Book summary “The second ring of power”: summary

Introduction

You face a world governed by rigid habits that limit your perception and trap you in an ordinary reality. When you seek deeper truths, you often encounter a terrifying collapse of everything you thought you knew about existence. Carlos Castaneda returns to Mexico to face don Juan's female apprentices, learning the arts of dreaming and stalking to achieve completeness and cross the crack between the worlds.

The book traces the harrowing aftermath of your apprenticeship, moving from the physical jump into an abyss through the mastery of the second attention. You will learn how sorcerers transform their bodies, shed personal history, and navigate energetic realms.

• How do you survive the shattering of ordinary reason?
• What mechanisms allow female sorcerers to rejuvenate their bodies?
• How do you practice dreaming without losing your awareness?
• What does it take to cross the crack between the worlds?

1. The Jump into the Abyss

Your final apprenticeship with don Juan and don Genaro concluded with a physical jump into an abyss from a mountain peak. You and Pablito jumped together from a flat, barren mountaintop on the western slopes of the Sierra Madre in central Mexico. This act marked the end of your apprenticeship and the final departure of don Juan and don Genaro.

The final apprenticeship concluded with a physical jump into an abyss, shattering ordinary reason.

Perception Mechanics

Jumping into the abyss allowed you to move as pure perception between the two inherent realms of all creation: the tonal and the nagual. According to don Juan's foundational principle, the jump transformed perception to shift back and forth between those two domains.

Your perception went through seventeen distinct bounces during the event. Those elastic shifts caused profound psychological and physical shifts that defied ordinary rational explanation.

• Moves into the nagual caused bodily disintegration and altered thinking.
• Moves into the tonal brought sudden unity, coherence, and compelling visions of order.

The author and Pablito jumped together from the top of a mountain in central Mexico into an abyss. During this drop, perception experienced seventeen elastic bounces alternating between body disintegration in the nagual and unity in the tonal.

Assault on Reason

Thorough analysis of the jump created an insoluble conflict between rational disbelief and unyielding internal certainty. Rational analysis made it impossible for you to believe the event actually happened. Yet another part of your being held steadfast to the absolute feeling that the jump did occur.

A return trip to Mexico to find answers resulted in a methodical and precise demolition of your reason by fellow apprentices. Seeking help from Pablito and Nestor under don Juan's absentee direction turned into a concentrated attack that destroyed the last bastions of your rational mind within a few days.

The author returned to Mexico to see Pablito and Nestor, only to experience a methodical demolition of his reason directed by don Juan.

During the concentrated attack on your reason, the apprentices revealed the art of dreaming. That practice forms the core subject of the current work. Subsequent visits presented the art of stalking as the crowning stone of the teachings and the most complex facet of being on Earth as individuals seeking the totality of themselves.

2. The Transformation of Dona Soledad

Female sorcerers can radically rejuvenate their bodies by aligning with their specific wind and direction.

Two years had passed since you last saw dona Soledad as a frail, helpless old woman. Now she appeared twenty years younger, possessing a lean, immensely strong body.

When you arrived at her house, Soledad ran nimbly and showed muscular thighs. She retained enough strength to wrestle you and nearly choke you to death.

The Nagual remade her body by changing the direction of her eyes of the spirit. He grabbed her chin, twisted her head to the left, and held it until she fainted from fear. That physical action broke the overused and weak habitual patterns of her spirit.

Rebuilding the Body

Female warriors have a specific wind associated with the four cardinal directions that they can use as a helper and guide. There are four winds corresponding to the four directions:

• the breeze (east)
• the cold wind (west)
• the hot wind (south)
• the hard wind (north)

Dona Soledad discovered she was the north wind, which is energetic, commandeering, and impatient. You must quiet down and stop talking to oneself to let the specific wind pick up the woman. You then lie naked so the wind can enter the womb and guide the actions and feelings.

The Four Winds and Clay Floor

Dona Soledad constructed a specialized floor in her room using fired clay slabs oriented to converge at a central point. It took four years to put down the red clay floor. Over a year went into making enough slabs to finish the work.

You construct this environment through specific steps:

• dig a pit for firing clay and fill it with firewood;
• stack clay slabs with flat pieces of rock in between;
• close the pit with a lid of dirt and wire, leaving four holes for the north wind and one in the center for smoke;
• burn the wood for days, then polish and even out the slabs after the pit cools.

