advanced psychology,magic,meditation,brain,thought streams

The work on bookofmagic is not finished. The book is an ongoing project. I might still make changes and additions. The material has rested for longer and shorter periods. I started writing this around 1995 and published a shorter English version on the internet about 5 years later. After that, I added material now and then for about 10 years. In 2014, I shut down the website and let the book rest. In January 2021, I went through the text. I added some things and made some changes and after that I published the English version on the website again.
After various requests from friends and colleagues, I have translated the book into Swedish and now in spring 2025 bookofmagic is available on the internet in my mother tongue.

The book deals with a difficult subject and may require some effort from the reader. Writing about magic can be provocative for a reader who is very rational and closely bound to scientific requirements. For those with a scientific education, my text will certainly be very difficult to digest.
The theme is about magic but not at all about magical rituals and the like. Instead, I want to describe how our common image of reality has been created and how it is maintained, and how limited we humans can be by our upbringing, our education and our cultural and social reality. I do my best to create an understanding that what we call reality is only a very small part of something infinitely larger. When I read through the text myself, I am a little taken by how much I repeat myself. It may seem somewhat annoying, but the repetitions are a way of emphasizing the importance and significance of the important central messages that I want to convey.
Most of the text is made up of additions I have made from 2015 onwards. These are mainly about personal development and our psychology, and how we function mentally and emotionally. These are areas that can be of interest to many people. Much of what I write about our mental functioning and how we think I have not found described elsewhere, nor have I managed to get it confirmed by anyone else with long experience of deeper inner work. It may therefore be the case that this is at least partly knowledge that has not previously been published.

As it stands, the text can be seen in two ways. It can be seen as a description of what is required to enter the mystery of true magic and perhaps it seems to promise to give instructions on how to find ways to master magic as in a magic school. However, this is not a textbook on magic. Those who read through the text will realize that I am mostly giving hints and that I am putting a lot of effort into describing how difficult it is to develop abilities to change perceived reality in more than a very limited extent. For those who really want to deepen their knowledge of the subject, I would like to emphasize that, in my opinion, it is important to find a teacher. It is probably very difficult to overcome the difficulties you may encounter on your own.
In several of the chapters I address myself here and there with exhortations aimed at those who have the ambition to seriously delve into the subject of magic. I do this because the book is partly written because I want to highlight the great sacrifices involved in exploring and dissolving the boundaries of what we call reality and how difficult that path can be, as well as how costly the consequences may be. I want to emphasize that I am not urging anyone to embark on a path that seriously involves magical ambitions. On the contrary, I highlight time and again in the text what this can cost. However, if you test and use the training methods I describe in the book and "stop halfway", there are great gains to be made in terms of personal maturity, inner harmony and, above all, freedom of choice.

In other words, the book is very much about personal development, albeit at a fairly advanced level. Hence the more important perspective of the text for most readers is that it can be used as a guide in this respect. It is aimed at those who want to find greater maturity and balance in their lives, as well as greater inner peace and happiness. I give a good description of what effective and good psychotherapy can be and the same goes for meditation. Effective psychotherapy with great potential for change, such as Gestalt therapy, which is my field of work, is an activity where a little magic is often part of the work. Good psychotherapy changes the reality of a person's life and experience of life and meditation can do the same. When psychotherapy and meditation are combined, they can often work wonders.

The text on thoughts and thought patterns and how to find ways to work at deeper levels of thought is not easy to say the least. When I write about this, I repeat myself a lot and spend much time on details. That part of the book is probably difficult for many people. For most people, that information and knowledge is probably not something that they want to spend time on. However, the topic can be interesting for providing an understanding of how we function at deeper subconscious levels, and such an understanding can be valuable even if you do not want to delve more specifically into the strategies described. Those who wish to do so may need to spend a lot of time on inner work as preparation before they are even able to start working with patterns of thought in the way described. In order to reach and possibly affect the deeper thought streams that exist within us, you need to have learned to free yourself from and observe your thoughts so that you are as if "beside them." You need to be so free that the thoughts that come are something that just happen alongside you almost as if they are separate from you. For most people, such ability requires many years of meditation and other inner work. I must emphasize that it is very important to see work with subconscious thought streams as something that should only be done as an exercise for short periods of time and that you should balance this type of exercise by letting go and leaving all deeper thoughts alone. In day-to-day life, you should let things be - leave your mind and thoughts alone. The exception to this is that it can sometimes be constructive to keep an eye on ones inner prejudices, findings and judgments and if you have the ability, you can refrain from "locking them" and confirming them so that they control your view of reality.

I might probably work more on the text and make additions and changes. To what extent depends entirely on my other activities. I spend time and energy on my work as a gestalt therapist and on my family, and I also work on other things. For example, I work as a fishing guide in Iceland.

I hope that you will find something in my book to add to your personal arsenal of useful knowledge and perhaps what I write will help you to make your life better.

The text in this book is my own highly personal thoughts and reflections. They are my own lessons about life and our existence and about how our reality is structured and how we can influence and change our lives. Some of what I write about may be new even for those of you who have put a lot of work into your inner self and personal development.
I ask you to respect my text. You are free to quote and use it as long as you do not claim it as your own. You are required to acknowledge me and my copyright if you quote or republish anything directly.

I am writing this book because I think I know something that I want to share with others. My knowledge comes from over 50 years of meditation and other inner work and from 45 years of work as a Gestalt therapist. Theoretical studies of personal development, meditation and related topics have of course also been important. Apart from the important books by Carlos Castaneda and a few other important sources, I have not focused directly on learning more about the subject of magic during my life, but this is something that has come my way as a "by-product" of other lessons. Although I am not involved in deeper magic at all, at least not on a conscious level, I have to a large extent indirectly gained an insight into the world of magic and perhaps pushed the boundaries of my personal reality a little further than many people.

I devote about twenty pages at the beginning of the book more exclusively to the subject of magic, but as I emphasized in my introduction, this is not a book with detailed instructions on how to perform or work with magic. On the contrary, there are no such instructions in the book at all. I do my best to describe the conditions for magical change and for manipulating our so-called reality. I also do my best to emphasize that true magic is something that requires very deep insights and fundamental changes in the self and in one's entire being. In my text, I place great emphasis on personal development and how to work with your own mind, your own thoughts, and your perceptions and beliefs. In my opinion, it is absolutely necessary to know how reality is dependent on one's own prejudices and programming if one aspires to enter the field of magic and one also needs to get to know one's inner self and the thoughts, ideas and beliefs that govern one's existence.

The book is about the basic assumptions of reality. These are buried deep down in our consciousness in the form of the Creator's/first spirit's intention and purpose, which is the primary reason why there is a reality at all. Some or most of the training methods I describe in the book are very well suited to personal development in the "normal" sense. Used in this way, they are safe, positive and beneficial for most people.
On the other hand, some of the training methods, if used in an unthinking and drastic way, can lead to what may be the opposite of personal development and I therefore urge the reader to exercise some caution. Dealing with real magic means learning to let go of the ties to the reality you are used to and this can lead to alienation and deep confusion. For those of you who want to go deeper and push your boundaries much further than most people do, I recommend that you put a lot of effort into anchoring yourself in this reality by working on staying and being an ordinary, ordinary person. The best way to do this is to do ordinary things with ordinary people and to keep a clear boundary between your potential skills and your ordinary life. Don't go around manipulating others or try to influence them in a more drastic way in your everyday life. If you are sloppy and careless, your actions will backfire on you and you risk being the one who suffers the most from the consequences. I have seen serious consequences in a few cases of competent and seemingly stable people who dug too deep and were careless.
Making sure you remain ordinary and ordinary is a very important anchor. When it comes to managing one's own life, even the most skillful and wise person has his or her ass behind as we say in Sweden, i.e. we all need to adapt to the same basic circumstances and conditions of living and existing. This fact is something that no one escapes from regardless of wisdom and inner development

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If you want to go directly to chapters in the book, I have listed some topics with links in the menu on the right.

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Magic

I would like to start by giving you some magic.

As an example, I present herewith the strongest magic in the modern Christian western world.

There is no magic

Once you understand the meaning of this statement and how much it affects us, you will also have an idea of what magic really is.

In the end, life is just about our beliefs, our faith and our intention and that is all.

As a start, I will also tell you how to perform magic and what you need to achieve in order to perform magic properly.

