The science of quantum physics, as well as the seeing of warriors and mystics, has shown us that chaos is the nature (natural order) of the universe and “order” happens in pockets or islands – the island of the tonal.
The tonal, in CC’s books, is often used synonymously as reason or understanding. I prefer to equate it with mind and thought. But there is much more to it. IMO, not enough info is given in Castaneda’s works to understand the tonal and nagual. But fortunately these elements are found in other systems, by the discerning eye.
One of the most enlightening works, IMO, on the tonal and nagual and man’s place/purpose in the universe is found in the Qabala, particularly in Carlo Suares’ fascinating work, “The Cipher of Genesis”. If you can get a hold of this book and read it… well, you’ll be doing yourself a big favor. And much can be gleaned from non-dual systems, zen and tao. So here’s a further exploration into the nature of the tonal based on my studies and observations.

1) The tonal begins at birth and ends at death.
If this is true, then there can be no hells or heavens which would necessarily be organized in some fashion, nor can there be an afterlife unless it is devoid of thought, name, mind, self. So if this is true, many other religions are not true – the tibetan book of the dead and the egyptian book of the dead in particular, and, as Buddha recognized, no transmigration of the soul, no Christian reward in heaven or punishment in hell…. that or the word “death” has some other definition than the normally accepted one. It appears true that the tonal is not present at birth.

2) Anything that can be named is the realm of the tonal.
Another system which emphasizes this is Gnosticism, wherein the one true God is the Ineffable.

3) The tonal is a guardian that has become a guard.
This statement from DJ gets more into the mind aspect where the tonal dethrones the nagual in the human mind, and it does so as a protective mechanism – the ego.

This is the area I’d like to expand on. This desire or need for protection/security, which originally was a very real physical impulse for survival, has transformed into a false, psychological non-existent ego’s need for continuity. Continuity and permanence are false or at best temporal. Chaos, the nagual, is this constantly fluctuating energy DJ speaks of.

I guess what I want to emphasize is a warrior’s need to stalk/observe moments of continuity, security, understanding… and recognize these as tonal desires/dreams that are simply not possible/actual. I don’t know that the tonal begins at birth and ends at death. But what is more significant to me is that all tonal items are born and die – they are temporal manifestations of order, but they cannot be maintained permanently. What is essential to recognize with the ego is its effort to achieve continuity, to survive. It can only do this by REPEATING THE PAST, and PROJECTING THE PAST INTO/AS A FUTURE. The ego does not exist; cannot exist presently, and present/now is all there is. But it can appear to exist through order, memory, habit, repetition, security, the known. The desire to understand is a front of the ego seeking security and control – order to resist the reality of chaos which would rip the ego apart.
A common element in all these ego strivings is the known (which is the same as the past) – there is no room for the unknown in the ego or first attention or self-reflection. The unknown is having no reflection, leaving no footprints, being without reference, mind emptied of knowledge/thought. The internal dialogue is always talking to us about life; it isn’t life. Mind is always one step removed from life. Let there be just life. That is non-duality. As long as there is life and someone living/experiencing life there will be conflict/seperation and you will miss the true meaning (being) of the nagual. You are the nagual, always have been. But you won’t know it until you eliminate the mind. And then you still won’t know it because there will be no knower and the known – there will be oneness.

I don’t think I said all that I meant to. I’ll have to come back and re-read and elaborate. My focus was meant to be living with chaos instead of resisting it and trying to maintain order. I wish to convey a certainty that order cannot be maintained because it is not the true nature of life. The true nature of life is life-death: flux. So we are back to death again. Death must not be a future event. That supports the false ego’s view, but it doesn’t support actuality. Life is the unknown – we must die to every moment in order for the next to be new. There can be no past, no knowledge, no storing/grasping. We must let these die in order to truly be alive.