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Author: Carlos Castaneda
Title: The Fire from Within
Original copyright year: 1984
Genre: Fiction
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CARLOS
CASTANEDA


THE FIRE
FROM
WITHIN


PUBLISHED BY POCKET BOOKS NEW YORK




Copyright ⌐ 1984 by Carlos Castaneda
Cover artwork copyright ⌐ 1985 Robert Giusti

Something was grabbing the edge of the mirror, as if
from the inside of the glass, as if the glass surface
were an open window and something or somebody
were just climbing through it.

Don Juan and I fought desperately; the loud thrash-
ing continued unremittingly like an enormous fish in
our bare hands. A strange shape was actually trying
to climb up through it. . .

I vacillated a second and the mirror flew out of my
hands.

"Grab it! Grab it!" Don Juan yelled. . .


"A VISION OF THE SORCERER'S WORLD THAT IS
FULL OF MIND-SPINNING IMPLICATIONS IN THE
CASTANEDA TRADITION."

    ?United Press International

"HIS STORIES OF INITIATION INTO THE WORLD
OF MAGIC AND SORCERY. . . CAN BE BOTH
MOCKING AND TERRIFYING. . . . THE FIRE FROM
WITHIN WILL FASCINATE YOU."

    ?The Nashville Tennessean

"ONE CAN'T EXAGGERATE THE SIGNIFICANCE
OF WHAT CASTANEDA HAS DONE."

    ?The New York Times

Each of Carlos Castaneda's books is a brilliant
and tantalizing burst of illumination into
the depths of our deepest mysteries, like a
sudden flash of light, like a burst of
lightning over the desert at night, which shows us
a world that is both alien and totally
familiar?the landscape of our dreams.

THE FIRE FROM WITHIN is the author's most
brilliant, thought-provoking and unusual
book, one in which Castaneda, under the tutelage
of don Juan and his "disciples," at last
constructs, from the teachings of don Juan and
his own experiences, a stunning portrait
of the "sorcerer's world" that is crystal-clear and
dizzying in its implications.

"It's impossible to view the world in quite
the same way after reading
THE FIRE FROM WITHIN."

    ?Chicago Tribune




I WANT TO EXPRESS MY ADMIRATION AND GRAT-
ITUDE TO A MASTERFUL TEACHER, H. Y. L., FOR
HELPING ME RESTORE MY ENERGY, AND FOR
TEACHING ME AN ALTERNATE WAY TO PLENI-
TUDE AND WELL-BEING.


Contents

FOREWORD
 1. The New Seers
 2. Petty Tyrants
 3. The Eagle's Emanations
 4. The Glow of Awareness
 5. The First Attention
 6. Inorganic Beings
 7. The Assemblage Point
 8. The Position of the Assemblage Point
 9. The Shift Below
10. Great Bands of Emanations
11. Stalking, Intent, and the Dreaming Position
12. The Nagual Julian
13. The Earth's Boost
14. The Rolling Force
15. The Death Defiers
16. The Mold of Man
17. The Journey of the Dreaming Body
18. Breaking the Barrier of Perception
EPILOGUE



Foreword


I have written extensive descriptive accounts of my
apprentice relationship with a Mexican Indian sor-
cerer, don Juan Matus. Due to the foreignness of the
concepts and practices don Juan wanted me to under-
stand and internalize, I have had no other choice but
to render his teachings in the form of a narrative, a
narrative of what happened, as it happened.

The organization of don Juan's instruction was
predicated on the idea that man has two types of
awareness. He labeled them the right side and the left
side. He described the first as the state of normal
awareness necessary for everyday life. The second,
he said, was the mysterious side of man, the state of
awareness needed to function as sorcerer and seer.
Don Juan divided his instruction, accordingly, into
teachings for the right side and teachings for the left
side.

He conducted his teachings for the right side when
I was in my state of normal awareness, and I have
described those teachings in all my accounts. In my
state of normal awareness don Juan told me that he
was a sorcerer. He even introduced me to another
sorcerer, don Genaro Flores, and because of the na-
ture of our association, I logically concluded that they
had taken me as their apprentice.

That apprenticeship ended with an incomprehensi-
ble act that both don Juan and don Genaro led me to
perform. They made me jump from the top of a flat
mountain into an abyss.

I have described in one of my accounts what took
place on that mountaintop. The last drama of don
Juan's teachings for the right side was played there by
don Juan himself; don Genaro; two apprentices, Pa-
blito and Nestor; and me. Pablito, Nestor, and I
jumped from that mountaintop into an abyss.

For years afterward I thought that just my total trust
in don Juan and don Genaro had been sufficient to
obliterate all my rational fears on facing actual anni-
hilation. I know now that it wasn't so; I know that the
secret was in don Juan's teachings for the left side,
and that it took tremendous discipline and persever-
ance for don Juan, don Genaro, and their companions
to conduct those teachings.

It has taken me nearly ten years to recollect what
exactly took place in his teachings for the left side that
led me to be so willing to perform such an incompre-
hensible act: jumping into an abyss.

It was in his teachings for the left side that don Juan
let on what he, don Genaro, and their companions
were really doing to me. and who they were. They
were not teaching me sorcery, but how to master three
aspects of an ancient knowledge they possessed:
awareness, stalking, and intent. And they were not
sorcerers; they were seers. And don Juan was not only
a seer, but also a nagual.

Don Juan had already explained to me, in his teach-
ings for the right side, a great deal about the nagual
and about seeing. I had understood seeing to be the
capacity of human beings to enlarge their perceptual
field until they are capable of assessing not only the
outer appearances but the essence of everything. He
had also explained that seers see man as a field of
energy, which looks like a luminous egg. The majority
of people, he said, have their fields of energy divided
into two parts. A few men and women have four or
sometimes three parts. Because these people are more
resilient than the average man, they can become na-
guals after learning to see.

In his teachings for the left side, don Juan explained
to me the intricacies of seeing and of being a nagual.
To be a nagual, he said, is something more complex
and far-reaching than being merely a more resilient
man who has learned to see. To be a nagual entails
being a leader, being a teacher and a guide.

As a nagual, don Juan was the leader of a group of
seers known as the nagual's party, which was com-
posed of eight female seers, Cecilia, Delia, Herme-
linda, Carmela. Nelida, Florinda, Zuleica, and Zoila;
three male seers, Vicente, Silvio Manuel, and Genaro;
and four couriers or messengers, Emilito, John Tuma,
Marta, and Teresa.

In addition to leading the nagual's party, don Juan
also taught and guided a group of apprentice seers
known as the new nagual's party. It consisted of four
young men, Pablito, Nestor, Eligio, and Benigno,
along with five women, Soledad, la Gorda, Lidia, Jo-
sefina, and Rosa. I was the nominal leader of the new
nagual's party together with the nagual woman Carol.

In order for don Juan to impart to me his teachings
for the left side it was necessary for me to enter into a
unique state of perceptual clarity known as heightened
awareness. Throughout the years of my association
with him, he had me repeatedly shift into such a state
by means of a blow that he delivered with the palm of
his hand on my upper back.

Don Juan explained that in a state of heightened
awareness apprentices can behave almost as naturally
as in everyday life, but can bring their minds to focus
on anything with uncommon force and clarity. Yet, an
inherent quality of heightened awareness is that it is
not susceptible to normal recall. What transpires in
such a state becomes part of the apprentice's every-
day awareness only through a staggering effort of re-
covery.

My interaction with the nagual's party was an ex-
ample of this difficulty of recall. With the exception of
don Genaro, I had contact with them only when I was
in a state of heightened awareness; hence in my nor-
mal everyday life I could not remember them, not
even as vague characters in dreams. The manner in
which I met with them every time was almost a ritual.
I would drive to don Genaro's house in a small town
in the southern part of Mexico. Don Juan would join
us immediately and the three of us would then get
busy with don Juan's teachings for the right side. After
that, don Juan would make me change levels of aware-
ness and then we would drive to a larger, nearby town
where he and the other fifteen seers were living.

Every time I entered into heightened awareness I
could not cease marveling at the difference between
my two sides. I always felt as if a veil had been lifted
from my eyes, as if I had been partially blind before
and now I could see. The freedom, the sheer joy that
used to possess me on those occasions cannot be com-
pared with anything else I have ever experienced. Yet
at the same time, there was a frightening feeling of
sadness and longing that went hand in hand with that
freedom and joy. Don Juan had told me that there is
no completeness without sadness and longing, for
without them there is no sobriety, no kindness. Wis-
dom without kindness, he said, and knowledge with-
out sobriety are useless.

The organization of his teachings for the left side
also required that don Juan, together with some of his
fellow seers, explain to me the three facets of their
knowledge: the mastery of awareness, the mastery of
stalking, and the mastery of intent.

This work deals with the mastery of awareness,
which is part of his total set of teachings for the left
side; the set he used in order to prepare me for per-
forming the astonishing act of jumping into an abyss.

Due to the fact that the experiences I narrate here
took place in heightened awareness, they cannot have
the texture of daily life. They are lacking in worldly
context, although I have tried my best to supply it
without fictionalizing it. In heightened awareness one
is minimally conscious of the surroundings, because
one's total concentration is taken by the details of the
action at hand.

In this case the action at hand was, naturally, the
elucidation of the mastery of awareness. Don Juan
understood the mastery of awareness as being the
modern-day version of an extremely old tradition,
which he called the tradition of the ancient Toltec
seers.

Although he felt that he was inextricably linked to
that old tradition, he considered himself to be one of
the seers of a new cycle. When I asked him once what
was the essential character of the seers of the new
cycle, he said that they are the warriors of total free-
dom, that they are such masters of awareness, stalk-
ing, and intent that they are not caught by death, like
the rest of mortal men, but choose the moment and
the way of their departure from this world. At that
moment they are consumed by a fire from within and
vanish from the face of the earth, free, as if they had
never existed.



THE FIRE
FROM
WITHIN


1
The New Seers


I had arrived in the city of Oaxaca in southern Mexico
on my way to the mountains to look for don Juan. On
my way out of town in the early morning, I had the
good sense to drive by the main square, and there I
found him sitting on his favorite bench, as if waiting
for me to go by.

I joined him. He told me that he was in the city on
business, that he was staying at a local boardinghouse,
and that I was welcome to stay with him because he
had to remain in town for two more days. We talked
for a while about my activities and problems in the
academic world.

As was customary with him, he suddenly hit me on
my back when I least expected it, and the blow shifted
me into a state of heightened awareness.

We sat in silence for a very long time. I anxiously
waited for him to begin talking, yet when he did, he
caught me by surprise.

"Ages before the Spaniards came to Mexico," he
said, "there were extraordinary Toltec seers, men ca-
pable of inconceivable deeds. They were the last link
in a chain of knowledge that extended over thousands
of years.

"The Toltec seers were extraordinary men?pow-
erful sorcerers, somber, driven men who unraveled
mysteries and possessed secret knowledge that they
used to influence and victimize people by fixating the
awareness of their victims on whatever they chose."

He stopped talking and looked at me intently. I felt
that he was waiting for me to ask a question, but I did
not know what to ask.

"I have to emphasize an important fact," he contin-
ued, "the fact that those sorcerers knew how to fixate
the awareness of their victims. You didn't pick up on
that. When I mentioned it, it didn't mean anything to
you. That's not surprising. One of the hardest things
to acknowledge is that awareness can be manipu-
lated."

I felt confused. I knew that he was leading me to-
ward something. I felt a familiar apprehension?the
same feeling I had whenever he began a new round of
his teachings.

I told him how I felt. He smiled vaguely. Usually
when he smiled he exuded happiness; this time he was
definitely preoccupied. He seemed to consider for a
moment whether or not to go on talking. He stared at
me intently again, slowly moving his gaze over the
entire length of my body. Then, apparently satisfied,
he nodded and said that I was ready for my final ex-
ercise, something that all warriors go through before
considering themselves fit to be on their own. I was
more mystified than ever.

"We are going to be talking about awareness," he
continued. "The Toltec seers knew the art of handling
awareness. As a matter of fact, they were the supreme
masters of that art. When I say that they knew how to
fixate the awareness of their victims, I mean that their
secret knowledge and secret practices allowed them
to pry open the mystery of being aware. Enough of
their practices have survived to this day, but fortu-
nately in a modified form. I say fortunately because
those activities, as I will explain, did not lead the an-
cient Toltec seers to freedom, but to their doom."
"Do you know those practices yourself?" I asked.
"Why, certainly," he replied. "There is no way for
us not to know those techniques, but that doesn't
mean that we practice them ourselves. We have other
views. We belong to a new cycle."

"But you don't consider yourself a sorcerer, don
Juan, do you?" I asked.

"No, I don't," he said. "I am a warrior who sees.
In fact, all of us are los nuevos videntes?the new
seers. The old seers were the sorcerers.

"For the average man," he continued, "sorcery is
a negative business, but it is fascinating all the same.
That's why I encouraged you, in your normal aware-
ness, to think of us as sorcerers. It's advisable to do
so. It serves to attract interest. But for us to be sor-
cerers would be like entering a dead-end street."

I wanted to know what he meant by that, but he
refused to talk about it. He said that he would elabo-
rate on the subject as he proceeded with his explana-
tion of awareness.

I asked him then about the origin of the Toltecs'
knowledge.

"The way the Toltecs first started on the path of
knowledge was by eating power plants," he replied.
"Whether prompted by curiosity, or hunger, or error,
they ate them. Once the power plants had produced
their effects on them, it was only a matter of time
before some of them began to analyze their experi-
ences. In my opinion, the first men on the path of
knowledge were very daring, but very mistaken."

"Isn't all this a conjecture on your part, don Juan?"

"No, this is no conjecture of mine. I am a seer, and
when I focus my seeing on that time I know every-
thing that took place."

"Can you see the details of things of the past?" I
asked.

"Seeing is a peculiar feeling of knowing," he re-
plied, "of knowing something without a shadow of
doubt. In this case, I know what those men did, not
only because of my seeing, but because we are so
closely bound together."

Don Juan explained then that his use of the term
"Toltec" did not correspond to what I understood it
to mean. To me it meant a culture, the Toltec Empire.
To him, the term "Toltec" meant "man of knowl-
edge."

He said that in the time he was referring to, centu-
ries or perhaps even millennia before the Spanish Con-
quest, all such men of knowledge lived within a vast
geographical area, north and south of the valley of
Mexico, and were employed in specific lines of work:
curing, bewitching, storytelling, dancing, being an or-
acle, preparing food and drink. Those lines of work
fostered specific wisdom, wisdom that distinguished
them from average men. These Toltecs, moreover,
were also people who fitted into the structure of every-
day life, very much as doctors, artists, teachers,
priests, and merchants in our own time do. They prac-
ticed their professions under the strict control of or-
ganized brotherhoods and became proficient and
influential, to such an extent that they even dominated
groups of people who lived outside the Toltecs' geo-
graphical regions.

Don Juan said that after some of these men had
finally learned to see?after centuries of dealing with
power plants?the most enterprising of them then
began to teach other men of knowledge how to see.
And that was the beginning of their end. As time
passed, the number of seers increased, but their ob-
session with what they saw, which filled them with
reverence and fear, became so intense that they
ceased to be men of knowledge. They became extraor-
dinarily proficient in seeing and could exert great con-
trol over the strange worlds they were witnessing. But
it was to no avail. Seeing had undermined their
strength and forced them to be obsessed with what
they saw.

"There were seers, however, who escaped that
fate," don Juan continued, "great men who, in spite
of their seeing, never ceased to be men of knowledge.
Some of them endeavored to use seeing positively and
to teach it to their fellow men. I'm convinced that
under their direction, the populations of entire cities
went into other worlds and never came back.

"But the seers who could only see were fiascos, and
when the land where they lived was invaded by a con-
quering people they were as defenseless as everyone
else.

"Those conquerors," he went on, "took over the
Toltec world?they appropriated everything?but
they never learned to see."'

"Why do you think they never learned to see?" I
asked.

"Because they copied the procedures of the Toltec
seers without having the Toltecs' inner knowledge. To
this day there are scores of sorcerers all over Mexico,
descendants of those conquerors, who follow the Tol-
tec ways but don't know what they're doing, or what
they're talking about, because they're not seers."

"Who were those conquerors, don Juan?"

"Other Indians," he said. "When the Spaniards
came, the old seers had been gone for centuries, but
there was a new breed of seers who were starting to
secure their place in a new cycle."

"What do you mean. a new breed of seers?"

"After the world of the first Toltecs was destroyed,
the surviving seers retreated and began a serious ex-
amination of their practices. The first thing they did
was to establish stalking, dreaming, and intent as the
key procedures and to deemphasize the use of power
plants; perhaps that gives us a hint as to what really
happened to them with power plants.

"The new cycle was just beginning to take hold
when the Spanish conquerors swept the land. Fortu-
nately, by that time the new seers were thoroughly
prepared to face that danger. They were already con-
summate practitioners of the art of stalking."

Don Juan said that the subsequent centuries of sub-
jugation provided for these new seers the ideal circum-
stances in which to perfect their skills. Oddly enough,
it was the extreme rigor and coercion of that period
that gave them the impetus to refine their new princi-
ples. And, owing to the fact that they never divulged
their activities, they were left alone to map their find-
ings.

"Were there a great many new seers during the
Conquest?" I asked.

"At the beginning there were. Near the end there
were only a handful. The rest had been extermi-
nated."

"What about in our day, don Juan?" I asked.

"There are a few. They are scattered all over, you
understand."

"Do you know them?" I asked.

"Such a simple question is the hardest one to an-
swer," he replied. "There are some we know very
well. But they are not exactly like us because they
have concentrated on other specific aspects of knowl-
edge, such as dancing, curing, bewitching, talking, in-
stead of what the new seers recommend, stalking,
dreaming, and intent. Those who are exactly like us
would not cross our path. The seers who lived during
the Conquest set it up that way so as to avoid being
exterminated in the confrontation with the Spaniards.
Each of those seers founded a lineage. And not all of
them had descendants, so the lines are few."

"Do you know any who are exactly like us?" I
asked.

"A few," he replied laconically.

I asked him then to give me all the information he
could, for I was vitally interested in the topic; to me it
was of crucial importance to know names and ad-
dresses for purposes of validation and corroboration.

Don Juan did not seem inclined to oblige me. "The
new seers went through that bit of corroboration," he
said. "Half of them left their bones in the corroborat-
ing room. So now they are solitary birds. Let's leave
it that way. All we can talk about is our line. About
that, you and I can say as much as we please."

He explained that all the lines of seers were started
at the same time and in the same fashion. Around the
end of the sixteenth century every nagual deliberately
isolated himself and his group of seers from any overt
contact with other seers. The consequence of that
drastic segregation, he said, was the formation of the
individual lineages. Our lineage consisted of fourteen
naguals and one hundred and twenty-six seers, he
said. Some of those fourteen naguals had as few as
seven seers with them. others had eleven, and some
up to fifteen.

He told me that his teacher?or his benefactor, as
he called him?was the nagual Julian, and the one who
came before Julian was the nagual Ellas. I asked him
if he knew the names of all fourteen naguals. He
named and enumerated them for me, so I could learn
who they were. He also said that he had personally
known the fifteen seers who formed his benefactor's
group and that he had also known his benefactor's
teacher, the nagual Ellas, and the eleven seers of his
party.

Don Juan assured me that our line was quite excep-
tional, because it underwent a drastic change in the
year 1723 as a result of an outside influence that came
to bear on us and inexorably altered our course. He
did not want to discuss the event itself at the moment,
but he said that a new beginning is counted from that
time; and that the eight naguals who have ruled the
line since then are considered intrinsically different
from the six who preceded them.


Don Juan must have had business to take care of
the next day, for I did not see him until around noon.
in the meantime, three of his apprentices had come to
town, Pablito, Nestor, and la Gorda. They were shop-
ping for tools and materials for Pablito's carpentry
business. I accompanied them and helped them to
complete all their errands. Then all of us went back to
the boardinghouse.

All four of us were sitting around talking when don
Juan came into my room. He announced that we were
leaving after lunch, but that before we went to eat he
still had something to discuss with me, in private. He
wanted the two of us to take a stroll around the main
square and then all of us would meet at a restaurant.

Pablito and Nestor stood up and said that they had
some errands to run before meeting us. La Gorda
seemed very displeased.

"What are you going to talk about?" she blurted
out, but quickly realized her mistake and giggled.

Don Juan gave her a strange look but did not say
anything.

Encouraged by his silence, la Gorda proposed that
we take her along. She assured us that she would not
bother us in the least.

"I'm sure you won't bother us," don Juan said to
her, "but I really don't want you to hear anything of
what I have to say to him."

La Gorda's anger was very obvious. She blushed
and, as don Juan and I walked out of the room, her
entire face clouded with anxiety and tension, becom-
ing instantly distorted. Her mouth was open and her
lips were dry.

La Gorda's mood made me very apprehensive. I felt
an actual discomfort. I didn't say anything, but don
Juan seemed to notice my feelings.

"You should thank la Gorda day and night," he said
all of a sudden. "She's helping you destroy your self-
importance. She's the petty tyrant in your life, but you
still haven't caught on to that."

We strolled around the plaza until all my nervous-
ness had vanished. Then we sat down on his favorite
bench again.

"The ancient seers were very fortunate indeed,"
don Juan began, "because they had plenty of time to
learn marvelous things. Let me tell you, they knew
wonders that we can't even imagine today."

"Who taught them all that?" I asked.

"They learned everything by themselves through
seeing,"' he replied. "Most of the things we know in
our lineage were figured out by (hem. The new seers
corrected the mistakes of the old seers, but the basis
of what we know and do is lost in Toltec time."

He explained. One of the simplest and yet most im-
portant findings, from the point of view of instruction,
he said, is the knowledge that man has two types of
awareness. The old seers called them the right and the
left side of man.

"The old seers figured out," he went on, "that the
best way to teach their knowledge was to make their
apprentices shift to their left side, to a state of
heightened awareness. Real learning takes place
there.

"Very young children were given to the old seers as
apprentices," don Juan continued, "so that they
wouldn't know any other way of life. Those children,
in turn, when they came of age took other children as
apprentices. Imagine the things they must have uncov-
ered in their shifts to the left and to the right, after
centuries of that kind of concentration."

I remarked how disconcerting those shifts were to
me. He said that my experience was similar to his
own. His benefactor, the nagual Julian, had created a
profound schism in him, by making him shift back and
forth from one type of awareness to the other. He said
that the clarity and freedom he experienced in
heightened awareness were in total contrast to the ra-
tionalizations, the defenses, the anger, and the fear of
his normal state of awareness.

The old seers used to create this polarity to suit their
own particular purposes; with it, they forced their ap-
prentices to achieve the concentration needed to learn
sorcery techniques. But the new seers, he said, use it
to lead their apprentices to the conviction that there
are unrealized possibilities in man.

"The best effort of the new seers," don Juan contin-
ued, "is their explanation of the mystery of aware-
ness. They condensed it all into some concepts and
actions which are taught while the apprentices are in
heightened awareness."

He said that the value of the new seers' method of
teaching is that it takes advantage of the fact that no
one can remember anything that happens while being
in a state of heightened awareness. This inability to
remember sets up an almost insurmountable barrier
for warriors, who have to recollect all the instruction
given to them if they are to go on. Only after years of
struggle and discipline can warriors recollect their in-
struction. By then the concepts and the procedures
that were taught to them have been internalized and
have thus acquired the force the new seers meant
them to have.


2
Petty Tyrants


Don Juan did not discuss the mastery of awareness
with me until months later. We were at that time in
the house where the nagual's party lived.

"Let's go for a walk," don Juan said to me, placing
his hand on my shoulder. "Or better yet, let's go to
the town's square, where there are a lot of people, and
sit down and talk."

I was surprised when he spoke to me, as I had been
in the house for a couple of days then and he had not
said so much as hello.

As don Juan and I were leaving the house, la Gorda
intercepted us and demanded that we take her along.
She seemed determined not to take no for an answer.
Don Juan in a very stern voice told her that he had to
discuss something in private with me.

"You're going to talk about me," la Gorda said, her
tone and gestures betraying both suspicion and annoy-
ance.

"You're right," don Juan replied dryly. He moved
past her without turning to look at her.

I followed him, and we walked in silence to the
town's square. When we sat down I asked him what
on earth we would find to discuss about la Gorda. I
was still smarting from her look of menace when we
left the house.

"We have nothing to discuss about la Gorda or any-
body else," he said. "I told her that just to provoke
her enormous self-importance. And it worked. She is
furious with us. If I know her, by now she will have
talked to herself long enough to have built up her con-
fidence and her righteous indignation at having been
refused and made to look like a fool. I wouldn't be
surprised if she barges in on us here, at the park
bench."

"If we're not going to talk about la Gorda, what are
we going to discuss?" I asked.

"We're going to continue the discussion we started
in Oaxaca," he replied. "To understand the explana-
tion of awareness will require your utmost effort and
your willingness to shift back and forth between levels
of awareness. While we are involved in our discussion
I will demand your total concentration and patience."

Half-complaining, I told him that he had made me
feel very uncomfortable by refusing to talk to me for
the past two days. He looked at me and arched his
brows. A smile played on his lips and vanished. I re-
alized that he was letting me know I was no better
than la Gorda.

"I was provoking your self-importance," he said
with a frown. "Self-importance is our greatest enemy.
Think about it?what weakens us is feeling offended
by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our
self-importance requires that we spend most of our
lives offended by someone.

"The new seers recommended that every effort
should be made to eradicate self-importance from the
lives of warriors. I have followed that recommenda-
tion, and much of my endeavors with you has been
geared to show you that without self-importance we
are invulnerable."

As I listened his eyes suddenly became very shiny.
I was thinking to myself that he seemed to be on the
verge of laughter and there was no reason for it when
I was startled by an abrupt, painful slap on the right
side of my face.

I jumped up from the bench. La Gorda was standing
behind me, her hand still raised. Her face was flushed
with anger.

"Now you can say what you like about me and with
more justification," she shouted. "If you have any-
thing to say, however, say it to my face!"

Her outburst appeared to have exhausted her, be-
cause she sat down on the cement and began to weep.
Don Juan was transfixed with inexpressible glee. I was
frozen with sheer fury. La Gorda glared at me and
then turned to don Juan and meekly told him that we
had no right to criticize her.

Don Juan laughed so hard he doubled over almost
to the ground. He couldn't even speak. He tried two
or three times to say something to me, then finally got
up and walked away, his body still shaking with
spasms of laughter.

I was about to run after him, still glowering at la
Gorda?at that moment I found her despicable ?
when something extraordinary happened to me. I re-
alized what don Juan had found so hilarious. La Gorda
and I were horrendously alike. Our self-importance
was monumental. My surprise and fury at being
slapped were just like la Gorda's feelings of anger and
suspicion. Don Juan was right. The burden of self-
importance is a terrible encumbrance.

I ran after him then, elated, the tears flowing down
my cheeks. I caught up with him and told him what I
had realized. His eyes were shining with mischievous-
ness and delight.

"What should I do about la Gorda?" I asked.

"Nothing," he replied. "Realizations are always
personal."

He changed the subject and said that the omens
were telling us to continue our discussion back at his
house, either in a large room with comfortable chairs
or in the back patio, which had a roofed corridor
around it. He said that whenever he conducted his
explanation inside the house those two areas would be
off limits to everyone else.

We went back to the house. Don Juan told everyone
what la Gorda had done. The delight all the seers
showed in taunting her made la Gorda's position ex-
tremely uncomfortable.

"Self-importance can't be fought with niceties,"
don Juan commented when I expressed my concern
about la Gorda.

He then asked everyone to leave the room. We sat
down and don Juan began his explanations.

