Quotes

“There must always be a discrepncy between concepts and reality, because the former are static and discontinuous while the latter is dynamic and flowing”
(William James from “Some Problems of Philosophy)

“They just hate it when people make love. And then they’ll go to a fistfight where somebody’s really hurt and all covered with bloodand they’ll just love that. Or a war and stuff like that. They’re all mixed up and they’re trying to take it out on you so you get mixed up too.”
(Robert Pirsig from “Lila”)

“The intelligence of the mind can’t think of any reason to live, but it goes on anyway because the intelligence of the cells can’t think of any reason to die.”
(Robert Pirsig from “Lila”)

“Whatever it is that’s aroused by these cues, isn’t put off by any lack of originality”
(Robert Pirsig from “Lila”)

“I say it clearly as it is — to understand or not to understand, both are mistaken (views).”
(from The Teachings of Rinzai)

“Love is like sunlight, and God is like the sun. The sun does not choose where there will be sunlight and where there will be none”
(Krishnamacharya)

“No posture makes us more concerned about others. This is worth meditating on”
(TKV Desikachar from “What are we Seeking?”)

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time”
T.S. Eliot

“At the end of the day, meditation is recognized more by the beauty of the discoveries we make than rather by the number of facts we know”
(TKV Desikachar from “What are we Seeking?”)

“An ideal is something we believe is right, but it may not be practical. Whereas an attitude should be something that we can put into practice right from where we are.”
(TKV Desikachar from “What are we Seeking?”)

“We make a living by what we get. But we make a life by what we give”
(Norman MacEwan)

“To learn how to chant develops this precious ability to listen without preconceived ideas or interference from our memories and habits”
(TKV Desikachar from “What are we Seeking?”)

“The shadows in the early morning don’t tell much. The shadows rest at that time. So it’s useless to gaze very early in the day. Around six in the morning the shadows wake up, and they are best around five in the afternoon. Then they are fully awake.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “The Second Ring of Power”)

“Men have to be  hooked. Women don’t need that. Women go freely into anything. That’s their power and at the same time their drawback. Men have to be led and women have to be contained”
(Carlos Castaneda from “The Second Ring of Power”)

… the daily world exists because we know how to hold its images; consequently, if one drops the attention needed to maintain those images, the world collapses”
(Carlos Castaneda from “The Second Ring of Power”)

“It takes all the time and all the energy we have to conquer the idiocy in us”
(Carlos Castaneda from “The Second Ring of Power”)

“Priests & nuns would make great flying sorcerers if someone would tell them that they can do it”
(Carlos Castaneda from “The Second Ring of Power”)

“… a warrior knows that he cannot change, and yet he makes it his business to try to change, even though he knows that he won’t be able to. That’s the only advantage a warrior has over the average man. The warrior is never disappointed when he fails to change.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “The Second Ring of Power”)

“… everything in the world is a force, a pull or a push. In order for us to be pushed or pulled we need to be like a sail, like a kite in the wind. But if we have a hole in the middle of our luminosity, the force goes through it and never acts upon us.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “The Second Ring of Power”)

“The range of what we think and is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.”
R.D. Laing

“Argument closes off the doors of the senses. It always masks violence. Continued too long, argument always leads to violence.”
Frank Herbert

“When one has nothing to lose, one becomes courageous. We are timid only when there is something we can still cling to.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “The Second Ring of Power”)

“Don Juan had always said to me that our great enemy is the fact that we never believe what is happening to us… when we finally realize what is going on it is usually too late to turn back. He contended that it is always the intellect that fools us, because it receives the message first, but rather than giving it credence and acting on it immediately, it dallies with it instead.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “The Second Ring of Power”)

“… a warrior could not avoid pain and grief but only the indulging in them”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“The fate of all of us here has been to know that we are prisoners of power. No one knows why us in particular, but what a great fortune!”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“This very rock where we’re sitting is a rock because we have been forced to give out attention to it”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“Sorcerers are convinced that all of us are a bunch of nincompoops. We can never relinquish our crummy control voluntarily, thus we have to be tricked”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“Take good advice, make sure it is good advice, then do it your way.”
(Vidal Sassoon from “The Element”)