To perform real magic, you need to be able to be fully in the right hemisphere of your brain and also be in touch with the organizing and structuring power in the left. If you succeed in this, you will be able to reorganize what you perceive as reality and change it. Maintaining contact with the western half is absolutely essential, otherwise you will lose yourself and have no idea that there is a reality you want to change.
If you work hard to manage how you use your hemispheres, you will discover that there is a possibility to actually hold your consciousness "in between" your hemispheres. In each case, you experience it as if there is a place there. When you succeed in doing this, it becomes possible to maintain your connection to structure and order at the same time as you can experience the boderless existence in your right hemisphere and possibly succeed in manipulating your reality. The place between left and right I describe is discussed in various places in schools for spiritual development. A couple of related examples are that in China they talk about the energy Chi and in India about Kundalini. Both are considered to be the "spiritual" energy that anatomically resides or is centered in our "middle" in connection with our spine and wich is in a position outside or beyond the dualistic in existence.
Finding the place I describe is extremely difficult and can take a lifetime (or perhaps more) to learn. You need to experience and learn who you are inside both physically and mentally, and see through the illusion that the order and orderliness you have learned during your upbringing is a fixed and stable or unchangeable reality. In this book, I attempt to describe, at least in part, some of the steps needed to loosen the bonds of the programming that shapes our view of reality.

As a start, I would also encourage you to follow this link to YouTube and listen to Jill Bolte Taylor tell her story of how she suddenly lost contact with the left side of her brain: My stroke of insight | Jill Bolte Taylor - YouTube

Her story is very important because it reveals or shows the fact that when you are completely in the right half of your brain, there is no structure and no boundaries in the sense that we normally experience reality and that when you are there, reality can therefore be changed if you learn how to do this.
Because her story is so important, I will repeat this link several times in the following text

If you wish, you can also visit her website: www.drjilltaylor.com.

Some things to think about

Humanity is on the threshold of a new awareness and a new stage of development. This is now happening quite rapidly and will increase the need for more insight and knowledge about the forces that shape us and underpin our existence. Developments in the IT field risk making us more fixed and enslaved in our reality. It is therefore extremely important to recognize and affirm what is genuinely human and our own deeper feelings.

Magic is neither good nor bad. You can't even say it's a tool because magic is the fundamental truth and force behind reality and our existence. Depending on who you are and your background, there may be forms and rituals that you can experience as magical, but the primary and at deeper levels only tool for real magic is you and your intention. Aids and rituals can be experienced as magical and important, but their function is mainly to help focus your intention in a better way.

When acting on this planet, it is good to remember that you are a child of Mother Earth. Having a sense of where north, south, east and west are can be helpful as this keeps you in line with our planet's magnetic field and also in touch with the planet itself. Another thing is that because everything has a rhythm and because the movement of this universe is rhythmic and curved or circular, rhythms and circles can be helpful to some extent.
Your body is your instrument and your own rhythms such as breathing, heart rate and even the pulse in the spinal canal are important tools and can be used as anchors and "reference instruments. " Muscle tonic rhythm can also be useful in inner work. However, even a good tool or instrument is only useful to a certain extent. In the end, thought, intention and purpose are all there is.

There are no levels of magic because magic just is, but there are levels at which magic can be practiced. There is everyday magic, small magic with small miracles and small everyday changes. There are bigger miracles and big magic that is about bigger changes in society and in human development. At the base and foundation of all this is the true magic that is the magic of thought and intention that can bring about real change and real miracles.

As I said, magic is neither good nor bad, but it can of course be used to do both good and evil. Its potential is unlimited, which is something that everyone who enters the field should consider. Choosing how to use yourself and your abilities is always crucial for all of us, but it can be far more important when practicing real magic than in a more ordinary life.

Although magic has unlimited potential, there are fundamental limitations for an individual practitioner. You cannot change our collective reality just anyway. This is because we all help to maintain our shared reality. We do this by being active magicians in our deepest subconscious. We operate and promote a shared picture of reality with common frames of reference, which stabilizes and confirms it. Magical changes on more than a very limited level require very powerful intervention and the larger the area you try to influence, the more you are met and limited by collective counter-forces. It is like walking into a headwind that turns into a storm and then a hurricane. In order to have an impact at the macro level, you have to influence other people's perception of reality. A Voodoo practitioner's ability to seriously influence the people around him or her is made possible by the fact that he or she lives in a culture where magic is considered real, and therefore it can be possible to get people in the local community to deeply believe in and be influenced by various magical changes that are unreasonable to most modern people. It is important to recognize that different local cultures, such as those of the Amazonian Indian tribes, have or have had a view of life that is fundamentally different from how we in the modern western world view reality. We simply cannot understand them because their systems of reference, frames of reference and worldview are so fundamentally different from our own.
In our culture, however, we have our own magic where the religions of our time have created a large part of the basis for our perception of reality and on top of this, rational modern science is perhaps the most decisive force for us.

Remember that nothing is real without compassion, empathy and love, without heart. In the end, what is good and true in life is always stronger and more important than what is evil or bad. This rule applies to magic and those who practice magic as well as to all other aspects of life. Without love and compassion, life is meaningless and if you lack an open heart, you can never get beyond a certain point in your own development and maturity as a human being. This is based on an important fact, and that is that without the heart there is a hollow, an emptiness in our being where there should be a connection between heaven and earth. It is as if the part on which two wings balance has been removed. Without it, it is not even possible to create balance. This emptiness and lack of function of a closed heart is constitutional and has to do with the basic conditions of creation. Our creator, the first spirit, in his wisdom created universes with this constitutional fact built in, and although reality can be changed in infinite ways, the basic rules of existence established by the first spirit are immutable.
The reason this "rule" is there is because love is necessary to remind us that we are all parts of the same whole and that we belong together. Any being who uses his or her intent and intention to do evil will sooner or later fail because he or she does not have an open heart. It is like reaching a big wall that you cannot climb over. The only way to cross the wall is to open your heart. With an open heart, the connection to the whole will be re-established, making redemption possible and, in time, redemption will also take place.

It is worth emphasizing that the meaning and importance of love and redemption is also the central message of the Christian Gospels, as it is central to other religions and spiritual traditions.

I strongly recommend that readers of this book work above all on developing and nurturing compassion, empathy and love. To do so is to encourage life itself, and to do so is necessary if you want to go on and claim the right to true conscious existence. Working with the heart precedes all other teaching. The mightiest being without a heart will ultimately fail before the poorest of the poor if in that poverty there is a living "open heart". It should also be known that the heart can never be killed or defeated, it can only be shaded and hidden away
There is a brotherhood and sisterhood for those who follow the way of the heart. To find and join it, one must look within oneself and find one's own heart.

Basic concepts

Belief
We are all magicians and we all perform magic all the time. For example, there is a little magic in almost everything we say and do and in what we believe to be true or not true. But the stronger magic that we all do is almost always at a subconscious level, and the most important and potent parts of that activity are buried very deep in our consciousness.

The powerful and real magic that we all perform all the time is to build, maintain and preserve the world around us, the world that we call ?reality?. We begin to do this as soon as we begin to exist in this world. It is an ongoing process and the more aware we become, the more complex and 'fixed' we tend to make our worldview.
Since we are all performing this magic all the time, one could of course say that we are all magicians. However, being a magician in the true sense of the word and in the way most of us interpret this concept means having control over the magic you do and thus being able to choose your own reality and sometimes even the reality of others.

Performing magic is a matter of perception and belief. But even if this is true, it tends to miss the point because most people do not have a conscious understanding of the deeper meaning of the word belief. Most of us think of faith as something related only to our superficial intellect and not to ourselves as whole beings, body, mind and spirit and to ourselves as beings where every atom of our body is filled with consciousness and not just our brain.

Our conscious intellect builds its activity on the premises about the world as we perceive it. We see what we perceive as true, real and logical, but we miss the fact that we have all collectively built and defined our reality by operating at a deep, complex and mainly subconscious level. We tend to see the world as something outside of ourselves and we think of its construction as something that someone else has created, or that may just be there without anyone being responsible. To overcome this misconception of the world and what reality is, we need to change our view at and understanding of ourselves and of what it means to believe.

Not believing is as important as believing
This fact is very, very important for the understanding of magic. What we choose not to believe in affects us as much as what we choose to believe in. If you know and accept this, you eventually realize that everything is a matter of conscious or subconscious choice. If you accept this, you may also come to realize that at a deeper level, everything is possible.

Upholding the world
The magic we perform to keep the dualistic world around us going is hard work. It tires us out and is the main reason for our need for sleep. When we are asleep, we are free to wander around in the dream world where everything is possible. The dream world is a place of true magic and when we are there, we are constantly creating new realities and/or staying in realities created by others. If we don't sleep, we hallucinate, we stop being able to perceive the world and the boundaries of reality fade and start to disolve. Consciously entering the world of dreams is one of the basic ways of exercising true magic, as is consciously leaving this world to go there or, in more advanced cases, by simply going somewhere else and taking your body with you.