He said that seers, old and new, are divided into
two categories. The first one is made up of those who
are willing to exercise self-restraint and can channel
their activities toward pragmatic goals, which would
benefit other seers and man in general. The other cat-
egory consists of those who don't care about self-re-
straint or about any pragmatic goals. It is the
consensus among seers that the latter have failed to
resolve the problem of self-importance.

"Self-importance is not something simple and
naive," he explained. "On the one hand, it is the core
of everything that is good in us, and on the other hand,
the core of everything that is rotten. To get rid of the
self-importance that is rotten requires a masterpiece
of strategy. Seers, through the ages, have given the
highest praise to those who have accomplished it."

I complained that the idea of eradicating self-impor-
tance, although very appealing to me at times, was
really incomprehensible; I told him that I found his
directives for getting rid of it so vague I could not
follow them.

"I've said to you many times," he said, "that in
order to follow the path of knowledge one has to be
very imaginative. You see, in the path of knowledge
nothing is as clear as we'd like it to be."

My discomfort made me argue that his admonitions
about self-importance reminded me of Catholic die-
turns. After a lifetime of being told about the evils of
sin, I had become callous.

"Warriors fight self-importance as a matter of strat-
egy, not principle," he replied. "Your mistake is to
understand what I say in terms of morality."

"I see you as a highly moral man, don Juan," I
insisted.

"You've noticed my impeccability, that's all," he
said.

"Impeccability, as well as getting rid of self-impor-
tance, is too vague a concept to be of any value to
me," I remarked.

Don Juan choked with laughter, and I challenged
him to explain impeccability.

"Impeccability is nothing else but the proper use of
energy," he said. "My statements have no inkling of
morality. I've saved energy and that makes me impec-
cable. To understand this, you have to save enough
energy yourself."

We were quiet for a long time. I wanted to think
about what he had said. Suddenly, he started talking
again.

"Warriors take strategic inventories," he said.
"They list everything they do. Then they decide
which of those things can be changed in order to allow
themselves a respite, in terms of expending their en-
ergy."

I argued that their list would have to include every-
thing under the sun. He patiently answered that the
strategic inventory he was talking about covered only
behavioral patterns that were not essential to our sur-
vival and well-being.

I jumped at the opportunity to point out that sur-
vival and well-being were categories that could be in-
terpreted in endless ways, hence, there was no way of
agreeing what was or was not essential to survival and
well-being.

As I kept on talking I began to lose momentum.
Finally, I stopped because I realized the futility of my
arguments.

Don Juan said then that in the strategic inventories
of warriors, self-importance figures as the activity that
consumes the greatest amount of energy, hence, their
effort to eradicate it.

"One of the first concerns of warriors is to free that
energy in order to face the unknown with it," don Juan
went on. "The action of rechanneling that energy i?
impeccability."

He said that the most effective strategy was worked
out by the seers of the Conquest, the unquestionable
masters of stalking. It consists of six elements that
interplay with one another. Five of them are called the
attributes of warriorship: control, discipline, forbear-
ance, timing, and will. They pertain to the world of the
warrior who is fighting to lose self-importance. The
sixth element, which is perhaps the most important of
all, pertains to the outside world and is called the petty
tyrant.

He looked at me as if silently asking me whether or
not I had understood.

"I'm really mystified," I said. "You keep on saying
that la Gorda is the petty tyrant of my life. Just what
is a petty tyrant?"

"A petty tyrant is a tormentor," he replied. "Some-
one who either holds the power of life and death over
warriors or simply annoys them to distraction."

Don Juan had a beaming smile as he spoke to me.
He said that the new seers developed their own clas-
sification of petty tyrants; although the concept is one
of their most serious and important findings, the new
seers had a sense of humor about it. He assured me
that there was a tinge of malicious humor in every one
of their classifications, because humor was the only
means of counteracting the compulsion of human
awareness to take inventories and to make cumber-
some classifications.

The new seers, in accordance with their practice,
saw fit to head their classification with the primal
source of energy, the one and only ruler in the uni-
verse, and they called it simply the tyrant. The rest of
the despots and authoritarians were found to be, nat-
urally, infinitely below the category of tyrant. Com-
pared to the source of everything, the most fearsome,
tyrannical men are buffoons; consequently, they were
classified as petty tyrants, pinches tiranos.

He said that there were two subclasses of minor
petty tyrants. The first subclass consisted of the petty
tyrants who persecute and inflict misery but without
actually causing anybody's death. They were called
little petty tyrants, pinches tiranitos. The second con-
sisted of the petty tyrants who are only exasperating
and bothersome to no end. They were called small-fry
petty tyrants, repinches tiranitos, or teensy-weensy
petty tyrants, pinches tiranitos chiquititos.

I thought his classifications were ludicrous. I was
sure that he was improvising the Spanish terms. I
asked him if that was so.

"Not at all," he replied with an amused expression.
"The new seers were great ones for classifications.
Genaro is doubtless one of the greatest; if you'd ob-
serve him carefully, you'd realize exactly how the new
seers feel about their classifications."

He laughed uproariously at my confusion when I
asked him if he was pulling my leg.

"I wouldn't dream of doing that," he said, smiling.
"Genaro may do that, but not I, especially when I
know how you feel about classifications. It's just that
the new seers were terribly irreverent."

He added that the little petty tyrants are further
divided into four categories. One that torments with
brutality and violence. Another that does it by creat-
ing unbearable apprehension through deviousness.
Another which oppresses with sadness. And the last,
which torments by making warriors rage.

"La Gorda is in a class of her own," he added.
"She is an acting, small-fry petty tyrant. She annoys
you to pieces and makes you rage. She even slaps you.
With all that she is teaching you detachment."

"That's not possible!" I protested.

"You haven't yet put together all the ingredients of
the new seers' strategy," he said. "Once you do that,
you'll know how efficient and clever is the device of
using a petty tyrant. I would certainly say that the
strategy not only gets rid of self-importance; it also
prepares warriors for the final realization that impec-
cability is the only thing that counts in the path of
knowledge."

He said that what the new seers had in mind was a
deadly maneuver in which the petty tyrant is like a
mountain peak and the attributes of warriorship are
like climbers who meet at the summit.

"Usually, only four attributes are played," he went
on. "The fifth, will, is always saved for an ultimate
confrontation, when warriors are facing the firing
squad, so to speak."

"Why is it done that way?"

"Because wilt belongs to another sphere, the un-
known. The other four belong to the known, exactly
where the petty tyrants are lodged. In fact, what turns
human beings into petty tyrants is precisely the obses-
sive manipulation of the known."

Don Juan explained that the interplay of all the five
attributes of warriorship is done only by seers who are
also impeccable warriors and have mastery over will.
Such an interplay is a supreme maneuver that cannot
be performed on the daily human stage.

"Four attributes are all that is needed to deal with
the worst of petty tyrants," he continued. "Provided,
of course, that a petty tyrant has been found. As I
said, the petty tyrant is the outside element, the one
we cannot control and the element that is perhaps the
most important of them all. My benefactor used to say
that the warrior who stumbles on a petty tyrant is a
lucky one. He meant that you're fortunate if you come
upon one in your path, because if you don't, you have
to go out and look for one."

He explained that one of the greatest accomplish-
ments of the seers of the Conquest was a construct he
called the three-phase progression. By understanding
the nature of man, they were able to reach the incon-
testable conclusion that if seers can hold their own in
facing petty tyrants, they can certainly face the un-
known with impunity, and then they can even stand
the presence of the unknowable.

"The average man's reaction is to think that the
order of that statement should be reversed," he went
on. "A seer who can hold his own in the face of the
unknown can certainly face petty tyrants. But that's
not so. What destroyed the superb seers of ancient
times was that assumption. We know better now. We
know that nothing can temper the spirit of a warrior
as much as the challenge of dealing with impossible
people in positions of power. Only under those condi-
tions can warriors acquire the sobriety and serenity to
stand the pressure of the unknowable."

I vociferously disagreed with him. I told him that in
my opinion tyrants can only render their victims help-
less or make them as brutal as they themselves are. I
pointed out that countless studies had been done on
the effects of physical and psychological torture on
such victims.

"The difference is in something you just said," he
retorted. "They are victims, not warriors. Once I felt
just as you do. I'll tell you what made me change, but
first let's go back again to what I said about the Con-
quest. The seers of that time couldn't have found a
better ground. The Spaniards were the petty tyrants
who tested the seers' skills to the limit; after dealing
with the conquerors, the seers were capable of facing
anything. They were the lucky ones. At that time there
were petty tyrants everywhere.

"After all those marvelous years of abundance
things changed a great deal. Petty tyrants never again
had that scope; it was only during those times that
their authority was unlimited. The perfect ingredient
for the making of a superb seer is a petty tyrant with
unlimited prerogatives.

"In our times, unfortunately, seers have to go to
extremes to find a worthy one. Most of the time they
have to be satisfied with very small fry."

"Did you find a petty tyrant yourself, don Juan?"

"I was lucky. A king-size one found me. At the
time, though, I felt like you; I couldn't consider myself
fortunate."

Don Juan said that his ordeal began a few weeks
before he met his benefactor. He was barely twenty
years old at the time. He had gotten a job at a sugar
mill working as a laborer. He had always been very
strong, so it was easy for him to get jobs that required
muscle. One day when he was moving some heavy
sacks of sugar a woman came by. She was very well
dressed and seemed to be a woman of means. She was
perhaps in her fifties, don Juan said, and very domi-
neering. She looked at don Juan and then spoke to the
foreman and left. Don Juan was then approached by
the foreman, who told him that for a fee he would
recommend him for a job in the boss's house. Don
Juan told the man that he had no money. The foreman
smiled and said not to worry because he would have
plenty on payday. He patted don Juan's back and as-
sured him it was a great honor to work for the boss.

Don Juan said that being a lowly ignorant Indian
living hand-to-mouth, not only did he believe every
word, he thought a good fairy had touched him. He
promised to pay the foreman anything he wished. The
foreman named a large sum, which had to be paid in
installments.

Immediately thereafter the foreman himself took
don Juan to the house, which was quite a distance
from the town, and left him there with another fore-
man, a huge, somber, ugly man who asked a lot of
questions. He wanted to know about don Juan's fam-
ily. Don Juan answered that he didn't have any. The
man was so pleased that he even smiled through his
rotten teeth.

He promised don Juan that they would pay him
plenty, and that he would even be in a position to save
money, because he didn't have to spend any, for he
was going to live and eat in the house.

The way the man laughed was terrifying. Don Juan
knew that he had to escape immediately. He ran for
the gate, but the man cut in front of him with a re-
volver in his hand. He cocked it and rammed it into
don Juan's stomach. "You're here to work yourself to
the bone," he said. "And don't you forget it." He
shoved don Juan around with a billy club. Then he
took him to the side of the house and, after observing
that he worked his men every day from sunrise to
sunset without a break, he put don Juan to work dig-
ging out two enormous tree stumps. He also told don
Juan that if he ever tried to escape or went to the
authorities he would shoot him dead?and that if don
Juan should ever get away, he would swear in court
that don Juan had tried to murder the boss. "You'll
work here until you die," he said. "Another Indian
will get your job then, just as you're taking a dead
Indian's place."

Don Juan said that the house looked like a fortress,
with armed men with machetes everywhere. So he got
busy working and tried not to think about his predica-
ment. At the end of the day, the man came back and
kicked him all the way to the kitchen, because he did
not like the defiant look in don Juan's eyes. He threat-
ened to cut the tendons of don Juan's arms if he didn't
obey him.

In the kitchen an old woman brought food, but don
Juan was so upset and afraid that he couldn't eat. The
old woman advised him to eat as much as he could.
He had to be strong, she said, because his work would
never end. She warned him that the man who had held
his job had died just a day earlier. He was too weak to
work and had fallen from a second-story window.

Don Juan said that he worked at the boss's place for
three weeks and that the man bullied him every mo-
ment of every day. He made him work under the most
dangerous conditions, doing the heaviest work imag-
inable, under the constant threat of his knife, gun, or
billy club. He sent him daily to the stables to clean the
stalls while the nervous stallions were in them. At the
beginning of every day don Juan thought it would be
his last one on earth. And surviving meant only that
he had to go through the same hell again the next day.

What precipitated the end was don Juan's request
to have some time off. The pretext was that he needed
to go to town to pay the foreman of the sugar mill the
money that he owed him. The other foreman retorted
that don Juan could not stop working, not even for a
minute, because he was in debt up to his ears just for
the privilege of working there.

Don Juan knew that he was done for. He understood
the man's maneuvers. Both he and the other foreman
were in cahoots to get lowly Indians from the mill,
work them to death, and divide their salaries. That
realization angered him so intensely that he ran
through the kitchen screaming and got inside the main
house. The foreman and the other workers were
caught totally by surprise. He ran out the front door
and almost got away, but the foreman caught up with
him on the road and shot him in the chest. He left him
for dead.

Don Juan said that it was not his destiny to die; his
benefactor found him there and tended him until he
got well.

"When I told my benefactor the whole story," don
Juan said, "he could hardly contain his excitement.
That foreman is really a prize, ' my benefactor said.
'He is too good to be wasted. Someday you must go
back to that house. '

"He raved about my luck in finding a one-in-a-mil-
lion petty tyrant with almost unlimited power. I
thought the old man was nuts. It was years before I
fully understood what he was talking about."

"That is one of the most horrible stories I have ever
heard," I said. "Did you really go back to that
house?"

"I certainly did, three years later. My benefactor
was right. A petty tyrant like that one was one in a
million and couldn't be wasted."

"How did you manage to go back?"

"My benefactor developed a strategy using the four
attributes of warriorship: control, discipline, forbear-
ance, and timing."

Don Juan said that his benefactor, in explaining to
him what he had to do to profit from facing that ogre
of a man, also told him what the new seers considered
to be the four steps on the path of knowledge. The first
step is the decision to become apprentices. After the
apprentices change their views about themselves and
the world they take the second step and become war-
riors, which is to say, beings capable of the utmost
discipline and control over themselves. The third step,
after acquiring forbearance and timing, is to become
men of knowledge. When men of knowledge learn to
see they have taken the fourth step and have become
seers.

His benefactor stressed the fact that don Juan had
been on the path of knowledge long enough to have
acquired a minimum of the first two attributes: control
and discipline. Don Juan emphasized that both of
these attributes refer to an inner state. A warrior is
self-oriented, not in a selfish way, but in the sense of
a total and continuous examination of the self.

"At that time, I was barred from the other two at-
tributes," don Juan went on. "Forbearance and tim-
ing are not quite an inner state. They are in the domain
of the man of knowledge. My benefactor showed them
to me through his strategy."

"Does this mean that you couldn't have faced the
petty tyrant by yourself?" I asked.

"I'm sure that I could have done it myself, although
I have always doubted that I would have carried it off
with flair and joyfulness. My benefactor was simply
enjoying the encounter by directing it. The idea of
using a petty tyrant is not only for perfecting the war-
rior's spirit, but also for enjoyment and happiness."

"How could anyone enjoy the monster you de-
scribed?"

"He was nothing in comparison to the real monsters
that the new seers faced during the Conquest. By all
indications those seers enjoyed themselves blue deal-
ing with them. They proved that even the worst ty-
rants can bring delight, provided, of course, that one
is a warrior."

Don Juan explained that the mistake average men
make in confronting petty tyrants is not to have a
strategy to fall back on; the fatal flaw is that average
men take themselves too seriously; their actions and
feelings, as well as those of the petty tyrants, are all-
important. Warriors, on the other hand, not only have
a well-thought-out strategy, but are free from self-im-
portance. What restrains their self-importance is that
they have understood that reality is an interpretation
we make. That knowledge was the definitive advan-
tage that the new seers had over the simple-minded
Spaniards.

He said that he became convinced he could defeat
the foreman using only the single realization that petty
tyrants take themselves with deadly seriousness while
warriors do not.

Following his benefactor's strategic plan, therefore,
don Juan got a job in the same sugar mill as before.
Nobody remembered that he had worked there in the
past; peons came to that sugar mill and left it without
leaving a trace.

His benefactor's strategy specified that don Juan
had to be solicitous of whoever came to look for an-
other victim. As it happened, the same woman came
and spotted him, as she had done years ago. This time
he was physically even stronger than before.

The same routine took place. The strategy, how-
ever, called for refusing payment to the foreman from
the outset. The man had never been turned down and
was taken aback. He threatened to fire don Juan from
the job. Don Juan threatened him back, saying that he
would go directly to the lady's house and see her. Don
Juan knew that the woman, who was the wife of the
owner of the mill, did not know what the two foremen
were up to. He told the foreman that he knew where
she lived, because he had worked in the surrounding
fields cutting sugar cane. The man began to haggle,
and don Juan demanded money from him before he
would accept going to the lady's house. The foreman
gave in and handed him a few bills. Don Juan was
perfectly aware that the foreman's acquiescence was
just a ruse to get him to go to the house.

"He himself once again took me to the house," don
Juan said. "It was an old hacienda owned by the peo-
ple of the sugar mill?rich men who either knew what
was going on and didn't care, or were too indifferent
even to notice.

"As soon as we got there, I ran into the house to
look for the lady. I found her and dropped to my knees
and kissed her hand to thank her. The two foremen
were livid.

"The foreman at the house followed the same pat-
tern as before. But I had the proper equipment to deal
with him; I had control, discipline, forbearance, and
timing. It turned out as my benefactor had planned it.
My control made me fulfill the man's most asinine
demands. What usually exhausts us in a situation like
that is the wear and tear on our self-importance. Any
man who has an iota of pride is ripped apart by being
made to feel worthless.

"I gladly did everything he asked of me. I was joyful
and strong. And I didn't give a fig about my pride or
my fear. I was there as an impeccable warrior. To tune
the spirit when someone is trampling on you is called
control."

Don Juan explained that his benefactor's strategy
required that instead of feeling sorry for himself as he
had done before, he immediately go to work mapping
the man's strong points, his weaknesses, his quirks of
behavior.

He found that the foreman's strongest points were
his violent nature and his daring. He had shot don
Juan in broad daylight and in sight of scores of onlook-
ers. His great weakness was that he liked his job and
did not want to endanger it. Under no circumstances
could he attempt to kill don Juan inside the compound
in the daytime. His other weakness was that he was a
family man. He had a wife and children who lived in a
shack near the house.

"To gather all this information while they are beat
ing you up is called discipline," don Juan said. "The
man was a regular fiend. He had no saving grace. Ac
cording to the new seers, a perfect petty tyrant has no
redeeming feature."

Don Juan said that the other two attributes of war-
riorship, forbearance and timing, which he did not yet
have, had been automatically included in his benefac-
tor's strategy. Forbearance is to wait patiently?no
rush, no anxiety?a simple, joyful holding back of
what is due.

"I groveled daily," don Juan continued, "some-
times crying under the man's whip. And yet I was
happy. My benefactor's strategy was what made me
go from day to day without hating the man's guts. I
was a warrior. I knew that I was waiting and I knew
what I was waiting for. Right there is the great joy of
warriorship."

He added that his benefactor's strategy called for a
systematic harassment of the man by taking cover
with a higher order, just as the seers of the new cycle
had done during the Conquest by shielding themselves
with the Catholic church. A lowly priest was some-
times more powerful than a nobleman.

Don Juan's shield was the lady who got him the job.
He kneeled in front of her and called her a saint every
time he saw her. He begged her to give him the me-
dallion of her patron saint so he could pray to him for
her health and well-being.

"She gave me one," don Juan went on, "and that
rattled the foreman to pieces. And when I got the ser-
vants to pray at night he nearly had a heart attack. I
think he decided then to kill me. He couldn't afford to
let me go on.

"As a countermeasure I organized a rosary among
all the servants of the house. The lady thought I had
the makings of a most pious man.

"I didn't sleep soundly after that, nor did I sleep in
my bed. I climbed to the roof every night. From there
I saw the man twice looking for me in the middle of
the night with murder in his eyes.

"Daily he shoved me into the stallions' stalls hoping
that I would be crushed to death, but I had a plank of
heavy boards that I braced against one of the corners
and protected myself behind it. The man never knew
because he was nauseated by the horses?another of
his weaknesses, the deadliest of all, as things turned
out."

Don Juan said that timing is the quality that governs
the release of all that is held back. Control, discipline,
and forbearance are like a dam behind which every-
thing is pooled. Timing is the gate in the dam.

The man knew only violence, with which he terror-
ized. If his violence was neutralized he was rendered
nearly helpless. Don Juan knew that the man would
not dare to kill him in view of the house, so one day,
in the presence of the other workers but in sight of his
lady as well, don Juan insulted the man. He called him
a coward, who was mortally afraid of the boss's wife.

His benefactor's strategy had called for being on the
alert for a moment like that and using it to turn the
tables on the petty tyrant. Unexpected things always
happen that way. The lowest of the slaves suddenly
makes fun of the tyrant, taunts him, makes him feel
ridiculous in front of significant witnesses, and then
rushes away without giving the tyrant time to retaliate.

"A moment later, the man went crazy with rage,
but I was already solicitously kneeling in front of the
lady," he continued.

Don Juan said that when the lady went inside the
house, the man and his friends called him to the back,
allegedly to do some work. The man was very pale,
white with anger. From the sound of his voice don
Juan knew what the man was really planning to do.
Don Juan pretended to acquiesce, but instead of head-
ing for the back, he ran for the stables. He trusted that
the horses would make such a racket the owners
would come out to see what was wrong. He knew that
the man would not dare shoot him. That would have
been too noisy and the man's fear of endangering his
job was too overpowering. Don Juan also knew that
the man would not go where the horses were?that is,
unless he had been pushed beyond his endurance.

"I jumped inside the stall of the wildest stallion,"
don Juan said, "and the petty tyrant, blinded by rage,
took out his knife and jumped in after me. I went
instantly behind my planks. The horse kicked him
once and it was all over.

"I had spent six months in that house and in that
period of time I had exercised the four attributes of
warriorship. Thanks to them, I had succeeded. Not
once had I felt sorry for myself or wept in impotence.
I had been joyful and serene. My control and disci-
pline were as keen as they'd ever been, and I had had
a firsthand view of what forbearance and timing did
for impeccable warriors. And I had not once wished
the man to die.

"My benefactor explained something very interest-
ing. Forbearance means holding back with the spirit
something that the warrior knows is rightfully due. It
doesn't mean that a warrior goes around plotting to do
anybody mischief, or planning to settle past scores.
Forbearance is something independent. As long as the
warrior has control, discipline, and timing, forbear-
ance assures giving whatever is due to whoever de-
serves it."

"Do petty tyrants sometimes win, and destroy the
warrior facing them?" I asked.

"Of course. There was a time when warriors died
like flies at the beginning of the Conquest. Their ranks
were decimated. The petty tyrants could put anyone
to death, simply acting on a whim. Under that kind of
pressure seers reached sublime states."

Don Juan said that that was the time when the sur-
viving seers had to exert themselves to the limit to find
new ways.

"The new seers used petty tyrants," don Juan said,
staring at me fixedly, "not only to get rid of their self-
importance, but to accomplish the very sophisticated
maneuver of moving themselves out of this world.
You'll understand that maneuver as we keep on dis-
cussing the mastery of awareness."

I explained to don Juan that what I had wanted to
know was whether, in the present, in our times, the
petty tyrants he had called small fry could ever defeat
a warrior.

"All the time," he replied. "The consequences
aren't as dire as those in the remote past. Today it
goes without saying that warriors always have a
chance to recuperate or to retrieve and come back
later. But there is another side to this problem. To be
defeated by a small-fry petty tyrant is not deadly, but
devastating. The degree of mortality, in a figurative
sense, is almost as high. By that I mean that warriors
who succumb to a small-fry petty tyrant are obliter-
ated by their own sense of failure and unworthiness.
That spells high mortality to me."

"How do you measure defeat?"

"Anyone who joins the petty tyrant is defeated. To
act in anger, without control and discipline, to have
no forbearance, is to be defeated."


"What happens after warriors are defeated?"

"They either regroup themselves or they abandon
the quest for knowledge and join the ranks of the petty
tyrants for life."


3
The Eagle's
Emanations


The next day, don Juan and I went for a walk along
the road to the city of Oaxaca. The road was deserted
at that hour. It was 2: 00 p. m.

As we strolled leisurely, don Juan suddenly began
to talk. He said that our discussion about the petty
tyrants had been merely an introduction to the topic
of awareness. I remarked that it had opened a new
view for me. He asked me to explain what I meant.

I told him that it had to do with an argument we had
had some years before about the Yaqui Indians. In the
course of his teachings for the right side, he had tried
to tell me about the advantages that the Yaquis could
find in being oppressed. I had passionately argued that
there were no possible advantages in the wretched
conditions in which they lived. And I had told him that
I could not understand how, being a Yaqui himself, he
did not react against such a flagrant injustice.

He had listened attentively. Then, when I was sure
he was going to defend his point, he agreed that the
conditions of the Yaqui Indians were indeed
wretched. But he pointed out that it was useless to
single out the Yaquis when life conditions of man in
general were horrendous.

"Don't just feel sorry for the poor Yaqui Indians,"
he had said. "Feel sorry for mankind. In the case of
the Yaqui Indians, I can even say they're the lucky
ones. They are oppressed, and because of that, some
of them may come out triumphant in the end. But the
oppressors, the petty tyrants that tread upon them,
they don't have a chance in hell."

I had immediately answered him with a barrage of
political slogans. I had not understood his point at all.
He again tried to explain to me the concept of petty
tyrants, but the whole idea bypassed me. It was only
now that everything fit into place.

"Nothing has fit into place yet," he said, laughing
at what I had told him. "Tomorrow, when you are in
your normal state of awareness, you won't even re-
member what you've realized now."

I felt utterly depressed, for I knew he was right.

"What's going to happen to you is what happened
to me," he continued. "My benefactor, the nagual
Julian, made me realize in heightened awareness what
you have realized yourself about petty tyrants. And I
ended up, in my daily life, changing my opinions with-
out knowing why.

"I had always been oppressed, so I had real venom
toward my oppressors, imagine my surprise when I
found myself seeking the company of petty tyrants. I
thought I had lost my mind."

We came to a place, on the side of the road, where
some large boulders were half buried by an old land-
slide; don Juan headed for them and sat down on a flat
rock. He signaled me to sit down, facing him. And
then without further preliminaries, he started his ex-
planation of the mastery of awareness.

He said that there were a series of truths that seers,
old and new, had discovered about awareness, and
that such truths had been arranged in a specific se-
quence for purposes of comprehension.

He explained that the mastery of awareness con-
sisted in internalizing the total sequence of such
truths. The first truth, he said, was that our familiarity
with the world we perceive compels us to believe that
we are surrounded by objects, existing by themselves
and as themselves, just as we perceive them, whereas,
in fact, there is no world of objects, but a universe of
the Eagle's emanations.

He told me then that before he could explain the
Eagle's emanations, he had to talk about the known,
the unknown, and the unknowable. Most of the truths
about awareness were discovered by the old seers, he
said. But the order in which they were arranged had
been worked out by the new seers. And without that
order those truths were nearly incomprehensible.

He said that not to seek order was one of the great
mistakes that the ancient seers made. A deadly con-
sequence of that mistake was their assumption that
the unknown and the unknowable are the same thing.
It was up to the new seers to correct that error. They
set up boundaries and defined the unknown as some-
thing that is veiled from man, shrouded perhaps by a
terrifying context, but which, nonetheless, is within
man's reach. The unknown becomes the known at a
given time. The unknowable, on the other hand, is the
indescribable, the unthinkable, the unrealizable. It is
something that will never be known to us, and yet it is
there, dazzling and at the same time horrifying in its
vastness.

"How can seers make the distinction between the
two?" I asked.

"There is a simple rule of thumb," he said. "In the
face of the unknown, man is adventurous. It is a qual-
ity of the unknown to give us a sense of hope and
happiness. Man feels robust, exhilarated. Even the
apprehension that it arouses is very fulfilling. The new
seers saw that man is at his best in the face of the
unknown."

He said that whenever what is taken to be the un-
known turns out to be the unknowable the results are
disastrous. Seers feel drained, confused. A terrible
oppression takes possession of them. Their bodies
lose tone, their reasoning and sobriety wander away
aimlessly, for the unknowable has no energizing ef-
fects whatsoever. It is not within human reach; there-
fore, it should not be intruded upon foolishly or even
prudently. The new seers realized that they had to be
prepared to pay exorbitant prices for the faintest con-
tact with it.

Don Juan explained that the new seers had had for-
midable barriers of tradition to overcome. At the time
when the new cycle began, none of them knew for
certain which procedures of their immense tradition
were the right ones and which were not. Obviously,
something had gone wrong with the ancient seers, but
the new seers did not know what. They began by as-
suming that everything their predecessors had done
was erroneous. Those ancient seers had been the mas-
ters of conjecture. They had, for one thing, assumed
that their proficiency in seeing was a safeguard. They
thought that they were untouchable?that is, until the
invaders smashed them, and put most of them to hor-
rendous deaths. The ancient seers had no protection
whatsoever, despite their total certainty that they
were invulnerable.

The new seers did not waste their time in specula-
tions about what went wrong. Instead, they began to
map the unknown in order to separate it from the un-
knowable.

"How did they map the unknown, don Juan?" I
asked.

"Through the controlled use of seeing," he replied.

I said that what I had meant to ask was, what was
entailed in mapping the unknown?

He answered that mapping the unknown means
making it available to our perception. By steadily
practicing seeing, the new seers found that the un-
known and the known are really on the same footing,
because both are within the reach of human percep-
tion. Seers, in fact, can leave the known at a given
moment and enter into the unknown.

Whatever is beyond our capacity to perceive is the
unknowable. And the distinction between it and the
knowable is crucial. Confusing the two would put
seers in a most precarious position whenever they are
confronted with the unknowable.

"When this happened to the ancient seers," don
Juan went on, "they thought their procedures had
gone haywire. It never occurred to them that most of
what's out there is beyond our comprehension. It was
a terrifying error of judgment on their part, for which
they paid dearly."

"What happened after the distinction between the
unknown and the unknowable was realized?" I asked.

"The new cycle began," he replied. "That distinc-
tion is the frontier between the old and the new.
Everything that the new seers have done stems from
understanding that distinction."

Don Juan said that seeing was the crucial element
in both the destruction of the ancient seers' world and
in the reconstruction of the new view. It was through
seeing that the new seers discovered certain undeni-
able facts, which they used to arrive at certain conclu-
sions, revolutionary to them, about the nature of man
and the world. These conclusions, which made the
new cycle possible, were the truths about awareness
he was explaining to me.


Don Juan asked me to accompany him to the center
of town for a stroll around the square. On our way, we
began to talk about machines and delicate instru-
ments. He said that instruments are extensions of our
senses, and I maintained that there are instruments
that are not in that category, because they perform
functions that we are not physiologically capable of
performing.

"Our senses are capable of everything," he as-
serted.

"I can tell you offhand that there are instruments
that can detect radio waves that come from outer
space," I said. "Our senses cannot detect radio
waves."

"I have a different idea," he said. "I think our
senses can detect everything we are surrounded by."

"What about the case of ultrasonic sounds?" I in-
sisted. "We don't have the organic equipment to hear
them."

"It is the seers' conviction that we've tapped a very
small portion of ourselves," he replied.

He immersed himself in thought for a while as if he
were trying to decide what to say next. Then he
smiled.

"The first truth about awareness, as I have already
told you," he began, "is that the world out there is
not really as we think it is. We think it is a world of
objects and it's not."

He paused as if to measure the effect of his words.
I told him that I agreed with his premise, because
everything could be reduced to being a field of energy.
He said that I was merely intuiting a truth, and that to
reason it out was not to verify it. He was not inter-
ested in my agreement or disagreement, he said, but
in my attempt to comprehend what was involved in
that truth.

"You cannot witness fields of energy," he went on.
"Not as an average man, that is. Now, if you were
able to see them, you would be a seer, in which case
you would be explaining the truths about awareness.
Do you understand what I mean?"

He went on to say that conclusions arrived at
through reasoning had very little or no influence in
altering the course of our lives. Hence, the countless
examples of people who have the clearest convictions
and yet act diametrically against them time and time
again; and have as the only explanation for their be-
havior the idea that to err is human.

"The first truth is that the world is as it looks and
yet it isn't," he went on. "It's not as solid and real as
our perception has been led to believe, but it isn't a
mirage either. The world is not an illusion, as it has
been said to be; it's real on the one hand, and unreal
on the other. Pay close attention to this, for it must be
understood, not just accepted. We perceive. This is a
hard fact. But what we perceive is not a fact of the
same kind, because we learn what to perceive.

"Something out there is affecting our senses. This
is the part that is real. The unreal part is what our
senses tell us is there. Take a mountain, for instance.
Our senses tell us that it is an object. It has size, color,
form. We even have categories of mountains, and they
are downright accurate. Nothing wrong with that; the
flaw is simply that it has never occurred to us that our
senses play only a superficial role. Our senses per-
ceive the way they do because a specific feature of our
awareness forces them to do so."

I began to agree with him again, but not because I
wanted to, for I had not quite understood his point.
Rather, I was reacting to a threatening situation. He
made me stop.

"I've used the term 'the world, ' " don Juan went
on, "to mean everything that surrounds us. I have a
better term, of course, but it would be quite incompre-
hensible to you. Seers say that we think there is a
world of objects out there only because of our aware-
ness. But what's really out there are the Eagle's ema-
nations, fluid, forever in motion, and yet unchanged,
eternal."

He stopped me with a gesture of his hand just as I
was about to ask him what the Eagle's emanations
were. He explained that one of the most dramatic
legacies the old seers had left us was their discovery
that the reason for the existence of all sentient beings
is to enhance awareness. Don Juan called it a colossal
discovery.

In a half-serious tone he asked me if I knew of a
better answer to the question that has always haunted
man: the reason for our existence. I immediately took
a defensive position and began to argue about the
meaninglessness of the question because it cannot be
logically answered. I told him that in order to discuss
that subject we would have to talk about religious be-
liefs and turn it all into a matter of faith.

"The old seers were not just talking about faith,"
he said. "They were not as practical as the new seers,
but they were practical enough to know what they
were seeing. What I was trying to point out to you
with that question, which has rattled you so badly, is
that our rationality alone cannot come up with an an-
swer about the reason for our existence. Every time it
tries, the answer turns into a matter of beliefs. The old
seers took another road, and they did find an answer
which doesn't involve faith alone."

He said that the old seers, risking untold dangers,
actually saw the indescribable force which is the
source of all sentient beings. They called it the Eagle,
because in the few glimpses that they could sustain,
they saw it as something that resembled a black-and-
white eagle of infinite size.

They saw that it is the Eagle who bestows aware-
ness. The Eagle creates sentient beings so that they
will live and enrich the awareness it gives them with
life. They also saw that it is the Eagle who devours
that same enriched awareness after making sentient
beings relinquish it at the moment of death.

"For the old seers," don Juan went on, "to say that
the reason for existence is to enhance awareness is
not a matter of faith or deduction. They saw it.

"They saw that the awareness of sentient beings
flies away at the moment of death and floats like a
luminous cotton puff right into the Eagle's beak to be
consumed. For the old seers that was the evidence
that sentient beings live only to enrich the awareness
that is the Eagle's food."


Don Juan's elucidation was interrupted because he
had to leave on a short business trip. Nestor drove
him to Oaxaca. As I saw them off, I remembered that
at the beginning of my association with don Juan,
every time he mentioned a business trip I thought he
was employing a euphemism for something else. I
eventually realized that he meant what he said. When-
ever such a trip was about to take place, he would put
on one of his many immaculately tailored three-piece
suits and would look like anything but the old Indian I
knew. I had commented to him about the sophistica-
tion of his metamorphosis.

"A nagual is someone flexible enough to be any-
thing," he had said. "To be a nagual, among other
things, means to have no points to defend. Remember
this?we'll come back to it over and over."

We had come back to it over and over, in every
possible way; he did indeed seem to have no points to
defend, but during his absence in Oaxaca I was given
to just a shadow of doubt. Suddenly I realized that a
nagual did have one point to defend?the description
of the Eagle and what it does required, in my opinion,
a passionate defense.

I tried to pose that question to some of don Juan's
companions, but they eluded my probings. They told
me that I was in quarantine from that kind of discus-
sion until don Juan had finished his explanation.

The moment he returned, we sat down to talk and I
asked him about it.

"Those truths are not something to defend passion-
ately," he replied. "If you think that I'm trying to
defend them, you are mistaken. Those truths were put
together for the delight and enlightenment of warriors,
not to engage any proprietary sentiments. When I told
you that a nagual has no points to defend, I meant,
among other things, that a nagual has no obsessions."

I told him that I was not following his teachings, for
I had become obsessed with his description of the
Eagle and what it does. I remarked over and over
about the awesomeness of such an idea.

"It is not just an idea," he said. "It is a fact. And a
damn scary one if you ask me. The new seers were
not simply playing with ideas."

"But what kind of a force would the Eagle be?"

"I wouldn't know how to answer that. The Eagle is
as real for the seers as gravity and time are for you,
and just as abstract and incomprehensible."

"Wait a minute, don Juan. Those are abstract con-
cepts, but they do refer to real phenomena that can be
corroborated. There are whole disciplines dedicated
to that."

"The Eagle and its emanations are equally corrob-
oratable," don Juan retorted. "And the discipline of
the new seers is dedicated to doing just that."

I asked him to explain what the Eagle's emanations
are.

He said that the Eagle's emanations are an immut-
able thing-in-itself, which engulfs everything that ex-
ists, the knowable and the unknowable.

"There is no way to describe in words what the
Eagle's emanations really are," don Juan continued.
"A seer must witness them."

"Have you witnessed them yourself, don Juan?"

"Of course I have, and yet I can't tell you what they
are. They are a presence, almost a mass of sorts, a
pressure that creates a dazzling sensation. One can
catch only a glimpse of them, as one can catch only a
glimpse of the Eagle itself."

"Would you say, don Juan, that the Eagle is the
source of the emanations?"

"It goes without saying that the Eagle is the source
of its emanations."

"I meant to ask if that is so visually."

"There is nothing visual about the Eagle. The entire
body of a seer senses the Eagle. There is something in
all of us that can make us witness with our entire
body. Seers explain the act of seeing the Eagle in very
simple terms: because man is composed of the Eagle's
emanations, man need only revert back to his compo-
nents. The problem arises with man's awareness; it is
his awareness that becomes entangled and confused.
At the crucial moment when it should be a simple case
of the emanations acknowledging themselves, man's
awareness is compelled to interpret. The result is a
vision of the Eagle and the Eagle's emanations. But
there is no Eagle and no Eagle's emanations. What is
out there is something that no living creature can
grasp."

I asked him if the source of the emanations was
called the Eagle because eagles in general have impor-
tant attributes.

"This is simply the case of something unknowable
vaguely resembling something known," he replied.
"On account of that, there have certainly been at-
tempts to imbue eagles with attributes they don't
have. But that always happens when impressionable
people learn to perform acts that require great sobri-
ety. Seers come in all sizes and shapes."

"Do you mean to say that there are different kinds
of seers?"

"No. I mean that there are scores of imbeciles who
become seers. Seers are human beings full of foibles,
or rather, human beings full of foibles are capable of
becoming seers. Just as in the case of miserable people
who become superb scientists.

"The characteristic of miserable seers is that they
are willing to forget the wonder of the world. They
become overwhelmed by the fact that they see and
believe that it's their genius that counts. A seer must
be a paragon in order to override the nearly invincible
laxness of our human condition. More important than
seeing itself is what seers do with what they see."

"What do you mean by that, don Juan?"

"Look at what some seers have done to us. We are
stuck with their vision of an Eagle that rules us and
devours us at the moment of our death."

He said that there is a definite laxness in that ver-
sion, and that personally he did not appreciate the idea
of something devouring us. For him, it would be more
accurate to say that there is a force that attracts our
consciousness, much as a magnet attracts iron shav-
ings. At the moment of dying, all of our being disinte-
grates under the attraction of that immense force.

That such an event was interpreted as the Eagle
devouring us he found grotesque, because it turns an
indescribable act into something as mundane as eat-
ing.

"I'm a very average man," I said. "The description
of an Eagle that devours us had a great impact on
me."

"The real impact can't be measured until the mo-
ment when you see it yourself," he said. "But you
must bear in mind that our flaws remain with us even
after we become seers. So when you see that force,
you may very well agree with the lax seers who called
it the Eagle, as I did myself. On the other hand, you
may not. You may resist the temptation to ascribe
human attributes to what is incomprehensible, and ac-
tually improvise a new name for it, a more accurate
one."


"Seers who see the Eagle's emanations often call
them commands," don Juan said. "I wouldn't mind
calling them commands myself if I hadn't got used to
calling them emanations. It was a reaction to my ben-
efactor's preference; for him they were commands. I
thought that term was more in keeping with his force-
ful personality than with mine. I wanted something
impersonal. 'Commands' sounds too human to me,
but that's what they really are, commands."

Don Juan said that to see the Eagle's emanations is
to court disaster. The new seers soon discovered the
tremendous difficulties involved, and only after great
tribulations in trying to map the unknown and separate
it from the unknowable did they realize that every-
thing is made out of the Eagle's emanations. Only a
small portion of those emanations is within reach of
human awareness, and that small portion is still fur-
ther reduced, to a minute fraction, by the constraints
of our daily lives. That minute fraction of the Eagle's
emanations is the known; the small portion within pos-
sible reach of human awareness is the unknown, and
the incalculable rest is the unknowable.

He went on to say that the new seers, being prag-
matically oriented, became immediately cognizant of
the compelling power of the emanations. They real-
ized that all living creatures are forced to employ the
Eagle's emanations without ever knowing what they
are. They also realized that organisms are constructed
to grasp a certain range of those emanations and that
every species has a definite range. The emanations
exert great pressure on organisms, and through that
pressure organisms construct their perceivable world.

"In our case, as human beings," don Juan said, "we
employ those emanations and interpret them as real-
ity. But what man senses is such a small portion of the
Eagle's emanations that it's ridiculous to put much
stock in our perceptions, and yet it isn't possible for
us to disregard our perceptions. The new seers found
this out the hard way?after courting tremendous dan-
gers."


Don Juan was sitting where he usually sat in the
large room. Ordinarily there was no furniture in that
room?people sat on mats on the floor?but Carol,
the nagual woman, had managed to furnish it with
very comfortable armchairs for the sessions when she
and I took turns reading to him from the works of
Spanish-speaking poets.

"I want you to be very aware of what we are
doing," he said as soon as I sat down. "We are dis-
cussing the mastery of awareness. The truths we're
discussing are the principles of that mastery."

He added that in his teachings for the right side he
had demonstrated those principles to my normal
awareness with the help of one of his seer compan-
ions, Genaro, and that Genaro had played around with
my awareness with all the humor and irreverence for
which the new seers were known.

"Genaro is the one who should be here telling you
about the Eagle," he said, "except that his versions
are too irreverent. He thinks that the seers who called
that force the Eagle were either very stupid or were
making a grand joke, because eagles not only lay eggs,
they also lay turds."

Don Juan laughed and said that he found Genaro's
comments so appropriate that he couldn't resist laugh-
ter. He added that if the new seers had been the ones
to describe the Eagle the description would certainly
have been made half in fun.

I told don Juan that on one level I took the Eagle as
a poetic image, and as such it delighted me, but on
another level I took it literally, and that terrified me.

"One of the greatest forces in the lives of warriors
is fear," he said. "It spurs them to learn."

He reminded me that the description of the Eagle
came from the ancient seers. The new seers were
through with description, comparison, and conjecture
of any sort. They wanted to get directly to the source
of things and consequently risked unlimited danger to
get to it. They did see the Eagle's emanations. But
they never tampered with the description of the Eagle.
They felt that it took too much energy to see the
Eagle, and that the ancient seers had already paid
heavily for their scant glimpse of the unknowable.

"How did the old seers come around to describing
the Eagle?" I asked.

"They needed a minimal set of guidelines about the
unknowable for purposes of instruction," he replied.
"They resolved it with a sketchy description of the
force that rules all there is, but not of its emanations,
because the emanations cannot be rendered at all in a
language of comparisons. Individual seers may feel
the urge to make comments about certain emanations,
but that will remain personal, in other words, there is
no pat version of the emanations, as there is of the
Eagle."

"The new seers seem to have been very abstract,"
I commented. "They sound like modern-day philoso-
phers."

"No. The new seers were terribly practical men,"
he replied. "They weren't involved in concocting ra-
tional theories."

He said that the ancient seers were the ones who
were the abstract thinkers. They built monumental ed-
ifices of abstractions proper to them and their time.
And just like the modern-day philosophers, they were
not at all in control of their concatenations. The new
seers, on the other hand, imbued with practicality,
were able to see a flux of emanations and to see how
man and other living beings utilize them to construct
their perceivable world.

"How are those emanations utilized by man, don
Juan?"

"It's so simple it sounds idiotic. For a seer, men are
luminous beings. Our luminosity is made up of that
portion of the Eagle's emanations which is encased in
our egglike cocoon. That particular portion, that hand-
ful of emanations that is encased, is what makes us
men. To perceive is to match the emanations con-
tained inside our cocoon with those that are outside.

"Seers can see, for instance, the emanations inside
any living creature and can tell which of the outside
emanations would match them."

"Are the emanations like beams of light?" I asked.

"No. Not at all. That would be too simple. They are
something indescribable. And yet, my personal com-
ment would be to say that they are like filaments of
light. What's incomprehensible to normal awareness
is that the filaments are aware. I can't tell you what
that means, because I don't know what I am saying.
All I can tell you with my personal comments is that
the filaments are aware of themselves, alive and vi-
brating, that there are so many of them that numbers
have no meaning and that each of them is an eternity
in itself."


4
The Glow
of Awareness


Don Juan, don Genaro, and I had just returned from
gathering plants in the surrounding mountains. We
were at don Genaro's house, sitting around the table,
when don Juan made me change levels of awareness.
Don Genaro had been staring at me and began to
chuckle. He remarked how odd he thought it was that
I had two completely different standards for dealing
with the two sides of awareness. My relation with him
was the most obvious example. On my right side, he
was the respected and feared sorcerer don Genaro, a
man whose incomprehensible acts delighted me and at
the same time filled me with mortal terror. On my left
side, he was plain Genaro, or Genarito, with no don
attached to his name, a charming and kind seer whose
acts were thoroughly comprehensible and coherent
with what I myself did or tried to do.

I agreed with him and added that on my left side,
the man whose mere presence made me shake like a
leaf was Silvio Manuel, the most mysterious of don
Juan's companions. I also said that don Juan, being a
true nagual, transcended arbitrary standards and was
respected and admired by me in both states.

"But is he feared?" Genaro asked in a quivering
voice.

"Very feared," don Juan interjected in a falsetto
voice.

We all laughed, but don Juan and Genaro laughed
with such abandon that I immediately suspected they
knew something they were holding back.

Don Juan was reading me like a book. He explained
that in the intermediate stage, before one enters fully
into the left-side awareness, one is capable of tremen-
dous concentration, but one is also susceptible to
every conceivable influence. I was being influenced
by suspicion.

"La Gorda is always in this stage," he said. "She
learns beautifully, but she's a royal pain in the neck.
She can't help being driven by anything that comes
her way, including, of corse, very good things, like
keen concentration."

Don Juan explained that the new seers discovered
that the transition period is the time when the deepest
learning takes place, and that it is also the time when
warriors must be supervised and explanations must be
given to them so they can evaluate them properly. If
no explanations are given to them before they enter
into the left side, they will be great sorcerers but poor
seers, as the ancient Toltecs were.

Female warriors in particular fall prey to the lure of
the left side, he said. They are so nimble that they can
go into the left side with no effort, often too soon for
their own good.

After a long silence, Genaro fell asleep. Don Juan
began to speak. He said that the new seers had had to
invent a number of terms in order to explain the sec-
ond truth about awareness. His benefactor had
changed some of those terms to suit himself, and he
himself had done the same, guided by the seers' belief
that it does not make any difference what terms are
used as long as the truths have been verified by seeing.

I was curious to know what terms he had changed,
but I didn't know quite how to word my question. He
took it that I was doubting his right or his ability to
change them and explained that if the terms we pro-
pose originate in our reason they can only communi-
cate the mundane agreement of everyday life. When
seers propose a term, on the other hand, it is never a
figure of speech because it stems from seeing and em-
braces everything that seers can attain.

I asked him why he had changed the terms.

"It's a nagual's duty always to look for better ways
to explain," he replied. "Time changes everything,
and every new nagual has to incorporate new words,
new ideas, to describe his seeing. '"

"Do you mean that a nagual takes ideas from the
world of every day life?" I asked.

"No. I mean that a nagual talks about seeing in ever
new ways," he said. "For instance, as the new na-
gual, you'd have to say that awareness gives rise to
perception. You'd be saying the same thing my bene-
factor said, but in a different way."

"What do the new seers say perception is, don
Juan?"

"They say that perception is a condition of align-
ment; the emanations inside the cocoon become
aligned with those outside that fit them. Alignment is
what allows awareness to be cultivated by every living
creature. Seers make these statements because they
see living creatures as they really are: luminous beings
that look like bubbles of whitish light."

I asked him how the emanations inside the cocoon
fit those outside so as to accomplish perception.

"The emanations inside and the emanations out-
side," he said, "are the same filaments of light. Sen-
tient beings are minute bubbles made out of those
filaments, microscopic points of light, attached to the
infinite emanations."

He went on to explain that the luminosity of living
beings is made by the particular portion of the Eagle's
emanations they happen to have inside their luminous
cocoons. When seers see perception, they witness
that the luminosity of the Eagle's emanations outside
those creatures' cocoons brightens the luminosity of
the emanations inside their cocoons. The outside lu-
minosity attracts the inside one; it traps it, so to speak,
and fixes it. That fixation is the awareness of every
specific being.

Seers can also see how the emanations outside the
cocoon exert a particular pressure on the portion of
emanations inside. This pressure determines the de-
gree of awareness that every living being has.

I asked him to clarify how the Eagle's emanations
outside the cocoon exert pressure on those inside.

"The Eagle's emanations are more than filaments of
light," he replied. "Each one of them is a source of
boundless energy. Think of it this way: since some of
the emanations outside the cocoon are the same as the
emanations inside, their energies are like a continuous
pressure. But the cocoon isolates the emanations that
are inside its web and thereby directs the pressure.

"I've mentioned to you that the old seers were mas-
ters of the art of handling awareness," he went on.
"What I can add now is that they were the masters of
that art because they learned to manipulate the struc-
ture of man's cocoon. I've said to you that they unrav-
eled the mystery of being aware. By that I meant that
they saw and realized that awareness is a glow in the
cocoon of living beings. They rightly called it the glow
of awareness."

He explained that the old seers saw that man's
awareness is a glow of amber luminosity more intense
than the rest of the cocoon. That glow is on a narrow,
vertical band on the extreme right side of the cocoon,
running along its entire length. The mastery of the old
seers was to move that glow, to make it spread from
its original setting on the surface of the cocoon inward
across its width.

He stopped talking and looked at Genaro, who was
still sound asleep.

"Genaro doesn't give a fig about explanations," he
said. "He's a doer. My benefactor pushed him con-
stantly to face insoluble problems. So he entered into
the left side proper and never had a chance to ponder
and wonder."

"Is it better to be that way, don Juan?"

"It depends. For him, it's perfect. For you and for
me, it wouldn't be satisfactory, because in one way or
another we are called upon to explain. Genaro or my
benefactor are more like the old than the new seers:
they can control and do what they want with the glow
of awareness."

He stood up from the mat where we were sitting and
stretched his arms and legs. I pressed him to continue
talking. He smiled and said that I needed to rest, that
my concentration was waning.


There was a knock at the door. I woke up. It was
dark. For a moment I could not remember where I
was. There was something in me that was far away, as
if part of me were still asleep, yet I was fully awake.
Enough moonlight came through the open window so
that I could see.

I saw don Genaro get up and go to the door. I real-
ized then that I was at his house. Don Juan was sound
asleep on a mat on the floor. I had the distinct impres-
sion that the three of us had fallen asleep after return-
ing dead tired from a trip to the mountains.

Don Genaro lit his kerosene lantern. I followed him
into the kitchen. Someone had brought him a pot of
hot stew and a stack of tortillas.

"Who brought you food?" I asked him. "Do you
have a woman around here that cooks for you?"

Don Juan had come into the kitchen. Both of them
looked at me, smiling. For some reason their smiles
were terrifying to me. I was about to scream in terror,
in fact, when don Juan hit me on the back and made
me shift into a state of heightened awareness. I real-
ized then that perhaps during my sleep, or as I woke
up, I had drifted back to everyday awareness.

The sensation I experienced then, once I was back
in heightened awareness, was a mixture of relief and
anger and the most acute sadness. I was relieved that
I was myself again, for I had come to regard those
incomprehensible states as being my true self. There
was one simple reason for that?in those states I felt
complete; nothing was missing from me. The anger
and the sadness were a reaction to impotence. I was
more aware than ever of the limitations of my being.

I asked don Juan to explain to me how it was pos-
sible for me to do what I was doing. In states of
heightened awareness I could look back and remem-
ber everything about myself; I could give an account
of everything I had done in either state; I could even
remember my incapacity to recollect. But once I had
returned to my normal, everyday level of awareness I
could not recall anything I had done in heightened
awareness, even if my life depended on it.

"Hold it, hold it there," he said. "You haven't re-
membered anything yet. Heightened awareness is
only an intermediate state. There is infinitely more
beyond that, and you have been there many, many
times. Right now you can't remember, even if your
life depends on it."

He was right. I had no idea what he was talking
about. I pleaded for an explanation.

"The explanation is coming," he said. "It's a slow
process, but we'll get to it. It is slow because I am just
like you: I like to understand. I am the opposite of my
benefactor, who was not given to explaining. For him
there was only action. He used to put us squarely
against incomprehensible problems and let us resolve
them for ourselves. Some of us never did resolve any-
thing, and we ended up very much in the same boat
with the old seers: all action and no real knowledge."

"Are those memories trapped in my mind?" I
asked.

"No. That would make it too simple," he replied.
"The actions of seers are more complex than dividing
a man into mind and body. You have forgotten what
you've done, or what you've witnessed, because when
you were performing what you've forgotten you were
seeing."

I asked don Juan to reinterpret what he had just
said.

Patiently, he explained that everything I had forgot-
ten had taken place in states in which my everyday
awareness had been enhanced, intensified, a condition
that meant that other areas of my total being were
used.

"Whatever you've forgotten is trapped in those
areas of your total being," he said. "To be using those
other areas is to see."

"I'm more confused than ever, don Juan," I said.

"I don't blame you," he said. "Seeing is to lay bare
the core of everything, to witness the unknown and to
glimpse into the unknowable. As such, it doesn't bring
one solace. Seers ordinarily go to pieces on finding out
that existence is incomprehensibly complex and that
our normal awareness maligns it with its limitations."

He reiterated that my concentration had to be total,
that to understand was of crucial importance, that the
new seers placed the highest value on deep, unemo-
tional realizations.