“… it is easier to overcome people’s judgments than to overcome our own self-judgment…”
(Arianna Huffington from “The Element”)

“Nobody can be anybody without somebody being around”
(John Wheeler from “The Element”)

“When I feel that something I’m writing is going well, everything in my life is good and the things in my life that aren’t good are completely manageable. If it’s not going well, Miss America could be standing there in a swimsuit handing me a nobel price and I wouldn’t be happy about it”
(Aaron Sorkin from “The Element”)

“I mean really, whatever you woke up worrying about this morning, get over it. How important in the greater scheme of things can it possibly be? Make your peace and move on.”
(Ken Robinson from “The Element”)

“It [Jazz] is an art that thrives on what it can do, not so much on what it does. ”
(Ben Ratliff  from “Coltrane – the Story of a Sound”)

“Coltrane was always concerned with blazing ahead, one popular line of reasoning goes; he didn’t place much value into what he left behind him”
(Ben Ratliff from “Coltrane – the Story of a Sound”)

“The music is in effect telling us about a future existence in which love and cooperation have placed strife and oppression. Once we have achieved a glimpse of that future state, our present mode of life becomes increasingly intolerable: who could be satisfied with prison after having breathed the sweet air of true freedom?”
(Frank Kofsky from “Coltrane – the Story of a Sound”)

“I do not pretend to understand his music. I doubt if anyone, including those playing it, really understands it… I feel this music, or rather, as I said, it opens up a part of my self that normally is tightly closed, and seldom recognized feelings, emotions, thoughts well up from the opened door and sear my consciousness”
(Don DeMichael  from “Coltrane – the Story of a Sound”)

“”I’d say, ‘Trane, man, why are you doing that, beating on your chest and howling in the microphone?’. He’d say, ‘Man, I can’t find anything else to play on the horn.’ He exhausted the saxophone. He couldn’t find nothing else to play… he ran out of horn”
(Rashied Ali from “Coltrane – the Story of a Sound”)

“… and it’s always been a thing with me to feel that all men know the truth, see? … The truth itself doesn’t have a name on it. To me. Each man has to find this for himself, I think. I believe that men are here to grow themselves into the best good that they can be… I’m not interested in trying to say what it will be, I don’t know. But I believe that good will only bring good.”
(John Coltrane from “Coltrane – the Story of a Sound”)

“what is called good is perfect and what is called bad is just as perfect”
Walt Whitman

“I’ve also studied deeply in the philosophies and the religions but cheerfulness kept breaking through”
Leonard Cohen

“Truth is indestructible. It seems history shows (and it’s the same way today) that the innovator is more often than not met with some degree of condemnation; usually according to the degree of departure from the prevailing modes of expression or what have you. Change is always hard to accept…. Quite often they are the rejects, outcasts, sub-citizens, etc. of the very societies to which they bring so mush sustenance… Whatever the case, whether accepted or rejected, rich or poor, they are forever guided by that great and eternal constant – the creative urge. Let us cherish it and give all praise to God.”
(John Coltrane from “Coltrane – the Story of a Sound”)

“… but it was the saxophone soloing that challenged credulity, it’s length and perhaps its unwillingness to tell a traditional story… If there’s one thing the facile critic needs to do his job, it is some verbal personality from the bandstand, some words to transcribe into the review – anything to make a thoroughly musical endeavor more literary or conversational. Coltrane would not provide it.”
(Ben Ratliff  from “Coltrane – the Story of a Sound”)

“They get too close to the horn with the mikes and don’t give the sound time to travel as they should. Consequently, they don’t get enough of the real timbre and they miss the whole body of the sound. They get the inside of it but not the outside as well.”
(John Coltrane from “Coltrane – the Story of a Sound”)

“Ordinarily, if an average man comes face to face with the nagual the shock would be so great that he would die. The goal of a warrior’s training is not to teach him to hex or to charm, but to prepare his tonal not to crap out.
…
You call is explaining. I call it a sterile and boring insistence of the tonal to have everything under it’s control. Whenever it doesn’t succeed, there is a moment of bafflement and then the tonal opens itself to death. What a prick! It would rather kill itself than relinquish control. And yet there is very little we can do to change that condition.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“Whenever you are in the world of the tonal, you should be an impeccable tonal; no time for irrational crap. But whenever you are in the world of the nagual, you should also be impeccable; no time for rational crap. For the warrior intent is the gate in between. It closes completely behind him when he goes either way”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“…one should never turn to one’s left when facing the nagual.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“A warrior doesn’t ever leave the island of the tonal. He uses it.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“He said that it was simpler and more effective just to act, without seeking explanations, and that by talking about my experience and by thinking about it I was dissipating it”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“The nagual is not experience or intuition or consciousness. Those terms and everything else you may care to say are only items on the island of the tonal.

…
One can say that the nagual accounts for creativity. The nagual is the only part of us that can create.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“Seeing is like that. Statements are made with great certainty, and one doesn’t know how it happened”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“The nagual is the part of us which we do not deal with at all.
…
At the time of birth, and for a while after, we are all nagual. We sense, then that in order to function we need a counterpart to what we have. The tonal is missing and that gives us, from the very beginning, a feeling of incompleteness. Then the tonal starts to develop and it becomes utterly important to our functioning, so important that it opaques the shine of the nagual, it overwhelms it. From the moment we become all tonal we do nothing else but to increment that old feeling of incompleteness which accompanies us from the moment of our birth and whichs tells us constantly that there is another part to give us completeness”.
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“A guardian is broad-minded and understanding. A guard, on the other hand, is a vigilante, narrow-minded and most of the time despotic.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“The secret of a warrior is that he believes without believing… A warrior, whenever he has to involve himself with believing, does it as a choice, as an expression of his innermost predilection. A warrior doesn’t believe, a warrior has to believe.

“A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.
…
a warrior takes everything as a challenge while an ordinary man takes everything as either a blessing or a curse”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“We are perceivers. We are an awareness; we are not objects; we have no solidity. We are boundless. The world of objects and solidity is a way of making our passage on earth convenient. It is only a description that was created to help us. We, or rather our reason, forget that the description is only a description and thus we entrap the totality of ourselves in a vicious circle from which we rarely emerge in our lifetime.
…
So, in essence, the world that your reason wants to sustain is the world created by a description and its dogmatic and inviolable rules, which the reason learns to accept and defend.
…

from now on you should let yourself perceive whether the description is upheld by your reason or by your will.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“Technology is anything that was invented after you were born”
Alan Kay

“The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.”
Albert Einstein

“It’s the little things. There’s nothing bigger is there?”
(from the movie “Vanilla Sky”)

“Fortunately, it is not reason which puts an ally together. It is the body. You have perceived ally in many degrees and on many occasions. Each of those perceptions was stored in your body. The sum of those pieces is the ally.
…
Our reason is petty and it is always at odds with our body. This, of course, is only a way of talking, bu the triumph of a man of knowledge is that he has joined the two together.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“The will develops in a warrior in spite of every opposition of the reason.
…
The body must be perfection before the will is a functioning unit”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“Once it has learned to dream the double, the self arrives at this weird crossroad and a moment comes when one realizes that it is the double who dreams the self.
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“To die with elation is a crappy way of dying… A warrior dies the hard way. His death must struggle to take him. A warrior does not give himself to it.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“My worrying, for instance, was a scene in which I looked at myself while I had the sensation of being boxed in. I call that worrying, It has happened to me a number of times after that first time.
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“You see all of us go through the same doubts. We are afraid of being mad; unfortunately for us, of course, all of us are already mad.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives.  Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born a reasonable being. We make ourselves into one or the other.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“For my teachers, unfortunately, certain things were, as they are for you, only tales of power”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“You’re in a terrible spot. It’s too late for you to retreat but too soon to act. All you can do is witness. You’re in the miserable position of an infant who cannot return to the mother’s womb, but neither can he run around and act. All an infant can do is witness and listen to the stupendous tales of action being told to him. You are at that precise point now. You cannot go back to the womb of your old world, but you cannot act with power either. For you there is only witnessing acts of power and listening to tales of power.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“If a warrior needs solace he simply chooses anyone and expresses to that person every detail of his turmoil. After all, the warrior is not seeking to be understood or helped; by talking he’s merely relieving himself of his pressure.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“… when confronted with unusual life situations… A warrior acts as if nothing had ever happened, because he doesn’t believe in anything, yet he accepts everything at its face value.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“The world doesn’t yield to us directly, the description of the world stands in between. So, properly speaking, we are always one step removed and our experiences of the world is always a recollection of the experience. We are perennially recollecting the instant that has just happened, just passed. Re recollect, recollect, recollect.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“You are like you are, because you tell yourself that you are that way.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