Science eats magic
Modern Western science has its own magic. In some ways, there is not much difference between that magic and other magic. In other ways, there is a gulf that separates it from other magic. The main reason for this gulf is, first, that modern science uses distrust as one of its most central forces and, second, that it needs machines and equipment for almost everything.
Modern science performs its magic in a very, very formalized, strict and rigid way. Only certain patterns are allowed to work. What lies outside these patterns is forbidden, ignored or considered not to exist.
Exceptions to this attitude can sometimes be found, for example in modern physics when it breaks new ground. One problem, however, is that even open-minded scientists are often very heavily indoctrinated with the "truths" that are the cornerstones of science. They often do not realize how untrue or fragile these "truths" can be, and they often do not realize that what they call truths and axioms are almost always models, built on other models, and that these models, although they can be very advanced and form the basis for scientific development, can sometimes also restrict creativity rather than encourage it. There is however sometimes a certain wisdom in modern science associated with this fact, and that is that many scientists and also others know that the most groundbreaking discoveries usually come in so-called basic research, i.e. research wich is more openminded and includes less of preconceived notions and existing models.

There is a big difference between people who "think they know" and those who "know they believe" and many scientists, especially in the natural sciences, are victims of an extremely strong belief that they know how things are and unfortunately some of them extend this belief far beyond their scientific field and apply it to their personal view of almost everything.
I once saw a TV program where all the Nobel Laureates of the year discussed and presented their views on various topics both in research and various other areas. What was very interesting when following this discussion was that the Japanese man who had won the literature prize that year gave the impression of being the most sensible, wise and open-minded of them all, and he was just a writer and not a scientist.
Another thing that was a bit pathetic when listening to the discussions between all these very knowledgeable and smart scientists was that they talked quite a lot about how sad it is that ordinary people don't understand them. No one seemed to realize that it might be their own attitude of knowing better and communicating in an "I know how things are" way that is the main cause of the gap between themselves and all those they perceive as if they are not understanding them.

The Earth is a shining, wonderful globe full of the magic of creation itself. It shines with the light of magic. In the old pre-Christian world, however, although it can be considered primitive, it was even more luminous. Modern science, combined with the limiting concepts of Christianity and a growing rationality, illuminates the world with its light of scientific and religious truths and with electricity and logical lectures, but science, organized religion and rationality at the same time slowly and effectively extinguish or dim the magical light of a more undestroyed planet. There is an obvious connection between this and the fact that we are slowly and ruthlessly destroying the entire surface of the planet we live on.

Science devours the magic.

While science can bring hope and light, the fact that we are overexploitating our planet sadden both humanity and the planet and the downsides of science and so called progress tend to make people lose hope and feel depressed. However, we should not fall into the trap of thinking that everything was better in the past. Scientific progress is important, but it should not be used as a tool to bring harm, restrict freedom and limit and constrain reality by fixing and locking its boundaries.

Purpose/Intention

There are as many belief systems as there are cultures and people, and they are as important to us as air. I do not primarily mean faith in the religious sense, but mainly faith in terms of the beliefs, values and attitudes that permeate societies and form the very basis on which they rest. These belief systems are inescapable and necessary because they are the basis of our existence and without them there would be nothing but chaos.
Each belief system has its own rules and limitations. For most of us, however, our different belief systems overlap, especially at the subconscious level, and the differences are usually very superficial. Almost all of our basic beliefs as human beings are actually very similar, but the common ground lies largely below the threshold of consciousness. At the conscious level, we sometimes tend to exaggerate the differences and we may even attack those who have a different view of life. To distinguish the light of others and trying to crusch their belief systems by asserting your own views and demanding that others live by your rules is not very constructive. While there may be cultural and other habits that are such that it is important to distance oneself from them, for the most part the differences are at such a level that it is far more interesting and rewarding to be tolerant and accept and enjoy the lifes, experiences and views of others.

Since there are a great number of belief systems there are many ways of practicing magic. There are rituals, rhythms and music, circles and communions of various kinds, such as the Christian tradition of eating Jesus' body and drinking his blood. Most people may not realize that the Christian communion is a magical act, and even if they do, they probably don't realize or think about how incredibly extreme and powerful this magic is. For many Christians it is a reality that the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ.
If you really think about it, the Christian communion, which is the central ritual of Christianity, has had an incredibly profound impact on humanity and life on our planet over two millennia and its power and influence as a ritual is enormous.
Rituals are very important at the collective level in groups and communities because they help to focus the beliefs and intentions of many people. However, practicing true magic as an individual does not require external means or rituals. If you have the skill, all you need is intention.

Intention is central to all magic. When you do magical rituals and use different tools, you use them because you need tools or rituals to open up to deeper levels of consciousness and to focus and sharpen your intention. On a collective level, rituals are however very effective as a way of gaining a common focus.

It is not easy to describe or explain what intention in its deepest sense really is and I hope that your understanding of what it is will grow by reading this book.
Understanding intention in depth is so intimately connected to the subtle and fundamental aspects of perception and experience that it is more or less impossible to grasp with the intellect. It must be experienced.

Maybe there are other works and books that describe intention and different ways of training oneself to experience intention and intent.
One way to train is meditation and I think it is difficult to find alternatives that are as good or better for training one's ability to focus one's mind so that one's intention is pure, strong and clear. In my opinion, Zazen or Zen meditation and similar meditation methods without mantras or other distractions are likely to be the most effective.

Since I am writing this book on a serious and important subject, I will try to explain what the essence of intention is when it is completely pure and focused. It is not so easy to describe. The reason is that I don't think many people realize that we are almost always thinking about several things at once. It's just that we consciously experience only one of these lines of thought. The others lie deeper below our threshold of consciousness but can sometimes be experienced, especially when internal conflicts arise.
It is not unusual for us to think things that are contradictory at the same time. For example, we may think that we want one thing, but deeper down on another level we may think "no, I can't do that" or "no, I don't want to". In such a case, we are not clear about what we want to do and we may do it anyway or hesitate or reject it. In addition to this kind of conflict, there may be other thoughts going on in our subconscious at the same time that add to the unclear situation.
I will write more about our complex thought system later in the book and, as I said, I strongly recommend some form of personal exercise such as meditation for the reader who wants to learn more about how intention works in our deepest inner self.

In my experience, pure intention is found when your awareness touches the place or part of your mind where thoughts are born. By touching this place with your conscious mind, you can influence what thoughts will be born. It is a very subtle and meaningful thing and I cannot explain it further or tell you how you can mean to do something with pure focused will and without any distracting thoughts and know how to do it without having planed how to do it beforehand. You only know it when it is there and that can be a special thing to experience.
Being aware of your intention at a deep level can be like balancing on a knife edge. You can compare it to being a rally driver, driving a car very fast on a difficult road or a skier going very fast downhill on skis. Some people are very good at doing this and many others can at least do it, even if they are not very good at it. However, it is quite a different matter if you think about doing this while being fully aware of every decision that you normally make subconsciously and reflexively due to training. If you have to consciously make every decision regarding every tiny movement of your body and your hands and eyes, it becomes an impossible thing to drive a car in a rally or to ski fast down a steep slope.
Experiencing intention is like realizing, for a moment of a moment of a moment, that any activity, however small, will change the world forever.
It is like realizing that anything but absolute stillness and absence of thought will do something to you and to everything else around you. You may also find that it is almost impossible to stay in the place that is free of activity and thought and that the moment you leave it you start doing so many things and are involved in so many processes that for a brief moment life becomes extremely complicated.

The following story about creation and the first spirit may give you further insight into the topic of intention. It is a simple creation story and it is the true story of the first intention.
It is the story of how everything began and therefore it is also the true story of the source of magic as well as everything else.

The original spirit*

In a beginning there was.................. ? ....................................................

There was not nothing because nothing cannot exist without something.
There was not emptiness because emptiness cannot exist without something.
Let us say that this beginning existed and that it was unimaginable and impossible to grasp or understand.

In this beginning is the original spirit.
In some incomprehensible way, the original spirit is aware of its existence. How it was possible is not possible to grasp or understand. Yet it is a fact.

Conscious and insightful, in need of something to fill its awareness, the original spirit acted.

First it sent its consciousness as far as it could in one direction, let us call this direction forward.
When it found nothing there, it turned its awareness as far as it could in the opposite direction, which is backward because forward had already been created.
When it didn't find anything there, the original spirit sent its consciousness as far as it could in another direction, which we call left.
When it found nothing there either, it did the same thing in the opposite direction, that is, to the right, because the left had now been created.
Still without result, the original spirit turned its consciousness another 90 degrees and sent it out as far as it could in a direction we can call up.
It still found nothing and with only one direction left to go, it did the same thing downwards.

When the original spirit did not find anything with its consciousness as far as it could go in all six of these directions, it became desperate. It became dizzy and started to spin. It spun faster and faster in all possible directions and suddenly a golden globe appeared, created by the six points of consciousness stretched out in six different directions, now moving so fast and in so many directions that a sphere was created.

And suddenly, as if by a miracle, time and space came into being.

The spirit went to the surface of the sphere and saw that outside was eternity.
It went to the inside and in there was also eternity, even though there suddenly seemed to be a center where there had previously been some kind of unfathomable nothingness in the place where it had all begun.

The primordial spirit decided to call the sphere the egg of creation and, filled with joy at existence and at having somewhere to be, the primordial spirit expanded and began to fill the universe with creation.

*A part of the inspiration for the above story comes from the books "The flower of life," I and II written by Drunvalo Melchisedec.

About the Big Bang

There is a need to say something about the Big Bang because the above creation story reminds us of this theory. The name Big Bang is new, but the theory or phenomenon is ancient. It is sometimes called Brahma's Night and Brahma's Day. It is also called the breath of God. The universe contracts when the creator breathes in and expands when he/she breathes out. It is important to realize that this is an ongoing process and that the Bang as our science calls it is happening right now, BUT not where we are in the process. The thing is that there is actually only one moment, one now, and that everything exists and happens simultaneously in this now. However, time also exists because movement and distance create time. The fact that there is both time and no time is one of the things that is very difficult to grasp when it comes to creation and existence. Another difficult thing to grasp is the possibility that there is nothing at all, while at the same time there is an eternity and endlessness in the universes.

Choices

Choices are important. When you choose to open a new path, new possibilities arise. Every choice you make changes your life. However, for most of us, many drastic choices tend to be more or less neutralized by the tendency of life to make everything return to the normal. Our common view of reality, which we are programmed to and which we have learned and cultivated together, is quite stable and resistant to impact and change. It is like a contract where we have all agreed on the rules. This contract or common agreement is very difficult to break and there are consequences for those who break it. Our individual influence on the agreement/contract is very, very limited and reality tends to act like a rubber ball. When you push it, it bounces back and becomes the same round ball it was before.
Still some choices change life drastically because there are still many opportunities available to us inside the ball of reality.

When you look at what the situation can be like for people who really seriously choose to learn and develop magical abilities, there are differences in how such a choice is made.
For those who have not consciously intended to embark on the path of magic, the choice is often made by ending up in something that radically changes one's view of the world. It may be an event that radically affects a person or, perhaps most commonly, an encounter with a special person such as Don Juan Mathus in Castaneda's books. Usually there is a second occasion when one realizes that an important choice is there and it becomes a more conscious point when a choice takes place.
On the other hand, if you live in a culture where magic is an accepted reality, the choice is usually conscious and you look for a person or a context in which you "apply" to be accepted as a disciple. In both cases, the choice to enter into such a drastic and transformative learning situation has major consequences. The view of the world and life changes significantly and it is difficult or almost impossible to go back and this is therefore sometimes called the point of no return. Another metaphor is the opening of Pandora's box
In spiritual teachings, one can find names related to this choice connected with a person entering some form of training, for example the myth of entering the path of the Bodhisattva path.

One thing that can happen is that there are examples of people who seem to have been deprived of their freedom of choice by being mentally hijacked and more or less forced into taking a magic path. The choice in these circumstances may be to accept what is happening. Without acceptance, a person will never be able to train and learn anything properly.

Choosing magic, letting it really happen, opens the way to chaos, to realizing that everything exists in the same place and at the same time, overlapping and merging in all infinity. Time becomes a true illusion and your intention resting in your mind and heart is your only reliable tool if you want to remain intact. Besides doing your best to keep your heart as a living center, there is one thing that is very important if you embark on such a path. I have already mentioned it in the previous section, but it bears repeating because it is particularly important. You should work as hard as you can to develop and maintain your identity as an ordinary, everyday person. This goal should always be there and go hand in hand with training and learning. Being "ordinary" is the best protection you can have against the alienation that follows the deeper changes required to practice magic. You should avoid anything that makes you seem special and different. Avoid in all ways appearing special or unusual. You should aim for an ordinary life and ordinary things and actions as far away from the magical world as possible.
Develop ordinary skills that are part of a rich and healthy life. Live as much as possible like most people. Do not manipulate life or other people unless it is absolutely necessary and unavoidable. If you succeed in being ordinary and ordinary, you will stay healthy and probably relatively happy. If not, you may regret the choice you have made. If you notice that you ever let yourself seem special, take a step back and remember this advice.
You should also realize that special knowledge doesn't make you any different when it comes to dealing with the basic existential dilemma we all share, namely the fact that you exist and have to do your best to make it meaningful and "worthwhile". In that respect, you will never be more or less special than anyone else. Magic skills will not make you happier, but using your skills for the good of others and to help the planet is very rewarding and can fill your life with meaning.

Magical training

There are different ways to go about becoming a magician and training methods can vary. However, there are some basic things that you will need to address in one way or another if you embark on the path of magic. Some of them are listed below as examples.

This list is of course not complete, but what is listed below are important things to think about

Quieting the mind and inner dialogue
Freeing oneself from history and deeper learning/programming
Working with the senses,
perception and communication
Opening the sensory channels and improving the balance and connection between the cerebral hemispheres
Improving body awareness and gaining a greater appreciation of one's own body
Working with thought patterns and their meaning and their connection to and dependence on inner sensations and bodily awareness
Opening the dream world to everyday consciousness
neutralizing the attachment to time references and time frames
investigating sacred geometry and the difference between male and female
awakening Kundalini or Chi which is the fundamental life force that exists between left and right

These are a number of examples. There are more and probably some that I have not thought of.

There are, of course, overlaps between most of the topics in the list. Therefore, each area of training can also be like a gateway and when you start working on one of them, the effect can be generalized to one or more of the other areas. This also means that it is probably not necessary to train very actively in each of these areas separately, but the broader the training the better as it makes you more complete and more competent.

Some of the above areas are, in my opinion, absolutely central and these are stilling the mind and opening up to the dream world and orienting oneself in relation to the hemispheres. In order to deal with these central areas, it is also necessary to examine some of the other areas of training listed. As mentioned, the different areas are interrelated and interdependent.
The most important thing is to still the mind and the inner dialogue, and this also tends to generalize to all areas of training.
In the case of stilling the mind, this is a process in which bodily awareness is strongly involved. The body and mind are closely linked and it is important to realize that the body is a gateway to the deeper layers of our mind. Therefore, it is necessary to work with the body and techniques that increase body awareness in order to successfully quiet the mind and gain greater control over one's mind and thought processes.

Magic returns

After being banned, suppressed and ignored for a long time, magic is now reappearing or perhaps more correctly, resurrecting in our modern western world. The importance of the Age of Aquarius should not be underestimated. The change that began in the 1960s started a process that, at least for us Westerners, freed us from a great deal of tradition and from the tight grip of the Christian Church. The collective consciousness has since developed rapidly and the acceptance of both magic and magical insights has spread. This major change is very clear if you look back 50 to 60 years. In the nineteen seventies, new ideas emerged and old ones were revived on a gradually increasing scope, and they spread with ever-increasing speed. To realize the significance of this change, it must be remembered that a few hundred years ago, to be accused of practising magic could lead to being burned at the stake, and it was not long ago that one would have been socially isolated if one said and did things that became fully accepted in the period 1965 to 1985.
1968 was certainly an important turning point and the period after that up to around 1985 was like a big melting pot with new ideas emerging and old ones being resurrected and dusted off.
Change was encouraged and everything seemed possible. At first, more profound changes could be noticed mainly in a small, exclusive and often quite young part of the western world's population, but over time, the seeds that were sown and some of the new things that came to life have spread. The 1990s may seem like a setback to some, but now in the third millennium of our Christian way of counting time, it is clear that a broad and profound change of attitudes and ideas has gained a strong foothold among large parts of the population. The change at a deeper level is not so clearly visible, but the breadth of changing attitudes is very clear

The late nineteenth century was absolutely decisive. In terms of magic and its development, schools of magic that had been hidden for hundreds of years suddenly came to light and began to share their knowledge. There were many new books and ideas during this time.
Personally, I think Carlos Castaneda's work was among the most important, at least for me. Many of those who were active in the front line of change were deeply affected by these books. What was special about them was that they described in great detail the process by which a folklorist is introduced to the world of magic.
Castaneda wrote about his experiences as a student of magic in such a way that it is possible to follow his own process very closely, almost as if what he describes is something that happens to yourself. The learning processes of his Nagual teacher Don Juan Mathus that he was exposed to are so well described that one becomes very deeply involved in Castaneda's own process and therefore gains an understanding of some of the most important factors connected to opening up to and becoming aware of the magic in the world.

As a second-hand experiencer, it is almost impossible to pass on the knowledge and insights given in Castaneda's books. You need to read them yourself to really understand them.
For those who do read them, however, I would like to issue a warning. Do not be fooled into thinking that they are mostly about drugs. In the first few volumes, Castaneda describes several occasions when he uses mescaline. I know that because of this, some readers have stopped reading after one or more of the first books. However, those who continue to read will realize that drugs are not at all a central part of Don Juan's teaching. On the contrary, in the later books, Don Juan points out that the use of hallucinogenic drugs can be harmful and destructive and that the only reason Castaneda was allowed to use these drugs was because he was so stupid and because he could not accept that his view of reality was not the only possible one.

To give you more insight into the teachings of Don Juan Mathus and the central learning needed for a magician, I will present the following quotes from the book Tales of power by Carlos Castaneda: Tales of power 1974; pages 231-233, 245, 247-248, 265.) The exact same quotes are also found in the book Patterns of the hypnotic techniques by Milton H Erickson,M.D. volume 1 by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. The quotes below are addressed to Carlos Castaneda as an apprentice/student.

The first act of a teacher is to introduce the idea that the world we think we see is only a picture, a description of the world. Every effort of a teacher is geared towards giving this insight to his or her pupil. Accepting it seems to be one of the hardest things to do. We are often trapped in our particular worldview, which forces us to know and act as if we know everything about the world. A teacher strives from the very beginning to stop that perception. Magicians and spiritual teachers call itstopping the inner dialog and they are convinced that it is the single most important technique a student or adept can learn.

However, stopping the inner dialog is the key to the world of magic, he says. The rest of the activities are just props. All they do is accelerate the effect of stopping the inner dialog.

The teacher changes the view of the world. I have called this view the tonal view. I have said that everything that we are is in that island. The explanation of wizards and magicians says that the Tonal island is created by our perception, which has been trained to focus on certain elements. Each of these elements and all of them together form our view of the world. A teacher's task, when it comes to the learner's perception of the world, is to rearrange all the elements into one half of the bubble. By now you must have realized that clearing and reorganizing the Tonal means rearranging all its elements on the side of our reason and logic. My task has been to bring order to your ordinary view of the world , not to destroy it, but to force it to come together on the logical rational side.

He drew an imaginary circle on the stone and divided it into two along a vertical line. He said that "the art of a teacher was to force his pupil to group his world view on the right half of the circle".
Why the right half? I asked.
That is the side that is tonal, he said. "The teacher always turns to that side, and by on the one hand presenting his pupil in the way of the warrior, he forces him to reason and sobriety and strength of character and body, and by on the other hand presenting him with unthinkable but real situations which the pupil cannot cope with, he forces him to realize that his reason, though a most wonderful thing, can only cover a small area.

(Author's note: Don Juan sees the body in a slightly different way than we do. He directly connects the left hemisphere of the brain and the right hemisphere of the body in such a way that it is the body that acts as the bearer of our capacity for order and structure and not the brain)

"Walking in that specific way overloads theTonal," he said. "It overwhelms it. You see, the attention of the Tonal has to be directed to its internal creations. It is that attention that creates the order of the world in the first place, so the Tonal has to be attentive to the elements of its world in order to perceive it, and above all, has to perceive the world as an inner dialogue."
He said that "the right" way to go was an evasion. The warrior first drew attention to his arms by keeping his fingers folded, and then by looking, without focusing his eyes, at any point directly in front of him on the path that began at the tip of his foot and ended above the horizon, he literally flooded his Tonal with information. The Tonal, without its one-to-one relationship with the elements of its description, became unable to speak to itself, and therefore became silent. (Author's note: This is partly a description of a certain type of walking technique that don Juan taught)

"Order in our perception is an exclusive concern of the tonal. Only there can our actions have a sequence. Only there are they like stairs where you can count the steps. There is nothing like that in Nagual. That is why the view of Tonal is a tool, and as such it is not only the best tool but the only one we have.

"Dreaming is a practical tool developed by wizards and magicians," he said. "They were no fools. They knew what they were doing and saw the benefit of Nagual by training their Tonal to let go for a moment and then grab again. This statement does not make sense to you. But it is what you have been doing all along, training yourself to let go without losing the connection to your fixed reality. Dreaming, of course, is the crowning achievement of magicians, the ultimate use of Nagual.

Castaneda's books and Don Juan's teachings are very important. They also suggest that shamanic and magical traditions have been preserved in secret despite the Christian conquest, oppression, destruction and extinction of the Indian culture.
Before the white man, these traditions were a living part of the various native societies of the American continent. A number of these schools and traditions have been hidden and preserved for hundreds of years. Their emergence from hiding, which is still happening today and which has gradually taken place since the upheaval of the 1970s, is an important part of the spiritual development necessary for the next stage of human evolution.

Certain aspects of Juan Mathus' teachings are particularly important. Of these aspects, the concepts of Tonal, Nagual and the Nagual being are central.

Tonal and Nagual

As far as Tonal and Nagual are concerned, they are, or at least appear to be, the same as our two bodyhalves and the hemispheres of the brain connected to them. They are products and manifestations of duality and consequently quite different in quality. They can be compared to yin and yang, male and female aspects of the human self, etc. As can be deduced from the quotes above, Tonal stands for structure, reason and detachment. Nagual represents feelings, intuition, chaos and unity. To further understand this and to understand the consequences of manipulating the mechanisms that make up a normal undisturbed use of Tonal and Nagual, one needs to read Castaneda's books or some other work of similar importance if one is able to find one (which I have not been able to do).

I will give an alternative description that is more in line with modern Western concepts

Most of us regard the order and sense of order we have achieved during our upbringing as reality. It is like believing that a map is the real landscape and not just a limited description. What we think is reality is a very small part of something much, much larger and which we can only perceive in a very limited way using our senses and our learning. However, this order is the only thing we have to rely on to navigate our lives and is therefore of the utmost importance to us.
We organize the world in the left part of the brain and the more orderly we are, the more we can be forced to stay in or favor that part. The right hemisphere can support us in our ordering mainly through emotional connections and confirmations, but that side is in its basic function free from order and is instead in contact with what reality really is, i.e. the enormous wholeness from which we have "picked" defined and ordered a very small part. The fact is that "the real" reality is so free of order that it is indescribable and I cannot tell you what it is. It can only be perceived, and in order to use and navigate it, it must be at least partially organized.
It should be added that the total difference between our hemispheres that I describe has to do with their basic function. In practice, we have good cooperation between the right and left hemispheres and that means that their function does not look so totally different. If you for example look at a picture of which functions are located where in the brain, the two halves can look relatively similar. To better understand this, we can think of each hemisphere as having a "main responsibility" that is consistent with the above picture of total dissimilarity. In our practical day-to-day lives, however, a healthy brain functions as a whole, with everything working together.

We are all in contact with the left side of our brain and experience the indescribable, which is reality in the form of perceived experiences and parts that have been systematized and organized. In this experience, our whole body and all our senses are involved and very important. What we experience in this way emerges in small pieces that we organize and incorporate into our world view. However, having contact with the right hemisphere is absolutely necessary for us to be able to organize and shape our experiences in the way we need. Both parts of the brain are therefore equally important and must work together. Because order is so important, we tend to favor the left hemisphere and this leads to an imbalance that can be debilitating. Due to our upbringing, there can also be disturbances in communication in the brain and the very important communication between the two hemispheres. This happens when someone is traumatized and/or due to a destructive upbringing forced to arrange things in a way that completely or partially excludes the possibility of communication between the hemispheres. In such cases there is a tendency to get stuck in the left hemisphere and in a structural loop that "spins around" in such a way that you keep coming back to the same point or conclusion. If you get stuck mainly in the right hemisphere, which is less common, life will instead become chaotic and disorganized and in the worst cases this leads to psychosis.
To become a little more free in our lives, it is good to loosen the ties to our order and programming and also from any feelings and bodily reactions involved. If you can step aside and allow time for reflection, freedom of choice becomes a more tangible reality and you can choose how to act and even, to a large extent, how to react. This is something that can be achieved in good psychotherapy and through meditation. A combination of both is often very good and helps you to become more balanced and to unblock internal communication.
If you want to go further and increase your freedom of choice, it is important to free yourself to a large extent from the programming in the left hemisphere and also from the sometimes binding and disturbing perceived emotional communication with the right side. This makes you even more balanced, which can give you the opportunity to rest in or be in the middle or between the two hemispheres.
If you are sufficiently free, you may be able to enter and experience the right hemisphere almost completely without losing contact with the ordering side, and since everything is possible in the indescribable wholeness of our right, nagual side of the brain, you may be able to reorganize the order in the left part and create change. It's a bit like redrawing a map. Things on the ground suddenly look different and will be perceived and experienced in a different way.

The Nagual creature

It is important to emphasize that the Nagual being in Castaneda's world has a different meaning than the Nagual side of our body. A Nagual being is someone who, because of his/her constitution, can use his/her Nagual side/half of the brain and its power of change in a way that is not easy for ordinary people.
In the case of the Nagual creature, don Juan does not give us many facts about this particular type of creature except that he or she is four-parted and not just two-parted
In what follows I will add some additional facts to his description.