"For instance, the other day," he went on, "when
you understood about la Gorda's and your self-impor-
tance, you didn't understand anything really. You had
an emotional outburst, that was all. I say this because
the next day you were back on your high horse of self-
importance as if you never had realized anything.

"The same thing happened to the old seers. They
were given to emotional reactions. But when the time
came for them to understand what they had seen, they
couldn't do it. To understand one needs sobriety, not
emotionality. Beware of those who weep with reali-
zation, for they have realized nothing.

"There are untold dangers in the path of knowledge
for those without sober understanding," he continued.
"I am outlining the order in which the new seers ar-
ranged the truths about awareness, so it will serve you
as a map. a map that you have to corroborate with
your seeing, but not with your eyes."

There was a long pause. He stared at me. He was
definitely waiting for me to ask him a question.

"Everybody falls prey to the mistake that seeing is
done with the eyes," he continued. "But don't be
surprised that after so many years you haven't real-
ized yet that seeing is not a matter of the eyes. It's
quite normal to make that mistake."

"What is seeing, then?" I asked.

He replied that seeing is alignment. And I reminded
him that he had said that perception is alignment. He
explained then that the alignment of emanations used
routinely is the perception of the day-to-day world,
but the alignment of emanations that are never used
ordinarily is seeing. When such an alignment occurs
one sees. Seeing, therefore, being produced by align-
ment out of the ordinary, cannot be something one
could merely look at. He said that in spite of the fact
that I had seen countless times, it had not occurred to
me to disregard my eyes. I had succumbed to the way
seeing is labeled and described.

"When seers see, something explains everything as
the new alignment takes place," he continued. "It's a
voice that tells them in their ear what's what. If that
voice is not present, what the seer is engaged in isn't
seeing. "

After a moment's pause, he continued explaining
the voice of seeing. He said that it was equally falla-
cious to say that seeing was hearing, because it was
infinitely more than that, but that seers had opted for
using sound as a gauge of a new alignment.

He called the voice of seeing a most mysterious
inexplicable thing. "My personal conclusion is that
the voice of seeing belongs only to man," he said. "It
may happen because talking is something that no one
else besides man does. The old seers believed it was
the voice of an overpowering entity intimately related
to mankind, a protector of man. The new seers found
out that that entity, which they called the mold of
man, doesn't have a voice. The voice of seeing for the
new seers is something quite Incomprehensible; they
say it's the glow of awareness playing on the Eagle's
emanations as a harpist plays on a harp."

He refused to explain it any further, arguing that
later on, as he proceeded with his explanation, every-
thing would become clear to me.


My concentration had been so total while don Juan
spoke that I actually did not remember sitting down at
the table to eat. When don Juan stopped talking, I
noticed that his plate of stew was nearly finished.

Genaro was staring at me with a beaming smile. My
plate was in front of me on the table, and it too was
empty. There was only a tiny residue of stew left in it,
as if I had just finished eating. I did not remember
eating it at all, but neither did I remember walking to
the table or sitting down.

"Did you like the stew?" Genaro asked me and
looked away.

I said I did, because I did not want to admit that I
was having problems recollecting.

"It had too much chile for my taste," Genaro said.
"You never eat hot food yourself, so I'm sort of wor-
ried about what it will do to you. You shouldn't have
eaten two servings. I suppose you're a little more pig-
gish when you're in heightened awareness, eh?"

I admitted that he was probably right. He handed
me a large pitcher of water to quench my thirst and
soothe my throat. When I eagerly drank all of it, both
of them broke into howling laughter.

Suddenly, I realized what was going on. My reali-
zation was physical. It was a flash of yellowish light
that hit me as if a match had been struck right between
my eyes. I knew then that Genaro was joking. I had
not eaten. I had been so absorbed in don Juan's expla-
nation that I had forgotten about everything else. The
plate in front of me was Genaro's.

After dinner don Juan went on with his explanation
about the glow of awareness. Genaro sat by me, listen-
ing as if he had never heard the explanation before.

Don Juan said that the pressure that the emanations
outside the cocoon, which are called emanations at
large, exert on the emanations inside the cocoon is the
same in all sentient beings. Yet the results of that pres-
sure are vastly different among them, because their
cocoons react to that pressure in every conceivable
way. There are. however, degrees of uniformity
within certain boundaries.

"Now," he went on, "when seers see that the pres-
sure of the emanations at large bears down on the
emanations inside, which are always in motion, and
makes them stop moving, they know that the luminous
being at that moment is fixated by awareness.

"To say that the emanations at large bear down on
those inside the cocoon and make them stop moving
means that seers see something indescribable, the
meaning of which they know without a shadow of
doubt. It means that the voice of seeing has told them
that the emanations inside the cocoon are completely
at rest and match some of those which are outside."

He said that seers maintain, naturally, that aware-
ness always comes from outside ourselves, that the
real mystery is not inside us. Since by nature the em-
anations at large are made to fixate what is inside the
cocoon, the trick of awareness is to let the fixating
emanations merge with what is inside us. Seers be-
lieve that if we let that happen we become what we
really are?fluid, forever in motion, eternal.

There was a long pause. Don Juan's eyes had an
intense shine. They seemed to be looking at me from
a great depth. I had the feeling that each of his eyes
was an independent point of brilliance. For an instant
he appeared to be struggling against an invisible force,
a fire from within that intended to consume him. It
passed and he went on talking.

"The degree of awareness of every individual sen-
tient being," he continued, "depends on the degree to
which it is capable of letting the pressure of the ema-
nations at large carry it."


After a long interruption, don Juan continued ex-
plaining. He said that seers saw that from the moment
of conception awareness is enhanced, enriched, by the
process of being alive. He said that seers saw, for
instance, that the awareness of an individual insect or
that of an individual man grows from the moment of
conception in astoundingly different ways, but with
equal consistency.

"Is it from the moment of conception or from the
moment of birth that awareness develops?" I asked.

"Awareness develops from the moment of concep-
tion," he replied. "I have always told you that sexual
energy is something of ultimate importance and that it
has to be controlled and used with great care. But you
have always resented what I said, because you
thought I was speaking of control in terms of morality;
I always meant it in terms of saving and rechanneling
energy."

Don Juan looked at Genaro. Genaro nodded his
head in approval.

"Genaro is going to tell you what our benefactor,
the nagual Julian, used to say about saving and re-
channeling sexual energy," don Juan said to me.

"The nagual Julian used to say that to have sex is a
matter of energy," Genaro began. "For instance, he
never had any problems having sex, because he had
bushels of energy. But he took one look at me and
prescribed right away that my peter was just for
peeing. He told me that I didn't have enough energy
to have sex. He said that my parents were too bored
and too tired when they made me; he said that I was
the result of very boring sex, cojida aburrida. I was
born like that, bored and tired. The nagual Julian rec-
ommended that people like me should never have sex;
this way we can store the little energy we have.

"He said the same thing to Silvio Manuel and to
Emilito. He saw that the others had enough energy.
They were not the result of bored sex. He told them
that they could do anything they wanted with their
sexual energy, but he recommended that they control
themselves and understand the Eagle's command that
sex is for bestowing the glow of awareness. We all
said we had understood.

"One day, without any warning at all, he opened
the curtain of the other world with the help of his own
benefactor, the nagual Ellas, and pushed all of us in-
side, with no hesitation whatsoever. All of us, except
Silvio Manuel, nearly died in there. We had no energy
to withstand the impact of the other world. None of
us, except Silvio Manuel, had followed the nagual's
recommendation."

"What is the curtain of the other world?" I asked
don Juan.

"What Genaro said?it is a curtain," don Juan re-
plied. "But you're getting off the subject. You always
do. We're talking about the Eagle's command about
sex. It is the Eagle's command that sexual energy be
used for creating life. Through sexual energy, the
eagle bestows awareness. So when sentient beings are
engaged in sexual intercourse, the emanations inside
their cocoons do their best to bestow awareness to the
new sentient being they are creating."

He said that during the sexual act, the emanations
encased inside the cocoon of both partners undergo a
profound agitation, the culminating point of which is a
merging, a fusing of two pieces of the glow of aware-
ness, one from each partner, that separate from their
cocoons.

"Sexual intercourse is always a bestowal of aware-
ness even though the bestowal may not be consoli-
dated," he went on. "The emanations inside the
cocoon of human beings don't know of intercourse for
fun."

Genaro leaned over toward me from his chair across
the table and talked to me in a low voice, shaking his
head for emphasis.

"The nagual is telling you the truth," he said and
winked at me. "Those emanations really don't
know."

Don Juan fought not to laugh and added that the
fallacy of man is to act with total disregard for the
mystery of existence and to believe that such a sub-
lime act of bestowing life and awareness is merely a
physical drive that one can twist at will.

Genaro made obscene sexual gestures, twisting his
pelvis around, on and on. Don Juan nodded and said
that that was exactly what he meant. Genaro thanked
him for acknowledging his one and only contribution
to the explanation of awareness.

Both of them laughed like idiots, saying that if I had
known how serious their benefactor was about the
explanation of awareness, I would be laughing with
them.

I earnestly asked don Juan what all this meant for
an average man in the day-to-day world.

"You mean what Genaro is doing?" he asked me in
mock seriousness.

Their glee was always contagious. It took a long
time for them to calm down. Their level of energy was
so high that next to them, I seemed old and decrepit.

"I really don't know," don Juan finally answered
me. "All I know is what it means to warriors. They
know that the only real energy we possess is a life-
bestowing sexual energy. This knowledge makes them
permanently conscious of their responsibility.

"If warriors want to have enough energy to see,
they must become misers with their sexual energy.
That was the lesson the nagual Julian gave us. He
pushed us into the unknown, and we all nearly died.
Since everyone of us wanted to see, we, of course,
abstained from wasting our glow of awareness."

I had heard him voice that belief before. Every time
he did, we got into an argument. I always felt com-
pelled to protest and raise objections to what I thought
was a puritanical attitude toward sex.

I again raised my objections. Both of them laughed
to tears.

"What can be done with man's natural sensuality?"
I asked don Juan.

"Nothing," he replied. "There is nothing wrong
with man's sensuality, it's man's ignorance of and dis-
regard for his magical nature that is wrong. It's a mis-
take to waste recklessly the life-bestowing force of sex
and not have children, but it's also a mistake not to
know that in having children one taxes the glow of
awareness."

"How do seers know that having children taxes the
glow of awareness?" I asked.

"They see that on having a child, the parents' glow
of awareness diminishes and the child's increases. In
some supersensitive, frail parents, the glow of aware-
ness almost disappears. As children enhance their
awareness, a big dark spot develops in the luminous
cocoon of the parents, on the very place from which
the glow was taken away. It is usually on the midsec-
tion of the cocoon. Sometimes those spots can even
be seen superimposed on the body itself."

I asked him if there was anything that could be done
to give people a more balanced understanding of the
glow of awareness.

"Nothing," he said. "At least, there is nothing that
seers can do. Seers aim to be free, to be unbiased
witnesses incapable of passing judgment; otherwise
they would have to assume the responsibility for
bringing about a more adjusted cycle. No one can do
that. The new cycle, if it is to come, must come of
itself."


5
The First Attention


The following day we ate breakfast at dawn, then don
Juan made me shift levels of awareness.

"Today, let's go to an original setting," don Juan
said to Genaro.

"By all means," Genaro said gravely. He glanced
at me and then added in a low voice, as if not wanting
me to overhear him, "Does he have to. . . perhaps
it's too much. . ."

In a matter of seconds my fear and suspicion esca-
lated to unbearable heights. I was sweating and pant-
ing. Don Juan came to my side and, with an
expression of almost uncontrollable amusement, as-
sured me that Genaro was just entertaining himself at
my expense, and that we were going to a place where
the original seers had lived thousands of years ago.

As don Juan was speaking to me, I happened to
glance at Genaro. He slowly shook his head from side
to side. It was an almost imperceptible gesture, as if
he were letting me know that don Juan was not telling
the truth. I went into a state of nervous frenzy, near
hysteria?and stopped only when Genaro burst into
laughter.

I marveled how easily my emotional states could
escalate to nearly unmanageable heights or drop to
nothing.

Don Juan, Genaro, and I left Genaro's house in the
early morning and traveled a short distance into the
surrounding eroded hills. Presently we stopped and
sat down on top of an enormous flat rock, on a gradual
slope, in a corn field that seemed to have been recently
harvested.

"This is the original setting," don Juan said to me.
"We'll come back here a couple more times, during
the course of my explanation."

"Very weird things happen here at night," Genaro
said. "The nagual Julian actually caught an ally here.
Or rather, the ally ..."

Don Juan made a noticeable gesture with his eye-
brows and Genaro stopped in midsentence. He smiled
at me.

"It's too early in the day for scary stories," Genaro
said. "Let's wait until dark."

He stood up and began creeping all around the rock,
tiptoeing with his spine arched backward.

"What was he saying about your benefactor's
catching an ally here?" I asked don Juan.

He did not answer right away. He was ecstatic,
watching Genaro's antics.

"He was referring to some sophisticated use of
awareness," he finally replied, still staring at Genaro.

Genaro completed a circle around the rock and
came back and sat down by me. He was panting heav-
ily, almost wheezing, out of breath.

Don Juan seemed fascinated by what Genaro had
done. Again I had the feeling that they were amusing
themselves at my expense, that both of them were up
to something I knew nothing about.

Suddenly, don Juan began his explanation. His
voice soothed me. He said that after much toiling,
seers arrived at the conclusion that the consciousness
of adult human beings, matured by the process of
growth, can no longer be called awareness, because it
has been modified into something more intense and
complex, which seers call attention.

"How do seers know that man's awareness is being
cultivated and that it grows?" I asked.

He said that at a given time in the growth of human
beings a band of the emanations inside their cocoons
becomes very bright; as human beings accumulate ex-
perience, it begins to glow. In some instances, the
glow of this band of emanations increases so dramati-
cally that it fuses with the emanations from the out-
side. Seers, witnessing an enhancement of this kind,
had to surmise that awareness is the raw material and
attention the end product of maturation.

"How do seers describe attention?" I asked.

"They say that attention is the harnessing and en-
hancing of awareness through the process of being
alive," he replied.

He said that the danger of definitions is that they
simplify matters to make them understandable; in this
case, in defining attention, one runs the risk of trans-
forming a magical, miraculous accomplishment into
something commonplace. Attention is man's greatest
single accomplishment. It develops from raw animal
awareness until it covers the entire gamut of human
alternatives. Seers perfect it even further until it cov-
ers the whole scope of human possibilities.

I wanted to know if there was a special significance
to alternatives and possibilities in the seers' view.

Don Juan replied that human alternatives are every-
thing we are capable of choosing as persons. They
have to do with the level of our day-to-day range, the
known; and owing to that fact, they are quite limited
in number and scope. Human possibilities belong to
the unknown. They are not what we are capable of
choosing but what we are capable of attaining. He said
that an example of human alternatives is our choice to
believe that the human body is an object among ob-
jects. An example of human possibilities is the seers'
achievement in viewing man as an egglike luminous
being. With the body as an object one tackles the
known, with the body as a luminous egg one tackles
the unknown; human possibilities have, therefore,
nearly an inexhaustible scope.

"Seers say that there are three types of attention,"
don Juan went on. "When they say that, they mean it
just for human beings, not for all the sentient beings
in existence. But the three are not just types of atten-
tion, they are rather three levels of attainment. They
are the first, second, and third attention, each of them
an independent domain, complete in itself."

He explained that the first attention in man is animal
awareness, which has been developed, through the
process of experience, into a complex, intricate, and
extremely fragile faculty that takes care of the day-to-
day world in all its innumerable aspects, in other
words, everything that one can think about is part of
the first attention.

"The first attention is everything we are as average
men," he continued. "By virtue of such an absolute
rule over our lives, the first attention is the most valu-
able asset that the average man has. Perhaps it is even
our only asset.

"Taking into account its true value, the new seers
started a rigorous examination of the first attention
through seeing. Their findings molded their total out-
look and the outlook of all their descendants, even
though most of them do not understand what those
seers really saw."

He emphatically warned me that the conclusions of
the new seers' rigorous examination had very little to
do with reason or rationality, because in order to ex-
amine and explain the first attention, one must see it.
Only seers can do that. But to examine what seers see
in the first attention is essential. It allows the first
attention the only opportunity it will ever have to re-
alize its own workings.

"In terms of what seers see, the first attention is the
glow of awareness developed to an ultra shine," he
continued. "But it is a glow fixed on the surface of the
cocoon, so to speak. It is a glow that covers the
known.

"The second attention, on the other hand, is a more
complex and specialized state of the glow of aware-
ness. It has to do with the unknown. It comes about
when unused emanations inside man's cocoon are uti-
lized.

"The reason I called the second attention special-
ized is that in order to utilize those unused emana-
tions, one needs uncommon, elaborate tactics that
require supreme discipline and concentration."

He said that he had told me before, when he was
teaching me the art of dreaming, that the concentra-
tion needed to be aware that one is having a dream is
the forerunner of the second attention. That concen-
tration is a form of consciousness that is not in the
same category as the consciousness needed to deal
with the daily world.

He said that the second attention is also called the
left-side awareness; and it is the vastest field that one
can imagine, so vast in fact that it seems limitless.

"I wouldn't stray into it for anything in this world,"
he went on. "It is a quagmire so complex and bizarre
that sober seers go into it only under the strictest con-
ditions.

"The great difficulty is that the entrance into the
second attention is utterly easy and its lure nearly ir-
resistible."

He said that the old seers, being the masters of
awareness, applied their expertise to their own glows
of awareness and made them expand to inconceivable
limits. They actually aimed at lighting up all the ema-
nations inside their cocoons, one band at a time. They
succeeded, but oddly enough the accomplishment of
lighting up one band at a time was instrumental in their
becoming imprisoned in the quagmire of the second
attention.

"The new seers corrected that error," he contin-
ued, "and let the mastery of awareness develop to its
natural end, which is to extend the glow of awareness
beyond the bounds of the luminous cocoon in one sin-
gle stroke.

"The third attention is attained when the glow of
awareness turns into the fire from within: a glow that
kindles not one band at a time but all the Eagle's em-
anations inside man's cocoon."

Don Juan expressed his awe for the new seers' de-
liberate effort to attain the third attention while they
are alive and conscious of their individuality.

He did not consider it worthwhile to discuss
the random cases of men and other sentient beings
who enter into the unknown and the unknowable
without being aware of it; he referred to this as
the Eagle's gift. He asserted that for the new seers
to enter into the third attention is also a gift, but
has a different meaning, it is more like a reward for an
attainment.

He added that at the moment of dying all human
beings enter into the unknowable and some of them
do attain the third attention, but altogether too briefly
and only to purify the food for the Eagle.

"The supreme accomplishment of human beings,"
he said, "is to attain that level of attention while re-
taining the life-force, without becoming a disembodied
awareness moving like a flicker of light up to the Ea-
gle's beak to be devoured."

While listening to don Juan's explanation I had
again completely lost sight of everything that sur-
rounded me. Genaro apparently had gotten up and left
us, and was nowhere in sight. Strangely, I found my-
self crouching on the rock, with don Juan squatting by
me holding me down by gently pushing on my shoul-
ders. I reclined on the rock and closed my eyes. There
was a soft breeze blowing from the west.

"Don't fall asleep," don Juan said. "Not for any
reason should you fall asleep on this rock."

I sat up. Don Juan was staring at me.

"Just relax," he went on. "Let the internal dialogue
die out."

All my concentration was involved in following
what he was saying when I got a jolt of fright. I did
not know what it was at first; I thought I was going
through another attack of distrust. But then it struck
me, like a bolt, that it was very late in the afternoon.
What I had thought was an hour's conversation had
consumed an entire day.

I jumped up, fully aware of the incongruity, al-
though I could not conceive what had happened to me.
I felt a strange sensation that made my body want to
run. Don Juan jumped me, restraining me forcefully.
We fell to the soft ground, and he held me there with
an iron grip. I had had no idea that don Juan was so
strong.

My body shook violently. My arms flew every
which way as they shook. I was having something like
a seizure. Yet some part of me was detached to the
point of becoming fascinated with watching my body
vibrate, twist, and shake.

The spasms finally died out and don Juan let go of
me. He was panting with the exertion. He recom-
mended that we climb back up on the rock and sit
there until I was all right.

I could not help pressing him with my usual ques-
tion: What had happened to me? He answered that as
he talked to me I had pushed beyond a certain limit
and had entered very deeply into the left side. He and
Genaro had followed me in there. And then I had
rushed out in the same fashion I had rushed in.

"I caught you right on time," he said. "Otherwise
you would have gone straight out to your normal
self."

I was totally confused. He explained that the three
of us had been playing with awareness. I must have
gotten scared and run out on them.

"Genaro is the master of awareness," don Juan
went on. "Silvio Manuel is the master of wilt. The two
of them were mercilessly pushed into the unknown.
My benefactor did to them what his benefactor did to
him. Genaro and Silvio Manuel are very much like the
old seers in some respects. They know what they can
do, but they don't care to know how they do it. Today,
Genaro seized the opportunity to push your glow of
awareness and we all ended up in the weird confines
of the unknown."

I begged him to tell me what had happened in the
unknown.

"You'll have to remember that yourself," a voice
said just by my ear.

I was so convinced that it was the voice of seeing
that it did not frighten me at all. I did not even obey
the impulse to turn around.

"I am the voice of seeing and I tell you that you are
a peckerhead," the voice said again and chuckled.

I turned around. Genaro was sitting behind me. I
was so surprised that I laughed perhaps a bit more
hysterically than they did.

"It's getting dark now," Genaro said to me. "As I
promised you earlier today, we are going to have a
ball here."

Don Juan intervened and said that we should stop
for the day, because I was the kind of nincompoop
who could die offright.

"Nah, he's all right," Genaro said, patting me on
the shoulder.

"You'd better ask him," don Juan said to Genaro.
"He himself will tell you that he's that kind of nincom-
poop."

"Are you really that kind of nincompoop?" Genaro
asked me with a frown.

I didn't answer him. And that made them roll
around laughing. Genaro rolled all the way to the
ground.

"He's caught," Genaro said to don Juan, referring
to me, after don Juan had swiftly jumped down and
helped him to stand up. "He'll never say he's a nin-
compoop. He's too self-important for that, but he's
shivering in his pants with fear of what might happen
because he didn't confess he's a nincompoop."

Watching them laugh, I was convinced that only
Indians could laugh with such joyfulness. But I also
became convinced that there was a mile-wide streak
of maliciousness in them. They were poking fun at a
non-Indian.

Don Juan immediately caught my feelings.

"Don't let your self-importance run rampant," he
said. "You're not special by any standards. None of
us are, Indians and non-Indians. The nagual Julian and
his benefactor added years of enjoyment to their lives
laughing at us."

Genaro nimbly climbed back onto the rock and
came to my side.

"If I were you. I'd feel so frigging embarrassed I'd
cry," he said to me. "Cry, cry. Have a good cry and
you'll feel better."

To my utter amazement I began to weep softly.
Then I got so angry that I roared with fury. Only then
I felt better.

Don Juan patted my back gently. He said that usu-
ally anger is very sobering, or sometimes fear is, or
humor. My violent nature made me respond only to
anger.

He added that a sudden shift in the glow of aware-
ness makes us weak. They had been trying to rein-
force me, to bolster me. Apparently, Genaro had
succeeded by making me rage.

It was twilight by then. Suddenly Genaro pointed to
a flicker in midair at eye level, in the twilight it ap-
peared to be a large moth flying around the place
where we sat.

"Be very gentle with your exaggerated nature,"
don Juan said to me. "Don't be eager. Just let Genaro
guide you. Don't take your eyes from that spot."

The flickering point was definitely a moth. I could
clearly distinguish all its features. I followed its con-
voluted, tired flight, until I could see every speck of
dust on its wings.

Something got me out of my total absorption. I
sensed a flurry of soundless noise, if that could be
possible, just behind me. I turned around and caught
sight of an entire row of people on the other edge of
the rock, an edge that was a bit higher than the one on
which we were sitting. I supposed that the people who
lived nearby must have gotten suspicious of us hang-
ing around all day and had climbed onto the rock in-
tending to harm us. I knew about their intentions
instantly.

Don Juan and Genaro slid down from the rock and
told me to hurry down. We left immediately without
turning back to see if the men were following us. Don
Juan and Genaro refused to talk while we walked back
to Genaro's house. Don Juan even made me hush with
a fierce grunt, putting his finger to his lips. Genaro did
not come into the house, but kept on walking as don
Juan dragged me inside.

"Who were those people, don Juan?" I asked him,
when the two of us were safely inside the house and
he had lit the lantern.

"They were not people," he replied.

"Come on, don Juan, don't mystify me," I said.
"They were men; I saw them with my own eyes."

"Of course, you saw them with your own eyes," he
retorted, "but that doesn't say anything. Your eyes
misled you. Those were not people and they were fol-
lowing you. Genaro had to draw them away from
you."

"What were they, then, if not people?"

"Oh, there is the mystery," he said. "It's a mystery
of awareness and it can't be solved rationally by talk-
ing about it. The mystery can only be witnessed."

"Let me witness it then." I said.

"But you already have, twice in one day," he said.
"You don't remember now. You will, however, when
you rekindle the emanations that were glowing when
you witnessed the mystery of awareness i'm referring
to. In the meantime, let's go back to our explanation
of awareness."

He reiterated that awareness begins with the per-
manent pressure that the emanations at large exert on
the ones trapped inside the cocoon. This pressure pro-
duces the first act of consciousness; it stops the mo-
tion of the trapped emanations, which are fighting to
break the cocoon, fighting to die.

"For a seer, the truth is that all living beings are
struggling to die," he went on. "What stops death is
awareness."

Don Juan said that the new seers were profoundly
disturbed by the fact that awareness forestalls death
and at the same time induces it by being food for the
Eagle. Since they could not explain it, for there is no
rational way to understand existence, seers realized
that their knowledge is composed of contradictory
propositions.

"Why did they develop a system of contradic-
tions?" I asked.

"They didn't develop anything," he said. "They
found unquestionable truths by means of their seeing.
Those truths are arranged in terms of supposedly bla-
tant contradictions, that's all.

"For example, seers have to be methodical, rational
beings, paragons of sobriety, and at the same time
they must shy away from all of those qualities in order
to be completely free and open to the wonders and
mysteries of existence."

His example left me baffled, but not to the extreme.
I understood what he meant. He himself had spon-
sored my rationality only to crush it and demand a
total absence of it. I told him how I understood his
point.

"Only a feeling of supreme sobriety can bridge the
contradictions," he said.

"Could you say, don Juan, that art is that bridge?"

"You may call the bridge between contradictions
anything you want?art, affection, sobriety, love, or
even kindness."

Don Juan continued his explanation and said that in
examining the first attention, the new seers realized
that all organic beings, except man, quiet down their
agitated trapped emanations so that those emanations
can align themselves with their matching ones outside.
Human beings do not do that; instead, their first atten-
tion lakes an inventory of the Eagle's emanations in-
side their cocoons.

"What is an inventory, don Juan?" I asked.

"Human beings take notice of the emanations they
have inside their cocoons," he replied. "No other
creatures do that. The moment the pressure from the
emanations at large fixates the emanations inside, the
first attention begins to watch itself. It notes every-
thing about itself, or at least it tries to, in whatever
aberrant ways it can. This is the process seers call
taking an inventory.

"I don't mean to say that human beings choose to
take an inventory, or that they can refuse to take it.
To take an inventory is the Eagle's command. What is
subject to volition, however, is the manner in which
the command is obeyed."

He said that although he disliked calling the ema-
nations commands, that is what they are: commands
that no one can disobey. Yet the way out of obeying
the commands is in obeying them.

"In the case of the inventory of the first attention,"
he went on, "seers take it, for they can't disobey. But
once they have taken it they throw it away. The Eagle
doesn't command us to worship our inventory; it com-
mands us to take it, that's all."

"How do seers see that man takes an inventory?" I
asked.

"The emanations inside the cocoon of man are not
quieted down for purposes of matching them with
those outside," he replied. "This is evident after
seeing what other creatures do. On quieting down,
some of them actually merge themselves with the em-
anations at large and move with them. Seers can see,
for instance, the light of the scarabs' emanations ex-
panding to great size.

"But human beings quiet down their emanations
and then reflect on them. The emanations focus on
themselves."

He said that human beings carry the command of
taking an inventory to its logical extreme and disre-
gard everything else. Once they are deeply involved
in the inventory, two things may happen. They may
ignore the impulses of the emanations at large, or they
may use them in a very specialized way.

The end result of ignoring those impulses after tak-
ing an inventory is a unique state known as reason.
The result of using every impulse in a specialized way
is known as self-absorption.

Human reason appears to a seer as an unusually
homogeneous dull glow that rarely if ever responds to
the constant pressure from the emanations at large?
a glow that makes the egglike shell become tougher,
but more brittle.

Don Juan remarked that reason in the human spe-
cies should be bountiful, but that in actuality it is very
rare. The majority of human beings turn to self-ab-
sorption.

He asserted that the awareness of all living beings
has a degree of self-reflection in order for them to
interact. But none except man's first attention has
such a degree of self-absorption. Contrary to men of
reason, who ignore the impulse of the emanations at
large, the self-absorbed individuals use every impulse
and turn them all into a force to stir the trapped ema-
nations inside their cocoons.

Observing all this, seers arrived at a practical con-
clusion. They saw that men of reason are bound to
live longer, because by disregarding the impulse of the
emanations at large, they quiet down the natural agi-
tation inside their cocoons. The self-absorbed individ-
uals, on the other hand, by using the impulse of the
emanations at large to create more agitation, shorten
their lives.

"What do seers see when they gaze at self-absorbed
human beings?" I asked.

"They see them as intermittent bursts of white light,
followed by long pauses of dullness," he said.

Don Juan stopped talking. I had no more questions
to ask, or perhaps I was too tired to ask about any-
thing. There was a loud bang that made me jump. The
front door flew open and Genaro came in, out of
breath. He slumped on the mat. He was actually cov-
ered with perspiration.

"I was explaining about the first attention," don
Juan said to him.

"The first attention works only with the known,"
Genaro said. "it isn't worth two plugged nickels with
the unknown."

"That is not quite right," don Juan retorted. "The
first attention works very well with the unknown. It
blocks it; it denies it so fiercely that in the end, the
unknown doesn't exist for the first attention.

"Taking an inventory makes us invulnerable. That
is why the inventory came into existence in the first
place."

"What are you talking about?" I asked don Juan.

He didn't reply. He looked at Genaro as if waiting
for an answer.

"But if I open the door," Genaro said, "would the
first attention be capable of dealing with what will
come in?"

"Yours and mine wouldn't, but his will," don Juan
said, pointing at me. "Let's try it."

"Even though he's in heightened awareness?" Ge-
naro asked don Juan.

"That won't make any difference," don Juan an-
swered.

Genaro got up and went to the front door and threw
it open. He instantly jumped back. A gust of cold wind
came in. Don Juan came to my side, and so did Ge-
naro. Both of them looked at me in amazement.

I wanted to close the front door. The cold was mak-
ing me uncomfortable. But as I moved toward the
door, don Juan and Genaro jumped in front of me and
shielded me.

"Do you notice anything in the room?" Genaro
asked me.

"No, I don't," I said, and I really meant it.

Except for the cold wind pouring in through the
open door, there was nothing to notice in there.

"Weird creatures came in when I opened the door,"
he said. "Don't you notice anything?"

There was something in his voice that told me he
was not joking this time.

The three of us, with both of them flanking me,
walked out of the house. Don Juan picked up the ker-
osene lantern, and Genaro locked the front door. We
got inside the car, through the passenger's side. They
pushed me in first. And then we drove to don Juan's
house in the next town.


6
Inorganic Beings


The next day I repeatedly asked don Juan to explain
our hasty departure from Genaro's house. He refused
even to mention the incident. Genaro was no help
either. Every time I asked him he winked at me, grin-
ning like a fool.

In the afternoon, don Juan came to the back patio
of his house, where I was talking with his apprentices.
As if on cue, all the young apprentices left instantly.

Don Juan took me by the arm, and we began to walk
along the corridor. He did not say anything; for a
while we just strolled around, very much as if we were
in the public square.

Don Juan stopped walking and turned to me. He
circled me, looking over my entire body. I knew that
he was seeing me. I felt a strange fatigue, a laziness I
had not felt until his eyes swept over me. He began to
talk all of a sudden.

"The reason Genaro and I didn't want to focus on
what happened last night," he said, "was that you had
been very frightened during the time you were in the
unknown. Genaro pushed you, and things happened
to you in there."

"What things, don Juan?"

"Things that are still difficult if not impossible to
explain to you now," he said. "You don't have
enough surplus energy to enter into the unknown and
make sense of it. When the new seers arranged the
order of the truths about awareness, they saw that the
first attention consumes all the glow of awareness that
human beings have, and not an iota of energy is left
free. That's your problem now. So, the new seers pro-
posed that warriors, since they have to enter into the
unknown, have to save their energy. But where are
they going to get energy, if all of it is taken? They'll
get it, the new seers say, from eradicating unnecessary
habits."

He stopped talking and solicited questions. I asked
him what eradicating unnecessary habits did to the
glow of awareness.

He replied that it detaches awareness from self-re-
flection and allows it the freedom to focus on some-
thing else.

"The unknown is forever present," he continued,
"but it is outside the possibility of our normal aware-
ness. The unknown is the superfluous part of the av-
erage man. And it is superfluous because the average
man doesn't have enough free energy to grasp it.

"After all the time you've spent in the warrior's
path, you have enough free energy to grasp the un-
known, but not enough energy to understand it or even
to remember it."

He explained that at the site of the flat rock, I had
entered very deeply into the unknown. But I indulged
in my exaggerated nature and became terrified, which
was about the worst thing anyone can do. So I had
rushed out of the left side, like a bat out of hell; unfor-
tunately, taking a legion of strange things with me.

I told don Juan that he was not getting to the point,
that he should come out and tell me exactly what he
meant by a legion of strange things.

He took me by the arm and continued strolling
around with me.

"In explaining awareness," he said, "I am presum-
ably fitting everything or nearly everything into place.
Let's talk a little bit about the old seers. Genaro, as
I've told you, is very much like them."

He led me then to the big room. We sat down there
and he began his elucidation.

"The new seers were simply terrified by the knowl-
edge that the old seers had accumulated over the
years," don Juan said. "It's understandable. The new
seers knew that that knowledge leads only to total
destruction. Yet they were also fascinated by it?es-
pecially by the practices."

"How did the new seers know about those prac-
tices?" I asked.

"They are the legacy of the old Toltecs," he said.
"The new seers learn about them as they go along.
They hardly ever use them, but the practices are there
as part of their knowledge."

"What kind of practices are they, don Juan?"

"They are very obscure formulas, incantations,
lengthy procedures that have to do with the handling
of a very mysterious force. At least it was mysterious
to the ancient Toltecs, who masked it and made it
more horrifying than it really is."

"What is that mysterious force?" I asked.

"It's a force that is present throughout everything
there is," he said. "The old seers never attempted to
unravel the mystery of the force that made them cre-
ate their secret practices; they simply accepted it as
something sacred. But the new seers took a close look
and called it wilt, the will of the Eagle's emanations,
or intent."'

Don Juan went on explaining that the ancient Tol-
tecs had divided their secret knowledge into five sets
of two categories each: the earth and the dark regions,
fire and water, the above and the below, the loud and
the silent, the moving and the stationary. He specu-
lated that there must have been thousands of different
techniques, which became more and more intricate as
time passed.

"The secret knowledge of the earth," he went on,
"had to do with everything that stands on the ground.
There were particular sets of movements, words, un-
guents, potions that were applied to people, animals,
insects, trees, small plants, rocks, soil.

"These were techniques that made the old seers
into horrid beings. And their secret knowledge of the
earth was employed either to groom or to destroy any-
thing that stands on the ground.

"The counterpart of the earth was what they knew
as the dark regions. These practices were by far the
most dangerous. They dealt with entities without or-
ganic life. Living creatures that are present on the
earth and populate it together with all organic beings.

"Doubtlessly, one of the most worthwhile findings
of the ancient seers, especially for them, was the dis-
covery that organic life is not the only form of life
present on this earth."

I did not quite comprehend what he had said. I
waited for him to clarify his statements.

"Organic beings are not the only creatures that have
life," he said and paused again as if to allow me time
to think his statements over.

I countered with a long argument about the defini-
tion of life and being alive. I talked about reproduc-
tion, metabolism, and growth, the processes that
distinguish live organisms from inanimate things.

"You're drawing from the organic," he said. "But
that's only one instance. You shouldn't draw all you
have to say from one category alone."

"But how else can it be?" I asked.

"For seers, to be alive means to be aware," he
replied. "For the average man, to be aware means to
be an organism. This is where seers are different. For
them, to be aware means that the emanations that
cause awareness are encased inside a receptacle.

"Organic living beings have a cocoon that encloses
the emanations. But there are other creatures whose
receptacles don't look like a cocoon to a seer. Yet
they have the emanations of awareness in them and
characteristics of life other than reproduction and me-
tabolism."

"Such as what, don Juan?"

"Such as emotional dependency, sadness, joy,
wrath, and so forth and so on. And I forgot the best
yet, love; a kind of love man can't even conceive."

"Are you serious, don Juan?" I asked in earnest.

"Inanimately serious," he answered with a deadpan
expression and then broke into laughter.

"If we take as our clue what seers see," he contin-
ued, "life is indeed extraordinary."

"If those beings are alive, why don't they make
themselves known to man?" I asked.

"They do, all the time. And not only to seers but
also to the average man. The problem is that all the
energy available is consumed by the first attention.
Man's inventory not only takes it all, but it also tough-
ens the cocoon to the point of making it inflexible.
Under those circumstances there is no possible inter-
action."

He reminded me of the countless times, in the
course of my apprenticeship with him, when I had had
a firsthand view of inorganic beings. I retorted that I
had explained away nearly every one of those in-
stances. I had even formulated the hypothesis that his
teachings, through the use of hallucinogenic plants,
were geared to force an agreement, on the part of the
apprentice, about a primitive interpretation of the
world. I told him that I had not formally called it prim-
itive interpretation but in anthropological terms I had
labeled it a "world view more proper to hunting and
gathering societies."

Don Juan laughed until he was out of breath.

"I really don't know whether you're worse in your
normal state of awareness or in a heightened one," he
said. "In your normal state you're not suspicious, but
boringly reasonable. I think I like you best when you
are way inside the left side, in spite of the fact that
you are terribly afraid of everything, as you were yes-
terday."

Before I had time to say anything at all, he stated
that he was pitting what the old seers did against the
accomplishments of the new seers, as a sort of coun-
terpoint, with which he intended to give me a more
inclusive view of the odds I was up against.

He continued then with his elucidation of the prac-
tices of the old seers. He said that another of their
great findings had to do with the next category of se-
cret knowledge: fire and water. They discovered that
flames have a most peculiar quality; they can transport
man bodily, just as water does.

Don Juan called it a brilliant discovery. I remarked
that there are basic laws of physics that would prove
that to be impossible. He asked me to wait until he
had explained everything before drawing any conclu-
sions. He remarked that I had to check my excessive
rationality, because it constantly affected my states of
heightened awareness. It was not a case of reacting
every which way to external influences, but of suc-
cumbing to my own devices.

He went on explaining that the ancient Toltecs, al-
though they obviously saw, did not understand what
they saw. They merely used their findings without
bothering to relate them to a larger picture. In the case
of their category of fire and water, they divided fire
into heat and flame, and water into wetness and fluid-
ity. They correlated heat and wetness and called them
lesser properties. They considered flames and fluidity
to be higher, magical properties, and they used them
as a means for bodily transportation to the realm of
nonorganic life. Between their knowledge of that kind
of life and their fire and water practices, the ancient
seers became bogged down in a quagmire with no way
out.

Don Juan assured me that the new seers agreed that
the discovery of nonorganic living beings was indeed
extraordinary, but not in the way the old seers be-
lieved it to be. To find themselves in a one-to-one
relation with another kind of life gave the ancient seers
a false feeling of invulnerability, which spelled their
doom.

I wanted him to explain the fire and water tech-
niques in greater detail. He said that the old seers'
knowledge was as intricate as it was useless and that
he was only going to outline it.

Then he summarized the practices of the above and
the below. The above dealt with secret knowledge
about wind, rain, sheets of lightning, clouds, thunder,
daylight, and the sun. The knowledge of the below had
to do with fog, water of underground springs, swamps,
lightning bolts, earthquakes, the night, moonlight, and
the moon.

The loud and the silent were a category of secret
knowledge that had to do with the manipulation of
sound and quiet. The moving and the stationary were
practices concerned with mysterious aspects of mo-
tion and motionlessness.

I asked him if he could give me an example of any
of the techniques he had outlined. He replied that he
had already given me dozens of demonstrations over
the years. I insisted that I had rationally explained
away everything he had done to me.

He did not answer. He seemed to be either angry at
me for asking questions or seriously involved in
searching for a good example. After a while he smiled
and said that he had visualized the proper example.


"The technique I have in mind has to be put in
action in the shallow depths of a stream," he said.
"There is one near Genaro's house."

"What will I have to do?"

"You'll have to get a medium-size mirror."

I was surprised at his request. I remarked that the
ancient Toltecs did not know about mirrors.

"They didn't," he admitted, smiling. "This is my
benefactor's addition to the technique. All the ancient
seers needed was a reflecting surface."

He explained that the technique consisted of sub-
merging a shiny surface into the shallow water of a
stream. The surface could be any flat object that had
some capacity to reflect images.

"I want you to construct a solid frame made of
sheet metal for a medium-size mirror," he said. "it
has to be waterproof, so you must seal it with tar. You
must make it yourself with your own hands. When you
have made it, bring it over and we'll proceed."

"What's going to happen, don Juan?"

"Don't be apprehensive. You yourself have asked
me to give you an example of an ancient Toltec prac-
tice. I asked the same thing of my benefactor. I think
everybody asks for one at a certain moment. My ben-
efactor said that he did the same thing himself. His
benefactor, the nagual Ellas, gave him an example;
my benefactor in turn gave the same one to me, and
now I am going to give it to you.

"At the time my benefactor gave me the example I
didn't know how he did it. I know now. Someday you
yourself will also know how the technique works; you
will understand what's behind all this."

I thought that don Juan wanted me to go back home
to Los Angeles and construct the frame for the mirror
there. I commented that it would be impossible for me
to remember the task if I did not remain in heightened
awareness.

"There are two things out of kilter with your com-
ment," he said. "One is that there is no way for you
to remain in heightened awareness, because you won't
be able to function unless I or Genaro or any of the
warriors in the nagual's party nurse you every minute
of the day, as I do now. The other is that Mexico is
not the moon. There are hardware stores here. We
can go to Oaxaca and buy anything you need."


We drove to the city the next day and I bought all
the pieces for the frame. I assembled it myself in a
mechanic's shop for a minimal fee. Don Juan told me
to put it in the trunk of my car. He did not so much as
glance at it.

We drove back to Genaro's house in the late after-
noon and arrived there in the early morning. I looked
for Genaro. He was not there. The house seemed de-
serted.

"Why does Genaro keep this house?" I asked don
Juan. "He lives with you, doesn't he?"

Don Juan did not answer. He gave me a strange look
and went to light the kerosene lantern. I was alone in
the room in total darkness. I felt a great tiredness that
I attributed to the long, tortuous drive up the moun-
tains. I wanted to lie down. In the darkness, I could
not see where Genaro had put the mats. I stumbled
over a pile of them. And then I knew why Genaro kept
that house; he took care of the male apprentices Pa-
blito, Nestor, and Benigno, who lived there when they
were in their state of normal awareness.

I felt exhilarated; I was no longer tired. Don Juan
came in with a lantern. I told him about my realiza-
tion, but he said that it did not matter, that I would
not remember it for too long.

He asked me to show him the mirror. He seemed
pleased and remarked about its being light yet solid.
He noticed that I had used metal screws to affix an
aluminum frame to a piece of sheet metal that I had
used as a backing for a mirror eighteen inches long by
fourteen inches wide.

"I made a wooden frame for my mirror," he said.
"This looks much better than mine. My frame was too
cumbersome and at the same time frail.

"Let me explain what we're going to do," he con-
tinued after he had finished examining the mirror. "Or
perhaps I should say, what we're going to attempt to
do. The two of us together are going to place this
mirror on the surface of the stream near the house. It
is wide enough and shallow enough to serve our pur-
poses.

"The idea is to let the fluidity of the water exert
pressure on us and transport us away."

Before I could make any remarks or ask any ques-
tions, he reminded me that in the past I had utilized
the water of a similar stream and accomplished ex-
traordinary feats of perception. He was referring to
the aftereffects of ingesting hallucinogenic plants,
which I had experienced various times while being
submerged in the irrigation ditch behind his house in
northern Mexico.

"Save any questions until I explain to you what the
seers knew about awareness," he said. "Then you'll
understand everything we're doing in a different light.
But first let's go on with our procedure."

We walked to the nearby stream, and he selected a
place with flat, exposed rocks. He said that there the
water was shallow enough for our purposes.

"What do you expect to happen?" I asked in the
midst of a gripping apprehension.

"I don't know. All I know is what we are going to
attempt. We will hold the mirror very carefully, but
very firmly. We will gently place it on the surface of
the water and then let it submerge. We will then hold
it on the bottom. I've checked it. There is enough silt
there to allow us to dig our fingers underneath the
mirror to hold it firmly."

He asked me to squat on a flat rock above the sur-
face in the middle of the gentle stream and made me
hold the mirror with both hands, almost at the corners
on one side. He squatted facing me and held the mirror
the same way I did. We let the mirror sink and then
we held it by plunging our arms in the water almost to
our elbows.

He commanded me to empty myself of thoughts and
stare at the surface of the mirror. He repeated over
and over that the trick was not to think at all. I looked
intently into the mirror. The gentle current mildly dis-
arranged the reflection of don Juan's face and mine.
After a few minutes of steady gazing into the mirror it
seemed to me that gradually the image of his face and
mine became much clearer. And the mirror grew in
size until it was at least a yard square. The current
seemed to have stopped, and the mirror looked as
clear as if it were placed on top of the water. Even
more odd was the crispness of our reflections, it was
as if my face had been magnified, not in size but in
focus. I could see the pores in the skin of my forehead.

Don Juan gently whispered not to stare at my eyes
or his, but to let my gaze wander around without fo-
cusing on any part of our reflections.

"Gaze fixedly without staring!" he repeatedly or-
dered in a forceful whisper.

I did what he said without stopping to ponder about
the seeming contradiction. At that moment something
inside me was caught in that mirror and the contradic-
tion actually made sense. "It is possible to gaze
fixedly without staring," I thought, and the instant
that thought was formulated another head appeared
next to don Juan's and mine. It was on the lower side
of the mirror, to my left.

My whole body trembled. Don Juan whispered to
calm down and not show fear or surprise. He again
commanded me to gaze without staring at the new-
comer. I had to make an unimaginable effort not to
gasp and release the mirror. My body was shaking
from head to toe. Don Juan whispered again to get
hold of myself. He nudged me repeatedly with his
shoulder.

Slowly I got my fear under control. I gazed at the
third head and gradually realized that it was not a
human head, or an animal head either. In fact, it was
not a head at all. It was a shape that had no inner
mobility. As the thought occurred to me, I instantly
realized that I was not thinking it myself. The realiza-
tion was not a thought either. I had a moment of
tremendous anxiety and then something incompre-
hensible became known to me. The thoughts were a
voice in my ear!

"I am seeing!" I yelled in English, but there was no
sound. "Yes, you're seeing," the voice in my ear said
in Spanish.

I felt that I was encased in a force greater than
myself. I was not in pain or even anguished. I felt
nothing. I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt, be-
cause the voice was telling me so, that I could not
break the grip of that force by an act of will or
strength. I knew I was dying. I lifted my eyes auto-
matically to look at don Juan, and at the instant our
eyes met the force let go of me. I was free. Don Juan
was smiling at me as if he knew exactly what I had
gone through.

I realized that I was standing up. Don Juan was
holding the mirror edgewise to let the water drip off.

We walked back to the house in silence.


"The ancient Toltecs were simply mesmerized by
their findings," don Juan said.

"I can understand why," I said.

"So can I," don Juan retorted.

The force that had enveloped me had been so pow-
erful as to incapacitate me for speech, even for
thought, for hours afterward. It had frozen me with a
total lack of volition. And I had thawed out only by
tiny degrees.

"Without any deliberate intervention on our part,"
don Juan continued, "this ancient Toltec technique
has been divided into two parts for you. The first was
just enough to familiarize you with what takes place.
In the second, we will try to accomplish what the old
seers pursued."

"What really took place out there, don Juan?" I
asked.

"There are two versions. I'll give you the old seers'
version first. They thought that the reflecting surface
of a shiny object submerged in water enlarges the
power of the water. What they used to do was gaze
into bodies of water, and the reflecting surface served
them as an aid to accelerate the process. They be-
lieved that our eyes are the keys to entering into the
unknown; by gazing into water, they were allowing
the eyes to open the way."

Don Juan said that the old seers observed that the
wetness of water only dampens or soaks, but that the
fluidity of water moves. It runs, they surmised, in
search of other levels underneath us. They believed
that water had been given to us not only for life, but
also as a link, a road to the other levels below.

"Are there many levels below?" I asked.

"The ancient seers counted seven levels," he re-
plied.

"Do you know them yourself, don Juan?"

"I am a seer of the new cycle, and consequently I
have a different view," he said. "I am just showing
you what the old seers did and I'm telling you what
they believed."

He asserted that just because he had different views
did not mean the old seers' practices were invalid;
their interpretations were wrong, but their truths had
practical value for them. In the instance of the water
practices, they were convinced that it was humanly
possible to be transported bodily by the fluidity of
water anywhere between this lev-el of ours and the
other seven levels below; or to be transported in es-
sence anywhere on this level, along the watercourse
of a river in either direction. They used, accordingly,
running water to be transported on this level of ours
and the water of deep lakes or that of waterholes to be
transported to the depths.

"What they pursued with the technique I'm show-
ing you was twofold," he went on. "On the one hand
they used the fluidity of the water to be transported to
the first level below. On the other, they used it to have
a face-to-face meeting with a living being from that
first level. The headlike shape in the mirror was one
of those creatures that came to look us over."

"So, they really exist!" I exclaimed.

"They certainly do," he retorted.

He said that ancient seers were damaged by their
aberrant insistence on staying glued to their proce-
dures, but that whatever they found was valid. They
found out that the surest way to meet one of those
creatures is through a body of water. The size of the
body of water is not relevant; an ocean or a pond
serves the same purpose. He had chosen a small
stream because he hated to get wet. We could have
gotten the same results in a lake or a large river.

"The other life comes to find out what's going on
when human beings call," he continued. "That Toltec
technique is like a knock on their door. The old seers
said the shiny surface on the bottom of the water
served as a bait and a window. So humans and those
creatures meet at a window."

"Is that what happened to me there?" I asked.

"The old seers would've said that you were being
pulled by the power of the water and the power of the
first level, plus the magnetic influence of the creature
at the window."

"But I heard a voice in my ear saying that I was
dying," I said.

"The voice was right. You were dying, and you
would have if I hadn't been there. That is the danger
of practicing the Toltecs' techniques. They are ex-
tremely effective but most of the time they are
deadly."

I told him that I was ashamed to confess that I was
terrified. Seeing that shape in the mirror and having
the sensation of an enveloping force around me had
proved too much for me the day before.

"I don't want to alarm you," he said, "but nothing
has happened to you yet. If what happened to me is
going to be the guideline of what will happen to you,
you'd better prepare yourself for the shock of your
life. It's better to shake in your boots now than to die
of fright tomorrow."

My fear was so terrifying that I couldn't even voice
the questions that came to my mind. I had a hard lime
swallowing. Don Juan laughed until he was coughing.
His face got purple. When I got my voice back, every
one of my questions prompted another attack of
coughing laughter.

"You have no idea how funny this all is to me," he
finally said. "I'm not laughing at you. It's just the
situation. My benefactor made me go through the
same motions, and looking at you I can't help seeing
myself."

I told him that I felt sick to my stomach. He said
that that was fine, that it was natural to be scared, and
that to control fear was wrong and senseless. The an-
cient seers got trapped by suppressing their terror
when they should have been scared out of their wits.
Since they did not want to stop their pursuits or aban-
don their comforting constructs they controlled their
fear instead.

"What else are we going to do with the mirror?" I
asked.

"That mirror is going to be used for a face-to-face
meeting between you and that creature you only gazed
at yesterday."

"What happens in a face-to-face meeting?"

"What happens is that one form of life, the human
form, meets another form of life. The old seers said
that in this case, it is a creature from the first level of
the fluidity of water."

He explained that the ancient seers surmised that
the seven levels below ours were levels of the fluidity
of water. For them a spring had untold significance,
because they thought that in such a case the fluidity of
water is reversed and goes from the depth to the sur-
face. They took that to be the means whereby crea-
tures from other levels, these other forms of life, come
to our plane to peer at us, to observe us.

"In this respect those old seers were not mistaken,"
he went on. "They hit the nail right on the head. Enti-
ties that the new seers call allies do appear around
waterholes."

"Was the creature in the mirror an ally?" I asked.

"Of course. But not one that can be utilized. The
tradition of the allies, which I have acquainted you
with in the past, comes directly from the ancient seers.
They did wonders with allies, but nothing they did was
worth anything when the real enemy came along: their
fellow men."

"Since those creatures are allies, they must be very
dangerous," I said.

"As dangerous as we men are, no more, no less."

"Can they kill us?"

"Not directly, but they certainly can frighten us to
death. They can cross the boundaries themselves, or
they can just come to the window. As you may have
realized by now, the ancient Toltecs didn't stop at the
window, either. They found weird ways to go beyond
it."


The second stage of the technique proceeded very
much as had the first except that it took perhaps twice
as long for me to relax and stop my internal turmoil.
When that was done, the reflection of don Juan's face
and mine became instantly clear. I gazed from his re-
flection to mine for perhaps an hour. I expected the
ally to appear any moment, but nothing happened. My
neck hurt. My back was stiff and my legs were numb.
I wanted to kneel on the rock to relieve the pain in my
lower back. Don Juan whispered that the moment the
ally showed its shape my discomfort would vanish.

He was absolutely right. The shock of witnessing a
round shape appear on the edge of the mirror dispelled
every discomfort of mine.

"What do we do now?" I whispered.

"Relax and don't focus your gaze on anything, not
even for an instant," he replied. "Watch everything
that appears in the mirror. Gaze without staring."

I obeyed him. I glanced at everything within the
frame of the mirror. There was a peculiar buzzing in
my ears. Don Juan whispered that I should move my
eyes in a clockwise direction if I felt that I was being
enveloped by an unusual force; but under no circum-
stances, he stressed, should I lift my head to look at
him.

After a moment I noticed that the mirror was reflect-
ing more than the reflection of our faces and the round
shape. Its surface had become dark. Spots of an in-
tense violet light appeared. They grew large. There
were also spots of jet blackness. Then it turned into
something like a flat picture of a cloudy sky at night,
in the moonlight. Suddenly, the whole surface came
into focus, as if it were a moving picture. The new
sight was a three-dimensional, breathtaking view of
the depths.

I knew that it was absolutely impossible for me to
fight off the tremendous attraction of that sight. It
began to pull me in.

Don Juan whispered forcefully that I should roll my
eyes for dear life. The movement brought immediate
relief. I could again distinguish our reflections and that
of the ally. Then the ally disappeared and reappeared
again on the other end of the mirror.

Don Juan commanded me to grip the mirror with all
my might. He warned me to be calm and not make
any sudden movements.

"What's going to happen?" I whispered.

"The ally will try to come out," he replied.

As soon as he had said that I felt a powerful tug.
Something jerked my arms. The tug was from under-
neath the mirror. It was like a suction force that cre-
ated a uniform pressure all around the frame.

"Hold the mirror tightly but don't break it," don
Juan ordered. "Fight the suction. Don't let the ally
sink the mirror too deep."

The force pulling down on us was enormous. I felt
that my fingers were going to break or be crushed
against the rocks on the bottom. Don Juan and I both
lost our balance at one point and had to step down
from the flat rocks into the stream. The water was
quite shallow, but the thrashing of the ally's force
around the frame of the mirror was as frightening as if
we had been in a large river. The water around our
feet was being swirled around madly, but the images
in the mirror were undisturbed.

"Watch out!" don Juan yelled. "Here it comes!"

The tugging changed into a thrust from underneath.
Something was grabbing the edge of the mirror; not
the outer edge of the frame where we were holding it,
but from the inside of the glass. It was as if the glass
surface were indeed an open window and something
or somebody were just climbing through it.

Don Juan and I fought desperately either to push the
mirror down when it was being thrust up or pull it up
when it was being tugged downward. In a stooped-
over position we slowly moved downstream from the
original spot. The water was deeper and the bottom
was covered with slippery rocks.

"Let's lift the mirror out of the water and shake him
loose," don Juan said in a harsh voice.

The loud thrashing continued unremittingly. It was
as if we had caught an enormous fish with our bare
hands and it was swimming around wildly.

It occurred to me that the mirror was in essence a
hatch. A strange shape was actually trying to climb up
through it. It was leaning on the edge of the hatch with
a mighty weight and was big enough to displace the
reflection of don Juan's face and mine. I could not see
us anymore. I could only distinguish a mass trying to
push itself up.

The mirror was not resting on the bottom anymore.
My fingers were not compressed against the rocks.
The mirror was in mid-depth, held by the opposing
forces of the ally's tugs and ours. Don Juan said he
was going to extend his hands underneath the mirror
and that I should very quickly grab them in order to
have a better leverage to lift the mirror with our fore-
arms. When he let go it tilled to his side. I quickly
reached for his hands but there was nothing under-
neath. I vacillated a second too long and the mirror
flew out of my hands.

"Grab it! Grab it!" don Juan yelled.

I caught the mirror just as it was going to land on
the rocks. I lifted it out of the water, but not quickly
enough. The water seemed to be like glue. As I pulled
the mirror out, I also pulled a portion of a heavy rub-
bery substance that simply pulled the mirror out of my
hands and back into the water.

Don Juan, displaying extraordinary nimbleness,
caught the mirror and lifted it up edgewise without any
difficulty.


Never in my life had I had such an attack of melan-
choly. It was a sadness that had no precise foundation;
I associated it with the memory of the depths I had
seen in the mirror. It was a mixture of pure longing for
those depths plus an absolute fear of their chilling sol-
itude.

Don Juan remarked that in the life of warriors it was
extremely natural to be sad for no overt reason. Seers
say that the luminous egg, as a field of energy, senses
its final destination whenever the boundaries of the
known are broken. A mere glimpse of the eternity
outside the cocoon is enough to disrupt the coziness
of our inventory. The resulting melancholy is some-
times so intense that it can bring about death.

He said that the best way to get rid of melancholy is
to make fun of it. He commented in a mocking tone
that my first attention was doing everything to restore
the order that had been disrupted by my contact with
the ally. Since there was no way of restoring it by
rational means, my first attention was doing it by fo-
cusing all its power on sadness.

I told him that the fact remained the melancholy was
real. Indulging in it, moping around, being gloomy,
were not part of the feeling of aloneness that I had felt
upon remembering those depths.

"Something is finally getting through to you," he
said. "You're right. There is nothing more lonely than
eternity. And nothing is more cozy for us than to be a
human being. This indeed is another contradiction?
how can man keep the bonds of his humanness and
still venture gladly and purposefully into the absolute
loneliness of eternity? Whenever you resolve this rid-
dle, you'll be ready for the definitive journey."

I knew then with total certainty the reason for my
sadness. It was a recurrent feeling with me, one that I
would always forget until I again realized the same
thing: the puniness of humanity against the immensity
of that thing-in-itself which I had seen reflected in the
mirror.

"Human beings are truly nothing, don Juan," I
said.

"I know exactly what you're thinking," he said.
"Sure, we're nothing, but that's exactly what makes
it the ultimate challenge, that we nothings could ac-
tually face the loneliness of eternity."

He abruptly changed the subject, leaving me with
my mouth open, my next question unsaid. He began
to discuss our bout with the ally. He said that first of
all, the struggle with the ally had been no joke. It had
not really been a matter of life or death, but it had not
been a picnic either.

"I chose that technique," he went on, "because my
benefactor showed it to me. When I asked him to give
me an example of the old seers' techniques, he nearly
split a gut laughing; my request reminded him so much
of his own experience. His benefactor, the nagual
Elias, had also given him a harsh demonstration of the
same technique."

Don Juan said that as he had made the frame for his
mirror out of wood, he should have asked me to do
the same, but he wanted to know what would happen
if the frame was sturdier than his or his benefactor's.
Both of their frames broke, and both times the ally
came out.

He explained that during his own bout the ally
ripped the frame apart. He and his benefactor were
left holding two pieces of wood while the mirror sank
and the ally climbed out of it.

His benefactor knew what kind of trouble to expect.
In the reflection of mirrors, allies are not really
frightening because one sees only a shape, a mass of
sorts. But when they are out, besides being truly fear-
some-looking things, they are a pain in the neck. He
remarked that once the allies get out of their level it is
very difficult for them to go back. The same prevails
for man. If seers venture into a level of those crea-
tures, chances are they are never heard of again.

"My mirror was shattered with the ally's force," he
said. "There was no more window and the ally
couldn't go back, so it came after me. It actually ran
after me, rolling on itself. I scrambled on all fours at
top speed, screaming with terror. I went up and down
hills like a possessed man. The ally was inches away
from me the whole time."

Don Juan said that his benefactor ran after him, but
he was too old and could not move fast enough; he
had the good sense, however, to tell don Juan to back-
track, and in that way was able to take measures to
get rid of the ally. He shouted that he was going to
build a fire and that don Juan should run in circles
until everything was ready. He went ahead to gather
dry branches while don Juan ran around a hill, driven
mad with fear.

Don Juan confessed that the thought had occurred
to him, as he ran around in circles, that his benefactor
was actually enjoying the whole thing. He knew that
his benefactor was a warrior capable of finding delight
in any conceivable situation. Why not also in this one?
For a moment he got so angry at his benefactor that
the ally stopped chasing him, and don Juan, in no
uncertain terms, accused his benefactor of malice. His
benefactor didn't answer, but made a gesture of gen-
uine horror as he looked past don Juan at the ally,
which was looming over the two of them. Don Juan
forgot his anger and began running around in circles
again.

"My benefactor was indeed a devilish old man,"
don Juan said, laughing. "He had learned to laugh
internally. It wouldn't show on his face, so he could
pretend to be weeping or raging when he was really
laughing. That day, as the ally chased me in circles,
my benefactor stood there and defended himself from
my accusations. I only heard bits of his long speech
every time I ran by him. When he was through with
that, I heard bits of another long explanation: that he
had to gather a great deal of wood, that the ally was
big, that the fire had to be as big as the ally itself, that
the maneuver might not work.

"Only my maddening fear kept me going. Finally he
must have realized that I was about to drop dead from
exhaustion; he built the fire and with the flames he
shielded me from the ally."

Don Juan said that they stayed by the fire for the
entire night. The worst time for him was when his
benefactor had to go away to look for more dry
branches and left him alone. He was so afraid that he
promised to God that he was going to leave the path
of knowledge and become a farmer.

"In the morning, after I had exhausted all my en-
ergy, the ally managed to shove me into the fire, and I
was badly burned," don Juan added.

"What happened to the ally?" I asked.

"My benefactor never told me what happened to
it," he replied. "But I have the feeling that it is still
running around aimlessly, trying to find its way back."

"And what happened to your promise to God?"

"My benefactor said not to worry, that it had been
a good promise, but that I didn't know yet that there
is no one to hear such promises, because there is no
God. All there is is the Eagle's emanations, and there
is no way to make promises to them."

"What would have happened if the ally had caught
you?" I asked.

"I might have died of fright," he said. "If I had
known what was entailed in being caught I would've
let it catch me. At that time I was a reckless man.
Once an ally catches you, you either have a heart
attack and die or you wrestle with it. Then after a
moment of thrashing around in sham ferocity, the al-
ly's energy wanes. There is nothing that an ally can do
to us, or vice versa. We are separated by an abyss.

"The ancient seers believed that at the moment the
ally's energy dwindles the ally surrenders its power to
man. Power, my eye! The old seers had allies coming
out of their ears and their allies' power didn't mean a
thing."

Don Juan explained that once again it had been up
to the new seers to straighten out this confusion. They
had found that the only thing that counts is impecca-
bility, that is, freed energy. There were indeed some
among the ancient seers who were saved by their al-
lies, but that had had nothing to do with the allies'
power to fend off anything; rather, it was the impec-
cability of the men that had permitted them to use the
energy of those other forms of life.

The new seers also found out the most important
thing yet about the allies: what makes them useless or
usable to man. Useless allies, of which there are stag-
gering numbers, are those that have emanations inside
them for which we have no match inside ourselves.
They are so different from us as to be thoroughly un-
usable. Other allies, which are remarkably few in
number, are akin to us, meaning that they possess
occasional emanations that match ours.

"How is that kind utilized by man?" I asked.

"We should use another word instead of 'utilize, ' "
he replied. "I'd say that what takes place between
seers and allies of this kind is a fair exchange of en-
ergy."

"How does the exchange take place?" I asked.

"Through their matching emanations," he said.
"Those emanations are, naturally, on the left-side
awareness of man; the side that the average man never
uses. For this reason, allies are totally barred from the
world of the right-side awareness, or the side of ratio-
nality."

He said that the matching emanations give both a
common ground. Then, with familiarity, a deeper link
is established, which allows both forms of life to
profit. Seers seek the allies' ethereal quality; they
make fabulous scouts and guardians. Allies seek the
greater energy field of man, and with it they can even
materialize themselves.

He assured me that experienced seers play those
shared emanations until they bring them into total
focus; the exchange lakes place at that time. The an-
cient seers did not understand this process, and they
developed complex techniques of gazing in order to
descend into the depths that I had seen in the mirror.

"The old seers had a very elaborate tool to help
them in their descent," he went on. "It was a rope of
special twine that they tied around their waist. It had
a soft butt soaked in resin which fitted into the navel
itself, like a plug. The seers had an assistant or a num-
ber of them who held them by the rope while they
were lost in their gazing. Naturally, to gaze directly
into the reflection of a deep, clear pond or lake is
infinitely more overwhelming and dangerous than
what we did with the mirror."

"But did they actually descend bodily?" I asked.

"You'd be surprised what men are capable of, es-
pecially if they control awareness," he replied. "The
old seers were aberrant. In their excursions to the
depths they found marvels. It was routine for them to
encounter allies.

"Of course, by now you realize that to say the
depths is a figure of speech. There are no depths, there
is only the handling of awareness. Yet the old seers
never made that realization."

I told don Juan that from what he had said about his
experience with the ally, plus my own subjective
impression on feeling the ally's thrashing force in the
water, I had concluded that allies are very aggressive.

"Not really," he said. "It is not that they don't have
enough energy to be aggressive, but rather that they
have a different kind of energy. They are more like an
electric current. Organic beings are more like heat
waves."

"But why did it chase you for such a long time?" I
asked.

"That's no mystery," he said. "They are attracted
to emotions. Animal fear is what attracts them the
most; it releases the kind of energy that suits them.
The emanations inside them are rallied by animal fear.
Since my fear was relentless the ally went after it, or
rather, my fear hooked the ally and didn't let it go."

He said that it was the old seers who found out that
allies enjoy animal fear more than anything else. They
even went to the extreme of purposely feeding it to
their allies by actually scaring people to death. The
old seers were convinced that the allies had human
feelings, but the new seers saw it differently. They
saw that allies are attracted to the energy released by
emotions; love is equally effective, as well as hatred,
or sadness.

Don Juan added that if he had felt love for that ally,
the ally would have come after him anyway, although
the chase would have had a different mood. I asked
him whether the ally would have stopped going after
him if he had controlled his fear. He answered that
controlling fear was a trick of the old seers. They
learned to control it to the point of being able to parcel
it out. They hooked their allies with their own fear and
by gradually doling it out. like food, they actually held
the allies in bondage.

"Those old seers were terrifying men," don Juan
continued. "I shouldn't use the past tense?they are
terrifying even today. Their bid is to dominate, to mas-
ter everybody and everything."

"Even today, don Juan?" I asked, trying to get him
to explain further.

He changed the subject by commenting that I had
missed the opportunity of being really scared beyond
measure. He said that doubtless the way I had sealed
the frame of the mirror with tar had prevented the
water from seeping behind the glass. He counted that
as the deciding factor that had kept the ally from
smashing the mirror.

"Too bad," he said. "You might even have liked
that ally. By the way, it was not the same one that
came the day before. The second one was perfectly
akin to you."

"Don't you have some allies yourself, don Juan?" I
asked.

"As you know, I have my benefactor's allies," he
said. "I can't say that I have the same feeling for them
that my benefactor did. He was a serene but thor-
oughly passionate man, who lavishly gave away
everything he possessed, including his energy. He
loved his allies. To him it was no sweat to allow the
allies to use his energy and materialize themselves.
There was one in particular that could even take a
grotesque human form."

Don Juan went on to say that since he was not par-
tial to allies, he had never given me a real taste of
them, as his benefactor had done to him while he was
still recovering from the wound in his chest. It all
began with the thought that his benefactor was a
strange man. Having barely escaped from the clutches
of the petty tyrant, don Juan suspected that he had
fallen into another trap. His intention was to wait a
few days to get his strength back and then run away
when the old man was not home. But the old man must
have read his thoughts, because one day, in a confi-
dential tone, he whispered to don Juan that he ought
to get well as quickly as possible so that the two of
them could escape from his captor and tormentor.
Then, shaking with fear and impotence, the old man
flung the door open and a monstrous fish-faced man
came into the room, as if he had been listening behind
the door. He was a grayish-green, had only one huge
unblinking eye, and was as big as a door. Don Juan
said that he was so surprised and terrified that he
passed out, and it took him years to get out from under
the spell of that fright.

"Are your allies useful to you, don Juan?" I asked.

"That's a very difficult thing to decide," he said.

"In some way, I love the allies my benefactor gave
me. They are capable of giving back inconceivable
affection. But they are incomprehensible to me. They
were given to me for companionship in case I am ever
stranded alone in that immensity that is the Eagle's
emanations."


7
The Assemblage Point


Don Juan discontinued his explanation of the mastery
of awareness for several months after my bout with
the allies. One day he started it again. A strange event
triggered it.

Don Juan was in northern Mexico. It was late after-
noon. I had just arrived at the house he kept there,
and he immediately had me shift into heightened
awareness. And I had instantly remembered that don
Juan always came back to Sonora as means of re-
newal. He had explained that a nagual, being a leader
who has tremendous responsibilities, has to have a
physical point of reference, a place where an amena-
ble confluence of energies occurs. The Sonoran desert
was such a place for him.

On entering into heightened awareness, I had no-
ticed that there was another person hiding in the semi-
darkness inside the house. I asked don Juan if Genaro
was with him. He replied that he was alone, that what
I had noticed was one of his allies, the one that
guarded the house.

Don Juan then made a strange gesture. He con-
torted his face as if he were surprised or terrified. And
instantly the frightening shape of a strange man ap-
peared at the door of the room where we were. The
presence of the strange man scared me so much that I
actually felt dizzy. And before I could recuperate from
my fright, the man lurched at me with a chilling feroc-
ity. As he grabbed my forearms, I felt ajolt of some-
thing quite like a discharge of an electric current.

I was speechless, caught in a terror I could not dis-
pel. Don Juan was smiling at me. I mumbled and
groaned, trying to voice a plea for help, while I felt an
even greater jolt.

The man tightened his grip and tried to throw me
backward on the ground. Don Juan, with no hurry in
his voice, urged me to pull myself together and not
fight my fear, but roll with it. "Be afraid without being
terrified," he said. Don Juan came to my side and,
without intervening in my struggle, whispered in my
ear that I should put all my concentration on the mid-
point of my body.

Over the years, he had insisted that I measure my
body to the hundredth of an inch and establish its
exact midpoint, lengthwise as well as in width. He had
always said that such a point is a true center of energy
in all of us.

As soon as I had focused my attention on that mid-
point, the man let go of me. At that instant I became
aware that what I had thought was a human being was
something that only looked like one. The moment it
lost its human shape to me, the ally became an amor-
phous blob of opaque light. It moved away. I went
after it, moved by a great force that made me follow
that opaque light.

Don Juan stopped me. He gently walked me to the
porch of his house and made me sit down on a sturdy
crate he used as a bench.

I was terribly disturbed by the experience, but even
more disturbed by the fact that my paralyzing fear had
disappeared so fast and so completely.

I commented on my abrupt change of mood. Don
Juan said that there was nothing strange about my
volatile change, and that fear did not exist as soon as
the glow of awareness moved beyond a certain thresh-
old inside man's cocoon.

He then began his explanation. He briefly outlined
the truths about awareness he had discussed: that
there is no objective world, but only a universe of
energy fields which seers call the Eagle's emanations.
That human beings are made of the Eagle's emana-
tions and are in essence bubbles of luminescent en-
ergy; each of us is wrapped in a cocoon that encloses
a small portion of these emanations. That awareness
is achieved by the constant pressure that the emana-
tions outside our cocoons, which are called emana-
tions at large, exert on those inside our cocoons. That
awareness gives rise to perception, which happens
when the emanations inside our cocoons align them-
selves with the corresponding emanations at large.

"The next truth is that perception takes place," he
went on, "because there is in each of us an agent
called the assemblage point that selects internal and
external emanations for alignment. The particular
alignment that we perceive as the world is the product
of the specific spot where our assemblage point is lo-
cated on our cocoon."

He repeated this several times, allowing me time to
grasp it. Then he said that in order to corroborate the
truths about awareness, I needed energy.

"I've mentioned to you," he continued, "that deal-
ing with petty tyrants helps seers accomplish a sophis-
ticated maneuver: that maneuver is to move their
assemblage points."

He said that for me to have perceived an ally meant
that I had moved my assemblage point away from its
customary position. In other words, my glow of
awareness had moved beyond a certain threshold, also
erasing my fear. And all this had happened because I
had enough surplus energy.

Later that night, after we had returned from a trip
into the surrounding mountains, which had been part
of his teachings for the right side, don Juan had me
shift again into heightened awareness and then contin-
ued his explanation. He told me that in order to dis-
cuss the nature of the assemblage point, he had to start
with a discussion of the first attention.

He said that the new seers looked into the unnoticed
ways in which the first attention functions, and as they
tried to explain them to others, they devised an order
for the truths about awareness. He assured me that
not every seer is given to explaining. For instance, his
benefactor, the nagual Julian, could not have cared
less about explanations. But the nagual Julian's bene-
factor, the nagual Elias, whom don Juan was fortunate
enough to meet, did care. Between the nagual Elias's
detailed, lengthy explanations, the nagual Julian's
scanty ones, and his own personal seeing, don Juan
came to understand and to corroborate those truths.

Don Juan explained that in order for our first atten-
tion to bring into focus the world that we perceive, it
has to emphasize certain emanations selected from the
narrow band of emanations where man's awareness is
located. The discarded emanations are still within our
reach but remain dormant, unknown to us for the du-
ration of our lives.

The new seers call the emphasized emanations the
right side, normal awareness, the tonal, this world, the
known, the first attention. The average man calls it
reality, rationality, common sense.

The emphasized emanations compose a large por-
tion of man's band of awareness, but a very small
piece of the total spectrum of emanations present in-
side the cocoon of man. The disregarded emanations
within man's band are thought of as a sort of preamble
to the unknown, the unknown proper consisting of the
bulk of emanations which are not part of the human
band and which are never emphasized. Seers call them
the left-side awareness, the nagual, the other world,
the unknown, the second attention.

"This process of emphasizing certain emanations,"
don Juan went on, "was discovered and practiced by
the old seers. They realized that a nagual man or a
nagual woman, by the fact that they have extra
strength, can push the emphasis away from the usual
emanations and make it shift to neighboring ones.
That push is known as the nagual's blow."

Don Juan said that the shift was utilized by the old
seers in practical ways to keep their apprentices in
bondage. With that blow they made their apprentices
enter into a state of heightened, keenest, most impres-
sionable awareness; while they were helplessly pli-
able, the old seers taught them aberrant techniques
that made the apprentices into sinister men, just like
their teachers.

The new seers employ the same technique, but in-
stead of using it for sordid purposes, they use it to
guide their apprentices to learn about man's possibili-
ties.

Don Juan explained that the nagual's blow has to be
delivered on a precise spot, on the assemblage point,
which varies minutely from person to person. Also,
the blow has to be delivered by a nagual who sees. He
assured me that it is equally useless to have the
strength of a nagual and not see, as it is to see and not
have the strength of a nagual, in either case the results
are just blows. A seer could strike on the precise spot
over and over without the strength to move aware-
ness. and a non-seeing nagual would not be able to
strike the precise spot.

He also said that the old seers discovered that the
assemblage point is not in the physical body, but in
the luminous shell, in the cocoon itself. The nagual
identifies that spot by its intense luminosity and
pushes it, rather than striking it. The force of the push
creates a dent in the cocoon and it is felt like a blow
to the right shoulder blade, a blow that knocks all the
air out of the lungs.

"Are there different types of dents?" I asked.

"There are only two types," he responded. "One is
a concavity and the other is a crevice; each has a
distinct effect. The concavity is a temporary feature
and produces a temporary shift?but the crevice is a
profound and permanent feature of the cocoon and
produces a permanent shift."

He explained that usually a luminous cocoon
hardened by self-reflection is not affected at all by the
nagual's blow. Sometimes, however, the cocoon of
man is very pliable and the smallest force creates a
bowl-like dent ranging in size from a small depression
to one that is a third the size of the total cocoon; or it
creates a crevice that may run across the width of the
egglike shell, or along its length, making the cocoon
look as if it has curled in on itself.

Some luminous shells, after being dented, go back
to their original shape instantly. Others remain dented
for hours or even days at a time, but they revert back
by themselves. Still others get a firm, impervious dent
that requires another blow from the nagual on a bor-
dering area to restore the original shape of the lumi-
nous cocoon. And a few never lose their indentation
once they get it. No matter how many blows they get
from a nagual they never revert back to their egglike
shapes.

Don Juan further said that the dent acts on the first
attention bydisplacing the glow of awareness. The
dent presses the emanations inside the luminous shell,
and the seers witness how the first attention shifts its
emphasis under the force of that pressure. The dent,
by displacing the Eagle's emanations inside the co-
coon, makes the glow of awareness fall on other ema-
nations from areas that are ordinarily inaccessible to
the first attention.

I asked him if the glow of awareness is seen only on
the surface of the luminous cocoon. He did not answer
me right away. He seemed to immerse himself in
thought. After perhaps ten minutes he answered my
question; he said that normally the glow of awareness
is seen on the surface of the cocoon of all sentient
beings. After man develops attention, however, the
glow of awareness acquires depth. In other words, it
is transmitted from the surface of the cocoon to quite
a number of emanations inside the cocoon.

"The old seers knew what they were doing when
they handled awareness," he went on. "They realized
that by creating a dent in the cocoon of man, they
could force the glow of awareness, since it is already
glowing on the emanations inside the cocoon, to
spread to other neighboring ones."

'You make it all sound as if it's a physical affair,"
I said. "How can dents be made in something that is
just aglow?"

"In some inexplicable way, it is a matter of a glow
that creates a dent in another glow," he replied.
"Your flaw is to remain glued to the inventory of rea-
son. Reason doesn't deal with man as energy. Reason
deals with instruments that create energy, but it has
never seriously occurred to reason that we are better
than instruments: we are organisms that create en-
ergy. We are a bubble of energy. It isn't farfetched,
then, that a bubble of energy would make a dent in
another bubble of energy."

He said that the glow of awareness created by the
dent should rightfully be called temporary heightened
attention, because it emphasizes emanations that are
so proximal to the habitual ones that the change is
minimal, yet the shift produces a greater capacity to
understand and to concentrate and, above all, a
greater capacity to forget. Seers knew exactly how to
use this upshift in the scale of quality. They saw that
only the emanations surrounding those we use daily
suddenly become bright after the nagual's blow. The
more distant ones remain unmoved, which meant to
them that while being in a state of heightened atten-
tion, human beings could work as if they were in the
world of everyday life. The need of a nagual man and
a nagual woman became paramount to them, because
that state lasts only for as long as the depression re-
mains, after which the experiences are immediately
forgotten.

"Why does one have to forget?" I asked.

"Because the emanations that account for greater
clarity cease to be emphasized once warriors are out
of heightened awareness," he replied. "Without that
emphasis whatever they experience or witness van-
ishes."

Don Juan said that one of the tasks the new seers
had devised for their students was to force them to
remember, that is, to reemphasize by themselves, at a
later time, those emanations used during states of
heightened awareness.

He reminded me that Genaro was always recom-
mending to me that I learn to write with the tip of my
finger instead of a pencil so as not to accumulate
notes. Don Juan said that what Genaro had actually
meant was that while I was in states of heightened
awareness I should utilize some unused emanations
for storage of dialogue and experience, and someday
recall it all by reemphasizing the emanations that were
used.

He went on to explain that a state of heightened
awareness is seen not only as a glow that goes deeper
inside the egglike shape of human beings, but also as
a more intense glow on the surface of the cocoon. Yet
it is nothing in comparison to the glow produced by a
state of total awareness, which is seen as a burst of
incandescence in the entire luminous egg. It is an ex-
plosion of light of such a magnitude that the bounda-
ries of the shell are diffused and the inside emanations
extend themselves beyond anything imaginable.

"Are those special cases, don Juan?"

"Certainly. They happen only to seers. No other
men or any other living creatures brighten up like that.
Seers who deliberately attain total awareness are a
sight to behold. That is the moment when they burn
from within. The fire from within consumes them. And
in full awareness they fuse themselves to the emana-
tions at large, and glide into eternity."


After a few days in Sonora I drove don Juan back
to the town in the southern part of Mexico where he
and his party of warriors lived.

The next day was hot and hazy. I felt lazy and some-
how annoyed. In midafternoon, there was a most un-
pleasant quietude in that town. Don Juan and I were
sitting on the comfortable chairs in the big room. I told
him that life in rural Mexico was not my cup of tea. I
disliked the feeling I had that the silence of that town
was forced. The only noise I ever heard was the sound
of children's voices yelling in the distance. I was never
able to find out whether they were playing or yelling
in pain.

"When you're here, you're always in a state of
heightened awareness," don Juan said. "That makes
a great difference. But no matter what, you should be
getting used to living in a town like this. Someday you
will live in one."

"Why should I have to live in a town like this, don
Juan?"

