cleanse and re-order the island
of the tonal thoroughly. Only an island that is immaculately clean and
uncluttered offers no resistance to the impact of the nagal, for it is as if
there is nothing present to offer resistance.

The nagal, once it begins to emerge, can cause great damage to the
tonal by surfacing in an uncontrolled outburst, for the actions of the nagal
are deadly to anyone who does not have the personal power to withstand
its impact. Generally speaking, average man does not have the
necessary personal power to withstand a direct experience of the nagal.
Therefore, should such a man come face to face with the nagal, the
shock to his tonal would kill him. It takes a great many years of diligent
training to prepare the tonal for a direct experience with the nagal. Thus
the aim in a warrior's training is not to teach him the tricks of sorcery, but
to teach his tonal the art of not resisting the impact of the nagal and so
not dying from shock. This is a most difficult task to accomplish, for the
tonal can only be convinced with reasons, while the nagal can only be
invoked by enticing it with action. Yet whenever the nagal does act, the
tonal tends to lose all sense of reason, because of its fright. It is therefore
imperative for the warrior to achieve a complete emptiness of everything
which could possibly obstruct or resist the actions of the nagal, before he
can safely risk a direct encounter with the nagal.

It stands to reason that the tonal must defend itself every time it is
threatened, for only in this way can it survive. It therefore matters very
little how the tonal chooses to react in order to defend itself. All that
matters in the life of a warrior is that the tonal of the warrior must learn
that there are alternatives to reacting. To this end an apprentice is taught
not to react; firstly, by being shown the folly inherent within his habitual
reactions; and secondly, by being enticed to use the various techniques
presented to him, through perceiving the advantages in using them. It is
the subtle and powerful combination of recognising both the
disadvantages in its folly as well as the advantages to be gained from
other alternatives, that the tonal can be coaxed into starting to relinquish
its obsessive control — without feeling totally threatened and therefore
withdrawing completely.

There are many instances when the tonal will momentarily relinquish its
control. For example, when it gets a sudden fright, or when it is highly
embarrassed. But the danger in these situations is that the tonal can
relinquish its control so completely that it dies. Many people have died
from fright, just as many people have been so highly embarrassed that
they lost control of their senses long enough to get themselves killed in
some way.

The true art of the warrior lies in his ability, acquired only after a
considerable struggle, to coax the tonal into relinquishing its control, and
then immediately to reverse that process as quickly and efficiency as he
can, the moment the tonal has let go. This act, as paradoxical and
whimsical as it may seem, is an act of vital importance, because white the
tonal of the warrior is unchallenged and the warrior's attention is fixed on
the world of the tonal, the warrior is on safe ground, for he knows all the
rules of the tonal. However, the moment the tonal relinquishes its control,
the world loses its solidity and it begins to fragment and disintegrate. If
the warrior does not immediately halt this process he is in grave danger of
being swept away by a mighty force Toltecs refer to simply as a raging
wind. Although the term “wind” is metaphorical, the force to which it refers
is not a metaphor, but a very real and unspeakably powerful force — the
primeval force of inherent awareness that sweeps all before it with
relentless intent. To be exposed to that force without the order of the
tonal's world spells insanity and death.

Whenever the tonal relinquishes its control, the nagal, if it is motivated to

do so, will surface, take control, and perform the extraordinary. How this
happens is not known.

The nagal can accomplish extraordinary feats, feats which are

considered to be impossible, and which are therefore mostly unthinkable
and terrifying for the tonal. Yet the reason why such feats are
extraordinary is because the warrior has no knowledge of how they are
accomplished. They simply happen. The only knowledge the warrior has
at his command is how to reach the nagal, but once the nagal surfaces in
him he has no idea what takes place.

No-one knows how the nagal works, or how the warrior uses it. We can
only witness the acts of the nagal.

The acts of the nagal can be witnessed only with the body, not with the
reason.

For the nagal there is no matter, energy, space or time. The nagal moves
within its own beingness, and its beingness is not the beingness of the
tonal.

If you wish to talk about the nagal your reason is not invited to join the
discussion. We can talk about the nagal as much as you want, provided
you do not want it explained to you. The nagal cannot be explained, it
can only be witnessed. Therefore we can talk about what you witnessed,
and how you witnessed it, but we can never even begin to explain how it
is possible. Any attempt at explaining the nagal is an utter anathema, for
it is disgracefully stupid to want to explain the nagal with the tonal.
Talking and reason have validity only within the boundaries prescribed by
the tonal's rules, and neither those boundaries nor those rules are
applicable to the nagal.
If, in considering the nagal, you fail to understand anything, then you are
in a fine state of mind. It is when you think you understand the nagal that
you have hopelessly missed the boat. Naturally, this is from the
perspective of the warrior. From the perspective of the average man you
are lost if you fail to understand, and you are well on the way to losing
control of your wits unless you force yourself to gain some measure of
understanding.

The nagal is that part of us which can never he explained, much less
understood, for we can attribute no descriptions, no words, no names, no
feelings, and no knowledge to that which we call the nagal. It is that part
of us which is, quite simply, No-Thing. In fact, average man never
ventures anywhere near the nagal, for he does not even know it exists.

Even if we do not know anything about the nagal, we can nonetheless

sense that there is more to us than just the tonal. Yet whenever we try to
figure out what this other part of us is, the tonal immediately takes over,
for it is very petty and therefore extremely jealous of the limelight. The
tonal overwhelms us with its cleverness and, once overwhelmed, we lose
even the slightest feeling we may have for our true inner self, the nagal.

The tonal's greatest accomplishment lies in how it can suppress any

manifestation of the nagal, to the point that even if the nagal’s presence
is blatantly obvious, the tonal will ensure it is completely unnoticeable. To
truly explain this is impossible, other than to say that no matter how clever
are the tonal's manouevres in retaining its position of supremacy within
life, the nagal does spontaneously make its appearance from time to
time. Yet because the tonal is utterly terrified by the presence of the
nagal, it immediately sets about obliterating any trace of that presence
with its cunning reason.
The acts of the nagal can be witnessed by anyone, but it is only a seer
who can see the presence of the nagal. Someone who does not see
would witness nothing in the presence of the nagal, other than something
he can account for according to his view of the world. If the surfacing of
the nagal is powerful, such a man will believe he is witnessing something
like a strong wind that has sprung up out of nowhere, or a fierce
downpour of rain when the sky was blue a minute before, or a sudden
unseasonal heat-wave. But when the surfacing of the nagal is subtle,
such a man will appear to have noticed nothing at all and, if questioned,
will say that he imagined he had detected something, but is not sure
what. This is only natural, and it is not that the man is being devious or
dishonest; on the contrary, he is being perfectly honest and sensible, for
his eyes, being attuned to the world of the tonal, would have seen nothing
extraordinary. Average man is always forced to interpret the unknown in
terms of the known, for his eyes are the eyes of the tonal and therefore
limited to the tonal's world, in which there is nothing out of the ordinary,
nothing new, nothing that the eyes cannot grasp, and nothing that cannot
be explained by the tonal.

When one encounters the nagal one should never stare at it. It is far
more beneficial, and much less taxing on the tonal, to glance at the nagal
as if it were something quite common, and to keep moving and blinking
the eyes so as to prevent one's attention from becoming fixated upon it.
This movement of the eyes, though, should be done only to relieve the
tonal of the undue stress it would be caused, should its attention become
fixated upon the nagal. It should not be done to enable the tonal to
squirm out of the encounter, by regaining control of its petty reason and
thereby immediately re-establishing its own order. Because of its
obsession with control, the tonal is quite convinced that everything it
cannot account for according to its rules, is threatening its rationality. Yet
this fear is a total illusion, for the nagal has no inherent wish to obliterate
its other polarity.

Not staring directly at the nagal, and keeping the eyes moving, are
important, because our eyes are the eyes of the tonal or, more precisely,
our eyes have been trained by the tonal and therefore the tonal controls
them. Consequently, every time we encounter the nagal, our eyes go stiff
and unyielding as the tonal struggles to keep its control and force the
world into continuing to obey its rules. So it is not surprising that looking
at the nagal through eyes that are controlled by the tonal should bring
about utter confusion and huge fear. Therefore, part of the warrior's
training is learning how to free the eyes from the control of the tonal. To
this effect the tonal must be taught that there are many other possible
arrangements of the world, and that these alternative arrangements can
be allowed to pass in front of the same windows, without being a menace
to the tonal. In order to meet with the nagal the eyes of the warrior must
be free from control, so as to become true windows. The eyes can be
windows revealing the boredom inherent within the world of the tonal, or
windows repeating the awesome wonders of infinity.

A few encounters with the nagal should be enough to dismantle

anyone's view of the world, and yet the tonal's grip is so strong that most
people's view of the world will remain intact, even if they have been struck
dumb through witnessing the incredible feats of the nagal. In a bizarre
kind of way this is average man's greatest strength.
Once man has become fully identified with the tonal he starts to perceive
everything in terms of pairs of opposites. This is because he can sense
the two sides of his beingness, but, through being identified with the tonal,
he always sees them as things that belong to the world of the tonal.
Therefore man sees the pairs of opposites as being mind and body, soul
and matter, good and evil, God and Satan, and so on. However, what
man never comes to realise is that he is merely pairing things on the
island of the tonal, much like pairing tea and coffee, or bread and cake, or
milk and water. Looked at objectively, this is madness, but in his madness
man actually believes that his reasoning is making unquestionable sense.

To assume that the nagal is God is the ultimate in arrogance, for God is
Some-Thing that belongs to the realm of both the personal tonal as well
as the tonal of the times. God is a construct of the mind and is therefore
very much part of the tonal's world. So although man can and does talk
about God with absolute familiarity and authority, this is where the reality
of God stops, for God cannot ever be witnessed or called upon at will.
The nagal, on the other hand, can be witnessed, for it can be invoked into
action by the warrior. Yet neither the nagal nor its acts can ever be talked
about. In fact, it is the idea called God, as well as the tonal's incessant
talking about God, that enables it to justify its sense of reasoning and
supremacy, whereas the witnessing of the nagal in action renders the
tonal speechless and incapacitated.

The nagal is at the warrior's command. But this does not mean that the
nagal is experience, or knowledge, intuition or consciousness, for all of
these are merely aspects of the island of the tonal. The nagal is purely an
effect. To grasp this is not easy, but it helps to think of the nagal as being
the effect brought about whenever power is manifested. This is the only
way in which we can make reference to the nagal, by saying that its
effects are present wherever we find power.
The nagal is simply there. The tonal comes into being at birth and ends
at death, but the nagal never ends, for the nagal has no limits. The nagal
is therefore all around the island, on the island and within the island. The
nagal is there before the island comes into being, it is there whilst the
island exists and it remains after the island has gone. The nagal is
always there where power waits. The nagal is aware of everything.

It is the nagal that is responsible for both creativity and creation, for the
nagal is the only part of us that can create.

Bringing into existence forms of any description — no matter how

ingenious these forms may be - is not creation, but simply the result of the
ingenuity of the tonal, or groups of tonals working together, in either
reproducing the known in a new form, or else refashioning it for a new
application.

Creativity is not something we think about, plan, and then bring to fruition.
Creativity is the result of having become inspired into spontaneous action
by the surfacing of the nagal. Creativity comes upon one in a flash of
brilliant insight, and one finds oneself acting without premeditation. It is
the tonal that needs the structured order born of reason in order to act;
but not the nagal. The nagal does not need a precise plan of action to
act, but when it acts, it does so with a breathtaking precision.
The human being is not really a reasoning being, but is predominantly
will, because will is connected to three other major aspects of the
blueprint of man; namely, feeling, dreaming and seeing. In comparison to
will reason is a much smaller centre, for it is connected only to talking.

All human beings come into incarnation with eight distinct aspects. Two
of these aspects, reason and talking, are well known to everyone. Feeling
is somehow known, but is forever vague and nebulous. Yet it is only upon
the Path of Knowledge that one becomes acquainted with dreaming,
seeing and will. Two further aspects, the dreamed and the dreamer,
remain elusive for all except the warrior who has learned to see. These
eight aspects form the totality of the self, that is, the reincarnating self
known as the true self. The true self in its totality is the awareness factor
of the nagal within manifestation. Just as life has two polarities; namely,
Life within Manifestation and Life Un-manifest, so too does the nagal
within manifestation have two aspects; namely, the tonal and the nagal.
The tonal and the nagal are the two poles of man’s beingness, and these
two poles, together with the eight aspects comprising the totality of the
self, make up the ten aspects of man, of which the human being within
incarnation is a reflection.

The aim of the warrior is to achieve the totality of the self. However
achieving the totality of the self is not as simple as wanting to do so, or
merely being willing to learn to do so. Achieving the totality of the self
necessitates the transmutation of egotism; a task that requires many
lifetimes.

The whole of society pivots around that force which man has come to
uphold as his principal deity — egotism. Under the influence of this
jealous deity, man is forced to perceive the world around him only in
terms of gross separativeness; his prevailing thoughts ever centred upon
the theme of ‘I here, and the world out there.’

Egotism is an inherent quality of the island of the tonal and therefore

cannot be eradicated — it can only be transmuted into its proper purpose,
and placed in its correct spot upon the island.

It is not egotism that is the culprit, and neither is it the island of the tonal.
It is man's identification with the egotism inherent within the tonal that is
the cause of man's evil doings. The warrior knows this and therefore,
instead of trying to escape the island of the tonal, he learns to use it and
its inherent qualities in order to bring about its needed transformation.
When one is finally ready for a direct and wilful encounter with the nagal,
one has to be alone; for we all have to stand alone or, more precisely, all-
one in our understanding of the nagal, the inner self.

It is the task of the nagal being to lead the warrior into the nagal. This
immediately raises the question, what is being led into the nagal? With
questions such as these reason is of no use, for as soon as reason is
stretched beyond the limits demarcated by the tonal’s rules, it is rendered
useless.
It is not the tonal that is led into the nagal, for the tonal and the
nagal are the two polarities of man’s beingness, and therefore they
cannot be led into one another. But as meaningless as this is to reason, it
is the warrior's perception that is led into the nagal.

When the time comes, you must have sufficient personal power to unfold
the wings of perception to touch both the nagal and the tonal, so that you
may know the meaning of eternity. In that flight through time you will
grasp the meaning of intent, and then too will you know the purpose of
all.
 IV

Only those who come to the Warrior's Path prepared to die can possibly
hope to succeed in becoming warriors, for the Warrior's Path can only be
mastered if mastering it means survival.

No man can survive the Path of Knowledge if he is not prepared to

embrace death, for death is a warrior's best advisor.

Death is the finest advisor we can have, for it is infinitely superior to any
other advisor, such as self-pity or anger. Most people choose self-pity as
an advisor, and use it to bear witness to everything they do. Having
learned to have it at their command, it is always ready to advise them in
the moment. However, acquiring an advisor and learning to command it,
takes a long time to perfect and requires an inordinate amount of effort.
As a result, people always tend to forget how hard they had to work at
making self-pity a natural feature of the islands of their tonal. But we can,
with the same amount of effort, also learn to bring our impending death to
bear witness to everything we do, and therefore have it as an advisor,
instead of self-pity. Having death as an advisor is far more empowering
than feeling sorry for yourself.

Unless you are willing to embrace death fully you cannot change. Your
old self must die in order for the warrior in you to emerge. To resist death
is to die a slow and miserable death, but to embrace death willingly is to
find the courage needed to fight an impeccable battle for your freedom.
The concept of change is a paradox, for on the one hand the Path of
Knowledge demands an irrevocable change, while on the other hand the
Sorcerer's Explanation implies that the island of the tonal is perfect just
the way it is, and that not a single element of it can be eliminated. From
this it follows that change does not mean eliminating anything, but rather
changing the way it is used. Take, for example, self-pity. If you have self-
pity as a feature of your island, you will never be able to rid yourself of it,
for it forms part of your island and, as such, also has a history attached to
it. Therefore every time the occasion warrants it, your self-pity will
become active. However, it is possible to transmute self-pity into
something far more life-supportive than simply causing you to indulge in
feeling sorry for yourself.

Transmutation of anything means changing the way in which it is used. If

you look at self-pity as an example, you will see that it has always been
useful to you. So whenever you have felt important and that you deserved
better conditions, better treatment, or a better life, instead of talking
responsibility for the actions which brought you to that point, you would
call forth self-pity in order to justify feeling life a hapless victim. However,
in order for self-pity to work you have to feel important, irresponsible and
immortal, something you can only do because you have given self-pity
such a prominent position on your island of the tonal. Yet you can equally
assign the same importance to humility, or to taking responsibility for your
actions, or to your impending death, and thereby assign to self-pity a less
prominent place. But having assigned self-pity to a less prominent place
on your island does not mean that you have eliminated it, for it still needs
to be transmuted; otherwise it will continue to cause you to feel sorry for
yourself.

True change is the death of the old. Anything other than death is not
change, but transmutation. Only death has the power to bring about
transformation.
Transformation can only be achieved through the continuous unfolding of
new knowledge. As new knowledge is unfolded the old self begins to die.
Thus for the warrior death is his best advisor and his constant companion.
Only the fool who lives in a state of ignorance believes that his
knowledge is fixed. Knowledge, like anything else in this universe, is
constantly unfolding under the impact of intent. Neither the universe nor
knowledge is absolute, but rather the expression of an evolution driven by
an intent that we can sense but not fathom.

All learning is forced, but only because man fears transformation. When
resistance to change is overcome, force is no longer necessary. Force
only comes into being because of resistance. Thus the warrior does not
resist death, but learns to dance with it.

Transformation is the process of death in which the warrior actively

engages once he or she embarks upon the Warrior's Path. It starts with
transmutation and ends in transfiguration.

Whenever we are touched by death we experience a deep sense of

melancholy, but if in that moment we embrace death fully, we become
transformed in unimaginable ways, and our ordinary acts become imbued
with power and magic. Warriors understand this, and therefore maintain a
most intimate relationship with their death — a relationship which in time
becomes a dance.

To be touched by death is to enter into the mood of the warrior.

The warrior comes to knowledge fully prepared to die, and thus
circumvents the pitfalls of expectation. Being prepared for the worst, the
warrior cannot be brought off balance by surprise or disappointment;
instead, his fate unfolds smoothly and effortlessly, unencumbered by
unnecessary acts.

A man can only be surprised if he has not taken the unexpected into
account. Knowing that surprise drains personal power, the warrior is
never complacent in making his decisions, but makes allowances for the
unexpected. In this way he avoids most of what fools, living an
undisciplined and reckless life, regard as accidents or misfortune.

Unlike average man, who only ever takes anything into account when he
thinks it is important for him to do so, the warrior is fully aware of
everything, at every moment of his life, and thereby never lays himself
open to becoming a victim. This means that a warrior lives on the edge —
something he does because he is humble and always aware.

A warrior does not indulge in complaining or having regrets about his life,
for he looks upon everything in his life as being a never-ending challenge.
Since challenges are simply challenges, it makes no sense to view some
as being good, and to view others as being bad.

Everything in life is but a challenge, and we make of our challenges what

we will. Average man sees everything in his life as either a blessing or a
curse, while the warrior sees everything as a challenge; therein lies the
difference between average man and the warrior.
A warrior accepts the challenges of life in true humidity. No matter what
his fate may be, it can never be a cause of discontent, but a living
challenge which it is his privilege to surmount.

Having trained as a hunter, the warrior handles each of his challenges

with the utmost respect and humidity.
There is a vast difference between the humility of the warrior and the so-
called humility of average man. The humility of the warrior does not make
of him a subservient being; instead humility is his predilection, which
comes through knowing that he is not more elevated or more important
than anyone or anything else. But average man regards himself as being
humble when he upholds what he terms respect for a superior, thereby
implying that he too is superior to those he deems lesser than him, and
that he can therefore demand from them the respect due to a superior.
This is the ultimate in conceit and arrogance.

Average man is arrogant, because he is ever impressed by reason and

always bows his head to it.

Reason makes us believe that our challenges in life are to our detriment,
and are therefore to be avoided at all costs. Yet this is the approach of a
coward who does not have the self-respect needed in order to honour the
marvellous gift of life.

Challenges are unique to every individual. What makes a challenge

difficult or easy is the level of power inherent within it. Easy challenges do
not require a great deal of effort and therefore their yields are poor.
Difficult challenges, on the other hand, require a great deal of effort, and
through exercising the will in order to conquer them, they yield
magnificent gifts of power.

No warrior runs away from his challenges, and yet a warrior also chooses
his battles. It is senseless to fight a battle in which there are no desired
stakes.
Average man likes to believe that he has free will, and therefore always
has several options open to him, but this is only a justification for
attempting to avoid his challenges. The warrior understands the folly of
seeking escapisms in a world pervaded by power — a power which
comes at him life the waves of the sea, and so he either mounts the crest
of those waves and surfs them, or he goes down under.

The circumstances of our life, like all forces within nature, are essentially
neutral. They manifest either positively or negatively, depending upon the
intent of the individual. We tend to make any situation either positive or
negative according to the meaning we attach to it. Meanings, though, do
not alter the content of a situation; meanings serve only to placate the
reason. It is man’s obsession with always having to placate his reason
that has given rise to the erroneous concept of free will. But the warrior
knows he does not have free will, since for him there is only the choice of
acting impeccably or unimpeccably. Therefore to the warrior, for whom
acting unimpeccably is not an honourable action, free will is a
contradiction in terms.

The warrior, or even average man, for that matter, cannot afford to wish
for a different life to the one he has; the warrior because he lives by
challenge; average man because he does not know when or where his
death will find him. Therefore to wish for a different life is as insane as the
demented idea that cowardice or laziness, or both, are honourable
pursuits.
Your weaknesses are your unrealised potentials, for your shortcomings
are your passage to power and your ticket to freedom. It is therefore
madness to believe that you would have power at your command if it
were not for your weaknesses and shortcomings.

Any imbalance is the consequence of all your actions, past and present.

The past is the sum total of those events which have brought you the
challenges you are facing in the present moment, and yet the outcome of
these challenges lies in the unpredictable future. It is therefore imperative
that you live in the eternal now, but doing this means that your decisions
must encompass the unexpected.
The warrior starts his journey upon like knowing that his inexperience will
cause him to be off-balance. But by being wide awake, and by cultivating
a quietness of life, he strives to find the equilibrium of spirit that is
necessary to survive the dictates and unexpected whims of power.

The warrior lives by challenge; consequently his life is a disciplined

strategy in the art of survival if you are going to succeed as a warrior you
cannot afford to waste your personal power in living a life which is helter-
skelter.

The life of a warrior is a strategy in self-discipline. Every action, thought

and feeling has to be carefully assessed as to its value. Warriors cannot
waste their time and personal power on issues which are of no
consequence to their fate.

Average man believes that his explanations of life will enable him to
survive; but explanations are a meaningless waste of time. Understanding
is a matter of experience; not the result of explanations. The mind can be
appeased only through experience, but explanations merely dull the mind
with a false sense of security, based upon assumed understanding.
Whenever the warrior is barred from progress by a lack of understanding,
he takes the required action in order to gain, through experience, the
knowledge he lacks.

Knowledge can be acquired only through action in daily life.

Having received guidance in any particular pursuit of knowledge, an
apprentice can gain far more knowledge from a few minutes of personal
experience within that realm of knowledge than he can gain from a
mountain of information imparted over many weeks.

The only true learning is that gained through practical experience, and
therefore everything you do must be within the context of the present
moment.
The warrior is a man like any other man, and because man is a thinking
creature, the warrior too seeks clarity.

The error of man is to seek explanations which substantiate his way of

thinking, his view of the world. But the unknown cannot be explained in
this way. As a result, all explanations turn into a matter of blind faith or
superstition.

A warrior does not care about explanations. In dealing with power, an

intangible and unpredictable opponent, explanations lose their
significance. In view of this, rationalisations are a dangerous waste of
time and energy.

In a universe pervaded by the unpredictable quirks of power,

rationalisation is of very little consequence.

Rationalising is not true thinking. All rationalisations are simply a function

of the rational mind of man, as opposed to the true mind of man.

Man does not normally think; he merely lives by rationalisations. Man

only starts to discover that he can think once he is forced to do so as an
act of survival.
The rational mind is one of man's greatest assets upon the physical
plane, yet it is more often a deadly trap of his own making - for man
himself determines both the quality and the functions of his rational mind.

The rational mind is but the tool of true mind, designed to enable man to
compute the practicalities involved in life upon the physical plane. True
mind is the third aspect of the nagal, the indwelling life, which reveals to
man the purpose of his existence. Therefore to solve the riddle of the
mind is to find the purpose of life, and thereby to master awareness.

Rationalisations distort the purpose of life, while true mind reveals this
purpose through the progressive evolution of awareness, as determined
by fate.

Rationalising is but an attempt by the rational mind to explain infinity. But

it is insanity to assume that the infinite can be explained by that which, by
definition, is finite.

Explanations are not reality — only a makeshift arrangement of the world.

The world you think you know so well is not the real world, but merely
your view of the world — a description of the world that serves to make
you think you are in control of your life and your future, since you know all
there is to know. You do not really believe this, yet because you have
become complacent in your view of the world, you feel duty-bound to
protect it at all costs. You protect and keep your view of the world intact
with your internal dialogue — a dialogue you keep repeating to yourself
over and over again, in your attempts to justify to yourself and others that
the world is only what your description of it indicates. By indulging in this
folly you fail to see how you fixate your attention upon the delusions that
arise from the limitations of your finite mind.

Internal dialogue is the sum total of all mental and emotional activity
directed at maintaining our view of the world.

Man talks to himself about his world, day in and day out, and thus
maintains his view through his incessant internal dialogue. By the time he
has finished talking to himself the order of his world is exactly as he is
telling himself it should be, and so he revitalises and replenishes his world
with every word he speaks. But, even more importantly, every decision
man makes is based upon what he is telling himself about his world. As a
result, he defines his fate according to the limitations of his internal
dialogue. It is therefore hardly surprising that man perpetuates his folly,
since every action of his is dictated by his internal dialogue, which never
changes for the entire duration of his life. It is for this reason that it is so
vitally important to stop the internal dialogue.
Talking in itself is not bad. But the problem with talking is that man
always assumes he has acquired knowledge which is beyond his current
frame of reference, when in reality he has simply understood words that
describe new knowledge, which he has yet to acquire through
experience. The result is always the same - such a man feels enlightened
and empowered by his assumed understanding. Yet the moment he is
challenged, the man finds himself just as unenlightened and powerless as
before. So he continues to re-enact his folly, since it is not possible to act
upon knowledge one does not possess. Knowing this, the warrior
chooses to act rather than to talk and because of this, he acquires a
much more fluid view than he had before — a view in which talking
becomes less important than taking action.

Your mistake is that you pride yourself on your ability to think and to
justify your view of the world through your incessant talking. If you want to
succeed in becoming a warrior you must stop talking yourself into
believing that your view of the world is inviolable.

What you look upon as being so real is not real at all. It is only real
because this is what you keep telling yourself. You look at a rock and you
think you know that it is a real rock, just as you look at a tree and think
you know that it is a real tree. But what is a real rock? And what is a real
tree? What do you really know about rocks and trees, other than how they
fit into your view of the world, and the views of others?

Your view of the world is not reality; it is merely the product of your
selective perception of an objective reality that is infinitely greater than
your feeble attempts to explain it in terms that appease your mind.
Selective perception is the bane of man, forcing him to live a life based
upon the illusion that he knows himself. Only by recapitulating his entire
life can man become free from the self-imposed illusions born of his
selective perception.

Selective perception does not allow for a full openness of heart, and thus
prevents al full participation in life. Unless you participate fully within life,
which means that you must stop judging it according to your selective
perception, your heart can never guide you into gaining an objective
understanding of life.

Those who avoid participating fully within life, do so because they are
forever judging life according to their selective perception of it. As a result,
they separate themselves from the reality that underlies their subjective
judgement of life.

Those who uphold separativeness live an existence based upon

ignorance — an ignorance that bars them from being able to claim their
power. Ignorance is the antithesis of having a fluid perception, which
allows for an expansion in awareness beyond the confines of any
particular view of the world.

Without a fluidity of perception the only personal power you can gain is
that tiny bit of power prescribed by the limitations of your view of the
world. Yet in order to gain fluidity of perception you must first claim the
power that is within your grasp. Without power you cannot hunt power.

Hunting power is a most peculiar affair, for contrary to what is generally

believed by average man, hunting for power is an act of the heart, rather
than the mind. This means that we can only hunt for power by applying to
life the teachings for the left side.

The teachings for the left side are to the teachings for the right side what
life is to form. Just as life is not the form, but an expression of Life made
Manifest, thereby allowing life to express itself as Life within
Manifestation, so too are the teachings for the right side the irrational
made manifest, thereby allowing the irrational, that is, the teachings for
the left side, to be expressed through that form termed the teachings for
the right side. Therefore the teachings for the left side represent the
nagal, and the teachings for the right side represent the tonal.

It is not possible to grasp the teachings for the left side whilst one's view
of the world remains intact. The teachings for the left side demand fluidity
of perception. Without fluidity of perception you will hear only your own
understanding of the words, and you will perceive only your own view of
the world reflected back to you in those words. Grasping the teachings for
the left side requires a complete shift in focus.

Shifting the focus is a matter of fluidity within perception. Nothing else is

required; for in being totally fluid, the perception of the warrior is forever
being moulded by the dictates of power. Therefore shifting the focus is as
much second nature to the warrior as are the physical movements of his
eyes.
For the warrior, as for the sorcerer, the world we look upon as our
everyday life is not real, or out there. Both warrior and sorcerer know that
the world as we know it is merely a representation of an inner reality that
defies description.

Believing that the world is only what you think it is, is the height of
arrogance and stupidity. The world is so much more than your eyes can
see or your mind can comprehend; in fact, it is an endless and
unfathomable mystery.

The world is what you have chosen to believe it is. You, likewise, are
whatever you have chosen to believe you are.

Belief is not blind faith — belief is a powerful act of magic.

It is not possible to become a warrior without stopping the world. In order
to do this, you must believe that it is possible, and that you too are a
magical being of the universe capable of doing so.

There is no such thing as luck or misfortune, coincidence, accidents or

even magic, for that matter. There is only intent. So if something comes
your way this is because, in one way or other, you set your intent on it.

What fools perceive as magic is but the manipulation of intent, and a

magician is merely a master of intent.

Inorder to stop the world you must stop indulging in your view of the
world — only then will you be able to muster enough personal power to
make the leap to freedom.

You cannot stop the world unless you claim your power, but no man can
claim his power if he feels unworthy of it.
Unless you stop your internal dialogue, you will never stop your view of
the world. But stopping the world — a view you have held since you were
born — is not as simple as wanting to, or even deciding to. You will only
succeed in stopping the world if you have a practical reason for doing so.
What can be more practical than having to abandon what you perceive to
be your life right now, in order to survive?

It is possible to use hallucinogens to stop one's view of the world, for

hallucinogens have the same impact upon one’s awareness as
techniques like the art of listening, gazing and the right way of walking, in
that they inundate the tonal with masses of information, ensuring that the
rational mind is incapable of keeping up the internal dialogue. Once the
internal dialogue shuts down, the view of the world, which is dependent
upon the internal dialogue, likewise stops. But Toltecs have learned
through bitter experience that, although hallucinogens are an excellent
and rapid method of stopping the view of the world, using these
substances is most costly and unwise, since they cause irreversible
damage to the nervous system.

Any practical task mesmerises the tonal, because the attention of the
tonal has to be focussed on its activities. This focussing of attention
creates the sense of order in the world around us, and it is therefore,
imperative for the tonal to be utterly focussed on the elements of its world,
so as to maintain that order. But maintaining order also means that the
tonal must uphold its view of the world as a continuous internal dialogue.
Interrupt or stop that dialogue and the spell is broken. The moment the
tonal is silenced it loses its hold upon the elements of its view, since it is
now forced to focus on what has silenced it.
Through having to maintain its ordered view, the tonal always falls silent
whenever it is bombarded by an excess of information that is beyond its
frame of reference. Because it is beyond its frame of reference, the tonal
cannot at first fit the new elements into its view, and it is therefore
temporarily forced into silence, while it attempts to find ways in which to
describe these new elements in terms of its view. Consequently, any task
that inundates the tonal with new information will serve to stop the internal
dialogue; but it is also important that this task should be something
practical in the sense that the task must call for actions and consequent
experiences which are both beyond the tonal's frame of reference.
Once the internal dialogue stops, the world around us suddenly changes
most dramatically. You must prepare yourself for this devastating shock.

After the internal dialogue has been stopped the apprentice invariably
descends into a state of inner turmoil, which halts any further progress.
This turmoil is brought about because the apprentice's whole life has now
been brought into question. As a result, his tonal feels utterly threatened,
and he begins to have serious doubts about his entire apprenticeship,
wondering whether he would not be better off abandoning his pursuit of
power. Unless the apprentice is severely challenged at this point he will
definitely quit his training. The most effective way of challenging such an
apprentice is to set him up in such a way that he is forced into having to
choose between the warrior's world and his ordinary world. Faced with
the bleakness entailed in returning to his ordinary world, the apprentice
begins to fight for his survival within the world of the warrior.

Whenever the internal dialogue stops, the world as we know it

disintegrates, and unknown and extraordinary facets of ourselves
emerge, along with abilities and knowledge that have been suppressed
by our internal dialogue.

Once the warrior has stopped the internal dialogue everything becomes
within his reach - even that which would normally have been impossible.
This is because the key to sorcery lies in stopping the internal dialogue.
The warrior who has stopped the internal dialogue holds the key to the
World of Sorcerers, for the purpose of sorcery is to collapse our view of
the world.

After stopping the internal dialogue the otherwise hidden passageway

into the World of Sorcerers becomes visible to the inner eye.

There is a marvellous world beyond this world, known as the World of

Sorcerers - dazzling in its splendour and permeated with a power that is
awesome. But to enter that world is insanity for anyone who does not hold
the keys. Sought-after by many throughout the ages, this world derives its
name from the fact that its matter has become embedded with the
remains of would-be sorcerers who did not possess the required keys.

The keys to the world of sorcerers are twenty-one jewels, reflecting a

light that is lethal to the ignorant. But whoever has the pouter to hold
these keys is master of the World of Sorcerers and may enter and exit
that world safely and at will.
To stop the world is a superb act of magic. Once a warrior has
accomplished this feat he is a free being with power at his command, and
thus his fate begins to unfold in the most astonishing and miraculous way.

If you want to meet your fate in life you must start right from where you
are. You cannot first want to know your fate, for fate is not a rigid course
from which there can be no deviation — instead it is a wondrous journey
of possibilities; each possibility bringing its own challenges and
knowledge.

Ignorance is no excuse. Deep down inside, all of us know exactly who

and what we are, and what we should be doing in this lifetime.

Confusion is a wilfully-induced state of mind. We can enter or exit it at

will. Man deliberately confuses himself in order to plead ignorance. Yet we
all know what we are doing, even if we are not willing to acknowledge the
truth.
Man's reason purposefully parades as the infallible judge it fancies itself
to be. Unfortunately though, life is infinitely bigger than man’s reason.

A warrior knows that the world is not what it appears to be, and
especially not what words and logic would seem to indicate. Therefore the
warrior, who fives by challenge, looks upon words as being yet another
challenge in facing the unknown. Consequently he does not make the
mistake of assuming that anything is merely a logical necessity.

There exists a very fine line between understanding and clarity. The
warrior seeks clarity in any situation, knowing that understanding is
relative to experience.

Warriors win battles, not by ignoring them in favour of rational

explanations, but through clarity.

Average man prefers to avoid his challenges rather than face them and,
as a result, is always looking for escapisms. But the real culprit that
makes of man such a coward is his reason, which would rather fail on its
own terms than relinquish its control. Man's reason therefore drives him
to seek refuge in failure, so that he can surrender on the terms of his
reason. However, the luminous being of man guards against this, and
thus it is not possible to fake either failure or triumph, while pleading
ignorance of the pretence.
Denial is the worst form of self-indulgence. Denial is not power; denial is
merely something we do in order to convince ourselves that we are
making great progress in changing ourselves, when in reality we are still
just as firmly stuck as we have always been.

Whenever we are faced with challenges we do not want to face, old

habits are always a most welcome refuge, even if we normally hate them.

Whenever man is faced with anything out of the ordinary he will,

according to his temperament, always resort to one of three bad habits:
The bigot will ignore what has happened and pretend it has never
occurred. The sanctimonious man will accept the incident at face value,
believing that he understands it all. The foolish man is forever puzzled by
what has happened, not knowing whether to accept or reject the incident,
and thus becomes obsessed with his questions.

When the warrior encounters anything extraordinary he behaves as if

nothing untoward has happened. Knowing that the world is not what it
appears to be, the warrior does not believe for the safe of believing, even
though he fully acknowledges everything at face value. Therefore the
warrior acknowledges without acknowledging, and ignores without
ignoring. He never assumes understanding, and neither does he assume
ignorance. Instead he behaves as if he is in control, even though he may
be thoroughly bewildered and frightened. By adopting this stance the
warrior avoids the confusion born of obsession.
Survival, like success, cannot be forced. If you want to survive, and if you
want to succeed in anything you do, then you must give it your all. At the
same time, you should take it gently and quietly, without hurrying and
without becoming stressed and obsessed with the outcome.

To become obsessed is to lose control - something a warrior cannot

afford to do, for a warrior must be calm and always keep his wits about
him.

The skill of the warrior lies in his ability to reconcile fear and awe. The
realisation that we are surrounded by knowledge never fails to inspire a
sense of wonder, but when the knowledge we seek suddenly comes
knocking at our door, it is always terrifying. Only by accepting that
knowledge is frightening can the warrior keep his fear in check while
resolving to face the utterly awesome nature of knowledge.

Having witnessed the very essence of life and death, there is nothing in
this world a warrior cannot contend with. In the face of certain death
nothing matters any more, because the worst is already at hand. So by
accepting death as an inherent factor life, the warrior is always calm and
lucid. Neither his words nor his actions reveal that his knowledge
encompasses both life and death.

The warrior never cedes his power to anyone or anything, not even to his
death, since he is not a willing partner, and he conforms to no-one’s
wishes other than his own. If he enters into a course of action it is only
because he believes the possible outcome of these actions will suit his
strategy.
It is the prime requisite of a warrior's beingness that his control must be
impeccable and never allow anything to bring him off balance. Therefore
a warrior may be staring death in the face, but his actions will reveal
nothing.

The warrior does not subscribe to what average man regards as self-
confidence. Whenever he knows that his actions will earn him the
approval of his fellow man, average man acts with a great deal of
arrogant self-assuredness and he calls this self-confidence. The warrior,
being a humble being, does not strive to gain the approval of others;
instead, he strives to have enough confidence in himself to be utterly
impeccable in all of his actions and feelings. Thus self-confidence, as it is
generally understood, implies arrogance based upon presumption, while
the confidence in self, as practised by the warrior, implies impeccability
based upon humility.

Self-confidence implies that you are convinced you can act upon your
own knowledge. Therefore a warrior is impeccable when he trusts his
personal power, irrespective of whether he has much personal power or
merely a little.
Any apprentice starts off with the certainty that only by disciplining
himself into becoming an impeccable warrior can he live his life without
regrets, but by the time he has achieved warriorship, he simply knows
that impeccability of the spirit is for him his innermost predilection.

A warrior always ensures that everything in his world is in proper order,

not because he believes he is going to survive his current battle, but just
because it is impeccable to do so.

Impeccability is simplicity itself. Impeccability is to act to the very best of

your ability upon whatever knowledge happens to be available to you at
any given moment. It is no more complicated than that. Therefore, if you
find yourself caught up in complexities, you can take it as fact that you are
not being impeccable — instead you are behaving like an immortal being
with all the time in the world to indulge in trying to appease your mind with
justifications. Yet it takes only a little objectivity to realise that there are no
immortal beings on this earth, and therefore that time is the essence of
impeccability. It is only the sense of mortality which engenders in man the
desire to act impeccably.

Only immortal beings have the time to dither and doubt, to be vague and
indecisive, to feel overwhelmed and perplexed, and ultimately to
procrastinate in talking definitive action. But the warrior, knowing for a fact
that his death is stalking him, also knows that he cannot afford to fritter
away his little time on earth being hooked to the petty trivialities of a tonal
behaving as if it is never going to die.
True thinking is instantaneous; only trivialities based upon self-
importance take time to circle through the mind.

The warrior, knowing that he cannot indulge, in the luxury of being

helpless, or confused, or too frightened to act by wanting his actions to be
perfect, keeps his focus on being impeccable instead of being perfect. To
achieve absolute perfection is possible only under extraordinary
conditions, and therefore the aim of the warrior is to achieve as much
perfection as he is capable of in any situation, by striving for impeccability.
Perfectionism is a stupid waste of time and personal power, whereas
impeccability compresses time and replenishes personal power.

Ifyou postpone taking action because you fear failure, or because of

feeling inadequate, you have already failed.

The impeccability of a warrior does not allow him to become obsessed

with the possible outcome of his actions. Winning or losing is not in any
way his concern — he is merely absorbed in the challenge of the
moment.
The warrior cannot uphold the logic of reason, because he knows that
death leaves no room for reasonable assumptions. Therefore the warrior
is always ready to seize his fleeting moment of chance.

It is very natural to feel helpless in the face of impossible odds. All of us

have to learn how to act on our own, and all learning takes time. This is
the same as when an infant has to learn to stand up and walk and all of
us are like helpless infants when we first come to the Warrior's Path. But
an infant wants to learn to stand up and walk, and because it cannot
manage it at first, it complains and protests in its frustration at not being
able to act on its own. Again this is only natural and therefore not wrong.
It follows that it is not the feeling of helplessness itself which is wrong, but
what is wrong is indulging in these feelings of helplessness, and
complaining while protesting that you are incapable, for this implies not
wanting to learn.

Average man has convinced himself that to indulge in helplessness,

insecurity and doubts is the mark of a sensitive man; but nothing could be
further from the truth, for the simple reason that indulgence is the
opposite of true sensitivity. Indulgence is the manifestation of a pretence
that arises out of gross self-centredness; sensitivity is the result of having
come to accept one's own limitations with humility.

Everyone has skill in one thing or another.

The many emotional states in which the average man indulges are all
moods he has acquired without ever having questioned their validity or
value. Yet, having been indoctrinated by the practices of black magic, he
sees it as his right to inflict these moods upon others.

The warrior does not inflict his emotional state of being onto others. But if
the warrior feels the need to express his emotions, he simply chooses
anyone or anything, be it a friend, dog, or mountain, to whom he egresses
his innermost feelings. It does not matter to the warrior if he is not
answered, or even if he is not heard, because the warrior is not seeking
to be understood or helped — by verbalising his feelings he is simply
releasing the pressure of his battle.

The mood of the warrior does not allow for any mind-set that upholds
indulgence and complaining, and neither does it support thoughts about
being a victor or a victim. The mood of the warrior is such that all his
focus is on struggling, and that every struggle is his last battle within this
lifetime. Therefore the outcome of the battle is of very little significance to
the warrior. All that matters to the warrior is that, in fighting his last battle
on earth, he gives full expression to his intent, by allowing his spirit to flow
free and unfettered in the joyful knowing that he is fighting an impeccable
battle.

Any man, given the right circumstances, can allow his spirit to surface
and take command of the situation; but sustaining this at all times is
something only a warrior is capable of.
When a warrior enters into battle he gives it his all. And should he ever
come to a point when he feels he has nothing left to give, then he brings
to mind that the only failure in life is the failure to fight. In that moment,
the impeccability of the warrior's spirit surfaces to spur him into renewed
effort, and to inspire him with an even greater strength of purpose than
ever before.
If you are going to become a warrior you must come, to grips with the fact
that the warrior is in need of nothing. You already have everything that
you need to fulfil your fate. The only experience that is real is being man,
and the only thing which is important is being alive, for it is the journey
that counts, and not the goal. Being alive is the journey, and the journey is
the incredible extravagance involved in having this short sojourn upon the
earth at this precise point in time, in this very place. This is something
every warrior knows, and therefore he lives accordingly. Thus there is no
conceitedness in the warrior’s claim that the experience of all experiences
is to be a warrior.

To seek out the disciplined and skilled ways of the warrior is the only true
honour we may rightfully claim, and to seek the impeccability of the
warrior's spirit is the only possible justification for our existence.

A warrior is an honourable being in that his humility does not allow for
any action which does not uphold the interrelationship of life.

To have the honour of the warrior requires a proper tonal. To have a

proper tonal means that one does not support self-importance.

Losing your self-importance will make you lighter and younger. People do
not age because of their challenges, but because of the immense weight
they shoulder in upholding self-importance.
Self-importance leads to impatience, and impatience will cause you to
fret about having to achieve warriorship sooner rather than later. Fretting
impatiently, you will continue to blunder along in ignorance of your daily
life, and in that ignorance you will miss your fleeting moments of chance.
Only once you have acquired true humility and patience will power come
to you unbidden.
With an acute awareness of his death, with his detachment, and with the
power of his decisions, the warrior sets up his life in the most strategic
manner he can. The knowledge that his death is stalking him guides his
every action and gives him his great lust for life. The power of his
irrevocable decisions enables him to choose without regrets, and what he
chooses is always the most impeccable course of action. As a result, the
warrior always enacts everything he has to do with ardent zeal and utter
efficiency. When someone behaves in this manner, he can rightfully be
called a warrior, for he has acquired the greatest of all attributes; namely,
patience.

Once a warrior has acquired patience he is well on his way to activating

his will. The warrior now knows how to wait. His death has become his
best advisor and therefore sits next to him, advising him, in inexplicable
ways, how to make his choices, and how to live his life as strategically as
possible. But still the warrior waits, all the while learning without feeling
the need to rush, for he knows that he is waiting for his will. And then one
day the warrior suddenly manages to do something that is normally quite
impossible. The warrior may well not even notice his incredible
achievement, but as he keeps performing wonders, and as impossible
things keep happening to him, he starts to become aware of some sort of
power beginning to emerge from within him as he progresses upon the
Path of Knowledge.

The warrior feels power in his guts, either below or just above the navel,
and whenever it arises it feels something like an insatiable longing; like an
itch that cannot be scratched. Sometimes it can feel like a great warmth
that cannot be soothed in any way, and sometimes it can even manifest
like fear, with dire spasms in the guts causing nausea, retching and even
severe physical pain. These symptoms normally last for several months,
but when they eventually subside, the warrior becomes aware that he
now has an intense feeling for all of life, and can actually touch the world
around him with this feeling. That feeling is the will, the precursor of
intent. Once the warrior has will at his command he is, technically
speaking, a sorcerer.
Will is something very special because it is so extraordinary. It comes to
one mysteriously, for there is no way really to explain how one activates
or uses it. But once one has acquired will, and uses it, the results are
always astonishing. The only way in which to acquire will is to know that
it can be developed. This is something the warrior knows, and therefore
he proceeds to wait for his will.

Waiting does not mean to be idle. To wait, in the true sense of the word,
implies having acquired patience — a state of awareness that can only be
achieved within a cultivated quietness of life.

If you wish to activate your will, you must wait patiently, knowing that you
are waiting, and what it is you are waiting for. This is the warrior's way,
and the only way in which to activate the will.

Waiting means taking great care by being fully aware of everything you
do. The key to evoking the will lies in all of the little things you do.

Average man never knows that he is waiting, and therefore he fills his
time doing only that which he regards as being important, while
neglecting all the little details pertaining to his life. The warrior, on the
other hand, knowing that nothing is more or less important than anything
else, takes infinite care in tending to everything within his daily life. In this
way, the warrior learns to compress time while he is waiting for his will.
Compressing time is an outward expansion into that vastness termed the
process of life, so that one's fate becomes visible. Having witnessed fate
in terms of the greater whole, one is left with an overriding sense of
purpose, which quickly becomes an all-absorbing mood - a mood which
then gradually transmutes into will.

The will develops in the warrior in spite of the opposition of his reason.

Before you can evoke your will, you have to prove to yourself that you
are capable of claiming knowledge as power. Only then will you find out
how your will works.

The body must be perfection before the will can be activated.

