A shift of the assemblage point to the area below its customary position allows the seer a detailed and narrow view of the world we know. So detailed is that view that it seems to be an entirely different world. It is a mesmerizing view that has a tremendous appeal, especially for those seers who have an adventurous but somehow indolent and lazy spirit.

The change of perspective is very pleasant. Minimal effort is required, and the results are staggering. If a seer is driven by quick gain, there is no better maneuver than the shift below. The only problem is that in those positions of the assemblage point, seers are plagued by death, which happens even more brutally and more quickly than in man's position.

My teacher thought it was a great place for cavorting, but that's all. A true change of worlds happens only when the assemblage point moves into man's band, deep enough to reach a crucial threshold, at which stage the assemblage point can use another of the great bands.

How? It's a matter of energy. The force of alignment hooks another band, provided that the seer has enough energy. Our normal energy allows our assemblage points to use the force of alignment of one great band of emanations. And we perceive the world we know. But if we have a surplus of energy, we can use the force of alignment of other great bands, and consequently we perceive other worlds.

This may seem like an oddity to you, but trees, for instance, are closer to man than ants. I've told you that trees and man can develop a great relationship; that's so because they share emanations.

The cocoon of a giant tree is not much larger than the tree itself. The interesting part is that some tiny plants have a cocoon almost as big as a man's body and three times its width. Those are power plants. They share the largest amount of emanations with man, not the emanations of awareness, but other emanations in general.

Another thing unique about plants is that their luminosities have different casts. They are pinkish in general, because their awareness is pink. Poisonous plants are a pale yellow pink and medicinal plants are a bright violet pink. The only ones that are white pink are power plants; some are murky white, others are brilliant white.

But the real difference between plants and other organic beings is the location of their assemblage points. Plants have it on the lower part of their cocoon, while other organic beings have it on the upper part of their cocoon.

With the inorganic beings, some have it on the lower part of their containers. Those are thoroughly alien to man, but akin to plants.

Others have it anywhere on the upper part of their containers. Those are close to man and other organic creatures.

The old seers were convinced that plants have the most intense communication with inorganic beings. They believed that the lower the assemblage point, the easier for plants to break the barrier of perception; very large trees and very small plants have their assemblage points extremely low in their cocoon. Because of this, a great number of the old seers' sorcery techniques were means to harness the awareness of trees and small plants in order to use them as guides to descend to what they called the deepest levels of the dark regions.

You understand, of course, that when they thought they were descending to the depths, they were, in fact, pushing their assemblage points to assemble other perceivable worlds with those seven great bands. They taxed their awareness to the limit and assembled worlds with five great bands that are accessible to seers only if they undergo a dangerous transformation. In their aberration they believed it was worth their while to break all the barriers of perception, even if they had to become trees to do that.

It is very easy in the path of knowledge to get lost in intricacies and morbidity. Seers are up against great enemies that can destroy their purpose, muddle their aims, and make them weak; enemies created by the warrior's path itself together with the sense of indolence, laziness, and self-importance that are integral parts of the daily world.

The mistakes the ancient seers made as a result of indolence, laziness, and self-importance were so enormous and so grave that the new seers had no option but to scorn and reject their own tradition.

The most important thing the new seers needed was practical steps in order to make their assemblage points shift. Since they had none, they began by developing a keen interest in seeing the glow of awareness, and as a result they worked out three sets of techniques that became their cornerstone.

With these three sets, the new seers accomplished a most extraordinary and difficult feat. They succeeded in systematically making the assemblage point shift away from its customary position.

The old seers had also accomplished that feat, but by means of capricious, idiosyncratic maneuvers.

What the new seers saw in the glow of awareness resulted in the sequence in which they arranged the old seers' truths about awareness. This is known as the mastery of awareness. From that, they developed the three sets of techniques. The first is the mastery of stalking, the second is the mastery of intent, and the third is the mastery of dreaming. I taught you these three sets from the very first day we met.

Stalking had very humble and fortuitous origins. It started from an observation the new seers made that when warriors steadily behave in ways not customary for them, the unused emanations inside their cocoons begin to glow. And their assemblage points shift in a mild, harmonious, barely noticeable fashion.

Stimulated by this observation, the new seers began to practice the systematic control of their behavior. They called this practice the art of stalking. The name, although objectionable, is appropriate, because stalking entails a specific kind of behavior with people, behavior that can be categorized as surreptitious.