The Naquala being or individual is interesting. According to don Juan, a Nagual is a very rare and special type of human being. A Nagual is quadripartite while other humans are bipartite. (Don Juan does not say how but it appears that it is a matter of internal anatomy and seems to affect mainly the nervous system.) By being quadripartite, a Nagual has special characteristics and abilities that ordinary humans do not have. Among these abilities, the ability to perform magic more easily than others is perhaps the most important. The name Nagual originated in the central parts of the American continent, but it probably has even older roots. Another old name originating in the Mediterranean region is Lucumon or Lucumone.

Each human being consists of two halves of the body separated by a vertical center line in the front-back direction. Our brain is similarly divided into two halves with the very different characteristics described above. According to what I have deduced, the internal anatomy of the Nagual is such that each of these two halves is perceived internally as if it were split in two. The upshot of this is that there is at least one more line of separation in his/her being that is not visible to most people, but which those with more open and trained perception can see. It is not physically visible from the outside but can be seen in a person's aura. The two center lines form a cross that runs through the entire Nagual being from top to bottom. It is probably possible to see this difference inside our brain, or at least it should perhaps be possible with the help of an MRI machine. The extra division or line of separation makes a big difference in the ability of a Nagual to open up his/her being to both the known and unknown worlds, by using both tonal and nagual, and to gain ability move more freely between these two aspects of our existence.

This is a picture of the traditional Lucumon cross which is also the Nagual cross.
It shows two intersecting lines as well as Nagual's specific diagonal cross layout (see below).
Note the similarity to the Christian cross.

More about the Nagual creature

As mentioned above, the normal human is divided into two halves of the body. These are related and connected to our two hemispheres so that our left half is connected to our right hemisphere and vice versa.
A popular and often used way of describing the two halves of the body is to say that the left side is the female or intuitive part of our being while the right side is the structured or male part. In the Taoist view, the left half of the body is called the yin part and the right half the yang part. This division is the same for both men and women. A relatively small proportion of the population has the two sides reversed.
The brain is also divided but in the opposite way to the body because the left side of the brain is more directly connected to the right side of the body and vice versa.

Our being is not only made up of the body we normally see. People with more open eyes may perceive the human being as a luminous oval shape with an egg-like form. This is what is popularly known as our aura or at least part of it. The division described above is, as far as I can tell, visible in the human aura.
The Nagual individual, which in a perceptual and interactive sense is divided into four parts instead of two, functions internally as if there were double intuitive or female parts and double male parts. The four parts are connected in the brain in a way that creates a diagonal cross in the nagual being. The cross is also visible in the aura, although it is not very obvious. However, the nagual body is not visually different from the bodies of ordinary people. The result of this unique cross-connection in the brain and spiritual being of the nagual appears to be that the front left part is connected to the back right part and vice versa and that this connection in the brain goes from the front rightpart to the back left and from the front left part to the back right.

This is the traditional sign showing a crosswise connection representing a Lucumon or Nagual. This sign is now closely associated with the Nagual Jesus of Nazareth

The result of the Nagual's different constitution seems to among other things be, that his or her inner perception is structured in a somewhat different way than that of ordinary people. There also seems to be a more complex interaction in the brain in terms of structure and intuition. The possibilities for inner interaction are richer and it is easier for a Nagual than for an ordinary person to find the place between left and right, which is the place of intention and the place where one can step aside and be less bound by perceived reality.
There are various names for this focus of consciousness, such as the place of creation, the place outside dualism and time, the place outside the circle, etc. The important thing is that this focal point is the place where our pure focused awareness/intention is active and where we can change the perceived worldview if we are sufficiently aware and have the ability, will and energy to do so. When you rest in this focus, you may be able to explore and use the right part of your brain and still be in control, thereby you can influence reality.
According to Don Juan, people with normal anatomy can also reach this place or focal point and can sometimes act at least as powerfully as any Nagual to bring about change. However, the Nagual seems to have a lot for free and therefore probably does not need as much training. Sometimes, in rare cases, maybe no specific training may be needed at all.

I need to clarify a few things about the books by Carlos Castaneda and my view of the magical school his teacher Juan Mathus represents.
For me, these books were a turning point that led to new fascinating and exciting insights that changed my life in many ways. They are written in such a way that you, yourself are drawn in and almost feel like a student. It is easy to be captivated by all this new mystery that you instinctively realize contains genuine knowledge of a kind that is difficult to obtain in any other way. I have also read a few books by a female disciple of Don Juan Mathus and Castaneda named Florinda Donner. Of these books particularly one, "Being in Dreaming", is similarly very interesting and gives a picture of magic as a realistic force that has a very deep impact. I highly recommend Castaneda's books and two of Florinda Donner's books make a very convincing contribution that complements what Castaneda writes about.
What can be learned from the books is unique knowledge that I believe is very difficult to find elsewhere. Knowledge that is valuable and can contribute to a deeper understanding of the foundations and conditions of our existence. It also gives a clear picture of how incredibly different the view of reality and our existence must have been for parts of the population on the American continent in pre-Christian times, before the white man.
As I have emphasized I see a great deal of value in the knowledge provided in the books. I am however rather or even very critical to parts of the philosophy and the aims and objectives that Don Juan seems to stand for. He talks a lot about freeing ourselves from the ties that have shaped our lives and that in many ways bind us in a negative way. At the same time, Don Juan sometimes presents himself as a victim of a tradition that is at least as enslaving and that also gives the impression of leading to loneliness and isolation. There seems to be little interest in anything other than the methods and training to which Don Juan's tradition and magical school are dedicated. The pupils are partly "caught up" in a strange and exciting world from which it is almost impossible to escape. Interest in the world outside their own group seems almost non-existent. Young people who do not reach the set goals do receive solid and careful help, but are then left to their fate when, despite the help, they do not reach where they are striving. It seems to be a selfish and very different world that we get an insight into and it becomes particularly clear in Florinda Donner's book about her apprenticeship which, in relation to Don Juan, is quite short-lived and ends with Don Juan and the majority of his group leaving both her and Castaneda and a few other adepts to fend for themselves in a world from which they have partly begun to free themselves.

To understand the importance and quality of the right side of our brain, I invite you to follow this link to YouTube and listen to Jill Bolte Taylor tell her story: My stroke of insight | Jill Bolte Taylor - YouTube

If you wish, you can also visit her website: www.drjilltaylor.com.

The Nagual Jesus son of Mary and Joseph

From the pictures and what I have written in the previous section, it is clear that Jesus was definitely a Nagual. If you believe the accounts of the miracles he performed, it is difficult to draw any other conclusion. His mother Maria may also have had this uncommon constitution. However, Mary was uneducated, while there are sources that claim that Jesus was educated by skilled teachers in India and elsewhere. It is likely that Jesus was very adaptable and skilled even as an untrained person.
The genetics that govern Nagual quality is unknown to me, but there is every reason to assume that this genetic constitution is very rare.

The character is said in Christianity to mean the Greek initial letters KR, which stand for Kristos or Christ. This may be true, but just as the usual cross existed and was used as an important symbol long before the time of Jesus, the sign is an ancient symbol for and graphic description of a Nagual. There are probably those within Christianity who know this but who for some unfathomable reason have chosen to keep it hidden and secret in the same way that much other important knowledge may have been preserved in secrecy but eradicated in society primarily by the Catholic Church and its Inquisition.
(A fact that many people do not know is that the Inquisition was active until well into the 19th century. Moreover, the Catholic Church probably purged dissenters even after the Inquisition ended.)

Jesus was most likely a Nagual and most likely some other men and women in human history and even today have had or have this characteristic. However, there is no obvious natural connection between being a Nagual and being a leader or being smart and strong or having spiritual or other wisdom. A Nagual can certainly be as good or bad, wise or unwise, competent or incompetent as any other human being. Among spiritual leaders, however, I would guess that this characteristic is probably more common than in most other fields of endeavor. This is probably due to the unique characteristic of the Nagual being that a Nagual has a greater ability than ordinary people to open up to spiritual issues and therefore may be drawn to a spiritually oriented existence.
Because a Nagual is a very rare individual, there are an enormous number of candidates to choose from among "ordinary people" when looking for someone who can lead and guide others. Contemporary nagual leaders in more mundane matters are therefore probably extremely rare.

Basques and Etruscans

The following theory particularly about the Etruscans is largely speculation based on limited information, mostly in the form of circumstantial evidence.

The Nagual creature is, as far as I know, extremely rare. Why it is so is an open question. There must be complicated genetic mechanisms involved. There are a few people who have their internal organs on the opposite side of the body to most people. It is possible that at some point there may have been a genetic variant of our species that has had parts of its internal anatomy and function altered in a way that has created the genetic constitution that a Nagual is said to have. If, for example, humans with a different internal anatomy are involved in such a change, it is likely that most cases of some form of internal duplication did not lead to survival, but perhaps in a few cases it has been successful and may have led to the fourfold division that a Nagual is said to have in its internal anatomy.