You see, a warrior considers himself already dead, so there is nothing for him to lose. The worst has already happened to him, therefore he’s clear and calm
…
Knowledge for a warrior is something that comes at once, engulfs him, and passes on”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“That’s the flaw with words. They always force us to feel enlightened, but when we turn around to face the world they always fail us and we end up facing the world as we always have, without enlightenment. For this reason, a sorcerer seeks to act rather than to talk and to this effect he gets a new description of the world – a new description where talking is not that important, and where new acts have new reflections”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“Your thoughts and your actions are fixed forever in their terms. That is slavery. I, on the other hand, brought you freedom. Freedom is expensive, but the price is not impossible. So, fear your captors, your masters. Don’t waste your time and your power fearing me.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“Things are only real after one has learned to agree on their realness. What took place this evening, for instance, cannot possibly be real to you, because no one could agree with you about it. ‘Do you mean that you didn’t see what happened?’. Of course I did. But I don’t count. I am the one who’s lying to you, remember?”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. If we have enough of it, one word uttered to us might be sufficient to change the course of our lives. But if we don’t have enough personal power, the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and that revelation won’t make a damn bit of difference”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to himself. Perhaps you are chasing rainbows. You’re after the self-confidence of the average man, when you should be after the humbleness of a warrior. The difference between the two is remarkable. Self Confidence entails knowing something for sure; humbleness entails being impeccable in one’s actions and feelings.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“Your flaw is o seek convenient explanations, explanations that fir you and your world…The explanation is not what you would call an explanation; nevertheless, it makes the world and its mysteries, if not clear, at least less awesome. That should be the essence of an explanation, but that is not what you seek. You’re after the reflection of your ideas”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Tales of Power”)

“…most warriors only perform tricks. The way of the warrior is filled with soul and feeling”
(Miyamoto Musashi translated by Stephen F. Kaufman from “The Martial Artist’s Book of Five Rings”)

“You would also do well to remember that what I say and how you perceive what I say can be completely different depending upon your awareness of yourself and the level of skill you  have attained”
(Miyamoto Musashi translated by Stephen F. Kaufman from “The Martial Artist’s Book of Five Rings”)

“Always return your weapon along the same path it traveled out on. In this way you can use it again without having to relocate and rethink our attitude”.
(Miyamoto Musashi translated by Stephen F. Kaufman from “The Martial Artist’s Book of Five Rings”)

“Imitation is the surest form of flattery and failure. I am not interested with your talk about my ideas. I am more interested in your applying them to your life. If you do not, then you are essentially not in accord with your own mind.”
(Miyamoto Musashi translated by Stephen F. Kaufman from “The Martial Artist’s Book of Five Rings”)

“There are ‘hidden’ meanings – not to be confused with non-understandable things – that must be thought through constantly until you reach an understanding.
”
(Miyamoto Musashi translated by Stephen F. Kaufman from “The Martial Artist’s Book of Five Rings”)

“… I found that a man can rise from the normal to a higher level of consciousness by a continuous biological process, as regular as any other activity of the body, and that at no stage is it necessary or even desirable for him either to neglect his flesh or to deny a place to the human feelings in his heart. A higher state of consciousness, able to liberate itself from the thraldom of senses, appears to be incompatible, unless we take the biological factors into account, with a physical existence in which passions and desires and the animal needs of the body, however restricted, exist side by side. But I can say conidently that a reasonable measure of control over appetites, coupled with some knowledge of the mighty mechanism and a befitting consitution proved a surer ans safer way to spiritual unfoldment than any amount of self-mortification or abnormal religious fervour can do”
(Gopi Krishna from “Kundalini – The Evolutionary Energy in Man”)