What sorcerers term will is not to be confused with strength of character;
like, for example, courage. Courage is what makes a man fearless,
reliable and generally admirable. But very few men with courage ever
have will, for being already powerful, in the sense of being both
formidable and feared, it rarely occurs to them to seek power beyond
what they already have. And yet, though they are truly awesome, the
actions of such men are merely acts of boldness and common sense.
Will, on the other hand, is a power that enables the sorcerer to
accomplish feats which not only astound, but also often defy common
sense.

Will is a force that arises from within us, and which we then project
outwards into the world, where it attaches itself. In average man the will
originates from the solar plexus; the centre he utilises for perception. Will
is not something physical, like muscular strength and neither is it in the
nature of thoughts or desires. In fact, will requires no thought at all; on
the contrary, it can enable you to succeed, even when your mind is telling
you it is impossible, for will is a power that operates in moments of need,
in spite of our weaknesses and indulgences.

Will is something which comes with a remarkable clarity and power that
can be used to direct our actions with deadly precision. Will is what
makes a Man of Knowledge invulnerable, and enables him to perform
miracles, such as winning battles that would otherwise be impossible to
win. However, to learn how to harness and wield will consciously and
with volition requires a long and rigorous training.

Average man can use only three of his senses to perceive the world
around him; his hands, his eyes and his ears. But a sorcerer can use also
his nose and his tongue, as well as what is termed will. Sorcerers prefer
to use their will to perceive, for that perception is quite different to using
the senses. When we look at the world, or hear it, touch it, smell it or taste
it, we are left with the impression that the world is out there and that what
our senses are telling us is real. However, when we perceive with the will,
the world is no longer out there. As a result, it is also not as real as our
senses would have us believe.

Perception is the process of comprehending what we are encountering.

But contrary to the commonly-held belief that we use only our senses to
perceive, we also use our will, and it is our will that determines the
manner in which we perceive even what our senses are telling us.
Consequently will is the force that enables us to relate to the world, for
we choose how we wish to perceive the world according to our will.

Every person is in touch with the world around him through his will, a
selection of energy fields originating from his solar plexus and extending
into the world around him. These energy fields appear to the seer as a
bunch of long fibres, or lines of energy, emanating from the region of the
navel, and attached to corresponding energy fields in the world
surrounding the person, thus enabling him to relate to his surroundings in
a manner that gives him a sense of familiarity. This in turn allows him to
achieve a sense of equilibrium and stability.

The will of average man operates without his volition, and therefore his
will is normally never attached to any particular energy fields outside of
him for very long. Thus the alignments produced by the average man are
not lasting. The sorcerer, however, can use his will to produce alignments
that will fast for as long as he wants, yet because these alignments
originate from the solar plexus of the sorcerer, the centre of desire, the
sorcerer is compelled to keep his desire intact, in order to maintain the
alignment — a practice that consumes an inordinate amount of personal
power.

A Man of Knowledge can produce alignments of energy fields which are

just as powerful as those of the sorcerer, but even more compelling,
through the use of his eyes alone. A Man of Knowledge can do this,
because he has learned the secret of will that eludes the sorcerer. Any of
the seven centres can be used for perception, but by far the most
powerful centre in man is the heart. Once the heart is operative, the will
becomes transformed into pure intent, the most powerful force in the
universe, and it is then directed through the eyes, the portals of the
nagal.

Will is the human expression of the one all-pervasive universal force

Toltecs term intent — an inherent faculty of the nagal. Will is to the
human what intent is to man.

To become proficient in the Mastery of Intent you need personal power.

Therefore you must turn to the South, the place of warmth, and through
the Art of Dreaming learn to nurture and exercise your intent. By learning
how to exercise your intent you will begin to solve the riddle of intent, and
so come to realise that intent is the nagal's will- to-manifest, the source
of the one and only energy which leads to transfiguration.
 V

The status of warrior is not the result of having undergone a particular

training program, but is rather a silent acknowledgement of self, which
comes from knowing that one has become impeccable in travelling the
Warrior's Path. To be a warrior is not a goal in itself, but is instead an
eternal quest for knowledge and freedom stretching into infinity.

The Warrior's Path is not an exercise in spiritual development. The

Warrior's Path is a way of life necessary to the daily survival of the
warrior. To a warrior the terms tonal and nagal are merely figures of
speech necessary for clarity — in an act of survival these terms blend
softly into one another.

Your life right now is a miserable state of affairs. Having been exposed to
the ways of power, it is no longer possible for you to return to your old
world, but you also cannot yet act like a warrior. All you can do is to watch
and listen. To all intents and purposes you are like a powerless new-born
infant who cannot return to the womb, but neither can it act on its own in
any real or meaningful way. You are no better off now than you were
before, for you are still at the mercy of the world around you, just as you
have always been, except now you know it. But to induce in self-pity will
not help you. The only thing that will help you is to take the only action
you are capable of— start to learn by watching and listening.

Finding yourself upon the Warrior's Path is a design of power — a design

which none of us can fathom, and a design from which there is no
escape. There is no place to hide, and there is nothing you can do to
prevent power from seeking you out in the fulfilment of that design. The
only thing you can do is to ask yourself why you in particular have been
singled out, for to be a warrior is not a matter of personal choice, but a
matter of surviving the battle for power. Yet there is no way to answer this
question without turning it into a mundane question that is void of power
— that meaningless type of question your average man likes to ask,
because he is conceited enough to want to be admired or pitied for his
life. You should simply reflect upon this question in terms of your
incredible good fortune at having found a challenge worthy of being man.

Once a warrior comes to the Warrior's Path power prescribes the

parameters of his challenges in such a way that, to all intents and
purposes, he becomes a prisoner of power - a prisoner who can act either
like an impeccable warrior fighting for his freedom, or like a complete
arsehole. But because acting like an arsehole is not an option for the
warrior, the warrior has no choice left at all. Therefore he is not really a
prisoner of power, but a slave of power.

If you are not strong enough to fight, you have no choice but to accept the
life of a slave. But the warrior is a free being who cannot submit himself to
slavery; for him there is no choice but to fight. If he then dies in that fight,
at least he will die as a free being and not as a slave.

Strength and warriorship are synonymous. To have strength you must

practise not-doing. Every battle is an exercise in not-doing.

You cannot survive the battle for power if you do not have personal
power, for power can only be met with power.
A battle for power is a battle for survival, and in such a battle there are no
rules of conduct. Power will use whatever means are available with which
to challenge the warrior.

The warrior, knowing that any battle is a battle for survival, always
chooses to follow the Path with a Heart in everything he does - even the
mundane. It is in consistently choosing to follow his heart where lies the
difference between the warrior and the average man. In following his
heart the warrior is always at-one with his life; no matter what his
challenges may be. As a result, he finds peace and a deep sense of
pleasure in every action, while he carefully chooses from out of his
experiences upon the Path with a Heart all that he needs in order to make
himself a shield against the onslaughts of power.

Wanting to do something implies having a motive and, provided such

motive is pure, the action will be impeccable. But any motive is merely a
substitute for the heart, since an act arising from the heart is
unconditional and therefore does not require motive.

Any pursuit in life is one of a great many different paths. And the value of
any particular path lies only in how you walk it. If you feel that the path
you are walking is not for you, then you should abandon it immediately.
However, your decision to walk a path or not should be based on that
clarity which springs from living the disciplined life of a warrior, and not on
fear or ambition; for any decision taken in the sober light of clarity cannot
possibly offend anyone, least of all yourself. Therefore consider every
path carefully, testing it in whichever way you feel necessary - then ask
yourself, but only yourself, one question: ‘Does this path have a heart?’

Any path is much the same as any other path. Some paths wind this way
and that - some paths go straight; but in the end, no path goes anywhere
at all. The only real difference between one path and another is that some
have a heart and some do not. The path that has a heart will uplift you,
ease your burden and bring you joy. But the path with no heart will make
you stumble, it will break your spirit, and finally cause you to look upon
your life with anger and bitterness. The first empowers you; the second
disempowers you.

There comes a point in the life of the warrior when it is no longer enough
merely to tread the Warrior's Path. When that moment comes the warrior
knows without a doubt that the Warrior's Path, like all other paths, leads
absolutely nowhere, and that the only advantage in treading this path, the
most difficult of all paths, is that it is for him a Path with a Heart, in that it
teaches him the meaning of inclusiveness.

The warrior is a man who has learned to love life and all the many
richnesses it brings — most of all the path where he walks. There is for
the warrior no greater joy than to walk a Path with a Heart. On this path
he walks thrilled by the wonder of it all, and in his joy he gives thanks in
his heart for this marvellous privilege, by embracing everything he
encounters with love and gratitude.
Your problem is that you think about your acts, and thus you fall into the
trap of believing that your actions and the actions of others are as
important as you think they are. Yet in reality nothing we do is important,
even though you believe that it is your actions that constitute the world. All
our doings are merely shields we use against the forces which surround
us and bombard us every day of our lives. Therefore what we do brings
us a sense of comfort and makes us feel safe, and in some respects it is
true that whatever we do is very important, but only if we know that our
doings are shields. However, average man never learns that our doings
are shields, and so he sees his doings as being more important than the
world; more important than life itself with the result that he allows his
doings and the doings of others to wreak havoc in his life and to dictate
his decisions.

A warrior carefully chooses the contents of his world. He does this with
great deliberation; for everything he chooses acts as a shield - a shield
that protects him from the onrush of the forces he is learning to handle
and conquer as allies.

An ally is a force or a tension, within life. Yet we cannot really define

forces any more than we can define life, or man, or an animal, or a tree,
you have never paused long enough to consider this, but it has taken you
your whole life up until now just to learn to meet a tree, let alone to
understand what exactly a tree is. Learning to meet an ally is no different.

Any force can become an ally, but as with any ally, forces are potentially
dangerous, for they feed off our personal power and can drain us if we
are complacent in handling them. Therefore the warrior always uses his
shields in wording with the ally.
Understanding what an ally is, depends upon one's level of personal
power. Toltecs say that the simple moth is the only true ally there is, but
this is only a way in which to verbalise the ineffable. Consequently we say
that moths bring us knowledge, and that they are the friends and
assistants of both sorcerers and Toltecs. But what exactly is meant by
this? It means that, like the moth, there is something ineffable within us
that draws us to the light. Sorcerers look upon this ineffable force within
us as being the ally, but Toltecs prefer to say that the ally is a moth, and
that the moth is knowledge.

We cannot claim that the ally is a moth as we ordinarily know moths.

Nonetheless, moths are the heralds of eternity, and because of this they
carry on their wings the gold dust of eternity. This is the way in which it
has been set up by power.
All of us are surrounded by eternity every moment of our lives, and we
can use that eternity if we so wish. But first we need to know that one
single moment can be an eternity, if we allow that moment to expand the
totality of the self in any one of the directions.

Average man operates entirely from within the confines of his reason.
Naturally, man's reason can always account for everything which
transpires within its view of the world, in one way or another; but it cannot
account for a moth being an ally, for the ally is something which lies
beyond the limitations of reason and therefore exceeds the scope of its
view of the world.

Man's reason cannot comprehend, much less accept the existence of the
ally. Yet fortunately for us, it is not reason that assembles the ally, but the
body. All of us have perceived different aspects of the ally on numerous
occasions throughout our lives, whether we are aware of it or not, and
these perceptions are stored within the luminous cocoon. The ally is the
sum of these perceptions.

Although man places great faith in his reason, reason is limited to the
point of being utterly petty in the greater scheme of things. As a result,
reason is constantly at odds with the body, for the luminous cocoon
responds to life in a way that defies reason; as for example, when it
perceives the ally. The Man of Knowledge overcomes this problem by
merging his reason with his heart, for only the heart is capable of
understanding the wordings of the luminous being.
Sorcerers know about the existence of the ally through the use of
hallucinogens, and although they never truly witness it, they manage to
perceive the ally in a strangely obscure fashion, by learning to account for
the ally in spite of their reason. They do this by using their will to enlarge
their view of the world, until their reason can accept the existence of the
ally as a reality. But by doing this sorcerers become entrapped within a
new view of the world which is even more debilitating than the one they
had before. Although this new view is much more valuable, since it
encompasses the existence of the ally, it is still an illusion; but an illusion
which has now been fortified by their will.

The consequences of acquiring a view of the world that requires the will
to keep it intact are crippling, for one can never break out of such a view
and achieve the totality of the self, without having to violate one's will.
Therefore, although sorcerers develop tremendous temporal power
through their practices, because the totality of the self eludes them, they
never have true power at their command, and thus they never become
Men of Knowledge. This is the stark and ultimate difference between the
Man of Knowledge and the sorcerer — because he has achieved the
totality of the self, the Man of Knowledge perceives the ally through
direct experience; the sorcerer never has direct experience of the ally,
since he can never achieve the totality of the self. The sad truth
concerning sorcerers is that although they know about the totality of the
self, by the time they have learned about it, they realise that it is too late
to turn back the clock that they have missed their gap to freedom, and
that only at the moment of death will the full mystery be revealed to them.
The ally can only be experienced through will once one's view of the
world has been stopped. It is therefore not incorrect to say that the ally is
the nagal or, more precisely, an awareness of the nagal.

To meet the ally you must be an impeccable warrior, for unless you are,
the ally will destroy you.

The ally waits for you just like your death waits for you. It is everywhere
and yet nowhere.

A direct experience of the ally brings about irrevocable change, for such
a meeting shatters every idea of the world we have ever held, and since
our ideas constitute for us everything, once our ideas have been
shattered, the world changes beyond recognition.

Should you survive the shock of having met with the ally, you will find
yourself alone within the unknown. As is natural with all of us, you will
immediately try to find your way back to the comfort of the known.
However, the life you had before will by then have been lost for ever, for
none of us can unlearn what we have learned. Although by this stage you
will have power at your command, this brings no solace when one is
faced with the sure knowledge that everything one has loved, hated,
wished for and feared, has become irretrievable - forever beyond one’s
grasp. Even though our world may change drastically, our innermost
feelings never change or die and, as a result, you will find yourself
embarking upon the journey home; in spite of knowing that you will never
reach it; within your heart of hearts knowing that no power on earth, not
even your death, can guide you back to the place, the people, the things,
that meant the world to you.
Right now you are at a most important crossroad; the most poignant one
you will ever find and also the most difficult one to understand. Much of
what you are struggling with now will probably never become clear to you,
for life was never meant to be clear. But there is no need to be
embarrassed or discouraged by this, for the one thing that you must
grasp, is that all of us are stupid creatures when we come to the Path of
Knowledge, and learning to pursue this path is no guarantee that we will
ever change. Some of us remain stupid until the very end.

The world is everything that surrounds us; life, death, man, animals,
plants, allies, and everything else perceptible and imperceptible. It is far
greater than we will ever understand, for we will never fathom all of its
secrets. Therefore we should respect it for the mystery that it is. The
average man never does this, because to him the world is never a
mystery. Consequently as he starts to grow old he becomes convinced
that he has nothing left to live for. Such an old man has not even begun to
live, let alone to exhaust the world; he has in his confused stupidity
merely exhausted what people do. Yet such an old man believes that the
world has nothing more to offer him. What a waste. What a frightening
price to pay for a few miserable shields.

The world that we perceive is a mystery, and so is man, despite his

doings.

The warrior knows that doings are not more important than the world, and
therefore he accords to everything its proper due. Since his doings, as
well as those of others, are never more important than life, the warrior
treats the world as an endless mystery and the doings of people as
endless folly.
The warrior's laughter, his tears and everything he does, are real enough,
and yet they are also utter folly; for none of it changes anything. Yet the
warrior chooses to do what he does, and he cares about what he is doing
as if it matters that he cares, for in this way he controls his folly.

It is possible to act with great effect, and to gain much advantage, even
when we know that our actions are mere folly. But we must first know that
our actions are useless, and then we must act as if our lives depend upon
the outcome. Such is the nature of the warrior's controlled folly.

Ifyou want to become a warrior you must learn that the warrior acts
without believing, for he is not expecting to be rewarded for his actions —
he simply acts because he feels like it. The only way you will discover the
power inherent within this is to do those things that do not appeal to you
because they make no sense.
Like learning to do anything in life, you learn to act like a warrior by
acting, not by talking, you must stop talking to yourself about how you
perceive your life.

The warrior is a happy being because he chooses to be happy, rather

than talking to himself about what will make him happy. Because he
chooses to be happy he looks at things in a way that mattes him happy;
and by looking at the world in this way he sees the funny side of things,
which makes him laugh. One must always choose the Path with a Heart,
so that one can bring forth the best in oneself, even if this is only to be
able to laugh.

Humour is a warrior's greatest asset. The only way of counteracting the

devastating impact of knowing that one is fighting against impossible
odds is to laugh at the poverty of our human resources.

The trick is in where we choose to place the focus. We make ourselves

strong and joyful, or weak and miserable, yet in both instances the
amount of effort is the same.

The state of well-being is something that has to be experienced before

one even knows that it exists. Once it has been discovered it needs to be
nurtured and tended with care.
Any form of indulgence drains one of personal power, and the warrior
who drains himself cannot possibly sustain the battle for power, for the
body is not indestructible. Therefore you have a choice; either you indulge
in your idiosyncrasies and perish, or else you stop your indulgence.

A warrior cuts out all unnecessary acts; in this way he saves his personal
power.

Indulging in internal dialogue is the cause of all misery, discomfort and

disease.

Stopping the internal dialogue is singularly the most important act an

apprentice must accomplish, in order to unlock his or her full potential as
a magical being. To aid the apprentice in stopping the internal dialogue he
is taught several techniques, the two most powerful of which are erasing
personal history and dreaming.
To be a warrior means that you can survive the machinations of power —
an act which only becomes possible through listening to the heart. In
order to listen to the heart you must follow your feelings; but as with
anything that a warrior does, and which holds true power, listening to the
heart appears to be so insignificant and trivial that average man never
deems it worthy of his attention. Average man regards his view of the
world, and acting within the content of that view, as infinitely superior to
listening to the heart. Only by erasing personal history can one begin to
see and eliminate the restraints of one’s view of the world.

Personal history is the self-image a man has acquired because of his

view of the world - an image which he projects into the world around him.
Personal history is not what a man knows about himself. It is what he has
led others to believe about him, because of what he thinks about himself.
Consequently, concepts such as age, place of birth and parentage can
only have meaning within the content of personal history.

We are all the product of our thoughts and our feelings; that is, the
product of our personal history; and the circumstances in which our fate
unfolds arise because we have called them forth according to our view of
the world.

In order to maintain our personal history we have to justify our every

action, word, feeling and thought to those around us. If on the other hand,
we have no personal history, no explanations or justifications are
necessary, for people simply accept us as they do any stranger. People
only tend to question when we have led them to believe they know us,
and it is through their questioning that they start to corner us into having
to justify our actions.
In order to erase your personal history you must create around yourself a
nebulous fog in which nothing about you seems tangible. Only tangible
people have personal history, for tangible people believe that they are
what their words and their actions would seem to indicate. To such
people, the state of beingness is not a living mystery, but is simply the
product of their personal history. Therefore erasing your personal history
means that you must begin to erase yourself; you must begin to erase
what you have led others to believe you are.

In interacting with the world, you can show people anything you wish
about yourself, provided you do not justify what you are showing them. In
this way you eliminate acquiring personal history.

Ifyou are going to succeed in erasing your personal history, you first
need to put into practice the three techniques that facilitate this process.
These techniques are; losing self-importance, taking responsibility and
using death as an advisor. Without the wholesome effects of these three
techniques, erasing personal history could lead us to start doubting
ourselves and our actions, and so become deceitful and evasive.

The problem with man is that he deceives himself into believing that he is
living a truthful life, while he is constantly justifying his existence to
everyone around him. Yet he fails to see that justifications are merely lies
used to uphold his personal history. In the absence of personal history it
is impossible to lie, for in the absence of personal history there is only life,
and one cannot lie about what is.
The only truthful life is a life lived wilfully; that is, with purpose, with
direction and with intent.
We choose our approach towards life by behaving either as if we know it
all, or as if we don't know. If we choose the first approach we quickly
become bored with both ourselves and the world. If we choose the
second we learn to erase our personal history, until we know for a fact
that we are a living mystery, and therefore that we cannot take ourselves
seriously. It is far more exciting to map out the unknown than to plod
towards death bored out of our minds. In mapping out the unknown we
never know what is going to happen next, and therefore we remain
awake, on edge and fully alive.

Life is No-Thing. Life is an endless chaos of possibilities spun by a great

wheel that is not. By selecting some of those possibilities we weave a
web, determined by a pattern we cannot know beforehand. It is this
selection of possibilities, or the weaving, or the woven web, which people
mistakenly regard as life. Yet life remains for ever untouched by the
weaving of man. We make our understanding of life what we will, but life
in itself is a transcendent state of flux having no form, and yet giving rise
to all forms.

At the centre of the wheel of life rages an almighty wind, against which
the warrior's only defence is his unbending intent to achieve and hold the
totality of the self; for the driving force of the wheel is the spirit of man.

Life is like a boundless ocean - an ocean of beingness. We are not in

control of life, and it is impossible for us ever to control it. We can at best
control the ways in which we surf the waves upon the ocean of life.
Life is a mystery, and thus we can never verbalise it. We can at best talk
around life, and thereby gain a feeling for this most marvellous of
mysteries.

We cannot work with a mystery from the outside. If we wish to solve a

mystery we must immerse ourselves within that mystery, for only in this
way can we map out the unknown.

It is the bane of man's existence that the limitations of his finite mind force
him to look upon the mystery of beingness as a dull mundane occurrence
with no particular significance.
When one looks at the world directly, the eyes fixate the assemblage
point, and no more movement is possible. Under such conditions there
can be no fluidity or sobriety. Therefore one should not look at the world
directly; that is, one should not stare, but glance around casually and at
ease. This is true even if one is using the inner vision to look at one's own
inner world.

In order to move the assemblage point you must master the three
principal techniques. The first is the Art of Stalking, the second is the Art
of Dreaming and the third is the Mastery of Intent.

All that is needed to move the assemblage point is firstly, the knowledge
that it is possible; and secondly, sufficient personal power with which to
do so.

Power flows to us whenever we need it. It is only the fixation of your

assemblage point and your subsequent doings which preclude you from
using the power that surrounds us all.

To shift the focus from fixation to abandonment is a warrior's greatest

achievement.

The difference in having power, as opposed to not having power, lies in

oar attention. Everything surrounding us exists only because our attention
has become fixated by it. The moment we shift our attention the world
suddenly becomes a very different place.
Attention is not what you have become conditioned into believing it is.
Attention is a true pause. To pause implies being suspended without
internal dialogue - a state of awareness in which there is total objectivity,
detachment and respect.
Once you have eliminated your view of the world you will realise that
there are an infinite number of different realities. To access these realities
means having to dream them in, in exactly the same way you dreamed
into existence your social conditioning. Dreaming in is the art of aligning
alternative states of perception; an act that gathers personal power.

Dreams are not just dreams; dreams are based upon reality -a reality that
exists beyond your thoughts. A warrior is no fool, and therefore does not
assume anything is confined to his way of thinking. Being an impeccable
hunter, hunting for power, the parameters of the warrior's life leave no
room for self-delusion, self-deception or wrong actions. The stakes are
too high for that. These stages are the disciplined and carefully-ordered
life that has taken him many years of painstaking effort to put into place.
The warrior is not about to discard all that through a stupid miscalculation
based upon a haphazard assumption, for he knows that dreaming is an
integral part of the Mastery of Awareness.

Dreaming is a part of life, as is walking, laughing and hunting. To walk or

to laugh or to hunt, like any other pursuit within life, is to dream.

In many ways dreaming is more real than your waking hours, for in
dreams you have abilities that you do not have in your everyday life, and
so you can change things in miraculous ways, you can learn things that
are normally way beyond your grasp and, in short, you have power at
your command.

The warrior hunts power, and one of the finest ways of hunting power is
dreaming.
A warrior chooses the content of his dreaming by holding an image in his
mind, while he stops his internal dialogue. Anyone is capable of doing
this, for if you are capable of not talking to yourself, while you hold the
image of the desired content in your mind, even if just for a moment, the
desired content will come to you.

Any image held in the mind in a state of inner silence is a true command,
since there are no other thoughts competing against it.

The trick in setting up dreaming does not lie in looking at things, but in
sustaining the sight of them when they are no longer in sight. Dreaming
becomes real once you have succeeded in bringing into sharp focus
anything you bring to mind, for then there is no difference between what
you do when dreaming and what you do when not dreaming.

Dreaming is real for the warrior, for in dreaming he can act wilfully, he can
choose his actions, and he can discriminate between something that
holds power and something which is a waste of time, whereas in an
ordinary dream none of this is possible.
The dream in which one watches oneself being asleep, is the dream of
the double.

The double is a dream.

The double is the other, the self. The self is the dreamer that dreams the
dream.

You are but the dream of your dreamer. You are not your body, or your
mind; not even your luminous cocoon, the double. These are only the
elemental units that have been dreamed in by the Eagle, and which are
coalesced by the dreamer, through a focussing of its intent. This coalition
is kept intact, throughout life, by the intensity with which the dreamer fixes
its attention upon the subject of its dream — you.

All the qualities of your tonal, including academic ability and talent, are a
matter of focus and intensity. The moment that focus is shifted, or the
intensity is altered, your tonal changes.

To enter the unknown requires the manipulation of intensity. While

intensity remains intact the assemblage point remains firmly fixed, barring
one from entering dreaming, left side awareness and the unknown.
You are your dreamer. Therefore to resist your dreamer by holding onto a
fixed view of the world, is to resist your own self - an act which makes no
sense.

The self dreams the double. This is simple enough, except that there is
nothing simple about a mystery. Although the ordinary dreams of the self
are indeed simple, this does not imply that the self is simple; for once it
has learned to dream the double, the self arrives at a weird crossroad —
in that moment one comes to realise that the double dreams the self.
No warrior knows where his other self is, simply because he has no idea
that he is in two places at the same time. To have such knowledge would
be tantamount to coming face to face with his own double - an act that by
definition spells death. This is the rule. This is the way in which power has
set it up.

A warrior is often made aware that he has been in two places at once,
but this is mere information and has no bearing on the fact that white he
is acting, he has no awareness of his duality.

Average man's experience of the world is never a direct impact upon his
perception, for all his experience is filtered through his view of the world.
This means that man's perception is always one step removed from his
experiences — making his experiences a mere recollection of the actual
experience. Therefore, your average man is never in the now, but is
forever recollecting the instant that has just passed. Thus he recollects,
recollects, recollects.

If one's entire experience of the world is recollection, then it is quite

clearly possible to be in two places simultaneously. However, it never
appears this way to a man's perception, because in order for him to
experience the world the man has to recollect the act he has just
performed, or the event he has just witnessed, or the experience he has
just had. In his own awareness there is therefore only a single
recollection, but from the angle of anyone observing the man in action it
will be clear to see how he can indeed perform two separate acts
simultaneously. Nevertheless, the man will himself maintain that he is
doing one thing, white he is actually doing the opposite, since in his
awareness he is recollecting two separate instants in time.
There is no future, or past. For the Man of Knowledge there is only the
here and now.

Time is that which expresses the intelligence factor within the fourfold
purpose of the Unspeakable. What we perceive as time is in reality the
movement of inherent awareness - the true egression of both the intent
and the mind of the Unspeakable. We can therefore look upon time as
being the very essence of all creation, and upon the other three
egressions of the fourfold purpose; matter, energy and space, as being
the reflection of the Unspeakable within the essence of creation — time.
As a result, we have no point of reference unless we acknowledge time
as the primordial essence of the manifested universe — an essence
which is sacred to all but the profane.

The goal of the dreamers of man is to conquer the challenge of

materialising their full awareness upon the physical plane. They meet this
challenge by dreaming into existence the four dimensions of their
beingness — matter, energy, space and time.

To become proficient in the Mastery of Awareness you must solve the

riddle of the mind. In order to do this you need sobriety; therefore you
must turn to the East, the place of the rising sun, by recapitulating fully
your entire life. Once you start to gain sobriety, you will begin to grasp the
essence of time, and then you will understand how the true art in
dreaming is learning to dream in the One Purpose, through the process of
transmutation.
From the perspective of the warrior, the dreamed of the dreamer, the
purpose of dreaming is threefold; firstly, to ascertain what his fate
encompasses; secondly, to dream in that aspect of fate which marks his
next step in achieving the totality of the self; thirdly, to achieve total
awareness.

Dreaming is the most powerful tool devised by Toltecs. Toltecs learned

how to solicit the help of the nagal, by training their tonals to relinquish
control for a while, and then claiming it back again. This is not an
explanation which makes logical sense, but that is actually what is
entailed in dreaming; namely, learning to let go without losing one's
sanity. Dreaming is the greatest achievement of Toltecs, for it is the
ultimate act in co-operating intelligently with the nagal.
We are caught in a dream. If you believe that dream to be reality your
actions will be sheer folly.

The world as you perceive it is but a dream which has fixated the
attention of humanity. Because of that fixation average man looks upon
this dream as an inviolable reality, when in fact it is but one particular view
of the world. Therefore to look upon this collective view of the world as
being reality, is insane, and can only be termed the madness of the
dream.

We have the power to choose and to change the contents of our dreams,
but to do this you must first learn how to take control of the dream that is
fixating your attention.

You cannot take control of the dream if you are not awake. To be awake
means that you know every facet of your life for what it really is. However,
in order to have such sobriety you must recapitulate your entire life, for
only in this way can you achieve knowledge of the self. In this respect the
warrior is an impeccable hunter hunting for power, and if he succeeds in
his hunting he becomes a Man of Knowledge.

Warriors know every aspect of their being most intimately; even their
latent tendencies, and most especially their hidden potential. To achieve
this, warriors use the world around them as a mirror, for in that mirror all
stands revealed.
In wording with mirrors it is necessary to recapitulate your entire life, from
the present moment right back to the moment of birth. Such a
recapitulation demands a level of honesty which is attainable only through
utter ruthlessness. Ruthlessness must begin with being ruthless with
yourself. Only when ruthlessness has replaced self-pity can you achieve
the sobriety needed in order to discriminate with wisdom. Without that
sobriety you will always behave like a clown re-enacting your folly.

To stop reacting you need to gather together all your personal power, so
that you can be yourself without being yourself. You must make every
effort to not-do your normal doings.

The warrior has to use his personal power, his will and his patience to
forget his doings. In the final analysis the warrior, like any man, has only
his folly. But the difference between the warrior and the average man is
that average man indulges in his folly, while the warrior uses his personal
power, his will and his patience to not-do his folly.
The world is what you perceive it to be only because you know the doing
it takes to make it appear so. If you did not know this doing you would
perceive a totally different world.

Man's doing is what makes a stone a stone, and a tree a tree. Likewise is
it your doing that makes you, you.

Doing is the principal way in which man succumbs to his laziness, his
apathy and his social conditioning.

To look at a tree is doing, hut to see a tree is not-doing.

If you are to succeed in stopping the world you must first stop doing.

Not-doing is on the one hand very simple; but on the other, exceedingly
difficult. It is simple because it is very easy to understand; but it is difficult
in that mastering it is not at all easy or simple.

Seeing is the ultimate achievement of the Man of Knowledge, but seeing

can only be mastered once the world has been stopped by not-doing it.
The most difficult aspect of the Warrior's Path is to learn that the world is
pure feeling. Not-doing is the ability to feel the world. Feeling the world
means to perceive it through the tensions within the web of life.

Average man perceives the world in the way he does because he cares
whether something is true or false. But to the warrior it does not matter
whether something is true or false. Average man behaves in a certain
way when he is dealing with what he knows to be true, and he behaves in
a different way when dealing with what he knows to be untrue. If
something is deemed to be true, average man acts upon it with
confidence and he believes in what he does. If something is deemed to
be untrue, either he doesn't act upon it, or he doesn’t believe in what he
does. The warrior, on the other hand, acts in both instances. If something
is deemed to be true, he acts in order to do doing. If something is deemed
to be untrue, he acts in order to do not-doing.

A warrior does not need to believe something to be true or false, for as

long he believes without believing he is not-doing.
Not-doing what is for one the known is the secret in hunting for power.

The warrior is always aware of every little change. The objective in

treading the Warrior's Path is to cultivate and nurture this awareness.

A hunter of power observes everything with infinite care, for there lies a
secret hid in even the tiniest of details.

A warrior can gain a wealth of information from all sorts of things like for
example, from shadows.

The belief that shadows are merely shadows is doing. It is a stupid belief,
for the world is infinitely more than the puny mind of man can
comprehend, and therefore it follows that shadows too are far more than
simply shadows. Quite besides which, what makes a shadow a shadow is
only our doing.

Shadows are akin to portals; the portals of not-doing. To the experienced

warrior shadows are the link between the known and the unknown — a
kind of portal through which the unknown may be viewed within the
context of the known. To the Man of Knowledge who is a seer, shadows
reveal the innermost feelings of people.
There is no way in which to explain exactly what shadows are. As with all
of the true teachings we can at best talk about shadows, but without ever
being able to define them. In a way, shadows reflect a kind of movement,
a movement of the tensions within the web of life. It is therefore not
incorrect to say that shadows reflect feelings.

Reality is not the result of an intellectual decision, arrived at after due

consideration of certain facts, chosen from the inventory of your view of
the world — reality is what you feel.

Without feeling the world loses its sense of order.

In order to feel the world you must allow your body to find the power
inherent within not-doing.

The only thing about you that is real, is the you that is going to die. To
discover the real you is the not-doing of the self.

Not -doing, life everything else warriors do, is a most important practice,
but it is not a goal in itself It is dreaming which is the main objective in
not-doing.

Dreaming is the not-doing of dreams.

Not-doing is a technique enabling the warrior to learn new ways in which
to perceive the world, and it provides him with a feeling for the
stupendous possibilities inherent within action. This means that
knowledge of an alternate world of dreaming, a world that is even more
real and practical than the one we are all familiar with, is made possible
through not-doing.

The existence of any world is but the expression of a specific

configuration of energy fields. When such a configuration is brought into
alignment, perception of that world comes into being.

There are many worlds that can be assembled by the perception of man,
but only some of these worlds are of an enduring and therefore
permanent nature. These worlds which are permanent have a tendency,
once assembled, to impact upon our awareness in such a way that we
perceive them as different dimensions of an existence going way beyond
the limitations of rational explanation.

A dimension is a specific expression of inherent awareness. There are in

total ten such levels of awareness within the manifested universe;
meaning that there are ten dimensions which are of immediate concern to
man as the microcosm of the macrocosm. A great many other possible
dimensions do exist, but these are determined by evolving awareness,
and are therefore neither fixed nor constant. Consequently, although
these would-be dimensions are acknowledged as worlds in their own
right, they are not regarded as true dimensions. Nonetheless we must
and do take these worlds into account, because the mere fact of their
existence exerts considerable influence upon awareness in general.
To enter the world of dreams you must learn to not-do your normal
awareness. This requires that you learn the Art of Stalking, for unless you
can stalk your own perception you will never be able to not-do your
normal awareness.

To understand the principles of the Art of Stalking you need to grasp that
this technique rests entirely upon what Toltecs have defined as the Four
Postulates of Stalking. These are:
You should know; firstly, that the whole world and everything in it is
an endless mystery;
Secondly, that it is our duty as warriors to solve this mystery, but we
should never engage the hope of being able to do so;
Thirdly, that because the warrior is aware of the endless mystery
surrounding him, he acknowledges that he too is a part of this mystery,
and because he knows that it is his duty to solve this mystery, he
becomes at-one with the mystery;
Fourthly, being at-one with the mystery, the warrior comes to
understand that the crux of this mystery is the infinite mystery of
beingness; irrespective of whether beingness means being an atom, a
mineral, a plant, an animal, a human, or even a superhuman entity.
Having come to this realisation, the warrior enters into a state of true
humility, for within the mystery of beingness, all are equal.

The Art of Stalking is a technique which requires a meticulous

understanding, and a precise application, of the Stalker's Rule, within the
content of the four Postulates of Stalking. The Stalker's Rule is a most
versatile tool, in that it is multi-faceted and, as a result, has an almost
unlimited number of possible uses. However, for the sake of clarity, when
instructing apprentices in the use of this tool, only the seven major facets
are verbalised, in terms of what are known as the Seven Aspects of the
Stalker's Rule. These seven aspects are:
1. A warrior chooses his battle, and therefore will always assess both
the circumstances and the conditions of every battle with the utmost
care.
2. By striving for simplicity, a warrior discards all unnecessary acts.
3. A warrior is always ready to make his fast stand right here and right
now.
4. Once he has entered into battle, a warrior abandons himself to his
actions by allowing his spirit to flow free and clear. Only then do the
powers of destiny guide us by paving the way.
5. Whenever faced with impossible odds, a warrior opens himself up to
the world around him by allowing his mind to become occupied with
the little details of life.
6. A warrior always compresses time. Any battle, no matter how big or
small it may be, is a battle for one's life, and in a battle for one's life
an instant becomes an eternity — an eternity which determines the
outcome of the battle.
7. A stalker never reveals his identity, not even to himself.
Life for the average man is nothing more than a dream and, being caught
within that dream, his actions are nothing more than folly. All that is
required to escape from the madness of this dream is knowledge of the
four components of the dream. These four components are one's
challenges within life; the possibilities that come into being because of
one's challenges; the Four Postulates of Stalking; and the Stalker's Rule.

To become proficient in the Art of Stalking, you need to learn how to

listen to your heart. Therefore you must turn to the West; the place of the
setting sun, and allow your death to guide you in erasing your personal
history. As you erase your personal history through the process of
transformation, you will begin to grasp the riddle of the heart. Your heart
will gradually reveal to you the meaning of space, and then you will come
to realise that the Art of Stalking has its origin in feeling.

Feeling is not emotion, and yet the two are intimately connected. Feeling
is an act of the heart; emotion is a secondary impulse within the act of
perception. This means that while feeling can only arise from within the
heart; emotion, which can be generated both by feeling and by thoughts,
can arise from within either the heart or the mind.

Life is a feeling. Emotion is our expression of life.

The Stalker, knowing that life is a feeling, stalks his feelings in order to
grasp the mystery of beingness. To stalk one's feelings entails stalking the
act of perception.
Living by the rule of the hunt, the warrior never takes pity on anyone or
anything, but instead ruthlessly stalks his perception and the perception
of others, so that the gifts of power can be extracted from each and every
challenge. By taking this approach, the life of the warrior becomes a tight,
but nonetheless open-hearted affair with all of life — an expression of his
impeccability and of his great love for the world around him.

The North is the centre of the world, because it commands action. The
North is therefore the world as we know it: the physical expression of the
Fourfold Purpose of the nagal; that is, materialisation through the
medium of action. Consequently, to the Stalker, the North is the battlefield
on which he can perfect his skill at materialising anything he chooses,
through the action he takes in stalking perception. To grasp this you must
understand that materialisation is the act of not-doing perception which
enables the Stalker to foster, not only within himself; but also in others if
need be, the required strength of purpose that results in the desired
materialisation. Therefore, learning to stalk perception is in reality the act
of not-doing perception, and through this the Stalker learns that matter is
not realty matter as we know it, but is instead the not-doing of the nagal.

The Stalker knows that any view of the world is but a dream based upon
the collective dream of humanity. Therefore the art of the Stalker lies in
his ability to be able to slip into and out of any dream. He can do this
because he has learned how to stalk not only his own dream, but also the
dreams of others.
Having learned to stalk his own dream, and the dreams of others, the
warrior learns the Lore of the Dragon. Dragon Lore enables the warrior to
enter the dream of the Eagle, and in so doing to learn to create
possibilities that never before were present. The advantage of this is that
in having to deal with the unpredictable whims of power, the warrior can
always create a wild card whenever the need for one arises. Therefore
Dragon Lore is the ultimate knowledge in the Art of Stalking — the ability
to slip out of any trap.

Dragon Lore is the divine birthright of man — his ability to work the magic
of life. The act of discrimination is the ultimate key to unlocking this god-
life potential of man. As the Stalker begins to discriminate with an ever
greater sense of sobriety and acquired wisdom, he slowly becomes
aware that he can sense, deep within his innermost being, the somewhat
vaporous grasp of an ineffable power which appears to be there and yet
not there. This is the Stalker's first contact with what are termed the Mists
of Dragon Lore. As he begins to gain a deeper grasp of this nebulous
power, the Stalker in time learns, through exercising his intent, how to
hold this nebulous power in focus long enough to start coalescing it into
true power.

Because the act of perception encompasses the mystery of intent, it too

is a mystery, and these two mysteries interact to produce the Mists of
Dragon Lore.

The Stalker is ever searching for the totality of the self, and therefore he
stalks the Mists of Dragon Lore, knowing that the fey to the totality of the
self must lie within the true relationship between the three rings of power.
Only one thing in the life of the warrior matters to him; and that is to
achieve the totality of the self. Nothing else is of any consequence, and
therefore even the Warrior’s Path is for him merely a means to an end.
Thus the warrior cannot uphold one view of the world as being more
important than any other, for in the final analysis, it is not the description
of life that is important, but life itself. Consequently everything a warrior
does is an expression of his intent to achieve the totality of the self, by
becoming atone with the nagal, but without abusing the tonal and, above
all, without damaging the body.

Having learned to control his folly, the Stalker never takes himself
seriously, for he knows that his actions must reflect the continuous
unfoldment of his awareness, as he strives to meet the whimsical
demands of power. Thus the Stalker strives to be as fluid as possible.

Any stalking manoeuvre is essentially improvisation. Yet such

improvisation must be based upon a due consideration of the possible
interactions between the four components of the dream. These
automatically come into being with every action; mental, emotional and
physical. 'The only way in which this consideration can be done is
assessing the tensions inherent within the web of life. These tensions are
always perceivable whenever the four postulates of stalking are brought
into play.

If you wish to win, even though you may have lost, you must shift the
focus by applying the fourth aspect of the stalker's rule, within the context
of the first postulate of stalking.
The greatest Stalker known to Toltecs is death. Death has mastered skills
in stalking that warriors have yet to learn. The warrior who wishes to
refine his stalking skills maintains a most intimate relationship with his
death.

There are two stages to death. The first stage, in which one vacates the
physical body, is very similar to having momentarily fainted, and then
regaining one's consciousness. For a short while after regaining
consciousness one experiences an unusual sense of peace, tranquility
and completion; then one enters the second stage of death. It is the
second stage that is the real death.

Only after one has vacated the physical body does one become aware of
how fiercely and relentlessly the force of death repeatedly smashes
against the luminous cocoon, in order to crack it open. Once cracked
open, the life-force escapes, and one dies fully.

Death is nothing. No-Thing. It is here, and yet it isn't here.

All of us have shields that protect us against the continuous onslaught of

death. These shields are our doings - the many doings we engage in
throughout our lives. But the sorcerer and the Man of Knowledge do not
need shields to protect them, against death, for they have something far
more effective than a shield; namely, their will.
Without shields all of us are vulnerable to the force of death. The reason
for this is that each and every one of our acts, including the act of
perception, initiates a death of sorts. Life and death form the polarity
termed incarnation, and it is therefore not possible to be alive without also
dying, for action brings about death, as does inertia. As a result, from the
moment we are born we begin to die, for both action and inertia call forth
the attention of the sharpshooters of the universe; the agents of death.

In the beginning every warrior needs the warrior's shield in order to

survive the arrows of the sharpshooters of the universe, and therefore
that shield is very much a shield. However, once the warrior has entered
the Temple of Death and has learned to dance the edge, the steps of his
dance and the swiftness of his movements are all that is required. From
this moment on the warrior uses his shield, not as a protection from the
sharpshooters of the universe, but as a means whereby he strives to
embrace more and more of life with his heart. In time that striving
becomes a passion - a passion that is all-consuming and utterly inclusive.

Average man is always so busy with his doings that he is never without
his shields, and therefore he can and does fend off his impending death,
until his allotted time on earth has been spent. Yet for the warrior, this
vulnerability to death constitutes a very real threat, for whenever he
opens himself to power, he also opens himself to death. The reason for
this is that we cannot learn if we keep our shields intact and remain
closed. In order to learn, the warrior must abandon his shields and open
himself to the world around him, including death. However, to do this
would spell annihilation if it were not for will. It is therefore vital that the
warrior has his will in place to counteract his death, whenever he opens
himself to power and the mysterious forces of life.
Will is not really a shield, but a force that both balances and keeps in
check the force of death. It is not possible to define will, other than to say
that it expresses itself as the will-to-live, the will-to-learn, the will-to-good,
and so on. Where there is the will-to-learn, neither resistance nor any of
our other shields can remain intact and we become completely open and
vulnerable. But where there is also the will-to-live, death cannot touch us
until our allotted time on earth is up.

Death is ever present and waiting for us. The moment our power begins
to wane we have reached the end of the road, and death takes us.

Any man, including the warrior, is the product of his personal power, and
it is this that determines how he lives and how he dies.

To die willingly is to die the coward's way. A warrior chooses to die the
hard way, in that his death has to struggle to take him. A warrior is a
fighter at heart, and therefore never submits to anything, least of all to his
death.

A warrior is a man and, just like any other man, he too cannot change the
configuration of his death, and so the warrior accepts this with all
humidity. Nevertheless, his impeccable spirit, which has claimed and
stored personal power throughout all the great many hardships entailed in
learning, has still enough power to stay his death for a short while. This,
though, is long enough to enable the warrior to rejoice fully in his power
for one last time.
A warrior chooses to die in his place of predilection. A place of
predilection is somewhere that is filled with unforgettable memories;
where battles have been won and lost; a place in which mysteries were
solved to reveal their hidden secrets, and where miracles were wrought; a
place that echoes the warrior's laughter whilst whispering his tears; a
place that has become saturated with his personal power and with the
impeccability of his spirit; a place that has become imbued with the life of
the warrior, and has therefore become as much his responsibility as is his
physical body. Consequently the warrior always chooses to store any new
power he acquires in his place of predilection, as an expression of his
love for it. And so too, when his allotted time on earth is spent, and his
death taps him on the shoulder, the warrior's spirit returns to his place of
predilection, and there in the presence of all that is dear to him, the
warrior dances his last dance.

Every warrior has a specific approach to life, a unique way in which he

expresses his power, and which he develops throughout his life as a
warrior. Such an expression can rightfully be termed a dance - for every
movement has been perfected to flow in a completely harmonious
response to the dictates of fate; while at the same time displaying the
warrior's great love of and for life, as well as his immense gratitude for
having been granted the priceless gift of life. If a warrior has limited
power, his dance is short and simple, but if he has a great deal of power,
his dance is a long and magnificent epic. But irrespective of whether a
warrior’s dance is simple or long, death must pause to witness the
warrior’s final expression upon earth, for death cannot take the warrior
who is reliving the battles he has fought. Therefore his death watches
from close by while the warrior dances his last dance.
In a warrior’s last dance he tells of his challenges within life, of his
struggles with learning, of the battles he has won and of those he has
lost; he tells of his joy, his grief, and of the many times he was utterly
bewildered in his confrontations with power. In a warrior’s last dance he
portrays the secrets he has learned and the wonders he has achieved -
this is his gift to life for having been granted the marvellous opportunity to
learn.

A warrior never turns his back, upon power without giving thanks for
privileges received. Therefore any man who hunts for power must learn
the last dance. The last dance is the story of the warrior's life; a dance
that grows as his personal power grows.

A Man of Knowledge knows that death is the last witness, because he

sees.

Death never stops. Sometimes it just becomes inconspicuous, but it

never leaves us.
 VI

There was, is, always will be only one life evolving one awareness
through the utilisation of one matter.

We speak of many mysteries, and yet there is but one mystery; namely,
the mystery of beingness. This most marvellous of mysteries
encompasses all of life - so utterly inspirational and enticing, and yet also
so profoundly elusive, its roots lying buried deep within the unknowable.
From the little that Toltec seers have been able to grasp of this great
mystery, we have come to learn that the mystery of beingness is in fact
the mystery of perception and awareness. All of life is beingness,
perception and awareness. Beyond this there is only the void, of which
we know even less.