"I've explained to you that the new seers aim to be
free. And freedom has the most devastating implica-
tions. Among them is the implication that warriors
must purposely seek change. Your predilection is to
live the way you do. You stimulate your reason by
running through your inventory and pitting it against
your friends' inventories. Those maneuvers leave you
very little time to examine yourself and your fate. You
will have to give up all that. Likewise, if all you knew
were the dead calm of this town, you'd have to seek,
sooner or later, the other side of the coin."

"Is that what you're doing here, don Juan?"

"Our case is a little bit different, because we are at
the end of our trail. We are not seeking anything.
What all of us do here is something comprehensible
only to a warrior. We go from day to day doing noth-
ing. We are waiting. I will not tire of repeating this:
we know that we are waiting and we know what we
are waiting for. We are waiting for freedom!

"And now that you know that," he added with a
grin, "let's get back to our discussion of awareness."

Usually, when we were in that room we were never
interrupted by anyone and don Juan would always de-
cide on the length of our discussions. But this time
there was a polite knock on the door and Genaro
walked in and sat down. I had not seen Genaro since
the day after we had run out of his house in a great
hurry. I embraced him.

"Genaro has something to tell you," don Juan said.
"I've told you that he is the master of awareness.
Now I can tell you what all that means. He can make
the assemblage point move deeper into the luminous
egg after that point has been jolted out of its position
by the nagual's blow."

He explained that Genaro had pushed my assem-
blage point countless times after I had attained
heightened awareness. The day we had gone to the
gigantic flat rock to talk, Genaro had made my assem-
blage point move dramatically into the left side?so
dramatically, in fact, that it had been a bit dangerous.

Don Juan stopped talking and seemed to be ready
to give Genaro the spotlight. He nodded as if to signal
Genaro to say something. Genaro stood up and came
to my side.

"Flame is very important," he said softly. "Do you
remember that day when I made you look at the re-
flection of the sunlight on a piece of quartz, when we
were sitting on that big flat rock?"

When Genaro mentioned it I remembered. On that
day just after don Juan had stopped talking, Genaro
had pointed to the refraction of light as it went through
a piece of polished quartz that he had taken out of his
pocket and placed on the flat rock. The shine of the
quartz had immediately caught my attention. The next
thing I knew, I was crouching on the flat rock as don
Juan stood by with a worried look on his face.

I was about to tell Genaro what I had remembered
when he began to talk. He put his mouth to my ear
and pointed to one of the two gasoline lamps in the
room.

"Look at the flame," he said. "There is no heat in
it. It's pure flame. Pure flame can take you to the
depths of the unknown."

As he talked, I began to feel a strange pressure; it
was a physical heaviness. My ears were buzzing; my
eyes teared to the point that I could hardly make out
the shape of the furniture. My vision seemed to be
totally out of focus. Although my eyes were open, I
could not see the intense light of the gasoline lamps.
Everything around me was dark. There were streaks
of chartreuse phosphorescence that illuminated dark,
moving clouds. Then, as abruptly as it had faded
away, my eyesight returned.

I could not make out where I was. I seemed to be
floating like a balloon. I was alone. I had a pang of
terror, and my reason rushed in to construct an expla-
nation that made sense to me at that moment: Genaro
had hypnotized me, using the flame of the gasoline
lamp. I felt almost satisfied. I quietly floated, trying
not to worry; I thought that a way to avoid worrying
was to concentrate on the stages that I would have to
go through to wake up.

The first thing I noticed was that I was not myself.
I could not really look at anything because I had noth-
ing to look with. When I tried to examine my body I
realized that I could only be aware and yet it was as if
I were looking down into infinite space. There were
portentous clouds of brilliant light and masses of
blackness; both were in motion. I clearly saw a ripple
of amber glow that was coming at me, like an enor-
mous, slow ocean wave. I knew then that I was like a
buoy floating in space and that the wave was going to
overtake me and carry me. I accepted it as unavoid-
able. But just before it hit me something thoroughly
unexpected happened?a wind blew me out of the
wave's path.

The force of that wind carried me with tremendous
speed. I went through an immense tunnel of intense
colored lights. My vision blurred completely and then
I felt that I was waking up, that I had been having a
dream, a hypnotic dream brought about by Genaro, in
the next instant I was back in the room with don Juan
and Genaro.


I slept most of the following day. In the late after-
noon, don Juan and I again sat down to talk. Genaro
had been with me earlier but had refused to comment
on my experience.

"Genaro again pushed your assemblage point last
night," don Juan said. "But perhaps the shove was
too forceful."

I eagerly told don Juan the content of my vision. He
smiled, obviously bored.

"Your assemblage point moved away from its nor-
mal position," he said. "And that made you perceive
emanations that are not ordinarily perceived. Sounds
like nothing, doesn't it? And yet it is a supreme ac-
complishment that the new seers strive to elucidate."

He explained that human beings repeatedly choose
the same emanations for perceiving because of two
reasons. First, and most important, because we have
been taught that those emanations are perceivable,
and second because our assemblage points select and
prepare those emanations for being used.

"Every living being has an assemblage point," he
went on, "which selects emanations for emphasis.
Seers can see whether sentient beings share the same
view of the world, by seeing if the emanations their
assemblage points have selected are the same."

He affirmed that one of the most important break-
throughs for the new seers was to find that the spot
where that point is located on the cocoon of all living
creatures is not a permanent feature, but is established
on that specific spot by habit. Hence the tremendous
stress the new seers put on new actions, on new prac-
ticalities. They want desperately to arrive at new
usages, new habits.

"The nagual's blow is of great importance," he
went on, "because it makes that point move. It alters
its location. Sometimes it even creates a permanent
crevice there. The assemblage point is totally dis-
lodged, and awareness changes dramatically. But
what is a matter of even greater importance is the
proper understanding of the truths about awareness in
order to realize that that point can be moved from
within. The unfortunate truth is that human beings
always lose by default. They simply don't know about
their possibilities."

"How can one accomplish that change from
within?" I asked.

"The new seers say that realization is the tech-
nique," he said. "They say that, first of all, one must
become aware that the world we perceive is the result
of our assemblage points' being located on a specific
spot on the cocoon. Once that is understood, the as-
semblage point can move almost at will, as a conse-
quence of new habits."

I did not quite understand what he meant by habits.
I asked him to clarify his point.

"The assemblage point of man appears around a
definite area of the cocoon, because the Eagle com-
mands it," he said. "But the precise spot is deter-
mined by habit, by repetitious acts. First we learn that
it can be placed there and then we ourselves command
it to be there. Our command becomes the Eagle's
command and that point is fixated at that spot. Con-
sider this very carefully; our command becomes the
Eagle's command. The old seers paid dearly for that
finding. We'll come back to that later on."

He stated once again that the old seers had concen-
trated exclusively on developing thousands of the
most complex techniques of sorcery. He added that
what they never realized was that their intricate de-
vices, as bizarre as they were, had no other value than
being the means to break the fixation of their assem-
blage points and make them move.

I asked him to explain what he had said.

"I've mentioned to you that sorcery is something
like entering a dead-end street," he replied. "What I
meant was that sorcery practices have no intrinsic
value. Their worth is indirect, for their real function is
to make the assemblage point shift by making the first
attention release its control on that point.

"The new seers realized the true role those sorcery
practices played and decided to go directly into the
process of making their assemblage points shift,
avoiding all the other nonsense of rituals and incanta-
tions. Yet rituals and incantations are indeed neces-
sary at one time in every warrior's life. I personally
have initiated you in all kinds of sorcery procedures,
but only for purposes of luring your first attention
away from the power of self-absorption, which keeps
your assemblage point rigidly fixed."

He added that the obsessive entanglement of the
first attention in self-absorption or reason is a power-
ful binding force, and that ritual behavior, because it
is repetitive, forces the first attention to free some
energy from watching the inventory, as a consequence
of which the assemblage point loses its rigidity.

"What happens to the persons whose assemblage
points lose rigidity?" I asked.

"If they're not warriors, they think they're losing
their minds," he said, smiling. "Just as you thought
you were going crazy at one time. If they're warriors,
they know they've gone crazy, but they patiently wait.
You see, to be healthy and sane means that the assem-
blage point is immovable. When it shifts, it literally
means that one is deranged."

He said that two options are opened to warriors
whose assemblage points have shifted. One is to ac-
knowledge being ill and to behave in deranged ways,
reacting emotionally to the strange worlds that their
shifts force them to witness; the other is to remain
impassive, untouched, knowing that the assemblage
point always returns to its original position.

"What if the assemblage point doesn't return to its
original position?" I asked.

"Then those people are lost," he said. "They are
either incurably crazy, because their assemblage
points could never assemble the world as we know it,
or they are peerless seers who have begun their move-
ment toward the unknown."

"What determines whether it is one or the other?"

"Energy! Impeccability! Impeccable warriors don't
lose their marbles. They remain untouched. I've said
to you many times that impeccable warriors may see
horrifying worlds and yet the next moment they are
telling a joke, laughing with their friends or with
strangers."

I said to him then what I had told him many times
before, that what made me think I was ill was a series
of disruptive sensorial experiences that I had had as
aftereffects of ingesting hallucinogenic plants. I went
through states of total space and time discordance,
very annoying lapses of mental concentration, actual
visions or hallucinations of places and people I would
be staring at as if they really existed. I could not help
thinking that I was losing my mind.

"By all ordinary measures, you were indeed losing
your mind," he said, "but in the seers' view, if you
had lost it, you wouldn't have lost much. The mind,
for a seer, is nothing but the self-reflection of the in-
ventory of man. If you lose that self-reflection, but
don't lose your underpinnings, you actually live an
infinitely stronger life than if you had kept it."

He remarked that my flaw was my emotional reac-
tion, which prevented me from realizing that the odd-
ity of my sensorial experiences was determined by the
depth to which my assemblage point had moved into
man's band of emanations.

I told him that I couldn't understand what he was
explaining because the configuration that he had called
man's band of emanations was something incompre-
hensible to me. I had pictured it to be like a ribbon
placed on the surface of a ball.

He said that calling it a band was misleading, and
that he was going to use an analogy to illustrate what
he meant. He explained that the luminous shape of
man is like a ball of jack cheese with a thick disk of
darker cheese injected into it. He looked at me and
chuckled. He knew that I did not like cheese.

He made a diagram on a small blackboard. He drew
an egglike shape and divided it in four longitudinal
sections, saying that he would immediately erase the
division lines because he had drawn them only to give
me an idea where the band was located in the cocoon
of man. He then drew a thick band at the line between
the first and second sections and erased the division
lines. He explained that the band was like a disk of
cheddar cheese that had been inserted into the ball of
jack cheese.

"Now if that ball of jack cheese were transparent,"
he went on, "you would have the perfect replica of
man's cocoon. The cheddar cheese goes all the way
inside the ball of jack cheese. It's a disk that goes from
the surface on one side to the surface on the other
side.

"The assemblage point of man is located high up,
three-fourths of the way toward the top of the egg on
the surface of the cocoon. When a nagual presses on
that point of intense luminosity, the point moves into
the disk of the cheddar cheese. Heightened awareness
comes about when the intense glow of the assemblage
point lights up dormant emanations way inside the
disk of cheddar cheese. To see the glow of the assem-
blage point moving inside that disk gives the feeling
that it is shifting toward the left on the surface of the
cocoon."

He repeated his analogy three or four times, but I
did not understand it and he had to explain it further.
He said that the transparency of the luminous egg cre-
ates the impression of a movement toward the left,
when in fact every movement of the assemblage point
is in depth, into the center of the luminous egg along
the thickness of man's band.

I remarked that what he was saying made it sound
as if seers would be using their eyes when they see the
assemblage point move.

"Man is not the unknowable," he said. "Man's lu-
minosity can be seen almost as if one were using the
eyes alone."

He further explained that the old seers had seen the
movement of the assemblage point but it never oc-
curred to them that it was a movement in depth; in-
stead they followed their seeing and coined the phrase
"shift to the left," which the new seers retained al-
though they knew that it was erroneous to call it a
shift to the left.

He also said that in the course of my activity with
him he had made my assemblage point move countless
times, as was the case at that very moment. Since the
shift of the assemblage point was always in depth, I
had never lost my sense of identity, in spite of the fact
that I was always using emanations I had never used
before.

"When the nagual pushes that point," he went on,
"the point ends up any which way along man's band,
but it absolutely doesn't matter where, because wher-
ever it ends up is always virgin ground.

"The grand test that the new seers developed for
their warrior-apprentices is to retrace the journey that
their assemblage points took under the influence of the
nagual. This retracing, when it is completed, is called
regaining the totality of oneself."

He went on to say that the contention of the new
seers is that in the course of our growth, once the glow
of awareness focuses on man's band of emanations
and selects some of them for emphasis, it enters into
a vicious circle. The more it emphasizes certain ema-
nations, the more stable the assemblage point gets to
be. This is equivalent to saying that our command
becomes the Eagle's command. It goes without saying
that when our awareness develops into first attention
the command is so strong that to break that circle and
make the assemblage point shift is a genuine triumph.

Don Juan said that the assemblage point is also re-
sponsible for making the first attention perceive in
terms of clusters. An example of a cluster of emana-
tions that receive emphasis together is the human
body as we perceive it. Another part of our total
being, our luminous cocoon, never receives emphasis
and is relegated to oblivion; for the effect of the as-
semblage point is not only to make us perceive clus-
ters of emanations, but also to make us disregard
emanations.

When I pressed hard for an explanation of clustering
he replied that the assemblage point radiates a glow
that groups together bundles of encased emanations.
These bundles then become aligned, as bundles, with
the emanations at large. Clustering is carried out even
when seers deal with the emanations that are never
used. Whenever they are emphasized, we perceive
them just as we perceive the clusters of the first atten-
tion.

"One of the greatest moments the new seers had,"
he continued, "was when they found out that the un-
known is merely the emanations discarded by the first
attention, it's a huge affair, but an affair, mind you,
where clustering can be done. The unknowable, on
the other hand, is an eternity where our assemblage
point has no way of clustering anything."

He explained that the assemblage point is like a
luminous magnet that picks emanations and groups
them together wherever it moves within the bounds of
man's band of emanations. This discovery was the
glory of the new seers, for it put the unknown in a new
light. The new seers noticed that some of the obses-
sive visions of seers, the ones that were almost impos-
sible to conceive, coincided with a shift of the
assemblage point to the region of man's band which is
diametrically opposed to where it is ordinarily located.

"Those were visions of the dark side of man," he
asserted.

"Why do you call it the dark side of man?" I asked.

"Because it is somber and foreboding," he said.
"It's not only the unknown, but the who-cares-to-
know-it."

"How about the emanations that are inside the co-
coon but out of the bounds of man's band?" I asked.
"Can they be perceived?"

"Yes, but in really indescribable ways," he said.
"They're not the human unknown, as is the case with
the unused emanations in the band of man, but the
nearly immeasurable unknown where human traits do
not figure at all. It is really an area of such an over-
powering vastness that the best of seers would be hard
put to describe it."

I insisted once more that it seemed to me that the
mystery is obviously within us.

"The mystery is outside us," he said, "Inside us we
have only emanations trying to break the cocoon. And
this fact aberrates us, one way or another, whether
we're average men or warriors. Only the new seers
get around this. They struggle to see. And by means
of the shifts of their assemblage points, they get to
realize that the mystery is perceiving. Not so much
what we perceive, but what makes us perceive.

"I've mentioned to you that the new seers believe
that our senses are capable of detecting anything.
They believe this because they see that the position of
the assemblage point is what dictates what our senses
perceive.

"If the assemblage point aligns emanations inside
the cocoon in a position different from its normal one
the human senses perceive in inconceivable ways."


8
The Position of
the Assemblage Point


The next time don Juan resumed his explanation of
the mastery of awareness we were again in his house
in southern Mexico. That house was actually owned
by all the members of the nagual's party, but Silvio
Manuel officiated as the owner and everyone openly
referred to it as Silvio Manuel's house, although I, for
some inexplicable reason, had gotten used to calling it
don Juan's house.

Don Juan, Genaro, and I had returned to the house
from a trip to the mountains. That day, as we relaxed
after the long drive and ate a late lunch, I asked don
Juan the reason for the curious deception. He assured
me that no deception was involved, and that to call it
Silvio Manuel's house was an exercise in the art of
stalking to be performed by all the members of the
nagual's party under any circumstances, even in the
privacy of their own thoughts. For any of them to
insist on thinking about the house in any other terms
was tantamount to denying their links to the nagual's
party.

I protested that he had never told me that. I did not
want to cause any dissension with my habits.

"Don't worry about it," he said, smiling at me and
patting my back. "You can call this house whatever
you want. The nagual has authority. The nagual
woman, for instance, calls it the house of shadows."

Our conversation was interrupted, and I did not see
him until he sent for me to come to the back patio a
couple of hours later.

He and Genaro were strolling around at the far end
of the corridor; I could see them moving their hands
in what seemed to be an animated conversation.

It was a clear sunny day. The midafternoon sun
shone directly on some of the flower pots that hung
from the eaves of the roof around the corridor and
projected their shadows on the north and east walls of
the patio. The combination of intense yellow sunlight,
the massive black shadows of the pots, and the lovely,
delicate, bare shadows of the frail flowering plants that
grew in them was stunning. Someone with a keen eye
for balance and order had pruned those plants to cre-
ate such an exquisite effect.

"The nagual woman has done that," don Juan said
as if reading my thoughts. "She gazes at these shad-
ows in the afternoons."

The thought of her gazing at shadows in the after-
noons had a swift and devastating effect on me. The
intense yellow light of that hour, the quietness of that
town, and the affection that I felt for the nagual
woman conjured up for me in one instant all the soli-
tude of the warriors' endless path.

Don Juan had defined the scope of that path when
he said to me that the new seers are the warriors of
total freedom, that their only search is the ultimate
liberation that comes when they attain total aware-
ness. I understood with unimpaired clarity, as I looked
at those haunting shadows on the wall, what it meant
to the nagual woman when she said that to read poems
out loud was the only release that her spirit had.

I remember that the day before she had read some-
thing to me, there in the patio, but I had not quite
understood her urgency, her longing. It was a poem
by Juan Ramon Jimenez, "Hora Inmensa," which she
told me synthesized for her the solitude of warriors
who live to escape to total freedom.


Only a bell and a bird break the stillness. . .
It seems that the two talk with the setting sun.
Golden colored silence, the afternoon is made of
crystals.
A roving purity sways the cool trees,
and beyond all that,
a transparent river dreams that trampling over
pearls
it breaks loose
and flows into infinity.


Don Juan and Genaro came to my side and looked
at me with an expression of surprise.

"What are we really doing, don Juan?" I asked. "Is
it possible that warriors are only preparing themselves
for death?"

"No way," he said, gently patting my shoulder.
"Warriors prepare themselves to be aware, and full
awareness comes to them only when there is no more
self-importance left in them. Only when they are noth-
ing do they become everything."

We were quiet for a moment. Then don Juan asked
me if I was in the throes of self-pity. I did not answer
because I was not sure.

"You're not sorry that you're here, are you?" don
Juan asked with a faint smile.

"He's certainly not," Genaro assured him. Then he
seemed to have a moment of doubt. He scratched his
head, then looked at me and arched his brows.
"Maybe you are," he said. "Are you?"

"He's certainly not," don Juan assured Genaro this
time. He went through the same gestures of scratching
his head and arching his brows. "Maybe you are," he
said. "Are you?"

"He's certainly not!" Genaro boomed, and both of
them exploded into uncontrolled laughter.

When they had calmed down, don Juan said that
self-importance is the motivating force for every at-
tack of melancholy. He added that warriors are enti-
tled to have profound states of sadness, but that
sadness is there only to make them laugh.

"Genaro has something to show you which is more
exciting than all the self-pity you can muster up," don
Juan continued, "it has to do with the position of the
assemblage point."

Genaro immediately began to walk around the cor-
ridor, arching his back and lifting his thighs to his
chest.

"The nagual Julian showed him how to walk that
way," don Juan said in a whisper, "it's called the gait
of power. Genaro knows several gaits of power.
Watch him fixedly."

Genaro's movements were indeed mesmeric. I
found myself following his gait, first with my eyes and
then irresistibly with my feet. I imitated his gait. We
walked once around the patio and stopped.

While walking, I had noticed the extraordinary lu-
cidity that each step brought to me. When we stopped,
I was in a state of keen alertness. I could hear every
sound; I could detect every change in the light or in
the shadows around me. I became enthralled with a
feeling of urgency, of impending action. I felt extraor-
dinarily aggressive, muscular, daring. At that moment
I saw an enormous span of flat land in front of me;
right behind me I saw a forest. Huge trees were lined
up as straight as a wall. The forest was dark and green;
the plain was sunny and yellow.

My breathing was deep and strangely accelerated,
but not in an abnormal way. Yet it was the rhythm of
my breathing that was forcing me to trot on the spot.
I wanted to take off running, or rather my body
wanted to, but just as I was taking off something
stopped me.

Don Juan and Genaro were suddenly by my side.
We walked down the corridor with Genaro to my
right. He nudged me with his shoulder. I felt the
weight of his body on me. He gently shoved me to the
left and we angled off straight for the east wall of the
patio. For a moment I had the weird impression that
we were going to go through the wall, and I even
braced myself for the impact, but we stopped right in
front of the wall.

While my face was still against the wall, they both
examined me with great care. I knew what they were
searching for; they wanted to make sure that I had
shifted my assemblage point. I knew that I had be-
cause my mood had changed. They obviously knew it
too. They gently took me by the arms and walked in
silence with me to the other side of the corridor, to a
dark passageway, a narrow hall that connected the
patio with the rest of the house. We stopped there.
Don Juan and Genaro moved a few feet away from
me.

I was left facing the side of the house that was in
dark shadows. I looked into an empty dark room. I
had a sense of physical weariness. I felt languid, indif-
ferent, and yet I experienced a sense of spiritual
strength. I realized then that I had lost something.
There was no strength in my body. I could hardly
stand. My legs finally gave in and I sat down and then
I lay down on my side. While I lay there, I had the
most wonderful, fulfilling thoughts of love for God, for
goodness.

Then all at once I was in front of the main altar of a
church. The bas-reliefs covered with gold leaf glittered
with the light of thousands of candles. I saw the dark
figures of men and women carrying an enormous cru-
cifix mounted on a huge palanquin. I moved out of
their way and stepped outside the church. I saw a
multitude of people, a sea of candles, coming toward
me. I felt elated. I ran to join them. I was moved by
profound love. I wanted to be with them, to pray to
the Lord. I was only a few feet away from the mass of
people when something swished me away.

The next instant, I was with don Juan and Genaro.
They flanked me as we walked lazily around the patio.


While we were having lunch the next day, don Juan
said that Genaro had pushed my assemblage point
with his gait of power, and that he had been able to do
that because I had been in a state of inner silence. He
explained that the articulation point of everything
seers do is something he had talked about since the
day we met: stopping the internal dialogue. He
stressed over and over that the internal dialogue is
what keeps the assemblage point fixed to its original
position.

"Once silence is attained, everything is possible,"
he said.

I told him I was very conscious of the fact that in
general I had stopped talking to myself, but did not
know how I had done it. If asked to explain the pro-
cedure I would not know what to say.

"The explanation is simplicity itself," he said.
"You willed it, and thus you set a new intent, a new
command. Then your command became the Eagle's
command.

"This is one of the most extraordinary things that
the new seers found out: that our command can be-
come the Eagle's command. The internal dialogue
stops in the same way it begins: by an act of will. After
all, we are forced to start talking to ourselves by those
who teach us. As they teach us, they engage their will

and we engage ours, both without knowing it. As we
learn to talk to ourselves, we learn to handle will. We
will ourselves to talk to ourselves. The way to stop
talking to ourselves is to use exactly the same method:
we must will it, we must inlend it."

We were silent for a few minutes. I asked him to
whom he was referring when he said that we had
teachers who taught us to talk to ourselves.

"I was talking about what happens to human beings
when they are infants," he replied, "a time when they
are taught by everyone around them to repeat an end-
less dialogue about themselves. The dialogue becomes
internalized, and that force alone keeps the assem-
blage point fixed.

"The new seers say that infants have hundreds of
teachers who teach them exactly where to place their
assemblage point."

He said that seers see that infants have no fixed
assemblage point at first. Their encased emanations
are in a state of great turmoil, and their assemblage
points shift everywhere in the band of man, giving
children a great capacity to focus on emanations that
later will be thoroughly disregarded. Then as they
grow, the older humans around them, through their
considerable power over them, force the children's
assemblage points to become more steady by means
of an increasingly complex internal dialogue. The in-
ternal dialogue is a process that constantly strengthens
the position of the assemblage point, because that po-
sition is an arbitrary one and needs steady reinforce-
ment.

"The fact of the matter is that many children see,"
he went on. "Most of those who see are considered to
be oddballs and every effort is made to correct them,
to make them solidify the position of their assemblage
points."

"But would it be possible to encourage children to
keep their assemblage points more fluid?" I asked.

"Only if they live among the new seers," he said.
"Otherwise they would get entrapped, as the old seers
did, in the intricacies of the silent side of man. And,
believe me, that's worse than being caught in the
clutches of rationality."

Don Juan went on to express his profound admira-
tion for the human capacity to impart order to the
chaos of the Eagle's emanations. He maintained that
every one of us, in his own right, is a masterful magi-
cian and that our magic is to keep our assemblage
point unwaveringly fixed.

"The force of the emanations at large," he went on,
"makes our assemblage point select certain emana-
tions and cluster them for alignment and perception.
That's the command of the Eagle, but all the meaning
that we give to what we perceive is our command, our
gift of magic."

He said that in the light of what he had explained,
what Genaro had made me do the day before was
something extraordinarily complex and yet very sim-
ple. It was complex because it required a tremendous
discipline on everybody's part; it required that the in-
ternal dialogue be stopped, that a state of heightened
awareness be reached, and that someone walk away
with one's assemblage point. The explanation behind
all these complex procedures was very simple; the
new seers say that since the exact position of the as-
semblage point is an arbitrary position chosen for us
by our ancestors, it can move with a relatively small
effort; once it moves, it forces new alignments of em-
anations, thus new perceptions.

"I used to give you power plants in order to make
your assemblage point move," don Juan continued.
"Power plants have that effect; but hunger, tiredness,
fever, and other things like that can have a similar
effect. The flaw of the average man is that he thinks
the result of a shift is purely mental. It isn't, as you
yourself can attest."

He explained that my assemblage point had shifted
scores of times in the past, just as it had shifted the
day before, and that most of the time the worlds it had
assembled had been so close to the world of everyday
life as to be virtually phantom worlds. He emphati-
cally added that visions of that kind are automatically
rejected by the new seers.

"Those visions are the product of man's inven-
tory," he went on. "They are of no value for warriors
in search of total freedom, because they are produced
by a lateral shift of the assemblage point."

He stopped talking and looked at me. I knew that
by "lateral shift" he had meant a shift of the point
from one side to the other along the width of man's
band of emanations instead of a shift in depth. I asked
him if I was right.

"That's exactly what I meant," he said. "On both
edges of man's band of emanations there is a strange
storage of refuse, an incalculable pile of human junk.
It's a very morbid, sinister storehouse. It had great
value for the old seers but not for us.

"One of the easiest things one can do is to fall into
it. Yesterday Genaro and I wanted to give you a quick
example of that lateral shift; that was why we walked
your assemblage point, but any person can reach that
storehouse by simply stopping his internal dialogue. If
the shift is minimal, the results are explained as fan-
tasies of the mind. If the shift is considerable, the
results are called hallucinations."