“But with the income halved, the cost of living at least fourfold, and the unavoidable demand for a more nutritious and hence more costly diet for me with absolutely no other source of income and no possibility of one, placed me in an indescribable predicament at a time when I was mentally in a precarious condition”
(Gopi Krishna from “Kundalini – The Evolutionary Energy in Man”)

“The secluded corner of a busy office room, throbbing with noiseless activity and tense with subdued excitement was not a place where a man now constantly preoccupied with the unseen, could pass several hours at a stretch always at the call of others, without running the risk of serious injury to his mental health.”
(Gopi Krishna from “Kundalini – The Evolutionary Energy in Man”)

“….relinquishing forever the thought of roaming the earth in the traditional way to effect the regeneration of mankind, a fantasy in my case born from the desire for power, the yearning for mental conquest, which often accompanies the activity of Kundalini in the intellectual center, causing a slightly intoxicated condition of the brain too subtle to be noticed by the subject himself or by his uniformed companions, however erudite and intelligent they may be.”
(Gopi Krishna from “Kundalini – The Evolutionary Energy in Man”)

The state of mind of the photographer creating is a blank. I might add that this condition exists only at special times, namely when looking for pictures. (Something keeps him from falling off curbs, down open manholes, into bumpers of skidding trucks while in this condition but goes off duty at other times.) . . . This is a very special kind of blank. A very active state of mind really, it is a very receptive state. . .”
(Minor White)

“I believe that like Alice Through the Looking Glass, with the camera one comes so close to the real that one goes beyond it and into the reality of he dream”
(Minor White)

“…insight, vision, moments of revelation. During those rare moments something overtakes the man and he becomes the tool of a greater Force; the servant of, willing or unwilling depending on his degree of awakeness. The photograph, then, is a message more than a mirror, and the mans a messenger who happens to be a photographer.”
(Minor White)

“I make but a simple statement of fact when I say that for years I was like on bound hand and foot to a log racing madly on a torrent, saved miraculously time after time from dashing to death against the many boulders projecting out of the swirling water on every side by just a narrow margin and in the nick of time, turning and twisting this way and that, as if guided by a marvelously quick and dexterous hand infallibly correct in its movement
…
At times I felt Instinctively that a life and death struggle was going on inside me in which I, the owner of the body, was entirely powerless to take part, forced to lie quietly and watch as a spectator the weird drama unfolded in my own flesh.”
(Gopi Krishna from “Kundalini – The Evolutionary Energy in Man”)

“God is the ultimate Rorschach test”
Carter Phipps

“It is the introspective worry itself which we might interpret as vrtta and which splits up experience into an anthill of particles”
(James Hillman – commentary in Gopi Krishna’s “Kundalini”)

“I suffered unbearable torture in silence, weeping internally at the sad turn of events blaming myself bitterly again and again for having delved into the supernatural without first acquiring a fuller knowledge of the subject and providing against the dangers and risks of the path.”
(Gopi Krishna from “Kundalini – The Evolutionary Energy in Man”)

“Like the vast majority of men interested in Yoga I had no idea that a system designed to develop the latent possibilities and nobler qualities in man could be fraught with such danger at times to destroy the sanity or crush life out of one by the sheer weight of entirely foreign and uncontrollable conditions of the mind”
(Gopi Krishna from “Kundalini – The Evolutionary Energy in Man”)

“Too often in the west we fail to realize that even in eastern disciplines the spiritual life is not meant as an escape from the worldly life. There is karma to be fulfilled on earth, within the dharma of necessity.”
(James Hillman – commentary in Gopi Krishna’s “Kundalini”)

“All of those for whom authentic transformation has deeply unseated their souls must, I believe, wrestle with the profound moral obligation to shout from the heart-perhaps quietly and gently, with tears of reluctance; perhaps with fierce fire and angry wisdom; perhaps with slow and careful analysis; perhaps by unshakable public example-but authenticity always and absolutely carries a demand and duty: you must speak out, to the best of your ability, and shake the spiritual tree, and shine your headlights into the eyes of the complacent. You must let that radical realization rumble through your veins and rattle those around you.”
(Ken Wilber)

“In order to persuade reason to rise above itself it is essential to arrange its ascent in a manner not repugnant to it by violating any of its own jealously guarded principles”
(Gopi Krishna from “Kundalini – The Evolutionary Energy in Man”)

“But science itself, though extremely useful in other ways and serviceable as a battering ram to smash religion, if not out of existence at least out of shape, was not in my view fit ro tule the domain where faith holds sway”
(Gopi Krishna from “Kundalini – The Evolutionary Energy in Man”)

“… my whole being revolted at the ide of becoming a homeless ascetic, depending on the labour of others for my sustenance. If God is the embodiment of all that is good, noble and pure, I argued withing myself, how can He decree that those who have a burning desire to find Him, surrendering themselves to His will, should leave their families, to whom they owe various obligations by virtue of the ties He has Himself forged in the human heart, and should wander from place to place depending on the charity and beneficence of those who honor those ties?”
(Gopi Krishna from “Kundalini – The Evolutionary Energy in Man”)

“Do not waste time idling or thinking after you have set your goals”
(Miyamoto Musashi translated by Stephen F. Kaufman from “The Martial Artist’s Book of Five Rings”)

“Weapons may have decorations on them to enhance the spirit of the warrior but they should primarily br built for durability.
(Miyamoto Musashi translated by Stephen F. Kaufman from “The Martial Artist’s Book of Five Rings”)

Whatever your determination or will power, it is foolish to try to change the nature of things. Things work the way they do because that is the way of things”
(Miyamoto Musashi translated by Stephen F. Kaufman from “The Martial Artist’s Book of Five Rings”)

“There are many ways of understanding simple things, but generally the opposite is true for difficult ideas”
(Miyamoto Musashi translated by Stephen F. Kaufman from “The Martial Artist’s Book of Five Rings”)

“The art of a warrior is to balance the terror of being a man with the wonder of being a man”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Journey to Ixtlan”)

“There is no way to escape the doing of our world, so what a warrior does is to turn his world into his hunting ground. As a hunter, a warrior knows that the world is made to be used. So he uses every bit of it. A warrior is like a pirate that has no qualms in taking and using anything he wants, except that a warrior doesn’t mind or he doesn’t feel insulted when he is used and taken himself”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Journey to Ixtlan”)

“Let’s say that when every one of us is born we bring with us a little ring of power. That little ring is almost immediately put to use. So every one of us is already hooked from birth and our rings of power are joined to everyone else’s. In other words, our rings of power are hooked to the doing of the world in order to make the world.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Journey to Ixtlan”)

“That’s your doing. Now in order to affect that doing I am going to recommend that you learn another doing… It may hook you to another doing and then you may realize that both doings are lies, unreal, and that to hinge yourself to either one is a waste of time, because the only thing that is real is the being in you that is going to die. To arrive at that being is the note-doing of the self”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Journey to Ixtlan”)

“The reason you keep on coming back to see me is very simple; every time you have seen me your body has learned certain things, even against your desire. And finally your body now needs to come back to me to learn more. Let’s say that your body knows that it is going to die, even though you never think about it. So I’ve been telling your body that I too am going to die and before I do I would like to show our body certain things, things which you cannot give to your body yourself… So let’s say then that your body returns to me because I am its friend”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Journey to Ixtlan”)

“This time, however, my fear was a true novelty. It came from an unknown part of the world and hit me in an unknown part of myself”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Journey to Ixtlan”)

“The secret is not in what you do to yourself but rather in what you don’t do.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Journey to Ixtlan”)

“Hunting power is a very strange affair. There is no way to plan it ahead of time. That’s what’s exciting about it. A warrior proceeds as if he had a plan though, because he trusts his personal power. He knows for a fact that it will make him act in th emost appropriate fashion.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Journey to Ixtlan”)

“I too did not want to take the path of a warrior. I believed that all that work was for nothing, and since we are all going to die what difference would it make to be a warrior? I was wrong. But I had to find that out for myself. Whenever you do realize that you are wrong, and that it certainly makes a world of difference, you can say that you are convinced. And then you can proceed by yourself. Any by yourself you may even become a man of knowledge”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Journey to Ixtlan”)

“A warrior is only a man. A humble man. He cannot change the designs of his death, But his impeccable spirit, which has stored power after stupendous hardships, can certainly hold his death for a moment, a moment long enough to let him rejoice for the last time in recalling his power. We may say that that is a gesture which death has with those who have an impeccable spirit.
…