We do not know what life is, other than the fact that it has three
expressions; the subjective, the objective and the corporeal. We term
these three expressions of life the three great bands. The subjective is
Life Coming into Manifestation; the objective is Life within Manifestation;
and the corporeal is Life Manifest. These three together form the cosmic
tonal of life, which is the opposite polarity of life itself; namely, the nagal,
or the No-Thing that is the void. Within this system, the subjective can be
materialised only through the medium of the objective, within the context
of the corporeal.

This present manifestation as we know it is the world of the Divine

Heterosexual, as oppressed by Life within Manifestation. Yet we should at
all times acknowledge that Life within Manifestation is not life itself but
rather the expression of life.
We do not know what life is, and we also know very little about the
divine purpose, other than what can be deduced of this purpose from our
experience of Life within Manifestation. Therefore, since our knowledge of
the divine purpose is limited to our experience of the egression of life, we
cannot presume to know the purpose of the Unspeakable.
All that we can safely say about that purpose is that, although it
manifests as heterosexual in quality, there is nonetheless conclusive
proof that life itself cannot be heterosexual, but is actually hermaphroditic
by nature, and that its true expression on becoming manifest is bisexual
in quality.
Therefore we define life as being primarily hermaphroditic, with a
bisexual purpose which is expressed by Life within Manifestation as a
heterosexual purpose.
More than this we cannot presume to know.
The Rule of the Three-pronged nagal is vastly different to the Rule of the
four-pronged nagal. The Rule of the Four concerns life as we know it; that
is, Life within Manifestation, white the Three concerns Life Be-coming
Manifest, of which we know very little. Our only knowledge of Life Be-
coming Manifest is what we have learned through its expression as Life
within Manifestation.

There is only the one polarity; nagal-tonal, but inherent within this polarity
is the awareness of the nagal. Therefore, although there is but one prime
duality, this duality nevertheless has three aspects to be considered; the
nagal, its awareness and the tonal. However, since it is not possible to
separate awareness from beingness, it stands to reason that the nagal
and its awareness; that is, Life Becoming Manifest, are one; manifesting
as the tonal; that is, Life within Manifestation. But since there are two
types of awareness, inherent awareness and evolving awareness, how
are we to view this?
In the final analysis, all awareness is an expression of intent, and
therefore it is only for the purposes of technical accuracy that it becomes
important to differentiate between inherent awareness and evolving
awareness; for in essence these two types of awareness are but the two
sides of the one coin, intent. Viewed in this way, it follows that, in relation
to the nagal, inherent awareness implies an awareness of its unknown
potential, while evolving awareness is that which is ever becoming for it
the known. This is the intent of the Unspeakable, expressed in Life within
Manifestation as the intent towards inclusiveness, and since
inclusiveness can only be achieved through dreaming, this expression of
intent is termed the dreamer.

Separating out the polarities is the dual act of creation, in which intent
exerts pressure upon mind to bring to birth the materialisation of purpose.
But since mind is separative by nature, exerting pressure upon mind
presupposes the need for multiplicity; a self-evident fact, considering that
the purpose of the Unspeakable is inclusiveness. For without multiplicity
there can be no inclusiveness. From this it follows that the act of creation
must be dual in nature — separation and unification. First there must be
the separation of elements, and only then can those elements be re-
united in the fulfilment of the purpose underlying creation.

The Unspeakable manifests as that incomprehensible duality, termed the

nagal and the tonal — the two rings of power. Standing between these
two rings is man — that universal point at which the perception of nagal
and tonal is assembled. At first the intent of man is so vague and so
insubstantial as to be no more than a nebulous mist interacting with the
two outer rings, but as he continues to focus his intent, it becomes a third
ring binding the other two together. These three rings form the totality of
the self - a coalition of forces based upon the Lore of the Dragon.
The relative factor of awareness is paramount to our understanding of the
purpose of the Unspeakable. In this respect it is important to grasp that
relativity is the result of the separation of the polarities within a non-
absolute universe. Had the universe been absolute, the separation of the
polarities would have been absolute; that is, each pole would have been
clearly defined with respect to the other, and each would have been
exclusive of the other. But because the universe is not absolute, the poles
are separated only in the sense of marking a set of limits between which
any spectrum of frequencies is true, when evolving awareness is
expressed as a function of inherent awareness. This remains true at any
given point of reference within the ten worlds of each of the four
dimensions and, as a result, the poles in any given set of polarities
gradually blend into each other, across a mutually inclusive range of
frequencies, which come to be defined by that particular alignment of
perception at which such a set of polarities comes into being. From this it
follows that what is generally perceived as a set of polarities is but the
product of relativity. Hence we see that all states of awareness have two
polarities; one being either positive or negative in relation to the other.

Toltecs have since time immemorial been researching the mystery

surrounding gender, but in order to grasp their knowledge on this subject,
we need first to grasp the implications inherent within the relative factor of
awareness.
Because the poles within a set of polarities are separated only in the
sense of marking the limits between which that spectrum of frequencies is
true, and because the poles blend into each other, across a mutually
inclusive range of frequencies, there is no true separation as such —
since separation is simply the product of a particular alignment of
perception.
It follows that gender too is but a set of polarities marking the limits
between which that particular spectrum of frequencies termed gender is
true. Consequently gender, like any set of polarities, is entirely relative to
perception. What this implies is that although the dual sexes are indeed
an objective reality, subjectively they do not exist as two poles which are
separate and therefore mutually exclusive.
This principle is totally fundamental to our understanding, not only of
heterosexuality, but also of hermaphroditism, for heterosexuality is but the
objective expression of subjective hermaphroditism. However, inherent
within this prinicple also lie the roots of that mystery termed bisexuality —
a mystery which Toltecs have not yet been able to solve.

Both the male and the female are hermaphroditic by nature, in the sense
that the manifestation of both is the result of a subjective impulse, which
is materialised through an objective expression of that impulse. But the
only true impulse there is, is that which is con-fined within the void as
intent, and which when emanating from the void, becomes de-fined as
the will- to -manifest, and materialised as the dimension of time; that is,
desire, or emotional impetus. From this it follows that both the male and
the female are the result of con-fined intent having be-come defined as
the two poles of the one polarity, desire.

Right side awareness concerns the rational and the known, and is
therefore masculine in quality. Left side awareness concerns the irrational
and the unknown, and is therefore feminine in quality. But this relationship
between the rational and the irrational, the known and the unknown, like
anything else in the universe, is only true within the context of the relative
factor of awareness. Since there is only the One Life and therefore the
one awareness, all awareness is masculine in nature, but can be either
masculine or feminine in quality, relative to a specific state of beingness
or level of existence. This is an important premise when considering
awareness, for in the final analysis there is only the unknown: the known
being but that part of the unknown which has been mapped out. From this
it follows that if there is only the one awareness, which is masculine in
nature, then even the irrational is masculine in nature.
There is a vast difference between academic thought and intelligence.
Academic thought can only function within the context of separativeness,
while intelligence is a spontaneous co-operation with the fundamental
wholeness that is inherent within the process of life.

In studying awareness it is of vital importance to distinguish between

consciousness, intelligence and awareness. Life is that which is
characterised by intelligence. Intelligence is manifested as the ability of
life to discern and therefore to choose between, while awareness is the
ability of a life-form to learn from its circumstances. It follows that
awareness is the manifestation of the intelligence factor of the life
indwelling the form. Consciousness, by definition, implies multiplicity, and
it is therefore the sum total of all intelligence within manifestation, as well
as the total expression of that intelligence; namely, all awareness.
Consequently there is the One Life, which is characterised by intelligence
and which, through Its inherent awareness, manifests as Life within
Manifestation demonstrating consciousness. This consciousness
comprises; firstly, the intelligence of the life indwelling the multiplicity of
forms we recognise as being Life within Manifestation; and secondly, the
evolving awareness that comes into being as a result of this life
experiencing the world of multiplicity.

Feeling is the expression of No-Thing; that is, intent exerting pressure

upon mind; an act of fertilisation which results in the conception of the
irrational, the embryo of evolving awareness. Bringing the embryo to birth
constitutes the evolution of awareness, but this relies upon receptiveness
to the conception of the irrational. When conception is resisted, the
embryo is aborted; meaning that the irrational cannot be brought to birth,
with the result that the evolution of awareness becomes encumbered.
Although the inherent awareness of life directs evolution upon a linear
course, evolving awareness, being fixed to its centre, pulls all linear
motion into an arc, thus bringing about an inclusiveness which would
otherwise not have been possible. This inclusiveness naturally intensifies
the vibration of evolving awareness.

Since the radius of evolving awareness can be lengthened by the

intensifying action of inclusiveness, and since its centre is ever propelled
forward by the force of inherent awareness, evolving awareness proceeds
in the form of a spiral; each ring encompassing a greater and greater
whole. However, in the case of self-centredness, instead of expanding,
the rings of the spiral diminish in size during their forward propulsion.

Any person whose view of the world has become too small has
intensified his or her awareness to the point where it is self-centred. Once
awareness is self-centred, it rapidly reaches a critical level at which it
becomes thoroughly destructive to that person.

The manifested universe is not open-ended, for at the core of all

existence is the primal urge of life to know itself in its entirety. This urge
defines an ultimate radius of a predetermined length, fixed by the intent
of the Unspeakable for the duration of this manifestation. Therefore even
the grand spiral of all combined states of awareness is curved back upon
itself to define that vast circle of beingness which we recognise as the
outer parameters of the manifested universe.
Without the law of polarity, which is but the expression of the dual nature
of intent, we would not be able to map out the unknown, for without this
law there would be no separation of the known from the unknown, male
from female, or light from darkness. Likewise, without the law of polarity
there would not exist that marvellous law termed the law of inclusiveness,
which demonstrates the awesome relationship between the polarities,
and which ultimately draws Every-Thing in the universe together through
that electromagnetic bond we term love in action — friendship. The law of
polarity already comes into existence the moment intent first stirs within
the void. In that moment friendship is conceived, is brought to birth as the
Yellow Rose of Friendship, and is perpetuated as divine inspiration
manifested within the mysterious relationship between the Divine
Bisexual and the Divine Heterosexual; that is, Life Coming into
Manifestation and Life Within Manifestation.

There is a powerful and highly dynamic relationship existing between the

world of the Three and the world of the Four. However, we do not grasp
this relationship, beyond the fact that it is an expression of divine
inspiration, and demonstrating both the love that exists between the
Three and the Four, as well as the fertilisation of the Four by the Three;
so that Life Be-coming Manifest remains forever nascent, and Life Within
Manifestation remains for ever inspired.

There is only one all-pervasive force throughout the whole universe;

intent, manifesting primarily as three mutually interrelated,
interdependent and interactive expressions of unconditional love.

The void and its intent are one, and therefore both are masculine. But
because the void and its be-coming are also one, the Yellow Rose of
Friendship is likewise masculine. From this it follows that divine
inspiration, the product of which is friendship, is a masculine urge bringing
about creativity.

The unknowable concerns Life Un-manifest, and so is masculine relative

to both the known and the unknown. Because of this, much of our
knowledge concerning the true nature of masculinity remains a mystery,
for until we can enter the unknowable, our knowledge of masculinity is
confined to our experience of it relative to femininity only.

Intent and vision are synonymous, the two being but the two sides of
that coin we term the purpose of the Unspeakable. Intent is the
subjective pressure caused by that purpose; vision is the objective
pressure resulting from that purpose. Together they give rise to the action
needed to materialise that purpose. But if intent is unconditional love,
then it follows that vision too is an expression of unconditional love, and
this implies that the purpose of the Unspeakable can only be materialised
through the medium of unconditional love, expressed in terms of action.
From this it stands to reason that the materialisation of purpose is the
result of love in action.

If we are to find the meaning inherent within our experience of the

purpose of the Unspeakable, we need first to grasp that there exists a
mysterious relationship between the void, its intent, and the Yellow Rose
of Friendship. Locked within this mystery lies the secret of the be-coming
of the Unspeakable. All that can be said about this mystery is that the
materialisation of the pressure that intent exerts upon mind is the Yellow
Rose of Friendship, just as it is also this same pressure of intent which
manifests, within Life made Manifest, as the creative power of the void,
channelled through the Yellow Rose of Friendship. It is therefore clear
that the act of be-coming creative is potential intelligence made manifest,
and that this manifestation is the Yellow Rose of Friendship inspired by
intent. It follows that friendship is the result of the divine inspiration
brought about within the void because of the relationship between itself
and its intent.

The act of be-coming creative results in fertilisation and conception; the

product of which is creation for the purpose of evolving awareness. As a
result, whenever we engage in the act of perception we are conceiving
the purpose of the Unspeakable. Therefore any act of perception results
in conception.

Toltecs have long been contemplating the deeper implications inherent

within the act of incarnation. Although it is true that, since they are
attached to the wheel of rebirth, the majority of beings have no choice in
this matter, how do we define the urge that drives even free beings into
incarnation, as if they too have no choice?
A difficult question this, and one that appears to have no easy
answer.
Toltecs have for a long time known that, in dealing with life, technical
answers are simply a convenient way of arriving at clarity. However,
technicalities cannot explain, much less probe, the subjective. Therefore
our models of both man and the universe are just that; models of an
objective reality that allow us to explore our past, and map out the
unknown. But how does one build a model of that which gives rise to the
objective universe? How does one build a model of life? How does one
model that which is pure feeling?
Although we can define the cause of existence, we cannot define
that subjective something which gives rise to that cause, other than to say
its expression is love in action. Yet although love in action is clear to see,
love itself is as irrational as is life. We know neither the purpose of life,
nor the intent which imbues it with that meaning we term love in action.
Incarnation has no purpose other than to bring about the materialisation
of the purpose of the Unspeakable, through the medium of action in Life
within Manifestation.

Action is an intelligent response to life, but since intelligence is relative to

awareness and, ultimately, to perception, it is of vital importance to
differentiate between actions that are life-supportive, and those that are
life-destructive.

Not all actions are life-supportive; but any act which is motivated by
inclusiveness is life-supportive. Inclusiveness is defined as being love in
action, and is always characterised by an uncompromising ruthlessness
that is divorced from self-centredness.

Action is the warrior's response to the purpose of his dreamer; reaction is

the principal means by which average man hooks himself to the folly of
his fellow men.

Intelligent co-operation means controlling your folly. This is the ultimate

key to all forms of magic, and leads to an understanding of Dragon Lore -
an understanding which yields the ability to cast the Spear of Destiny and
to wield the Sword of Power.
Intelligent co-operation forms the very basis of manifested life — it is the
glue that keeps everything together and, at the same time, makes
possible the evolution of awareness. Intelligent co-operation between
male and female, between man and the world, is an act of listening to the
heart, so that the chaotic unknown can become included within the
known. Intelligent co-operation is therefore an expression of that elusive
love, which evades the understanding of most people. It is only by
walking the Path with a Heart that the warrior comes to understand the
true meaning of love.

Humility is a passive acceptance of the process of life; love is an active

participation in that process.

The cornerstone of true love is intelligent co-operation.

 VII

The reason for manifestation is the evolution of awareness. The nagal,

being Life Un-manifest, is the source of all life as we know it. In order to
evolve its own awareness it manifests, first, as Life made Manifest — the
cosmic tonal; and second, as Life within Manifestation — the cosmic
nagal; thus setting up that prime duality, termed the nagal and the tonal,
or Life Un-manifest and Life within Manifestation. In this scheme of things
the nagal is the male; that is, the active, or positive polarity, exploring its
unknown potential through the medium of Life within Manifestation. As a
result, Life within Manifestation is for the nagal its opposite and negative
polarity; that is, the tonal, which by definition is female relative to the
nagal.

Life revolves around polarities; whether negative and positive, black and
white, spirit and man, or male and female.

The nagal is No-Thing; Life Un-manifest. The tonal is Every-Thing, both

Life made Manifest and Life within Manifestation.

The nagal is Life Un-manifest - No-Thing - the void. The tonal is Life
within Manifestation - Every-Thing - the womb.

Intelligence gives rise to awareness, but all awareness has two polarities;
one termed male because it is masculine in quality; and the other termed
female because it is feminine in quality.
Allawareness is relative — terms such as male and female are not
absolutes, but values we temporarily attach to a given state of
awareness, relative to any other state of awareness.

The nagal manifests in order to realise its full potential, by mapping out
those aspects of itself which are as of yet for it the unknown. This implies
first having to separate the known from unknown; an act which results in
having to separate its awareness into male and female, and the
consequence of which is the splitting of the sexes. Without the splitting of
the sexes it would not be possible to materialise potential through
mapping out the unknown and including it within the known.

The nagal is the spirit of man, and therefore it is masculine. The nagal
has no body, no emotions or mental ability, for it is No-Thing. The tonal is
the social being we know as man or woman and therefore, relative to the
nagal, the tonal is feminine, irrespective of gender. The tonal means
having a body, emotions and mental faculties, for the tonal is Every-
Thing. The interaction between nagal and tonal, between masculine and
feminine, leads to the evolution of awareness.

The term man refers to the nagal indwelling the form, irrespective of
gender. The nagal manifests its awareness as the dreamer upon its own
plane. The dreamer, being pure awareness, is hermaphroditic by nature,
because to be pure implies being whole. It therefore stands to reason that
the dreamer must be both male and female.
When the dreamer comes into incarnation it does so by manifesting only
one polarity of its awareness in those forms we recognise as men and
women and term the dreamed. The dreamed is the social being upon the
physical plane that is either masculine or feminine by virtue of its inherent
potential. If it is masculine, it is the active polarity of the dreamer; that is,
the male. If it is feminine, it is the receptive polarity; that is, the female.

The male is the active polarity of the nagal's awareness; meaning that
men are the representatives of the spirit of man upon the physical plane.
The female is the receptive polarity of the nagal's awareness; meaning
that women are the representatives of the tonal upon the physical plane.

The terms man and woman pertain to physical gender, but the terms
male and female pertain to the awareness that relates to gender. It
follows that the terms masculinity or femininity imply each specific
potential that has to be unfolded through the medium of gender.

Men and women have discarded the obvious in favour of intellectual

complexity and, as a result, have lost touch with their feelings, especially
those feelings that pertain to the mystery of gender.

Locked within the mystery of gender lie the keys to evolution. The man or
woman who has mastered the secrets of gender has unlimited power at
his or her command.
In dealing with any mystery it is wise to bear in mind that one is up
against the unknown. Only fools are so ignorant as to want to fake
cleverness in the face of the unknown. The wise ones are sufficiency
humble to allow their feelings to guide them.
The evolution of awareness proceeds in three stages; defined as the
mother, the male and the female. The purpose of evolution is not only to
unfold these three aspects of awareness, but also to reconcile them in
such a manner as to bring about an intelligent co-operation between
each.

The mark of the true male is courage, but to have courage a man must
take heart. Being a representative of the nagal upon the physical plane,
the male can never plead helplessness. It fоllows that the male must
always lead by example, and therefore in treading the Path of Freedom
he must be prepared to fight for what holds for him heart.

It is the male who goes forth into the world out there to claim his personal
power, through the knowledge he gains from his experiences within life.
This is because being a male means having to know, both what your
purpose within this lifetime entails, as well as the responsibility that you
have towards yourself and others in either fulfilling your purpose, or failing
to fulfil it. This implies that you have to think about everything you do, or
decide not to do. However, true thinking is not your internal dialogue, and
neither is it rationalisation. True thinking means listening to your heart, so
that you can tap the creative power of the Void in striving to fulfil your fate
as a male.

The male must set the example in how to enjoy life to the full, by
embracing all of the many richnesses of life impeccably. Knowledge
cannot be acquired through denial, but neither can it be acquired through
indulgence in weaknesses.
The male must map out the unknown and make it practical upon the
physical plane. To do so he must anchor the female, for the male cannot
afford to become enmeshed and lost within the chaos of the unknown.

To be a male means being fully committed to yourself and to the world

around you.

The male, being the spirit of man made manifest, creates.

The female is negative relative to the male, for the male and the female
are equal but opposite polarities of the dreamer. Because the female is
negative relative to the male, she not only provides him with a
counterbalance, but she also complements him in every respect. In this
way the female supports the male in claiming his power.

To be a true female you need, more than anything else, a willingness to

be completely open and defenceless. You need to be totally honest with
yourself and acknowledge that you are a mystery even unto yourself.
However, because of the relative factor of awareness, this is equally true
for the male.

The mystery of the female lies in the fact that the tonal is Every-Thing;
that is, all of manifested life. Therefore the tonal is both chaos and order,
light and darkness, positive and negative, life and death.
The female is dual in nature because she is the tonal; that is, she is
Every-Thing. Thus the female is both light and darkness, positive and
negative, order and chaos, male and female. The male in the woman is
her own inner male, just as the female in the man is his own inner female.
However, the female has two aspects; namely, the mother and the true
female. The mother aspect is a potential in women that has already been
fully evolved and included into the known. It is therefore masculine in
quality. The true female is a potential that is still being evolved, and thus
still needs to be included into the known. The female aspect is therefore
the unknown, and fully feminine in quality.

If the female resorts to rationalising she cannot support the purpose of

the male. This implies that the female needs to be contained, if she is
going to give full expression to her irrational nature as a representative of
the unknown. Consequently, even that greater female termed the
universe is not open-ended.

The female is not concerned with rational implications, and so can cover
a huge expanse of the unknown rapidly, but superficially. The female
therefore works horizontally. The male, on the other hand, has to fathom
out the implications of everything encountered and, as a result, moves
more slowly than the female, but at a much greater depth. Therefore the
male works vertically. However, both breadth and depth are required to
map out the unknown, and to achieve this, male and female need each
other's specialised abilities. This mutual need is the basis of intelligent co-
operation.
The nature of the female is that she brings forth from out of her own
depths fragments of the unknown. It is the duty of the male to make these
practical upon the physical plane, because it is he who has the ability to
reason out what the female has intuited. To accomplish this the male
must also apply his feelings to that which the female brings him; so that
he can follow her, and then fathom the practicability of her gift. In this way
male and female together map out the unknown.

The female does not try to emulate the male, because she understands
full well that the male and the female each have their own role to play,
and that each role is vitally important. Neither does the female compete
against the male, for this only brings forth the mother in herself, which is
counter-productive to being female.

The female nurtures — a process that comes very naturally to all women.
In relation to this it is vital to remember that the sole purpose of life upon
the physical plane is the materialisation of our full potential within physical
life. Therefore in order for us to accomplish this we must all nurture the
purpose of the male; that is, the purpose of the nagal, irrespective of our
gender.

The female does not have the power to create, any more than the male
has the power to conceive a child. The female can only sustain and
nurture what the male has brought forth with his creative powers, for the
essence of the female is conception and bringing to birth that conception.
Mapping out the unknown can only be done by hunting for pouter, both
within ourselves and in the world out there.

The hunter, irrespective of gender, is masculine. The quintessence of

masculinity is harmony, just as the quintessence of hunting is intelligent
co-operation.

In hunting for power we cannot afford to forget that all reality is masked
by the mystery of life — a mystery which the ignorant have turned into
myths and old wives' tales. Yet at the core of man's myths lie hid a great
many stupendous secrets concerning both male and female, and
therefore care must be taken not to discard the baby with the bathwater.

The way in which power has set it up is that the male is the hunter in the
outer world, relating all that he learns there back to himself; the female is
the hunter in the inner world, having to relate all she learns there to the
world around her.

If we are to hunt for power successfully, either within our inner world, or in
the world out there, we must come to see and to uphold the
interrelationship of life. There is only one life, and we are all
interdependent and interactive units of that one life. Life is simply a vast
system of relationships. Therefore our well-being, our happiness and
success, are entirely dependent upon our skill in relating, firstly, to
ourselves; and secondly, to the world around us.
To relate implies understanding. To relate to ourselves, to others or to the
world, we need to be aware.

Being wide awake implies not only using your fear, but also developing
respect.

All relationships have their basis within conflict, for it is only through
conflict that new knowledge can be uncovered. In working with conflict we
need to be defenceless; hence the need for exercising intelligent co-
operation.

Conflict has never injured anyone. But what does injure the spirit is when
someone behaves like a mother; being forever on your case, telling you
what to do, when to do it and how to do it.

There are no victims in this world. Through their actions people merely
reflect for us our highest hopes and deepest fears.
In hunting for power, both, the male and the female involve themselves in
five areas of endeavour, with a two-fold purpose in mind. This purpose is
first, to strive for the acquisition of power through the medium of their own
inner worlds; and second, to strive to achieve their freedom by using that
power within the outer world.

Hunting for power within the inner world involves gaining knowledge in
five cardinal areas of activity; sobriety, action, feeling, warmth and intent.
Gaining knowledge in these five areas leads to an understanding of the
five aspects of the One Power, and how these interact in the pursuit of
personal power.

Hunting for power in the outer world involves gaining knowledge in

another five cardinal areas of activity; education, politics, medicine,
religion and science. Each of these five areas of endeavour leads to
knowledge of the greater whole — a knowledge that is needed in the
pursuit of freedom.

Education means that we have the acquired ability to handle life and the
many challenges it brings us. Politics is our ability to negotiate for
strategies that allow for the manipulation of power. Medicine is the
knowledge needed to correct those imbalances within our lives that bring
about disease. Religion is our innate drive towards understanding the
mystery of beingness. Science is our ability to enhance the quality of all of
life, by uncovering that knowledge which everyone can use to achieve
their freedom through the medium of technology.
If, after all the instruction you have received, you still wish to become a
warrior, you must first pause at this point, in order to review your journey
thus far. This is the only way in which to fortify your achievements to date.
Without doing this you will not be able to claim the power you have
harnessed.

That which is learned at the knee of our parents creates a lasting

impression. With that impression we make of our lives what we will.

Life is not your social conditioning. Neither are you your behaviour. But if
you truly wish to change, you must stop taking yourself so seriously, by
casting off your self-image, and learning to play the game of life.

Our wishes are not just idle day-dreams. Each of our wishes is an
expression of our innermost predilection — a predilection which it is
perfectly possible for us to fulfil, provided we use our knowledge wisely in
playing the game of life.

All of life is a system of games. Some games just require more carefully-
defined rules than others. The game which requires the strictest rules of
all, is the game of relationships.

In order to learn how to relate you must take responsibility for having
called forth the people in your life. This implies that you should never treat
the people in your life any differently than you would a total stranger.
Acknowledge gender according to its proper potential. Therefore make
allowances for the differences between males and females.

Accept yourself for who and what you are, for the you that you are now is
the only one that can claim your power, and thereby change yourself. In
order to do this, you must hunt for the power inherent within your
shortcomings. Wishing to be someone or something you are not is not
being real or honest. Be real by making yourself and others real.

Believe in yourself and in others. In doing so you should respect your

gains, and measure these against what you are still lacking, so that you
can perceive yourself, and others, objectively.

Actions speak louder than words, yet in order truly to act you must pay
attention to your feelings. Your emotions will guide you to your true
feelings.

Compress time by learning to laugh at your own folly. Only then will you
come to realise that ruthlessness and unconditional love are
synonymous.
 POSTSCRIPT

At the beginning of this present solar system the Spirit of Atl embodied
within His physical expression the full extent of the solar debris. This solar
debris is an unresolved solar challenge left over from the previous solar
system, and is in the nature of a type of radioactivity that has the potential
either to explode into sheer radiance or to implode into unmitigated
darkness. It is this solar debris, embodied within the luminous cocoon of
the planet Earth, which gives all life-forms upon this planet their peculiar
tendency towards inertia, but which, at the same time, also gives them
their potential to become a radiant source of radioactive light. The sum
total of this debris is what Toltecs therefore look upon as being Lucifer,
the Light-bringer.
The powerful planetary events which tend to after for ever the course of
history do not originate from man. These events are the results of mighty
cosmic forces introduced into our system by the planetary Being. It is the
task of seers to predict the probable outcome of such events, and to
make the necessary adjustments within the collective planetary
awareness, so as to enable all of life to meet headlong the challenges
posed by these forces.
The most definitive decision we ever make, is the decision to be born.
Once we are born it is possible, through the choices and the decisions we
make at every crucial point within our lives, to affect and even to change
the circumstances surrounding the battles we have to face. However, it is
utter folly to assume that we can dictate the outcome of these battles, and
this is for two reasons. Firstly, underlying the battles we call forth, as well
as their outcome, is a purpose which is predetermined, by virtue of the
fact that the cause underlying the decision to be born was already in
existence before birth. Secondly, the final outcome of every battle is
always a re-definition of that purpose, arising out of and dependent upon
the measure of impeccability with which we have fought the battle.
Therefore, although the purpose underlying any battle is predetermined,
every outcome nonetheless becomes causative in itself. Consequently, all
of our actions ultimately lead to the same unpredictable result; that is,
mapping out the unknown in the constant re-definition of the primeval
cause.
 FURTHER INFORMATION

Further informaon concerning Theun Mares and applying these teachings in your daily life.

Toltec Legacy
Theun’s unique online teaching acility.
www.toltec-legacy.com

Relaonship Resoluon
A website dedicated to all maers surrounding relaonships, and on which Theun gives personal
guidance on relaonship issues.
www.relaonship-resoluon, com

The Temple of Peace

Assisng people in person to fnd the answers they are seeking, so that their lives can be flled with
peace and ulflment.
www.the-temple-of-peace.com

The Toltec Foundaon

www.toltec-foundaon.org
 THE TOLTEC TEACHINGS SERIES
by THEUN MARES

Details of other books by Theun Mares in which he outlines the various concepts and techniques of the
Warrior's Path. These are needed by the serious student who wishes to learn how to apply the Toltec
teachings in a praccal manner, and who wishes to fully benet by gaining the knowledge to handle all the
varied challenges found within daily life.

THE TOLTEC TEACHINGS

Volume I

First in the Toltec Teachings Series, this book introduces the Warrior’s Path and the Toltec Path of
Freedom. This is an acon-based approach to life, in which individuals are taught to value their own
experience more highly than informaon from others. Theun Mares introduces the basic concepts
of this path, as well as the tools used by warriors in everyday life to build self-belief, self-reliance
and self-empowerment - the true foundaons for freedom.

ISBN 0-958-4675-1-X

THE TOLTEC TEACHINGS

Volume II

A deep adventure into the inner teachings of this ancient tradion, including how to stop the
internal dialogue, how to handle the four natural enemies of mankind, plus detailed informaon on
seng up dreaming, together with the universal symbols to aid dream interpretaon.

ISBN 0-958-4675-2-8

THE TOLTEC TEACHINGS

Volume III

Part One
You can do far more than just make your relaonship work - discover the amazing skills for turning
any relaonship into an upliing experience of joy and fun!

Part Two
How to unlock the powerful secrets of male creavity and sexuality in order to experience greater
joy and fullment. A message of hope and guidebook for all men.

Part Three
A journey of mystery and discovery, enabling a woman to nd deep, enduring fullment as a true
female in today's ultra-compeve, asexual world.
ISBN 0-958 4675-3-6

THE TOLTEC TEACHINGS

Volume IV

“Dragon Lore” is shown as the process of acvely taking charge of one’s life and the future. The
book explores the human psyche, introducing concepts such as the 21 aspects of awareness; the
meaning and existence of alternave worlds; the 4 postulates of stalking and the 7 aspects of the
stalker’s rule.

ISBN 0-958-4675-4-4

THE TOLTEC TEACHINGS

Volume V

Freedom is not just a myscal nebulous concept. True freedom needs to be fought for, and aained.
In this h volume, Theun lis the veils of myth as he takes the reader back to the roots of freedom
buried within another me, another place. Having gone back to the very beginning, Theun goes on
to show what freedom means in the world today, and how, in praccal terms, we can set about
achieving it in our lives.

ISBN 0-958-4675-5-2

THE TOLTEC TEACHINGS

Volume VI

At no stage throughout their history have Toltec seers transmied the core of their teachings;
namely, the Toltec aphorisms, in anything other than purely oral form. Now for the rst me, the
Toltec aphorisms have been commied to wring in their enrety by the Toltec and seer charged
with revealing the Toltec legacy to humanity today - Theun Mares. These range from the simplest,
given to an apprence at the outset of his or her journey on the Path of Knowledge, to those given
only aer a great many years of painstaking endeavour in learning to become a true Man or Woman
of Knowledge.

ISBN 0-958-4675-6-0

For more informaon visit www.renascentlegacy.com

Renascent Legacy Press

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115 26 Athens
Greece

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