“To make reason feel safe is always the task of the teacher,” he said. "I’ve tricked your reason
into believing that the tonal was accountable and predictable. Genaro and I have labored to give you the impression that only the nagual was beyond the scope of explanation; the proof that the tricking was successful is that at this moment it seems to you that in spite of everything you have gone through, there is still a core that you can claim as your own, your reason. That’s a mirage.
Your precious reason is only a center of assemblage, a mirror that reflects something which is outside of it. Last night you witnessed not only the indescribable nagual but also the
indescribable tonal.
“The last piece of the sorcerers’ explanation says that reason is merely reflecting an outside
order, and that reason knows nothing about that order; it cannot explain it, in the same way it
cannot explain the nagual. Reason can only witness the effects of the tonal, but never ever could it understand it, or unravel it. The very fact that we are thinking and talking points out an order that we follow without ever knowing how we do that, or what the order is.”
I brought up then the idea of Western man’s research into the workings of the brain as a
possibility of explaining what that order was. He pointed out that all that that research did was to
attest that something was happening.
“Sorcerers do the same thing with their will” he said. "They say that through the will they can
witness the effects of the nagual. I can add now that through reason, no matter what we do with
it, or how we do it, we are merely witnessing the effects of the tonal. In both cases there is no
hope, ever, to understand or to explain what it is that we are witnessing.
“Last night was the first time that you flew on the wings of your perception. You were still
very timid. You ventured only on the band of human perception. A sorcerer can use those wings to touch other sensibilities, a crow’s for instance, a coyote’s, a cricket’s, or the order of other worlds in that infinite space.”
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