The Nagual also carried a guaje, a gourd containing allies used to acquaint apprentices with power. When the Nagual offered soup to Soledad in a gourd bowl, it miraculously slid onto her foot without spilling, proving power had pointed her out.

3. The Little Sisters and Energetic Emptiness

Don Juan's female apprentices operate as formidable sorcerers with distinct personalities and specific roles assigned by the Nagual. Lidia acts as the commandeering leader who communicates through covert foot movements and covert signs. Rosa is boisterous and bad-tempered. Josefina uses extreme stalking disguises to baffle outsiders.

Don Juan's female apprentices utilize covert communication, stalking disguises, and energetic holes to navigate sorcery.

Lidia and Rosa are in their early twenties and stand about five feet three or five feet four inches tall. They view you as being the Nagual himself while simultaneously regarding you as empty. You meet Lidia and Rosa at dona Soledad's house, where they use a system of coded foot movements to send secret warnings about you and test your warriorship. Lidia gives Rosa the sign for horrible using her foot when you approach, and repeatedly uses foot gestures to silence or direct Rosa.

Sorcerers use a system of coded movements of the feet as a covert communication method to signal danger, unpleasantness, or commands without speaking. Don Juan taught you this covert system during your travels. Apprentices silently coordinate intentions, warn each other, or signal commands during tense interactions.

Covert Communication and Stalking

Stalking as an art involves using extreme physical disguises and feigned disabilities, such as muteness or appearing old and repulsive, to completely baffle outsiders and ensure safe passage. You master the art of altering your presentation so thoroughly that observers notice your fictitious flaws rather than your true identities. Josefina adopts the disguise of an old, toothless, foul-smelling, and partially paralyzed woman carrying firewood and a baby doll, projecting the apparent age of the midfifties. She completely baffles you before revealing her true identity as a pretty young girl.

Stopping the world and achieving a complete suspension of judgment occurs through the physical amalgamation of a ticklish sensation on top of the head and a dry cracking sound at the base of the neck. The body stores the memory of these dual physical sensations through intense experiences or collisions. This process provides the exact physiological vehicle needed to bypass normal rationality and access hidden resources. You experience the dry cracking sound like a broken pipe behind your windpipe and a ticklish shiver on top of your head when dodging Rosa's strike and during physical clashes.

Emptiness and Double Perception

Being empty in sorcery refers to a literal energetic condition marked by a hole in one's body caused by being emptied by a man or a woman. While Western thinking interprets emptiness as a lack of will or determination, sorcerers recognize an energetic void or hole on the right side of the stomach resulting from giving completeness away or having it taken. Lidia tells you that you are empty and traces an invisible hole four or five inches in diameter on the right side of your stomach. She explains that Soledad and la Gorda had even larger holes from being emptied.

A sorcerer can achieve double perception, being in two places at once, by utilizing the ticklish sensation on the top of the head as a vehicle to detach awareness from the physical body. When triggered by intense physical compression or energetic shifts, the ticklish head sensation acts as a mechanism that scoops awareness out, allowing a practitioner to view themselves from a vantage point near the ceiling. During the physical scuffle with Josefina, Lidia, and Rosa on the kitchen floor, you feel your awareness lift out through the top of your head until you are looking down at your own body from near the ceiling. La Gorda stops six or seven feet away when approaching you.

Curing a dying or severely blocked person requires stripping away their remaining comforts so they have nothing left to lose, inducing courage, and physically pushing the affliction away using a specific hand movement. When an individual reaches total vulnerability and possesses nothing to cling to, their impeccable spirit can be harnessed to push out the illness. Don Juan explains to you that a terminally ill friend could walk out of a hospital by recognizing she is terminal, acquiring courage from having nothing to lose, and pushing the disease away with her left hand while repeating out, out, out. You can apply this through concrete steps:

• remind the patient that they are a terminal or incurable case with nothing left to lose;
• have the patient push their arm out straight in front of them with the hand clenched as if holding a knob;
• instruct the patient to continuously push forward while saying out, out, out with every second of their remaining life.

4. La Gorda and Completeness

Regaining completeness requires erasing personal history, reclaiming one's edge, and shedding the human form.

A complete person is someone who has never had children. Having children takes the edge and vital energy of a person's spirit. A sorcerer can see this emptiness as a black hole on the left side for a same-sex child or a dark brown hole on the right side for an opposite-sex child. The nagual can patch this hole with his own luminosity, but you must later work to regain your shine and completeness.

La Gorda explains that she had two daughters who emptied her and took her edge. Castaneda had a female child that left a brown hole on the right side of his stomach.

Completeness and the Human Mold

To regain completeness, an incomplete person must refuse their children in dreaming and actively steal their edge back. You can achieve this through specific steps:

• refuse love for children in dreaming;
• learn not to care about them;
• visit the children and let your left side snatch the edge out of them.

La Gorda visited her daughters four or five times after they grew up. She allowed her left side to take her edge back without the children ever noticing any loss.

The human mold is the divine source and origin of man that groups life force together. The human form is a sticky force that keeps people bound to their personal habits. La Gorda saw the human mold as a radiant luminous being when she became complete. She lost her human form following a serious internal battle resembling a heart attack.

Flying and Harnessing Allies

Allies are formless, powerful forces and entities that sorcerers can harness. Castaneda and la Gorda encountered four horrendous allies that prowled around them as living entities. These included a rectangular dark mass four or five feet wide and eight or nine feet tall, a tall glowing man, a giant jaguar, and a phosphorescent coyote. To control them, you can use a small container:

• find a perfect, thumb-sized gourd with a neck;
• dry, hollow, smooth, and polish the gourd;
• offer the gourd to the allies to entice them to live inside it.

Sorcerers can generate sparks and light from their bodies to entice the energy lines of the world and hook onto them for flying. La Gorda weighed 115 pounds and demonstrated her flying in the canyon. You can project your energy through specific movements:

• squat and reach under your skirt or clothing;
• snap your fingers open to create a bursting sound and sparks;
• grab the luminous lines like a jaguar without separating your wrists;
• allow the lines to pull you into the other world.

5. The Genaros and the Toltec Heritage

Human beings cling to the human form, which prevents true change and keeps sorcerers and ordinary people alike trapped in endless bickering and familiar habits. Talking, fighting, and reacting stem from clinging to the human form. Even sorcerers who want to change indulge in not trying because they believe they will fail, which is as harmful as being disappointed by failures.

Warriors must be impeccable in their effort to change over years in order to scare the human form and eventually shake it away.

Pablito and the little sisters fight constantly and nearly kill each other because they are clinging to the human form and refuse to cooperate. The Nagual taught that through years of impeccable effort, the human form cannot stand it any longer and leaves, which can injure or kill the body, but an impeccable warrior survives. La Gorda successfully lost her form and became formless, while Pablito failed because he lacked impeccability and gave up trying. The Nagual and Genaro referred to their apprentices as Toltecs, defining a Toltec as a receiver and holder of mysteries. Pablito explains that instead of calling them sorcerers or witches, the Nagual taught that they were Toltecs who received and now hold the special luminosity and mysteries given by the Nagual and Genaro.

The Split Nagual

Sorcerers can be split by the Nagual and Genaro to develop a nagual shape, giving them an extra ear, an extra eye, and the capacity to go an extra mile. Nestor explains that you were split in the eucalyptus grove when the Nagual and Genaro pulled your luminosity apart by the ears until you became two long chunks instead of an egg, leaving a huge gap in the middle. Nestor and Benigno recognize you as the Maestro because you are stuck with this split nagual shape coming out of your head three times.

The final jump into the abyss was a practical accomplishment of perception staged by don Juan and don Genaro to lead apprentices through the only open gate.

Nestor witnessed you and Pablito running toward the edge and jumping like kites, confirming you jumped with your physical bodies. Pablito was disintegrating like a cloud, requiring you to pull him into temporary solidity. Pablito claims he blacked out and remembers nothing due to his lack of impeccability, while Nestor insists he was fully aware.

Nestor's Journey as the Witness

Nestor's path of knowledge was to be the Witness, and through howling like a coyote, he learned to transform and navigate between the tonal and the nagual. After finding himself alone in the dark after the jump, Nestor howled like a coyote to calm his fear, experienced a throat blow and bell sound, and successfully transformed into a coyote before disintegrating into dry sand and visiting an old sorcerer named Porfirio. Nestor visited Porfirio's hut 10 times to restore his strength, learning to read the marks on plant and animal molds.

To navigate these changes, you can apply specific techniques:

• Howl like a coyote to calm grief and feel the warmth and protection of the earth.
• Use the sound of a bell as a vehicle to accomplish anything needed during a change of speed.

You may experience visions of alien landscapes, monstrous creatures, and a massive dome structure where the Nagual and Genaro reside. Your first vision of a split rock and a colossal domelike structure, estimated to be 50000 feet high, is identified by Nestor as an omen and the exact location where the Nagual, Genaro, and Eligio now reside. Eligio did not die in the street; he jumped into the abyss and remained in the white vaults of that dome because he did not return from his jump.