And thus you will dance to your death here, on this hilltop, at the end of the day. An din your last dance you will tell of your struggle, of the battles you have won and of those you have lost; you will tell of your joys and bewilderments upon encountering personal power. Your dance will tell about the secrets and about the marvels you have stored. And your death will sit her and watch you.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Journey to Ixtlan”)

“A warrior, on the other hand, is a hunter. He calculates everything. That’s control. But once his calculations are over he acts. He lets go. That’s abandon.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Journey to Ixtlan”)

“Tonight in your dreams you must look at your hands.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Journey to Ixtlan”)

“A hunter that is worth his salt does not catch game because he sets his traps, or because he knows the hunting routines of his prey, but because he himself has no routines. This is his advantage. He is not at all like the animals he is after, fixed by heavy routines and predictable quirks; he is free, fluid, unpredictable”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Journey to Ixtlan”)

“One day I found out that personal history was no longer necessary for me and, like drinking, I dropped it… Little by little you must create a fog around yourself; you must erase everything around you until nothing can be taken for granted, until nothing is any longer for sure, or real. Your problem now is that you’re too real. Your endeavors are too real, your moods are too real. Don’t take things so for granted. You must begin to erase yourself.”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Journey to Ixtlan”)

“Fright never injures anyone. What injures the spirit is having someone always on your back, beating you, telling you what to do and what not to do”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Journey to Ixtlan”)

“… everyone who comes into contact with a child is a teacher who incessantly describes the world to him, until the moment when the child is capable of perceiving the world as it is described. According to Don Juan, we have no memory of that portentous moment, simply because none of us could possibly have had any point of reference to compare it to anything else. From that moment on, however, the child is a member. He knows the description of the world; and his membership becomes full fledged, I suppose, when he is capable of making all the proper perceptual interpretations which, by conforming to that description, validate it”
(Carlos Castaneda from “Journey to Ixtlan”)

“The presentation of an idea, apparently improvised, is only valid if there has been adequate study and preparation…”
(Miyamoto Musashi translated by Stephen F. Kaufman from “The Martial Artist’s Book of Five Rings”)

“There is a significant difference between not getting a deal signed and having your head cut off. Business is mental. War is mental and physical. The true warrior has not difficulty understanding this difference regardless of all the hype suggesting that ‘business is war’. It absolutely is not.”
(Stephen F. Kaufman from “The Martial Artist’s Book of Five Rings”)

“You’re chained to you reason …  Understanding is only a very small affair, so very small”
(Carlos Castaneda from “A Separate Reality”)

“Fright is something one can never get over. When a warrior is caught in such a tight spot he would simply turn his back to the ally without thinking twice. A warrior cannot indulge thus he cannot die of fright. A warrior allows the ally to come only when he is good and ready. When he is strong enough to grapple with the ally he opens up his gap and lurches out, grabs the ally, keeps him pinned down and maintains his stare on him for exactly the time he has to, then he moves his eyes away and releases the ally and lets him go. A warrior, my little friend, is the master at all times”
(Carlos Castaneda from “A Separate Reality”)

“The spirit of a warrior is not geared to indulging and complaining, nor is it geared to winning or losing. The spirit of a warrior is geared only to struggle, and every struggle is a warrior’s last battle on earth. Thus the outcome matters very little to him. In his last battle on earth a warrior lets his spirit flow free and clear. And as he wages his battle, knowing that his will is impeccable, a warrior laughs and laughs”
(Carlos Castaneda from “A Separate Reality”)

“It isn’t a matter of fine acting performances or of those talents which always impress through expertise and technique, however special. It’s more a question of heart. That is an empty space, a group of performers simply and openly show themselves for what they are, and hope to be”
John Heilpern from “Conference of the Birds”

“I have actually seen people contemplate their navels”
John Heilpern from “Conference of the Birds”

“In his absence, Brook asked Myers to take personal responsibility for work on another show, The Ogre Show, which would be performed that night. Pleased and flattered, Myers accepted the job as the group’s new boss. He found out later that Brook had given the same to job to everyone else”
John Heilpern from “Conference of the Birds”