The new seers, armed with this technique, tackled the known in a sober and fruitful way. By continual practice, they made their assemblage points move steadily.

Stalking is one of the two greatest accomplishments of the new seers. And stalking is merely behavior with people.

You can now understand that shifting the assemblage point was the reason why the new seers placed such a high value on the interaction with petty tyrants. Petty tyrants force seers to use the principles of stalking and, in doing so, help seers to move their assemblage points.

Stalking belongs exclusively to the new seers. They are the only seers who have to deal with people. The old ones were so wrapped up in their sense of power that they didn't even know that people existed, until people started clobbering them on the head.

The mastery of intent together with the mastery of stalking are the new seers' two masterpieces, which mark the arrival of the modern- day seers. In their efforts to gain an advantage over their oppressors the new seers pursued every possibility. They knew that their predecessors had accomplished extraordinary feats by manipulating a mysterious and miraculous force, which they could only describe as power. The new seers had very little information about that force, so they were obliged to examine it systematically through seeing. Their efforts were amply rewarded when they discovered that the energy of alignment is that force.

They began by seeing how the glow of awareness increases in size and intensity as the emanations inside the cocoon are aligned with the emanations at large. They used that observation as a springboard, just as they had done with stalking, and went on to develop a complex series of techniques to handle that alignment of emanations.

At first they referred to those techniques as the mastery of alignment. Then they realized that what is involved is much more than alignment; what is involved is the energy that comes out of the alignment of emanations. They called that energy will .

Will became the second basis. The new seers understood it as a blind, impersonal, ceaseless burst of energy that makes us behave in the ways we do. Will accounts for our perception of the world of ordinary affairs, and indirectly, through the force of that perception, it accounts for the placement of the assemblage point in its customary position.

The new seers examined how the perception of the world of everyday life takes place and saw the effects of will. They saw that alignment is ceaselessly renewed in order to imbue perception with continuity. To renew alignment every time with the freshness that it needs to make up a living world, the burst of energy that comes out of those very alignments is automatically rerouted to reinforce some choice alignments.

This new observation served the new seers as another springboard that helped them reach the third basis of the set. They called it intent, and they described it as the purposeful guiding of will, the energy of alignment.

As time passed and the new seers established their practices, they realized that under the prevailing conditions of life, stalking only moved the assemblage points minimally. For maximum effect, stalking needed an ideal setting; it needed petty tyrants in positions of great authority and power. It became increasingly difficult for the new

seers to place themselves in such situations; the task of improvising them or seeking them out became an unbearable burden.

The new seers deemed it imperative to see the Indescribable Force's emanations in order to find a more suitable way to move the assemblage point. As they tried to see the emanations they were faced with a very serious problem. They found out that there is no way to see them without running a mortal risk, and yet they had to see them. That was the time when they used the old seers' technique of dreaming as a shield to protect themselves from the deadly blow of the Indescribable Force's emanations. And in doing so, they realized that dreaming was in itself the most effective way to move the assemblage point.

One of the strictest commands of the new seers was that warriors have to learn dreaming while they are in their normal state of awareness. Following that command, I began teaching you dreaming almost from the first day we met.

Dreaming has to be taught in normal awareness because dreaming is so dangerous and dreamers so vulnerable. It is dangerous became it has inconceivable power; it makes dreamers vulnerable because it leaves them at the mercy of the incomprehensible force of alignment.

The new seers realized that in our normal state of awareness, we have countless defences that can safeguard us against the force of unused emanations that suddenly become aligned in dreaming.

Dreaming, like stalking, began with a simple observation. The old seers became aware that in dreams the assemblage point shifts slightly to the left side in a most natural manner. That point indeed relaxes when man sleeps and all kinds of unused emanations begin to glow.

The old seers became immediately intrigued with that observation and began to work with that natural shift until they were able to control it. They called that control dreaming, or the art of handling the dreaming body.

There is hardly a way of describing the immensity of their knowledge about dreaming. Very little of it, however, was of any use to the new seers. So when the time of reconstruction came, the new seers took for themselves only the bare essentials of dreaming to aid them in seeing the Indescribable Force's emanations and to help them move their assemblage points.

