Authors From Peru

"There is a question that a warrior has to ask, mandatorily: Does this path have a heart?... All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. However, a path without a heart is never enjoyable. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy - it does not make a warrior work at liking it; it makes for a joyful journey; as long as a man follows it, he is one with it."

"This series of specially selected quotations was gathered from the first eight books that I wrote about the world of the shamans of ancient Mexico. The quotations were taken directly from the explanations given to me as an anthropologist by my teacher and mentor don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian shaman from Mexico. He belonged to a lineage of shamans that traced its origins all the way back to the shamans who lived in Mexico in ancient times. In the most effective manner he could afford, don Juan Matus ushered me into his world, which was, naturally, the world of those shamans of antiquity. Don Juan was, therefore, in a key position. He knew about the existence of another realm of reality, a realm which was neither illusory, nor the product of outbursts of fantasy. For don Juan and the rest of his shaman-companions - there were fifteen of them - the world of the shamans of antiquity was as real and as pragmatic as anything could be. This work started as a very simple attempt to collect a series of vignettes, sayings, and ideas from the lore of those shamans that would be interesting to read and think about. But after the work was in progress, an unforeseeable twist of direction took place: I realized that the quotations by themselves were imbued with an extraordinary impetus. They revealed a covert train of thought that had never been evident to me before. They were pointing out the direction that don Juan's explanations had taken over the thirteen years in which he guided me as an apprentice. (Introduction)"

"Better than any type of conceptualization, the quotations revealed an unsuspected and unwavering line of action that don Juan had followed in order to promote and facilitate my entrance into his world. It became something beyond a speculation to me that if don Juan had followed that line, this must have also been the way in which his own teacher had propelled him into the world of shamans. Under the impact of the "wheel of time," the aim of this book became, then, something that had not been part of the original plan. The quotations became the ruling factor, by themselves and in themselves, and the drive imposed on me by them was one of staying as close as I possibly could to the spirit in which the quotations were given. They were given in the spirit of frugality and ultimate directness. (Introduction)"

"The only thing that could be done was to follow the quotations, and let them create a sketch of the skeletal form of the thoughts and feelings that the shamans of ancient Mexico had about life, death, the universe, energy. They are reflections of how those shamans understood not only the universe, but the processes of living and coexisting in our world. And more important yet, they point out the possibility of handling two systems of cognition at once without any detriment to the self. (Introduction)"

"Power rests on the kind of knowledge that one holds. What is the sense of knowing things that are useless? They will not prepare us for our unavoidable encounter with the unknown."

"Nothing in this world is a gift. Whatever has to be learned must be learned the hard way."

"A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war: wide-awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake, and whoever makes it might never live to regret it."

"When a man has fulfilled all four of these requisites - to be wide awake, to have fear, respect, and absolute assurance - there are no mistakes for which he will have to account; under such conditions his actions lose the blundering quality of the acts of a fool. If such a man fails, or suffers a defeat, he will have lost only a battle, and there will be no pitiful regrets over that."

"Dwelling upon the self too much produces a terrible fatigue. A man in that position is deaf and blind to everything else. The fatigue makes him cease to see the marvels all around him."

"Every time a man sets himself to learn, he has to labor as hard as anyone can, and the limits of his learning are determined by his own nature. Therefore, there is no point in talking about knowledge. Fear of knowledge is natural; all of us experience it, and there is nothing we can do about it. But no matter how frightening learning is, it is more terrible to think of a man without knowledge."

"To be angry at people means that one considers their acts to be important. It is imperative to cease to feel that way. The acts of men cannot be important enough to offset our only viable alternative: our unchangeable encounter with infinity."

"Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore, a warrior must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if he feels that he should not follow it, he must not stay with it under any conditions. His decision to keep on that path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. He must look at every path closely and deliberately."

"There is a question that a warrior has to ask, mandatorily: Does this path have a heart?"

"All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. However, a path without a heart is never enjoyable. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy - it does not make a warrior work at liking it; it makes for a joyful journey; as long as a man follows it, he is one with it."

"There is a world of happiness where there is no difference between things because there is no one there to ask about the difference. But that is not the world of men. Some men have the vanity to believe that they live in two worlds, but that is only their vanity. There is but one single world for us. We are men, and must follow the world of men contentedly."

"A man has four natural enemies: fear, clarity, power, and old age. Fear, clarity and power can be overcome, but not old age. Its effect can be postponed, but it can never be overcome."

"For a warrior, to be inaccessible means that he touches the world around him sparingly. And above all, he deliberately avoids exhausting himself and others. He doesn’t use and squeeze people until they have shriveled to nothing, especially the people he loves."

"A warrior knows that he is only a man. His only regret is that his life is so short that he can't grab onto all the things that he would like to. But for him, this is not an issue; it's only a pity. Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy and vain. To be a warrior one needs to be light and fluid."

"When they are "seen" as fields of energy, human beings appear to be like fibers of light, like white cobwebs, very fine threads that circulate from the head to the toes. Thus to the eye of a seer, a man looks like an egg of circulating fibers. And his arms and legs are like luminous bristles, bursting out in all directions."

"The seer "sees" that every man is in touch with everything else, not through his hands, but through a bunch of long fibers that shoot out in all directions from the center of his abdomen. Those fibers join a man to his surroundings; they keep his balance; they give him stability."

