It seemed the key and focus of learning to perform miracles in the waking state was to learn to first do these things in the dream state. Without mastery of the dream world, there could not be mastery of the physical world. Nearly all of Castaneda’s training was focused on gaining mastery of the dream world, or the “second attention” as Don Juan called it. It is assumed that the second attention is a synonym for our intuitive faculties. Our waking state is the first attention. Mastery of the second attention or intuitive faculties was the principal pursuit of the shaman and the source of his knowledge and ability to be used in service to his people. The sorcerer, on the other hand, is one who works to attain the same mastery, but only to serve the self and the pursuit of power and control over others. What is Creator’s perspective?

The description of accessing the dream state as a pathway to greater intuitive reach and power of the sort that can exhibit phenomena like mind over matter is, indeed, a clue about the mechanism involved, with consciousness and the level of the mind most adept and most capable of bringing such things about. The part of the mind with the greatest intuitive reach and the greatest array of resources and capability is the deep subconscious, still undiscovered by mainstream science, but rather by your channel, and all that implies. What is taking place in the description of developing extraordinary talent through the intuitive capability in turning to the dream state is that the latter is a bridge between levels of consciousness. What occurs in the dream state can be a projection of the deep subconscious, and that could include teaching and important insights about things the person wants to know and further develop. Because there is a keen interest and commitment in doing so, the deep subconscious will do its best to communicate but cannot talk to the conscious self directly. The only path left is through communication during the dream state and helping to arrange things so that a person will recall them upon awakening, and then have them go into long-term memory accessible by the conscious level of the mind to be utilized and practiced. The intuitive realm can be reached by the conscious self with practice, but it will not have a large part of the mind privy to the storehouse of knowledge accumulated by the deep subconscious in being able to review the akashic records and other repositories of consciousness to a much greater level of detail and certainty. So the average person confined mostly to the conscious level of perception is quite limited in functional capability. The application of the intuitive reach and what it might show you, as in all actions, will influence what comes next. If this leads to something good, something beneficial, new growth and learning, it will be a benefit and a positive contribution to human awareness and knowledge, and in joining the collective unconscious can help inform others to more likely discover the same things, and the knowledge will spread and the skill and ability it offers will sprout up again and again, seemingly coincidentally, but not truly the case. On the other hand, when the power of intuitive reach is directed towards causing harm or serving the self in a pursuit of power and control in answer to jealousy, greed, or satisfying the ego, wanting to be seen as better than others, such dark impulses will corrupt potentially everything the person does, and that includes their intuitive explorations and consequences. The sorcerer is a perpetrator of evil. It might not start out that way, it might simply be a desire to regain a level playing field by someone who has been harmed and wants to fight back. But pursuing power is a very slippery slope, it almost always creates a false reward because that power, in coming from somewhere, leaves a vacuum and if evil fills that vacuum, what you are doing in drawing to yourself something not earned creates two pockets of distortion—the first in leaving a deficit that will cause harm to others; the second being acquisition of unearned power will harm the self in causing a corruption to drag you down and taint all you do. You can be sure that the Law of Karma will reckon with these distortions and at some point, all of the personal gains you might acquire through manipulations of consciousness will be taken away, and then some, because corruption and negativity will spread to infect others through your actions and their resulting pain and suffering will be on your head. Many have fallen into the temptations of the path of the sorcerer and it can be a long road to return to even where they were before, let alone make real and lasting gains in their soul’s journey and development.