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religious explanations on almost everything, which all had one common denominator: A
great trust in the continuity of man. By helping me to see the universe with the eyes of a
sorcerer, Carlos destroyed that sensation in me. He made me see that death is an
irrevocable reality, and that to avoid acknowledging it by applying second-hand beliefs is
shameful.
On one occasion, somebody asked him:
"Carlos, what expectations do you have for the future?"
He jumped:
"There are no expectations! Sorcerers don't have a tomorrow!"
That night, a large group of interested people had gathered in the auditorium of a private
residence, near the area of San Jeronimo. When I arrived, Carlos was already there. He
was smiling, busily answering questions.
His initial topic was what he called 'not-doing', an activity specially designed to banish
any trace of every-day habits from our lives. He affirmed that not-doing is the favorite
exercise of apprentices, because it introduces them to a marvelous environment and
creates a very refreshing bewilderment for one's energy. The effect this has on one's
awareness they call 'stopping the world.'
In response to some questions, he explained that not-doing cannot be reasoned out. Any
effort applied towards understanding it, is in fact an interpretation of the teaching - and
goes automatically into the field of 'doing'.
"The premise of sorcerers for dealing with this kind of practice is inner silence, and the
quality of silence required for something so enormous as stopping the world can only
come from direct contact with the great truth of our existence: That we are all going to
die."
He advised us:
"If you want to know yourselves, be aware of your personal death. It's not negotiable, it is
the only thing that you can seriously own. Everything else may fail, but not death, you
can take that as a fact. Learn how to use it to produce real effects in your lives.
"Also, stop believing in fairy tales. Nobody needs you out there. None of us is so
important that it justifies inventing something as fantastic as immortality. A humble
sorcerer knows that his destiny is the same as that of any other living being on Earth. So,
instead of having false hopes, he works concretely and with great effort to escape the
human condition, and to reach the only exit we have: The breaking of our perceptual
barrier.
"While you listen to death's advice, make yourself responsible for your lives, for the
totality of your actions. Explore yourself, recognize yourself, and live intensely, like
sorcerers live. Intensity is the only tiling that can save us from boredom.
"Once aligned with death, you will be able to take the next step: Reducing your baggage
to a minimum. This is a prison world, and we must leave it as fugitives; we can't take
anything with us. Human beings are travelers by nature. To fly and to know other
horizons is our destiny. Do you take your bed or your dining table with you on a trip?
Synthesize your life!"
He made the comment that humanity in our time has acquired a strange habit that is
symptomatic of the mental state we live in.
When we travel, we buy all kinds of useless devices in other countries, things that we
certainly would never buy in our own country. Once we return home, we store them in a
comer and end up forgetting their existence - until one day we notice them by chance,
and toss them in the garbage.
"And we behave this way on the journey that is our life. We are like donkeys carrying a
bale of useless sniff, there is nothing valuable there. Everything we did, at the end, when
old age assaults us, only serves to endlessly repeat some sentence or other, like a
scratched record.
"A sorcerer asks himself: What is the sense of all this? Why invest my resources in
something which won't help me at all? The appointment of a sorcerer is with the
unknown, he cannot commit his energy to nonsense. While you walk the Earth, collect
something of true value from it, otherwise it wasn't worth it.
"The power that governs us has granted us a choice. Either we spend life prowling around
our familiar habits, or we encourage ourselves to get to know other worlds. The only
thing which can give us the necessary jolt is the awareness of death.
"An ordinary person spends his whole existence without ever stopping to reflect, because
he thinks that death is at the end of life; after all, we will always have time for it! But a
warrior has discovered that this is not true. Death lives beside us, an arm's length away,
permanently alert, looking at us, ready to jump at the smallest provocation. The warrior
transforms his animal fear of extinction into an opportunity for joy. because he knows
that ail he has is this moment. Think as warriors. we are all going to die!"
One of the present asked him:
"Carlos, in another lecture you told us that having the spirit of a warrior means seeing
death as a privilege. What does that mean?"
He answered:
"It means to leave our mental habits behind."
"We are so accustomed to coexistence that, even face to face with death, we continue
thinking in group terms. Religions don't tell us about the individual in contact with the
absolute, but of flocks of sheep and goats, who go to heaven or to hell according to their
fortune. Even if we are atheists and don't believe that anything happens after death, that
'anything' is generic, we assume it is the same for everybody. We cannot conceive of the
idea that the power of an impeccable life can change things.
"In the view of such ignorance, it is normal for an ordinary man to feel panic regarding
his end, and try to deal with it with prayers and medicines, or confuse himself with the
noise of the world.
"Human beings have an egocentric and extremely simplistic vision of the universe. We
never stop to consider our destiny as transitory beings. However, our obsession with the
future betrays us.
"The sincerity or cynicism of our convictions makes no difference, because deep down
we all know what is going to happen. That's why we all leave signs behind. We build
pyramids, skyscrapers, make children, write books, or, at the very least, we draw our
initials in the bark of a tree. It is the ancestral fear, the silent knowledge of death, which
is behind that subconscious impulse.
"But there is one group of human beings who have been able to face that fear. As
opposed to ordinary people, sorcerers eagerly seek out any situation that will take them
beyond social interpretations. What better opportunity than their own extinction! Thanks
to their frequent excursions into the unknown, they know that death is not natural; it is
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