6. The Art of Dreaming and Stalking

Everyday objects and outlandish sights of the tonal relate to the apprehendable present in everything. Seeing relates to the nagual, which manifests only to specialized sorcerer senses. You can view the tonal using normal senses, but a sight of the nagual requires specialized perception.

Practitioners master the second ring of power by holding dream images and disassembling habits.

The attention of the tonal is the first ring of power used for the ordinary world. The attention of the nagual is the second ring of power used by sorcerers to impart order to the nonordinary world.

Stalking Weaknesses

An impeccable stalker can turn anything into prey, including their own weaknesses, by analyzing and disassembling the routines of their habits. By figuring out the routines and component actions of a habit, you can break its fixation just like trapping rabbits inside a cage.

La Gorda weighed two hundred and thirty-six pounds when she suffered from excessive eating. She broke her habit by refusing to eat for twenty-three days and walking miles daily while eating only four mouthfuls of food at a time.

You must follow specific steps to disassemble a routine:

• Figure out the routines and components of a habit until all parts of the doing are known.
• Break the fixation with an initial drastic action, such as fasting or substituting a subterfuge.
• Eat quietly, slowly, and very little at a time, specifically taking four mouthfuls of food at one time and waiting before the next.
• Walk miles and miles every day to consume excess energy and maintain discipline.

Sorcerers change not only the color of their luminosity to amber but also their shape from luminous eggs into tombstone-like forms. Average human beings glow pale yellow or white and have an egg-like luminosity shape, whereas sorcerers who are complete glow amber like honey and are shaped like tombstones rounded at both ends.

First and Second Rings of Power

Sorcerers use smoke from a fire to envelop capricious people, drawing out what they are hiding and cleansing their luminosity. Smoke acts like a manageable fog that envelops a person, forcing hidden aspects to emerge and clearing the luminosity of unbearable or elusive individuals. Don Juan gave Josefina smoke baths for fourteen days until she was cured of her eccentricities.

You can manage this treatment using simple methods:

• Make a fire and let the smoke envelop the person who is hiding or difficult.
• Control breathing and feel the smoke with closed eyes to breathe without choking.

The art of the dreamer consists of holding the images of a dream with attention in the exact same way images of the daily world are held. By engaging the attention of the nagual during ordinary dreams and focusing it on items and events, dreamers transform ordinary dreams into true dreaming. The little sisters and la Gorda demonstrated their dreaming art by running silently along walls, hanging from roofs, and transporting you across a rocky hill.

You develop this skill through progressive practice:

• Find hands in dreams as the first pointer.
• Elongate the exercise of paying attention to finding specific objects, buildings, and streets.
• Progress to dreaming about specific places at specific times of the day.
• Draw the attention of the nagual to focus on the total self, such as viewing oneself sleeping in bed without waking up.

7. The Second Attention and Gazing

Integrating the second attention through leaf gazing and power arrangements allows sorcerers to cross the crack between the worlds.

The second attention represents the awesome, chaotic side of human perception. The first attention corresponds to the orderly tonal of daily life. Sorcerers use power plants or dreaming to gather their second attention. You must integrate both attentions to achieve completeness and prevent your luminous layers from separating and causing death.

The Nagual demonstrated this by having followers carry a heavy table and bundle to a desolate valley. He showed the personal tonal as a small island of familiar things compared to the vast nagual underneath.

Impeccability of behavior is the only freedom warriors possess. It is the sole means to scare away the human form and unify your attentions. Forces outside human volition rule human destinies, making absolute control impossible.

Don Juan illustrated this by showing how tying shoelaces impeccably either saved them from a falling boulder or caused them to miss a crucial moment depending on outside forces. A huge boulder landed twenty or thirty yards from them during this lesson.

Gazing Techniques

Gazing at dry leaves quiets thoughts and stops the world. It serves as the primary method to trap and fortify the second attention. Thoughts subside, the tonal wanes, and the second attention hooks onto the leaves without the jarring effects of power plants.

La Gorda spent four years stopping the world and one year finding her hands in dreaming. She spent years gazing at dry leaves and moving them in spirals until she could dream the designs first and find them in the leaves the next day.

You perform leaf gazing through specific actions:

• Sit on the ground on a soft mat of leaves or a cushion made of natural fibers with the back propped against a tree, stump, or rock.
• Keep the body thoroughly relaxed and the eyes half-closed to avoid tiring them.
• Scan the object slowly in a counterclockwise direction without moving the head.

Sorcerers progress through a specific order of gazing subjects, moving from plants and trees to mobile creatures, rocks, and cyclic phenomena. Each category of subject possesses unique light characteristics and teaches different skills. Small plants shoot intense light and are dangerous, trees offer steady focus, small insects are innocuous due to mobility, and rocks hold deep secrets and scent guides for dreaming. Both you and la Gorda might become eucalyptus gazers, and la Gorda used rock scents to navigate during her dreaming journeys.

True warriors do not offer unsolicited help or compassion. Interference disrupts another person's personal power and natural path. The author picked up a snail from a sidewalk to save it, but don Juan explained that the interference might have caused the snail to lose its hard-won momentum and progress.

Distance gazing at distant geological formations requires strict coordination of physical posture, eyelid aperture, and breathing to prevent being engulfed. You can zoom in on hidden features by filtering sunlight through eyelashes and focusing on a specific dark spot in a distant canyon.

The author spent one hour successfully completing the distance gazing procedure to perceive a carved stone chair before la Gorda interrupted him.

You execute distance gazing by following these rules:

• Use the brim of a hat as a visor to shade off excessive sunlight.
• Half-close the eyelids and sustain the opening to maintain a uniform flow of light.
• Distinguish a background water canyon through the mesh of light fibers on the eyelashes.
• Breathe calmly from the abdomen to maintain the eye aperture without letting the dark blotch engulf you.

Toltec Power Stand and Departure

A specific physical arrangement of four sorcerers around a central practitioner acts as a Toltec power arrangement to bundle the second attention together.

In this formation, the participants embody the four cardinal directions and specific ritual elements. The east is the weapon, the north is the shield, the west is the spirit catcher, and the south is the power object basket. La Gorda and the little sisters embraced the author in a dark room, pressing their heads against his to force their second attentions into a unified state.

You build this formation using precise physical contact:

• Have the person acting as the center stand surrounded by four partners.
• Grab hands palm to palm without interlocking fingers.
• Hook arms above the elbow and hold the central person tightly against the chest.
• Have the partner in front grab the shoulders under the armpits, and the partner in back embrace the waist over the navel.
• Press heads together in perfect unison and close eyes to concentrate the second attention.

The Nagual and Genaro departed this world by focusing their second attention on the beautiful world of red bugs and stepping through the crack between the worlds. Don Juan previously showed the author round, brilliantly red insects in northern Mexico, demanding he memorize their shape as a reference point for that domain. Having encountered the guardian of the other world through power plants, the Nagual discovered the domain of small red bugs and recognized its perfection. Upon leaving, they gathered their second attention, opened the crack, and crossed over to wait for their apprentices.

10 Key Ideas

1. The final apprenticeship concluded with a physical jump into an abyss from a mountain peak, resulting in seventeen elastic perception bounces between body disintegration in the nagual and unity in the tonal.
2. Female warriors radically rejuvenate their bodies by stopping internal dialogue, lying naked, and allowing their specific cardinal wind—such as the north wind for dona Soledad—to enter the womb and guide their actions.
3. Don Juan's female apprentices utilize covert foot movements for secret communication, extreme stalking disguises to baffle outsiders, and energetic holes on the right side of the stomach caused by being emptied.
4. Regaining completeness requires an incomplete person to refuse love for children in dreaming, erase personal history, and allow their left side to snatch their edge back.
5. Warriors must be impeccable in their long-term effort to scare and eventually shake away the sticky human form, which otherwise traps both ordinary people and sorcerers in endless habits and bickering.
6. The attention of the tonal serves as the first ring of power for the ordinary world, whereas the attention of the nagual operates as the second ring of power used by sorcerers to impart order to the nonordinary world.
7. The art of the dreamer consists of holding dream images with attention in the exact same way images of the daily world are held, progressing from finding hands to viewing oneself sleeping.
8. Gazing at dry leaves serves as the primary method to quiet thoughts, stop the world, and trap and fortify the second attention without the jarring effects of power plants.
9. A specific physical arrangement of four sorcerers surrounding a central practitioner acts as a Toltec power arrangement, using precise contact and pressed heads to bundle the second attention into a unified state.
10. The Nagual and Genaro departed this world by focusing their second attention on the domain of small red bugs, opening the crack between the worlds, and crossing over to wait for their apprentices.