Seers, old and new, understand dreaming as being the control of the natural shift that the assemblage point undergoes in sleep. To control that shift does not mean in any way to direct it, but to keep the assemblage point fixed at the position where it naturally moves in sleep, a most difficult maneuver that took the old seers' enormous effort and concentration to accomplish.

Dreamers have to strike a very subtle balance, for dreams cannot be interfered with, nor can they be commanded by the conscious effort of the dreamer, and yet the shift of the assemblage point must obey the dreamer's command--a contradiction that cannot be rationalized but must be resolved in practice.

After observing dreamers while they slept, the old seers hit upon the solution of letting dreams follow their natural course. They have seen that in some dreams, the assemblage point of the dreamer would drift considerably deeper into the left side than in other dreams. This observation posed to them the question of whether the content of the dream makes the assemblage point move, or the movement of the assemblage point by itself produces the content of the dream by activating unused emanations.

They soon realized that the shifting of the assemblage point into the left side is what produces dreams. The farther the movement, the more vivid and bizarre the dream. Inevitably, they attempted to command their dreams, aiming to make their assemblage points move deeply into the left side. Upon trying it, they discovered that when dreams are consciously or semiconsciously manipulated, the assemblage point immediately returns to its usual place. Since what they wanted was for that point to move, they reached the unavoidable conclusion that interfering with dreams was interfering with the natural shift of the assemblage point.

From there the old seers went on to develop their astounding knowledge on the subject--a knowledge which had a tremendous bearing on what the new seers aspired to do with dreaming, but was of little use to them in its original form.

Thus far you have understood dreaming as being the control of dreams, and every one of the exercised I have given you to perform, such as finding your hands in your dreams, was not, although it might seem to be, aimed at teaching you to command your dreams. Those exercises were designed to keep your assemblage point fixed at the place where it had moved in your sleep. It is here that the dreamers have to strike a subtle balance. All they can direct is the fixation of their assemblage points. Seers are like fishermen equipped with a line that casts itself wherever it may; the only thing they can do is keep the line anchored at the place where it sinks.

Wherever the assemblage point moves in dreams is called the dreaming position. The old seers became so expert at keeping their dreaming position that they were even able to wake up while their assemblage points were anchored there.

The old seers called that state the dreaming body, because they controlled it to the extreme of creating a temporary new body every time they woke up at a new dreaming position. I have to make it clear to you that dreaming has a terrible drawback. It belongs to the old seers. It's tainted with their mood. I've been very careful in guiding you through it, but still there is no way to make sure.

I'm warning you about the pitfalls of dreaming, which are truly stupendous. In dreaming, there is really no way of directing the movement of the assemblage point; the only thing that dictates that shift is the inner strength or weakness of dreamers. Right there we have the first pitfall.

At first the new seers were hesitant to use dreaming. It was their belief that dreaming, instead of fortifying, made warriors weak, compulsive, capricious. The old seers were all like that. In order to offset the nefarious effect of dreaming, since they had no other option but to use it, the new seers developed a complex and rich system of behavior called the warrior's way, or the warrior's path.

With that system, the new seers fortified themselves and acquired the internal strength they needed to guide the shift of the assemblage point in dreams. The strength that I am talking about is not conviction alone. No one could have had stronger convictions than the old seers, and yet they were weak to the core. Internal strength means a sense of equanimity, almost of indifference, a feeling of being at ease, but, above all, it means a natural and profound bent for examination, for understanding. The new seers called all these traits of character sobriety.

The conviction that the new seers have is that a life of impeccability by itself leads unavoidably to a sense of sobriety, and this in turn leads to the movement of the assemblage point.

I've said that the new seers believed that the assemblage point can be moved from within. They went one step further and maintained that impeccable men need no one to guide them, that by themselves, through saving their energy, they can do everything that seers do. All they need is a minimal chance, just to be cognizant of the possibilities that seers have unraveled.

All that is required is impeccability, energy, and that begins with a single act that has to be deliberate, precise, and sustained. If that act is repeated long enough, one acquires a sense of unbending intent, which can be applied to anything else. If that is accomplished the road is clear. One thing will lead to another until the warrior realizes his full potential. When a warrior understands all of that, it will indeed be a godsent example of the strength that I am talking about. At that point his assemblage point will have shifted, it will have been moved by sobriety to a position that fosters understanding, instead of being moved by capriciousness, to a position that only enhances self- importance.