"When a warrior learns to "see" he "sees" that a man is a luminous egg whether he's a beggar or a king and there's no way to change anything; or rather, what could be changed in that luminous egg? What?"

"A warrior never worries about his fear. Instead, he thinks about the wonders of "seeing" the flow of energy! The rest is frills, unimportant frills."

"Only a crackpot would undertake the task of becoming a man of knowledge of his own accord. A sober-headed man has to be tricked into doing it. There are scores of people who would gladly undertake the task, but those don't count. They are usually cracked. They are like gourds that look fine from the outside and yet they would leak the minute you put pressure on them, the minute you filled them with water."

"When a man is not concerned with "seeing," things look very much the same to him every time he looks at the world. When he learns to "see," on the other hand, nothing is ever the same every time he "sees" it, and yet it is the same. To the eye of a seer, a man is like an egg. Every time he "sees" the same man he "sees" a luminous egg, yet it is not the same luminous egg."

"The shamans of ancient Mexico gave the name "allies" to inexplicable forces that acted upon them. They called them "allies" because they thought they could use them to their hearts' content, a notion that proved nearly fatal to those shamans, because what they called an "ally" is a being without corporeal essence that exists in the universe. Modern-day shamans call them "inorganic beings.""

"To ask what function the allies have is like asking what we men do in the world. We are here, that's all. And the allies are here like us; and maybe they were here before us."

"The most effective way to live is as a warrior. A warrior may worry and think before making any decision, but once he makes it, he goes on his way, free from worries or thoughts; there will be a million other decisions still awaiting him. That's the warriors' way."

"A warrior thinks of his death when things become unclear. The idea of death is the only thing that tempers our spirit."

"Death is everywhere. It may be the headlights of a car on a hilltop in the distance behind. They may remain visible for a while, and disappear into the darkness as if they had been scooped away; only to appear on another hilltop, and then disappear again."

"Those are the lights on the head of death. Death puts them on like a hat and then shoots off on a gallop, gaining on us, getting closer and closer. Sometimes it turns off its lights. But death never stops."

"A warrior must know first that his acts are useless, and yet, he must proceed as if he didn't know it. That's a shaman's "controlled folly.""

"The eyes of man can perform two functions: one is "seeing" energy at large as it flows in the universe and the other is "looking at things in this world." Neither of these functions is better than the other; however to train the eyes only to look is a shameful and unnecessary loss."

"A warrior lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting."

"A warrior chooses a path with heart, any path with heart, and follows it; and then he rejoices and laughs. He knows because he "sees" that his life will be over altogether too soon. He "sees" that nothing is more important that anything else."

"A warrior has no honor, no dignity, no family, no name, no country; he has only life to be lived, and under these circumstances, his only tie to his fellow men is his controlled folly."

"Nothing being more important than anything else, a warrior chooses any act, and acts it out as if it mattered to him. His controlled folly makes him say that what he does matters and makes him act as if it did, and yet he knows that it doesn't; so when he fulfills his acts, he retreats in peace, and whether his acts were good or bad, or worked or didn't, is in no way part of his concern."

"A warrior may choose to remain totally impassive and never act, and behave as if being impassive really mattered to him; he would be rightfully true at that too, because that would also be his controlled folly."

"There's no emptiness in the life of a warrior. Everything is filled to the brim. Everything is filled to the brim, and everything is equal."

"An average man is too concerned with liking people or with being liked himself. A warrior likes, that's all. He likes whatever or whomever he wants for the hell of it."

"A warrior takes responsibility for his acts, for the most trivial of his acts. An average man acts out his thoughts, and never takes responsibility for what he does."

"The average man is either victorious or defeated and, depending on that, he becomes a persecutor or a victim. These two conditions are prevalent as long as one does not "see." "Seeing" dispels the illusion of victory, or defeat, or suffering."

"A warrior knows that he is waiting and what he is waiting for; and while he waits he wants nothing and thus whatever little thing he gets is more than he can take. If he needs to eat he finds a way, because he is not hungry; if something hurts his body he finds a way to stop it, because he is not in pain. To be hungry or to be in pain means that the man is not a warrior; and the forces of his hunger and pain will destroy him."

"Denying oneself is an indulgence. The indulgence of denying is by far the worst; it forces us to believe that we are doing great things, when in effect we are only fixed within ourselves."

""Intent" is not a thought, or an object, or a wish. "Intent" is what can make a man succeed when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated. It operates in spite of the warrior's indulgence. "Intent" is what makes him invulnerable. "Intent" is what sends a shaman through a wall, through space, to infinity."

"When a man embarks on the warriors' path he becomes aware, in a gradual manner, that ordinary life has been left forever behind. The means of the ordinary world are no longer a buffer for him; and he must adopt a new way of life if he is going to survive."

"The things that people do cannot under any conditions be more important than the world. And thus a warrior treats the world as an endless mystery and what people do as an endless folly."

"We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye."

"One shouldn't worry about taking pictures or making tape recordings. Those are superfluities of sedate lives. One should worry about the spirit, which is always receding."

"A warrior doesn't need personal history. One day, he finds it is no longer necessary for him, and he drops it."

"A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting... Thus a man of knowledge sweats and puffs and if one looks at him he is just like an ordinary man, except that the folly of his life is under his control. Separate Reality: Conversations With Don Juan. (1971) p. 85; As cited in: Eugene Dupuis (2001) Time Shift: Managing Time to Create a Life You Love. Ch. 5: Self Management"