In the case of the Etruscans, there is evidence to suggest that this group of people, and perhaps the Basques as well, worked actively to breed for the Nagual constitution. This may have affected these two ethnic groups genetically in other ways as well, so that they have some deviations from the genetics of most humans.
Grinder and Bandler, the two authors and creators of NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming, claim that the Basques are the only ethnic group they know of where people differ from the way most people function when it comes to our system for receiving and processing images, words and feelings, what they both called our internal representation system. This difference is quite strange. The Basques differ in a crucial way from how we humans function in general in terms of functions that are very central to how we function perceptually when we communicate. This deviation could be a result of them actively trying to breed for the Nagual quality. Their breeding ambitions may have affected the system of perception for the whole population because these functions would very likely work differently for a person who is a Nagual.

The term Lucumone is an Etruscan word and seems to mean king or leader in a specific way that indicates a particular quality that others lack. This may suggest that the Nagual quality was perhaps more common in their society than elsewhere. The mystery of the extinction of their culture is now considered mostly to be a result of them being absorbed by their inheritors the Romans. However, no one really seems to know how this extinction could have happened so quickly almost without leaving traces.
The Etruscans were highly civilized and it is very strange that so little is known and so few traces remain. It may be that powerful and dominant smaller groups, because they had leaders with magical skills, just went elsewhere when they were threatened. For them, elsewhere may have been an option that meant leaving this reality or this place in our reality. If you read Carlos Castaneda's books, this ability to go elsewhere, to change reality is one of the rare qualities that a Nagual is said to have and he or she can, as it is said, also take others with them. Therefore, my theory is maybe not completely unthinkable. Castaneda's and not least Florinda Donner's books contain examples of people suddenly disappearing more or less before their eyes and then suddenly reappearing without any reasonable explanation. This can be for just a short time or for many days. Castaneda himself was said to have been away from our reality for a long time when his teacher Don Juan suddenly left together with most of his followers.
As far as the Etruscans are concerned, one can imagine that if something similar happened there among the most influential members of the population, it would have a very dramatic effect.

More about the Nagual creature

As mentioned above, the Nagual quality was probably relatively more common in Etruscan society than elsewhere and perhaps also among the Basques. If the Etruscans bred for this trait, it was perhaps more widespread in their genetic pool than elsewhere. If so, this may have had consequences when their society suddenly ended. Nagual individuals may have been more common in this part of Italy long after the Etruscans disappeared. St. Francis of Assisi is one such possible example. He was born in the old Etruscan part of Italy and there must have been several other such examples in the early Christian world. Leonardo da Vinci may be another example of a Nagual from the same part of Italy.
In the late Middle Ages, especially after 1000 and onwards, the Catholic Church ruthlessly hunted down anyone they thought might threaten their power. This was part of a stricter view of what is the right and true faith that the Catholic Church gradually adopted. Perhaps only people with nagual characteristics who were active in the Church were allowed to exist as long as they were very clear in their support for the Church.
The Inquisition and the hunt were effective ways of purifying the Church and ridding the world of influences that could compete with the "true faith" of the Christian Church, and gradually have have also Naguals within the Church likely been hunted and killed along with many other people with ideas and activities that the Catholic Church found uncomfortable. Religiously motivated purges were and are a very nasty process that, unfortunately, was probably also effective in reducing the part of the gene pool that leads to the birth of Naguals. The Vatican probably knew very well what they were doing in this regard and they probably did it very deliberately because sometimes Naguals tend to be such that people are drawn to them and to flock to them, especially if they use their powers to help others.
In today's world, Naguals are probably very rare, at least in Europe and in areas where the Catholic Church has had great influence. Those that do exist probably suffer from a lack of knowledge, stamina and training and/or are wise enough to hide themselves very carefully.
It can be dangerous to be exposed and it may even be that Naguals are still hunted by the Vatican but in secret because their existence can make people realize that Jesus was not as unique as the Church claims.

Whether you believe my theories or not, the Christian Church's pursuit of dissent and other abuses is a great shame. This applies to a great extent to the Catholic Church, which with its Inquisition is responsible for countless atrocities. However, Protestants and other Christian denominations also bear a heavy responsibility. The hunt for dissenters, ostracization, forced Christianization, etc. is a large part of the foundation on which ecclesiastical Christianity rests. The systematic extermination of cultures and people on other continents is another part. Public torture, witch burnings, etc. are stains of shame that are part of our history. The churches today do not lack responsibility because the church has been a main actor in that part of history and because that is what has built up the churches' current position and their power and influence. For my part, I seriously mean that every priest in a Christian church should begin his service by asking for forgiveness for all the past injustices that exist in the history on which their activity is based. Just as the extermination of the Jews and the massive persecution and killing of Palestinians should never be forgotten, neither should these atrocities in our Western history.

About God, Jesus and faith

Jesus was a very important person. His impact on human history is so enormous that it is almost impossible to imagine. His ideas and teachings deal with issues that are central to us as human beings. It is a pity that these teachings are linked to the Old Testament of the Bible with all its historical texts, and it is in my opinion important, to decouple the evangelical message from the rest of the Bible. Instead, we should consider the Old Testament only as a way of placing Jesus in a historical context and as a help to understand what we may need to know about him as a person.

In interpreting the Gospel message, we should start with what is most important. To do this, we should apply and use some steps that are central to all learning. The first and most important step is learning through imitation/modeling.
Modeling and imitation is how a newborn child learns and modeling continues to be important even as we grow up.
Learning by listening to verbal messages and instructions starts to play a role as we get older and sometime around 8 to 9 years old this type of learning is used perhaps almost as much as modeling. However, depending on the situation, this differs and even as adults we sometimes tend to use modeling as a basic way of learning. This is the case, for example, in most subconscious learning processes.
If we apply this view of learning to the Gospels, we must start with what Jesus did, his actions. These are what really weigh heavily in his teaching and if we compare the four Gospels with each other and also with other accounts of Jesus, it is possible to discover and understand what is likely to be true and to tease out the central issues.
As a second step, we can begin to look at what he may have taught verbally. Once we begin to study oral teachings more closely, however, we must be wary of misinterpretation and the influence of the people who convey and report these messages. Thus, one should be quite skeptical when accepting verbal messages, especially after such a long time as the New Testament. In cases where the 4 Gospels convey a similar message, the reliability is of course greater
As a third step, one can study what other people among Jesus' disciples and followers have done and said and how they seem to interpret Jesus' teachings. In this way, you might find something that confirms what you have found in the first two steps. For my part, I would estimate that in terms of what is the true part of Jesus' teaching, his actions are about 80%, his verbal message 15% and the rest 5%, but this is of course a very rough estimate.

By following the above steps, we can perhaps determine the following:

1) Jesus seemed to value people equally, whether they were poor or rich, influential or non-influential, male or female. All people have the same value.
2) Jesus also seems to have had and shown love empathy and compassion in a very tangible way. He seems to have had a great loving and caring heart.
3) Jesus renounced worldly power.
4) Jesus used his extraordinary powers to help other people.
5) Jesus chose death before compromising his heart.
6) Before he died and in death, he chose and gave forgivness.

One might find other things that are also likely, but hardly as important as these six.

Christian churches and congregations often have a strange way of looking at the Gospel message as if it were their property. This may not seem so strange at first glance because this is how people often act, but when you think about it further, you can see how crazy this attitude is. It is impossible to own someone's actions or the account of someone's actions. No one can own the story of Jesus as told in the Gospels. Nor can anyone have the right to interpret this message, because the message of the Gospels is a gift to all humanity, Christians and others alike. It is a gift to all who want to be part of and follow the teachings of Jesus, whether they consider themselves Christians or not.

Jesus was a spiritual teacher and he was also a magician. There is no doubt that he could perform the miracles described in the Bible. Such things are possible to do and a Nagual, as described above, has a natural talent for performing magic.
More important than his miracles, however, is Jesus' impact on history and this is also magic, perhaps one of the most powerful magics there is even if it does not involve performing great miracles.

The teachings of Jesus, his example and/or other similar teachings and examples are central if you want to open up to and use your intention and purpose consciously. These same ideas and thoughts are part of many magical traditions. Carlos Castaneda's teacher Don Juan speaks of the path of the heart and the importance of following that path, and so do many other teachers. Without an open heart and without compassion, empathy and love, you risk losing yourself. This is important to know for every conscious being, but it is crucial if you choose a path that involves true magic.

Jesus' love, his open heart, his renunciation of worldly power and his choice of salvation and foregiveness are the central messages of the Gospels and not least important is the fact that he used his powers not for his own gain but to help others.

