Quotations by Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz - Buddhism and Castaneda's Tonal & Nagual
American Buddhist Monk
Tonal & Nagual
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"There are two sides to a person's being – the superconscious and the
conscious. These have reverberations in the popular works of Carlos
Castaneda, in the don Juan terminology of the tonal and the nagual.
The tonal is the sense of place. It is order and reason in a world of
chaos.
The world is always chaos, but we pretend that it's not because it
makes us feel better. In doing so we're able to go through it in a
specific manner and form: That's the tonal.
Each one of you has created a sense of self. That's what the tonal
does. Each one of you is taught a system of maintenance that has been
developed by humankind from your birth till your death.
Don Juan speaks of the island of the tonal as something that's in the
middle of the ocean ... the nagual.
The nagual is the unknown. It cannot be talked about, it can only be
witnessed.
The nagual is the superconscious. It's nirvana. It's the unknown that
cannot be explained or reasoned.
The nagual gives you the unknown; it gives you reality; it leads you
to the totality of yourself.
When we go to the desert, it's pure nagual. There you witness
stupendous and incredible acts of power that your reason cannot
possibly deal with.
The deeper side of the study occurs on levels of attention your mind
is not aware of, but that your superconscious mind is – what don Juan
calls the nagual.
In no way can words convey the nagual. But they open up the
possibility. They allow an admission on the island of the tonal.
The tonal is also endless and limitless. We like to think of it as
being finite so we feel better.
When one side or the other predominates, there's an imbalance and
there's unhappiness.
In the world order, if the nagual dominates and not the tonal, then
we'll live in times of fear and superstition.
I examine each student carefully: Is there a balance between their
tonal and their nagual?
If the tonal collapses completely, then you're crazy functionally,
you're psychotic.
Reason is necessary. It is necessary to deal with the world.
A person who is insane has no sense of their place; they've lost that
ability, which our friend don Juan describes as the tonal.
You need your reason to pass through the world and also to experience
the nagual, because if you become all nagual, we'll lock you away in
an institution.
The reason why there's such a rigid repression of the mentally ill is
the psyche of humanity senses something. It senses that it doesn't
want to deal with the unknown.
Occasionally in my travels I meet people who have pushed too far into
the nagual. These individuals are not too balanced but they have made
great journeys in the unknown.
There are people who just can't handle life because they've thrown
away too much of their reason.
Everyone is on the verge of insanity … insanity meaning on the verge
of the unknown.
Your reason is your friend. It defends the island of your awareness.
But you don't want your reason to rule everything.
If the tonal predominates, which we see now more in the world, there's
no mystery -- understanding of consciousness or awareness.
The island of the tonal, the way we see life, is there so we can get
through our life. It was never intended to become a dictator that
would usurp all other views of the world and banish them.
The description you have been given of the world is an aberrant one.
It does not accept and give proper place to the nagual, to the
mysterious unknown that is our heritage.
The tonal is so strong, that it even arranges a syntactical place for
God and thus kills the mystery, the reality, and paralyzes the being.
The Romans were the tonal incarnate, complete order.
Christ was crucified because he threatened the tonal of the times, the
established order.
The problem is that the dictator of the tonal wants to eliminate the
mystery of life.
Thought is the ultimate tonal. Each thought is like a dike that blocks
out the nagual.
Your tonal must accept that the nagual exists and that it's beneficial
and healthy.
The tonal leads the way. You have to have a methodology.
“Don't talk about enlightenment,” Buddha would say. He was saying
don't talk about the nagual. He'd talk about how to get to it.
When we talk, answer questions, I'm addressing your tonal. I'm
teaching you a way or a series of ways of dealing with the world.
In the training process, the teacher addresses two sides of your
being. One is the tonal and one is the nagual.
The Buddha would never speak about enlightenment. The way he taught
people about enlightenment was they meditated with him. He exposed
them to countless views of the nagual.
The Eightfold Path is ordering the island of the tonal completely.
What the teacher does is sweep all of the logic, order and reason onto
one side and make that side very strong.
When you sit, you've put a place on the island of the tonal for the
possibility of your thoughts stopping for a shot period of time.
As we slam you with more and more devastating blows of the nagual, at
the same time, we strengthen and clear the tonal so that it can easily
withstand them – so there is no loss in continuity of consciousness.
What I do, the teacher of the nagual, is open up the bubble of your
luminosity and allow the luminous being to take short excursions into
the unknown.
Each of your excursions is balanced by the strengthening of the
tonal.
As we gradually open that bubble and allow the luminous being inside
to come out, your second attention will develop and you'll begin to
see, deal with, and become the totality of yourself.
The reordering of the luminous fibers is a very sophisticated art.
It's not something anyone should ever undertake without supervision.
You can make all the changes to the island of the tonal you want, you
can take excursions into the nagual, but to push yourself into the
reordering process is absolutely foolish.
You're not capable of stepping into nirvana at this time. If you did
it would be disastrous. You're tonal would be swamped.
Why is it when you start to meditate you stop at a certain point?
Because you're tied to the world, you have holes in your being and you
haven't learned to lead an efficient life.
Until your physical togetherness increases, your development in the
inner worlds will not increase.
Most of you are predominantly nagual. You have trouble with the
physical life because you have devoted more of your attention to the
mysterious side of your being.
As long as you continue to run away from the world, I will not be able
to show you your luminosity.
As long as you fight the system, all of the things that are part of
the tonal of the times, then you will be imbalanced and will not do
well in the other levels of attention.
A strong onslaught of the nagual would upset your balance completely.
It's necessary for you to work out a way of living that's very strong,
tight and powerful or you will not be able to deal with the unknown.
Your development in the superconscious will correlate to your level of
physical togetherness.
When you're in the desert you witness acts of power. When you're in
the world of the tonal, drop all that nonsense, become logical and
orderly and have fun with that.
When you can command the nagual you have a great deal of power, and
people know it intuitively. They feel if they can plunge themselves
into the nagual they can get anything they want in the tonal.
What they should really do, if they want supreme power, is develop the
tonal to perfection.
The siddhas are developed through the tonal, not the nagual.
The nagual doesn't give you the ability to get what you want in the
tonal.
The danger in mysticism is that you push yourself too far into the
nagual too soon. This is obsession.
We break off obsession by laughing at ourselves, by learning to be
funny, by just seeing the joy in life and by having a terrific love
for this world.
Humor is the balance of the tonal. Within the tonal you've got reason
and humor. The two balance each other so that the tonal can accept and
understand the journeys into the nagual.
You'll find that you will be able to reorder the island of your tonal
so that it's in good shape – logical, orderly, neat, and well-
defined.
Go through every closet in your house in every room.
When your home is perfect, every plant in place, every piece of
furniture suits the space completely – you've completed a task.
The way you dress is extremely important. It demonstrates your spirit.
It's the guise through which the world evaluates and views you.
Every person who sees you physically evaluates you and projects energy
towards you based upon the way you've dressed.
A person who doesn't dress well, who doesn't spend time and attention
with their physical being, has a very loose being.
Consider the way you speak and your use of language; it's a reflection
of your warrior spirit.
The kundalini is so strong you must have a strong phsyical body.
The process is not simply of constructing a new tonal from scratch,
but reordering the one you have.
Your tonal will enable you to deal with the world well, to do well in
a career and interact with others.
Until the physical togetherness increases the development in the inner
worlds will not increase. They always go together because you simply
can't handle the power.
When every aspect of your life is impeccable, then you will find that
there's no limit to your journeys into the infinite."
- Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz