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CONCLUSION
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The theme of this book is that there are higher levels of consciousness to which we humans may aspire, and that those higher levels are infinitely more desirable than our present condition. This is the fundamental esoteric teaching, the one element that is common to hermetic and alchemical writings, the bhagavad-gita, the parables of Jesus, the teachings of the compassionate Buddha, the secret of the golden flower, Plato's Republic, the enneads of Plotinus, Upanishads, and innumer­able other sacred and secular texts.

Working toward these higher levels of being involves two complementary processes: first, the discovery that the goal— the higher level of consciousness—exists and is attainable; second, the actual attainment of the goal.

Two stories from the Bible illustrate these two states in the process. The first tells of a "treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys the field." The second is a story of "a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it." In each of these stories, the initial discovery, the first stage, is fol­lowed by a second stage in which personal sacrifices are made and former beliefs and attachments are abandoned, in order to realize a new possibility.

When one (trader or nontrader) begins to transcend one's current limits, the most striking change is a profound sense of unity, a sense that all things are more than interrelated; they are all one thing. Just as the different facets of a jewel are two- dimensional aspects of a single three-dimensional form, so the various objects and events that we experience (in the transcen­dence state) are different three-dimensional aspects of reality.

The sense of unity, even in the market, extends to the perception of time. Instead of perceiving a succession of different moments, and movements within those moments, a trader in this state perceives all as being identical and therefore as comprising one eternal movement/moment. Time no longer flows or passes; it seems to stand still. Events still occur in sequence, but they do not seem to take place "in time." The effect of this stoppage of time is a marked sensation of peace and stability. This was the message that Don Juan was trying to get to Castanada about "stopping the world." In short, the stoppage of time is not separate from the intense good feelings of transcendent experience, but is an integral part of that feeling—another aspect of an experience that is, above all, unitary. When all things are perceived as one thing, all places seem to be one place, all markets seem to be the same market, and the idea of different places/markets (which is an idea of three-dimensional space) is perceived as illusion.

It is only in appearance that time is a river. It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves.

Thornton Wilder Eighth Day

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