As you may understand from what I write, "being a Christian" in my opinion is not primarily being a member of a Christian church but having Jesus as a role model, someone to hold close to your heart as a help to keep your own heart open. Of course, being part of a church or community can be very good. It can be a way to keep your faith, trust and love alive and to share it with others. A way to feel at home and rest in something good.
In some churches, however, you get a lot of rubbish, messages and commandments that are supposed to be linked to being a true Christian. In addition, sometimes you may be forced or pressured to judge others outside the church you are a part of or judge someone within the church who violates what is considered right and proper.
I've been around for a while and I've seen Christian churches with crazy commandments and prejudices, such as: Women must not keep their hair down, but must wear a topknot. Women must not use cosmetics, etc. There are all sorts of commandments, such as that you must not do this or that because if you do, you are a sinner. Every time I have heard this, it has very clearly been due to prejudices linked to the priests or preachers themselves and/or to other members of the congregations. It is also strange that a church can condemn someone for something such as not wearing their hair in a knot or for using cosmetics and 10 or 15 years later the same thing may be OK and not a sin at all because the priest or preacher in question has been replaced. Too often the result of personal prejudices among priests and leading members of a community has been the cause of misery.

I have my own convictions. Human lifestyle, values and prejudices should not be confused with God. God only cares about how we act and that we follow our heart.
I urge you who are reading this to do your best to form your own opinion and to consider what you think is right and what you want to believe. You have all right in the world to interpret the Gospels in your own way.

I must add that although I hold the Christian message in high esteem, this message is not unique and neither is Jesus, even though he is special. God has many messengers and Jesus is just one of them, even though he has been and still is exceptionally important to us Westerners. To make him unique in the sense that the only right thing to do is to believe in him is to put yourself above all those who have other beliefs and other prophets. This is NOT a nice thing to do. God is there for all creation and he/she does not make a difference between Christians and people of other faiths.

I want to add a few things about how I see God and faith. First of all. We are all God's children and there is a spark of God in all human beings as well as in animals and plants and in everything that exists. To find God is to find this spark within yourself and to see/recognize it in others and in what surrounds you, what you are a part of. Therefore, in my opinion, faith is not something that you can find by reasoning logically in your mind or by believing in texts in a book. Faith is not primarily an intellectual thing. It is an experience, something you realize and know with your whole being and with your senses and feelings strongly involved, not just with your mind.
When you have this experience, you "just know" without a doubt. There is no need to reason or debate. The heart is at the center of the experience and you just know that you are part of something bigger than yourself. You may also realize and feel that you have your own loving heart and that it is entirely up to you how you use your power to love. This free will is God's greatest gift.
Another thing is that when you experience faith, it is also more OK to be separate, to be a small part of the richness that is God's creation. You do not have to do things to please God. You are special to him/her anyway. There are no conditions.

It can be hard to understand how everyone can be special to God, and it can be very hard to accept that people who you think are devilish or evil are as special to God as you are.

The experience that is faith is not static, but it evolves and can grow. It needs to do so. It may need to be guarded in order to grow, but once it's there, I don't think you can lose it. There is no return. This knowledge is always somewhere deep inside us, even if we don't always have it in focus.
Accepting that we are separate is an important thing. We may long for unity, for not being alone, but being separate is as important as being in unity. The tendency to think that unity, being one with God, is the right thing is very strong from our separate position, but that does not mean that separateness is wrong. From the perspective of unity, separateness is more desirable than unity. God wants it both ways. He/she is in many ways incomprehensible and full of contradictions if you try to understand it logically. You can only understand God when your heart and emotions are involved and then you might also understand the importance of love and how it can be that God loves all of creation and everyone equally.
In my opinion, there is one very important thing to understand about God. God does not need your worship in the first place, but your love. I urge you to think about this. Take a look inside yourself. Deep within your own heart and your own being you will find your own need for total unconditional love. It is in this that we are the image of God and not in our outer being.

Just as God needs to be loved, he/she also needs friends more than worshippers. Imagine what it would be like to be cherished and worshipped by everyone else, how enormously lonely it would be. We all need love and so does God, although this love can be greatly affected by the fact that most of us separate beings also want and need help from God. I urge you to give God all your love and also to offer your friendship to the best of your ability.

I said in the past that you cannot find God in a book. This is only partly true. A book can trigger an experience of faith, as can other things such as something dramatic happening in your life or listening to someone who makes a strong impression. What I mean is that a book is just a book. The Bible is just a history book and to say that it is the word of God is preposterous. Even the Gospels are just stories about Jesus. Who wants the God who is so often found in the Old Testament. That image of God is very far from what God is.
Believing in texts can be dangerous because the texts are too inflexible and too full of human prejudices. On top of this come the interpretations that churches or preachers leave us. Interpretations that are often clouded by the prejudices of the interpreter. This is why it is so important to form your own opinion when it comes to messages in books or oral sermons.
If you follow the words of a book instead of your own heart, you may end up making choices that you will deeply regret, and if you follow a preacher's advice even though you know it is not right, you may end up suffering and worrying.
I remember a program on Swedish television where a woman with a hidden camera went to several Muslim priests to ask if she could say no to her husband when he wanted to have sex or if she had to do it even though she didn't want to or didn't feel well. Almost all of the mullahs she asked said that she had no right to say no. In fact, they seemed to think that rape within marriage is ok. This is very frightening and says something about how confused priests can be. In this example, it is Muslim priests who are acting in a very bad way. Something similar can of course also happen, and unfortunately sometimes does, with Christian priests and other spiritual leaders.

There is a need to say something more about the fact that Jesus used his extraordinary powers primarily to help others. This is very important. If you have or develop extraordinary talents or abilities, it is your responsibility to use them primarily for others and not for yourself. This choice is crucial. In fact, the only way to deal with being unusual when it comes to extraordinary abilities is to help others if you do not want to risk alienating yourself. If you use your abilities mostly for yourself, you are just a manipulative egotist and this leads to isolation. Using your powers for others is in line with the tradition in many so-called primitive societies. A shaman is supposed to be a servant in his/her community and in turn be provided with food and shelter and whatever he/she needs to live a decent life. There is great wisdom in this as it helps the shaman to avoid alienation and instead become part of his/her community.
In our complex society, you cannot be a shaman or a helper in the way that it works in a small tribe. In our society, people with unusual abilities usually have to hide to avoid being exploited. If, on the other hand, you have more limited powers, you are usually free to act as a helper and use your abilities in an accepted niche. If you do that, I think you should embrace the shaman tradition and not charge more than you feel is right. If you start to see profit as too important, there are risks for yourself. It is also true that sometimes, when needed, you should help people for free or at a reduced price, BUT it must also be said that this is not a rule to be followed at all costs. If you give and give without concidering your own needs, you can exhaust yourself completely and then you will be of no use to anyone and least of all to yourself. Thus, even if you are a helper, you have the right to put yourself first as long as it is not at the expense of others. Your first concern should be yourself, which means taking care of yourself and prioritizing yourself in a way that keeps you healthy and happy. If you allow others to empty you, you will end up not being able to help anyone. You need to sometimes be able to say no.

Quieting the mind

I recommend meditation as the first and best way to quiet the mind.

There are many different types of meditation. Different methods have their own approach and although many are similar, some may have more specific effects. Some methods are more complete and focus on your whole being while others may be designed to develop or unlock specific parts of your resources.
As I mentioned in the previous, I think Zen meditation/Zazen is a good method to use. I recommend the Soto school tradition because it is very pure and simple. Other Zen schools and other methods such as Vipasana, TM or Acem and different versions of what is called Mindfullness are also very good and have similar effects, but using a mantra as in TM and Acem can be an obstacle and be in the way when you reach the deeper parts of your inner self.
Regardless of the method, meditation is usually a good way to be with yourself, to get closer to yourself and to become more relaxed, and meditating is therefore good for you no matter what your goals are.
The key is to find a method that feels good to work with and that suits your own personality and your needs. The more complete meditation methods, such as Zazen, work to strengthen the here and now consciousness, reduce and loosen the ties to the inner dialogue and help to free the practitioner in those areas where the self or mind is negatively tied to the personal history.
Meditation also helps to gradually reduce mental and physical tension.
One very good thing about meditation is that in most traditions and schools it is a method that is effective and at the same time kind to the practitioner.
What may seem a little strange in this context is also that meditation is in some ways counter-effective in relation to magic. The reason for this is that all good and healthy methods of meditation have their own built-in positive process. They gradually reduce and calm the inner dialog, open the heart chakra and make us more relaxed, focused and content. The opening of the heart chakra brings mental and physical balance and makes us less restless or overly ambitious.

People with long experience of meditation often know a lot about the illusions of reality and how fragile reality can be. Meditation can allow you to rest in an area close to the boundaries of reality, and experienced practitioners can achieve a profound openness to the "essence of magic" without having to open up for magical thinking. In this way, they can avoid entering the path of magic while still learning more about the essence of magic. This is very good and makes meditation an excellent tool for personal development and for gaining deep insights without any drastic consequences. This is why I strongly recommend meditation as a basic practice for whatever goal you want to achieve.

In the following, I give some more information about the Soto School of Zazen.