I asked him to explain the act of walking the assem-
blage point. He said that once warriors have attained
inner silence by stopping their internal dialogue, the
sound of the gait of power, more than the sight of it,
is what traps their assemblage points. The rhythm of
muffled steps instantly catches the alignment force of
the emanations inside the cocoon, which has been dis-
connected by inner silence.

"That force hooks itself immediately to the edges of
the band," he went on. "On the right edge we find
endless visions of physical activity, violence, killing,
sensuality. On the left edge we find spirituality, reli-
gion, God. Genaro and I walked your assemblage
point to both edges, so as to give you a complete view
of that human junk pile."

Don Juan restated, as if on second thought, that one
of the most mysterious aspects of the seers' knowl-
edge is the incredible effects of inner silence. He said
that once inner silence is attained, the bonds that tie
the assemblage point to the particular spot where it is
placed begin to break and the assemblage point is free
to move.

He said that the movement ordinarily is toward the
left, that such a directional preference is a natural re-
action of most human beings, but that there are seers
who can direct that movement to positions below the
customary spot where the point is located. The new
seers call that shift "the shift below."

"Seers also suffer accidental shifts below," he went
on. "The assemblage point doesn't remain there long,
and that's fortunate, because that is the place of the
beast. To go below is counter to our interest, although
the easiest thing to do."

Don Juan also said that among the many errors of
judgment the old seers had committed, one of the most
grievous was moving their assemblage points to the
immeasurable area below, which made them experts
at adopting animal forms. They chose different ani-
mals as their point of reference and called those ani-
mals their nagual. They believed that by moving their
assemblage points to specific spots they would acquire
the characteristics of the animal of their choice, its
strength or wisdom or cunning or agility or ferocity.

Don Juan assured me that there are many dreadful
examples of such practices even among the seers of
our day. The relative facility with which the assem-
blage point of man moves toward any lower position
poses a great temptation to seers, especially to those
whose inclination leans toward that end. It is the duty
of a nagual, therefore, to test his warriors.

He told me then that he had put me to the test by
moving my assemblage point to a position below,
while I was under the influence of a power plant. He
then guided my assemblage point until I could isolate
the crows' band of emanations, which resulted in my
changing into a crow.

I again asked don Juan the question I had asked him
dozens of times. I wanted to know whether I had phys-
ically turned into a crow or had merely thought and
felt like one. He explained that a shift of the assem-
blage point to the area below always results in a total
transformation. He added that if the assemblage point
moves beyond a crucial threshold, the world vanishes;
it ceases to be what it is to us at man's level.

He conceded that my transformation was indeed
horrifying by any standards. My reaction to that ex-
perience proved to him that I had no leanings toward
that direction. Had it not been that way, I would have
had to employ enormous energy in order to fight off a
tendency to remain in that area below, which some
seers find most comfortable.

He further said that an unwitting downshift occurs
periodically to every seer, but that such a downshift
becomes less and less frequent as their assemblage
points move farther toward the left. Every time it oc-
curs, however, the power of a seer undergoing it di-
minishes considerably. It is a drawback that takes
time and great effort to correct.

"Those lapses make seers extremely morose and
narrow-minded," he continued, "and in certain cases,
extremely rational."

"How can seers avoid those downshifts?" I asked.

"It all depends on the warrior," he said. "Some of
them are naturally inclined to indulge in their quirks?
yourself, for instance. They are the ones who are hard
hit. For those like you, I recommend a twenty-four-
hour vigil of everything they do. Disciplined men or
women are less prone to that kind of shift; for those I
would recommend a twenty-three-hour vigil."

He looked at me with shiny eyes and laughed.

"Female seers have downshifts more often than
males," he said. "But they are also capable of bounc-
ing out of that position with no effort at all. while
males linger dangerously in it."

He also said that women seers have an extraordi-
nary capacity to make their assemblage points hold on
to any position in the area below. Men cannot. Men
have sobriety and purpose, but very little talent; that
is the reason why a nagual must have eight women
seers in his party. Women give the impulse to cross
the immeasurable vastness of the unknown. Together
with that natural capacity, or as a consequence of it,
women have a most fierce intensity. They can, there-
fore, reproduce an animal form with flare, ease, and a
matchless ferocity.

"If you think about scary things," he continued,
"about something unnamable lurking in the darkness,
you're thinking, without knowing it, about a woman
seer holding a position in the immeasurable area
below. True horror lies right there. If you ever find an
aberrant woman seer, run for the hills!"

I asked him whether other organisms were capable
of shifting their assemblage points.

"Their points can shift," he said, "but the shift is
not a voluntary thing with them."

"Is the assemblage point of other organisms also
trained to appear where it does?" I asked.

"Every newborn organism is trained, one way or
another," he replied. "We may not understand how
their training is done?after all, we don't even under-
stand how it is done to us?but seers see that the
newborn are coaxed to do what their kind does. That's
exactly what happens to human infants: seers see their
assemblage points shifting every which way and then
they see how the presence of adults fastens each point
to one spot. The same happens to every other organ-
ism."

Don Juan seemed to reflect for a moment and then
added that there was indeed one unique effect that
man's assemblage point has. He pointed to a tree out-
side.

"When we, as serious adult human beings, look at
a tree," he said, "our assemblage points align an infi-
nite number of emanations and achieve a miracle. Our
assemblage points make us perceive a cluster of ema-
nations that we call tree."

He explained that the assemblage point not only
effects the alignment needed for perception, but also
obliterates the alignment of certain emanations in
order to arrive at a greater refinement of perception, a
skimming, a tricky human construct with no parallel.

He said that the new seers had observed that only
human beings were capable of further clustering the
clusters of emanations. He used the Spanish word for
skimming, desnate, to describe the act of collecting
the most palatable cream off the top of a container of
boiled milk after it cools. Likewise, in terms of per-
ception, man's assemblage point takes some part of
the emanations already selected for alignment and
makes a more palatable construct with it.

"The skimmings of men," don Juan continued, "are
more real than what other creatures perceive. That is
our pitfall. They are so real to us that we forget we
have constructed them by commanding our assem-
blage points to appear where they do. We forget they
are real to us only because it is our command to per-
ceive them as real. We have the power to skim the top
off the alignments, but we don't have the power to
protect ourselves from our own commands. That has
to be learned. To give our skimmings a free hand, as
we do, is an error of judgment for which we pay as
dearly as the old seers paid for theirs."


9
The Shift Below


Don Juan and Genaro made their yearly trip to the
northern part of Mexico, to the Sonoran desert, to
look for medicinal plants. One of the seers of the na-
gual's party, Vicente Medrano, the herbalist among
them, used those plants to make medicines.

I had joined don Juan and Genaro in Sonora, at the
last stage of their journey, just in time to drive them
south, back to their home.

The day before we started on our drive, don Juan
abruptly continued his explanation of the mastery of
awareness. We were resting in the shade of some tall
bushes in the foothills of the mountains. It was late
afternoon, almost dark. Each of us carried a large bur-
lap sack filled with plants. As soon as we had put them
down, Genaro lay down on the ground and fell asleep,
using his folded jacket as a pillow.

Don Juan spoke to me in a low voice, as if he didn't
want to wake up Genaro. He said that by now he had
explained most of the truths about awareness, and that
there was only one truth left to discuss. The last truth,
he assured me, was the best of the old seers' findings,
although they never knew that themselves. Its tremen-
dous value was only recognized, ages later, by the
new seers.

"I've explained to you that man has an assemblage
point," he went on, "and that that assemblage point
aligns emanations for perception. We've also dis-
cussed that that point moves from its fixed position.
Now, the last truth is that once that assemblage point
moves beyond a certain limit, it can assemble worlds
entirely different from the world we know."

Still in a whisper, he said that certain geographical
areas not only help that precarious movement of the
assemblage point, but also select specific directions
for that movement. For instance, the Sonoran desert
helps the assemblage point move downward from its
customary position, to the place of the beast.

"That's why there are true sorcerers in Sonora,"
he continued. "Especially sorceresses. You already
know one, la Catalina. In the past, I have arranged
bouts between the two of you. I wanted to make your
assemblage point shift, and la Catalina, with her sor-
cery antics, jolted it loose."

Don Juan explained that the chilling experiences I
had had with la Catalina had been part of a prear-
ranged agreement between the two of them.

"What would you think if we invited her to join
us?" Genaro asked me in a loud voice, as he sat up.

The abruptness of his question and the strange
sound of his voice plunged me into instant terror.

Don Juan laughed and shook me by the arms. He
assured me that there was no need for alarm. He said
that la Catalina was like a cousin or an aunt to us. She
was part of our world, although she did not quite fol-
low our quests. She was infinitely closer to the ancient
seers.

Genaro smiled and winked at me.

"I understand that you've got hot pants for her,"
he said to me. "She herself confessed to me that every
time you have had a confrontation with her, the
greater your fright, the hotter your pants."

Don Juan and Genaro laughed to near hysteria.

I had to admit that somehow I had always found la
Catalina to be a very scary but at the same time an
extremely appealing woman. What impressed me the
most about her was her exuding energy.

"She has so much energy saved," don Juan com-
mented, "that you didn't have to be in heightened
awareness for her to move your assemblage point all
the way to the depths of the left side."

Don Juan said again that la Catalina was very
closely related to us, because she belonged to the na-
gual Julian's party. He explained that usually the na-
gual and all the members of his party leave the world
together, but that there are instances when they leave
either in smaller groups or one by one. The nagual
Julian and his party were an example of the latter.
Although he had left the world nearly forty years ago,
la Catalina was still here.

He reminded me about something he mentioned to
me before, that the nagual Julian's party consisted of
a group of three thoroughly inconsequential men and
eight superb women. Don Juan had always maintained
that such a disparity was one of the reasons why the
members of the nagual Julian's party left the world
one by one.

He said that la Catalina had been attached to one of
the superb women seers of the nagual Julian's party,
who taught her extraordinary maneuvers to shift her
assemblage point to the area below. That seer was one
of the last to leave the world. She lived to an ex-
tremely old age, and since both she and la Catalina
were originally from Sonora, they returned, in her ad-
vanced years, to the desert and lived together until the
seer left the world. In the years they spent together,
la Catalina became her most dedicated helper and dis-
ciple, a disciple who was willing to learn the extrava-
gant ways the old seers knew to make the assemblage
point shift.

I asked don Juan if la Catalina's knowledge was
inherently different from his own.

"We are exactly the same," he replied. "She's
more like Silvio Manuel or Genaro; she is really the
female version of them, but, of course, being a woman
she's infinitely more aggressive and dangerous than
both of them."

Genaro assented with a nod of his head. "Infinitely
more," he said and winked again.

"Is she attached to your party?" I asked don Juan.

"I said that she's like a cousin or an aunt to us," he
replied. "I meant she belongs to the older generation,
although she's younger than all of us. She is the last
of that group. She is rarely in contact with us. She
doesn't quite like us. We are too stiff for her, because
she's used to the nagual Julian's touch. She prefers
the high adventure of the unknown to the quest for
freedom."

"What is the difference between the two?" I asked
don Juan.

"In the last part of my explanation of the truths
about awareness," he replied, "we are going to dis-
cuss that difference slowly and thoroughly. What's
important for you to know. at this moment, is that
you're jealously guarding weird secrets in your left-
side awareness; that is why la Catalina and you like
each other."

I insisted again that it was not that I liked her, it was
rather that I admired her great strength.

Don Juan and Genaro laughed and patted me as if
they knew something I did not.

"She likes you because she knows what you're
like," Genaro said and smacked his lips. "She knew
the nagual Julian very well."

Both of them gave me a long look that made me feel
embarrassed.

"What are you driving at?" I asked Genaro in a
belligerent tone.

He grinned at me and moved his eyebrows up and
down in a comical gesture. But he kept quiet.

Don Juan spoke and broke the silence.

"There are very strange points in common between
the nagual Julian and you," he said. "Genaro is just
trying to figure out if you're aware of it."

I asked both of them how on earth I would be aware
of something so farfetched.

"La Catalina thinks you are," Genaro said. "She
says so because she knew the nagual Julian better than
any of us here."

I commented that I couldn't believe that she knew
the nagual Julian, since he had left the world nearly
forty years ago.

"La Catalina is no spring chicken," Genaro said.
"She just looks young; that's part of her knowledge.
Just as it was part of the nagual Julian's knowledge.
You've seen her only when she looks young. If you
see her when she looks old, she'll scare the living
daylights out of you."

"What la Catalina does," don Juan interrupted,
"can be explained only in terms of the three master-
ies: the mastery of awareness, the mastery of stalking,
and the mastery of intent.

"But today, we are going to examine what she does
only in light of the last truth about awareness: the
truth that says that the assemblage point can assemble
worlds different from our own after it moves from its
original position."

Don Juan signaled me to get up. Genaro also stood
up. I automatically grabbed the burlap sack filled with
medicinal plants. Genaro stopped me as I was about
to put it on my shoulders.

"Leave the sack alone," he said, smiling. "We
have to take a little hike up the hill and meet la Cata-
lina."

"Where is she?" I asked.

"Up there," Genaro said, pointing to the top of a
small hill. "If you stare with your eyes half-closed,
you'll see her as a very dark spot against the green
shrubbery."

I strained to see the dark spot, but I couldn't see
anything.

"Why don't you walk up there?" don Juan sug-
gested to me.

I felt dizzy and sick to my stomach. Don Juan urged
me with a movement of his hand to go up, but I didn't
dare move. Finally, Genaro took me by the arm and
both of us climbed toward the top of the hill. When we
got there, I realized that don Juan had come up right
behind us. The three of us reached the top at the same
time.

Don Juan very calmly began to talk to Genaro. He
asked him if he remembered the many times the na-
gual Julian was about to choke both of them to death,
because they indulged in their fears.

Genaro turned to me and assured me that the nagual
Julian had been a ruthless teacher. He and his own
teacher, the nagual Elias, who was still in the world
then, used to push everyone's assemblage points be-
yond a crucial limit and let them fend for themselves.

"I once told you that the nagual Julian recom-
mended us not to waste our sexual energy," Genaro
went on. "He meant that for the assemblage point to
shift, one needs energy. If one doesn't have it, the
nagual's blow is not the blow of freedom, but the blow
of death."

"Without enough energy," don Juan said, "the
force of alignment is crushing. You have to have en-
ergy to sustain the pressure of alignments which never
take place under ordinary circumstances."

Genaro said that the nagual Julian was an inspiring
teacher. He always found ways to teach and at the
same time entertain himself. One of his favorite teach-
ing devices was to catch them unawares once or twice,
in their normal awareness, and make their assemblage
points shift. From then on, all he had to do to have
their undivided attention was to threaten them with an
unexpected nagual's blow.

"The nagual Julian was really an unforgettable
man," don Juan said. "He had a great touch with
people. He would do the worst things in the world,
but done by him they were great. Done by anyone
else, they would have been crude and callous.

"The nagual Ellas, on the other hand, had no touch,
but he was indeed a great, great teacher."

"The nagual Elias was very much like the nagual
Juan Matus," Genaro said to me. "They got along
very fine. And the nagual Elias taught him everything
without ever raising his voice, or playing tricks on
him.

"But the nagual Julian was quite different," Genaro
went on, giving me a friendly shove. "I'd say that he
jealously guarded strange secrets in his left side, just
like you. Wouldn't you say so?" he asked don Juan.

Don Juan did not answer, but nodded affirmatively.
He seemed to be holding back his laughter.

"He had a playful nature," don Juan said, and both
of them broke into a great laughter.

The fact that they were obviously alluding to some-
thing they knew made me feel even more threatened.

Don Juan matter-of-factly said that they were refer-
ring to the bizarre sorcery techniques that the nagual
Julian had learned in the course of his life. Genaro
added that the nagual Julian had a unique teacher be-
sides the nagual Elias. A teacher who had liked him
immensely and had taught him novel and complex
ways of moving his assemblage point. As a result of
this, the nagual Julian was extraordinarily eccentric in
his behavior.

"Who was that teacher, don Juan?" I asked.

Don Juan and Genaro looked at each other and gig-
gled like two children.

"That is a very tough question to answer," don
Juan replied. "All I can say is that he was the teacher
that deviated the course of our line. He taught us
many things, good and bad, but among the worst, he
taught us what the old seers did. So, some of us got
trapped. The nagual Julian was one of them, and so is
la Catalina. We only hope that you won't follow
them."

I immediately began to protest. Don Juan inter-
rupted me. He said that I did not know what I was
protesting.

As don Juan spoke, I became terribly angry with
him and Genaro. Suddenly, I was raging, yelling at
them at the top of my voice. My reaction was so out
of tone with me that it scared me. It was as if I were
someone else. I stopped and looked at them for help.

Genaro had his hands on don Juan's shoulders as if
he needed support. Both of them were laughing un-
controllably.

I became so despondent I was nearly in tears. Don
Juan came to my side. He reassuringly put his hand
on my shoulder. He said that the Sonoran desert, for
reasons incomprehensible to him, fostered definite
belligerence in man or any other organism.

"People may say that it's because the air is too dry
here," he continued, "or because it's too hot. Seers
would say that there is a particular confluence of the
Eagle's emanations here, which, as I've already said,
helps the assemblage point to shift below.

"Be that as it may, warriors are in the world to train
themselves to be unbiased witnesses, so as to under-
stand the mystery of ourselves and relish the exulta-
tion of finding what we really are. This is the highest
of the new seers' goals. And not every warrior attains
it. We believe that the nagual Julian didn't attain it.
He was waylaid, and so was la Catalina."

He further said that to be a peerless nagual, one has
to love freedom, and one has to have supreme detach-
ment. He explained that what makes the warrior's
path so very dangerous is that it is the opposite of the
life situation of modern man. He said that modern man
has left the realm of the unknown and the mysterious,
and has settled down in the realm of the functional.
He has turned his back to the world of the foreboding
and the exulting and has welcomed the world of bore-
dom.

"To be given a chance to go back again to the mys-
tery of the world," don Juan continued, "is sometimes
too much for warriors, and they succumb; they are
waylaid by what I've called the high adventure of the
unknown. They forget the quest for freedom; they for-
get to be unbiased witnesses. They sink into the un-
known and love it."

"And you think i'm like that, don't you?" I asked
don Juan.

"We don't think, we know," Genaro replied. "And
la Catalina knows better than anyone else."

"Why would she know it?" I demanded.

"Because she's like you," Genaro replied, pro-
nouncing his words with a comical intonation.

I was about to get into a heated argument again
when don Juan interrupted me.

"There's no need to get so worked up," he said to
me. "You are what you are. The fight for freedom is
harder for some. You are one of them.

"In order to be unbiased witnesses," he went on,
"we begin by understanding that the fixation or the
movement of the assemblage point is all there is to us
and the world we witness, whatever that world might
be.

"The new seers say that when we were taught to
talk to ourselves, we were taught the means to dull
ourselves in order to keep the assemblage point fixed
on one spot."

Genaro clapped his hands noisily and let out a pierc-
ing whistle that imitated the whistle of a football
coach.

"Let's get that assemblage point moving!" he
yelled. "Up, up, up! Move, move, move!"

We were all still laughing when the bushes by my
right side were suddenly stirred. Don Juan and Genaro
immediately sat down with the left leg tucked under
the seat. The right leg, with the knee up, was like a
shield in front of them. Don Juan signaled me to do
the same. He raised his brows and made a gesture of
resignation at the corner of his mouth.

"Sorcerers have their own quirks," he said in a
whisper. "When the assemblage point moves to the
regions below its normal position, the vision of sorcer-
ers becomes limited. If they see you standing, they'll
attack you."

"The nagual Julian kept me once for two days in
this warrior's position," Genaro whispered to me. "I
even had to urinate while I sat in this position."

"And defecate," don Juan added.

"Right," Genaro said. And then he whispered to
me, as if on second thought, "I hope you did your
kaka earlier. If your bowels aren't empty when la Cat-
alina shows up, you'll shit in your pants, unless I show
you how to take them off. If you have to shit in this
position, you've got to get your pants off."

He began to show me how to maneuver out of my
trousers. He did it in a most serious and concerned
manner. All my concentration was focused on his
movements. It was only when I had gotten out of my
pants that I became aware that don Juan was roaring
with laughter. I realized that Genaro was again poking
fun at me. I was about to stand up to put on my pants,
when don Juan stopped me. He was laughing so hard
that he could hardly articulate his words. He told me
to stay put, that Genaro did things only half in fun,
and that la Catalina was really there behind the
bushes.

His tone of urgency, in the midst of laughter, got to
me. I froze on the spot. A moment later a rustle in the
bushes sent me into such a panic that I forgot about
my pants. I looked at Genaro. He was again wearing
his pants. He shrugged his shoulders.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I didn't have time to
show you how to put them back on without getting
up."

I did not have time to get angry or to join them in
their mirth. Suddenly, right in front of me, the bushes
separated and a most horrendous creature came out.
It was so outlandish I was no longer afraid. I was
spellbound. Whatever was in front of me was not a
human being; it was something not even remotely re-
sembling one. It was more like a reptile. Or a bulky
grotesque insect. Or even a hairy, ultimately repulsive
bird. Its body was dark and had coarse reddish hair. I
could not see any legs, just the ugly enormous head.
The nose was flat and the nostrils were two enormous
lateral holes. It had something like a beak with teeth.
Horrifying as that thing was, its eyes were magnifi-
cent. They were like two mesmeric pools of inconceiv-
able clarity. They had knowledge. They were not
human eyes, or bird eyes, or any kind of eyes I had
ever seen.

The creature moved toward my left, rustling the
bushes. As I moved my head to follow it, I noticed
that don Juan and Genaro seemed to be as spellbound
by its presence as I was. It occurred to me that they
had never seen anything like that either.

In an instant, the creature had moved completely
out of sight. But a moment later there was a growl and
its gigantic shape again loomed in front of us.

I was fascinated and at the same time worried by
the fact that I was not in the least afraid of that gro-
tesque creature. It was as if my early panic had been
experienced by someone else.

I felt, at one moment, that I was beginning to stand
up. Against my volition, my legs straightened up and
I found myself standing up, facing the creature. I
vaguely felt that I was taking off my jacket, my shirt,
and my shoes. Then I was naked. The muscles of my
legs tensed with a tremendously powerful contraction.
I jumped up and down with colossal agility, and then
the creature and I raced toward some ineffable green-
ness in the distance.

The creature raced ahead of me, coiling on itself,
like a serpent. But then I caught up with it. As we
speeded together, I became aware of something I al-
ready knew?the creature was really la Catalina. All
of a sudden, la Catalina, in the flesh, was next to me.
We moved effortlessly. It was as if we were station-
ary, only posed in a bodily gesture of movement and
speed, while the scenery around us was being moved,
giving the impression of enormous acceleration.

Our racing stopped as suddenly as it had started,
and then I was alone with la Catalina in a different
world. There was not a single recognizable feature in
it. There was an intense glare and heat coming from
what seemed to be the ground, a ground covered with
huge rocks. Or at least they seemed to be rocks. They
had the color of sandstone, but they had no weight;
they were like chunks of sponge tissue. I could send
them hurling around by only leaning on them.

I became so fascinated with my strength that I was
oblivious to anything else. I had assessed, in whatever
way, that the chunks of seemingly weightless material
opposed resistance to me. It was my superior strength
that sent them hurling around.

I tried to grab them with my hands, and I realized
that my entire body had changed. La Catalina was
looking at me. She was again the grotesque creature
she had been before, and so was I. I could not see
myself, but I knew that both of us were exactly alike.

An indescribable joy possessed me, as if joy were
some force that came from outside me. La Catalina
and I cavorted, and twisted, and played until I had no
more thoughts, or feelings, or human awareness in any
degree. Yet, I was definitely aware. My awareness
was a vague knowledge that gave me confidence; it
was a limitless trust, a physical certainty of my exis-
tence, not in the sense of a human feeling of individ-
uality, but in the sense of a presence that was
everything.

Then, everything came again into human focus all
at once. La Catalina was holding my hand. We were
walking on the desert floor among the desert shrubs. I
had the immediate and painful realization that the des-
ert rocks and hard clumps of dirt were horribly inju-
rious to my bare feet.

We came to a spot clear of vegetation. Don Juan
and Genaro were there. I sat down and put on my
clothes.


My experience with la Catalina delayed our trip
back to the south of Mexico. It had unhinged me in
some indescribable way. In my normal state of aware-
ness, I became disassociated. It was as if I had lost a
point of reference. I had become despondent. I told
don Juan that I had even lost my desire to live.

We were sitting around in the ramada of don Juan's
house. My car was loaded with sacks and we were
ready to leave, but my feeling of despair got the best
of me and I began to weep.

Don Juan and Genaro laughed until their eyes were
tearing. The more desperate I felt, the greater was
their enjoyment. Finally, don Juan had me shift into
heightened awareness and explained that their laugh-
ter was not unkindness on their part, or the result of a
weird sense of humor, but the genuine expression of
happiness at seeing me advance in the path of knowl-
edge.

"I'll tell you what the nagual Julian used to say to
us when we got to where you are," don Juan went on.
"That way, you'll know that you're not alone. What's
happening to you happens to anyone who stores
enough energy to catch a glimpse of the unknown."

He said that the nagual Julian used to tell them that
they had been evicted from the homes where they had
lived all their lives. A result of having saved energy
had been the disruption of their cozy but utterly limit-
ing and boring nest in the world of everyday life. Their
depression, the nagual Julian told them, was not so
much the sadness of having lost their nest, but the
annoyance of having to look for new quarters.

"The new quarters," don Juan went on, "are not as
cozy. But they are infinitely more roomy.

"Your eviction notice came in the form of a great
depression, a loss of the desire to live, just as it hap-
pened to us. When you told us that you didn't want to
live, we couldn't help laughing."

"What's going to happen to me now?" I asked.

"Using the vernacular, you got to get another pad,"
don Juan replied.

Don Juan and Genaro again entered into a state of
great euphoria. Every one of their statements and re-
marks made them laugh hysterically.

"It's all very simple," don Juan said. "Your new
level of energy will create a new spot to house your
assemblage point. And the warriors' dialogue you
carry on with us every time we get together will solid-
ify that new position."

Genaro adopted a serious look and in a booming
voice he asked me, "Did you shit today?"

He urged me with a movement of his head to an-
swer. "Did you, did you?" he demanded. "Let's get
going with our warriors' dialogue."

When their laughter had subsided, Genaro said that
I had to be aware of a drawback, the fact that from
time to time the assemblage point returns to its origi-
nal position. He told me that in his own case, the
normal position of his assemblage point had forced
him to see people as threatening and often terrifying
beings. To his utter amazement, one day he realized
that he had changed. He was considerably more dar-
ing and had successfully dealt with a situation that
would have ordinarily thrown him into chaos and fear.

"I found myself making love," Genaro continued,
and he winked at me. "Usually I was afraid to death
of women. But one day I found myself in bed with a
most ferocious woman, it was so unlike me that when
I realized what I was doing I nearly had a heart attack.
The jolt made my assemblage point return to its mis-
erable normal position and I had to run out of the
house, shaking like a scared rabbit.

"You'd better watch out for the recoil of the assem-
blage point," Genaro added, and they were laughing
again.

"The position of the assemblage point on man's co-
coon," don Juan explained, "is maintained by the in-
ternal dialogue, and because of that, it is a flimsy
position at best. That's why men and women lose their
minds so easily, especially those whose internal dia-
logue is repetitious, boring, and without any depth.

"The new seers say that the more resilient human
beings are those whose internal dialogue is more fluid
and varied."

He said that the position of the warrior's assem-
blage point is infinitely stronger, because as soon as
the assemblage point begins to move in the cocoon, it
creates a dimple in the luminosity, a dimple that
houses the assemblage point from then on.

"That's the reason why we can't say that warriors
lose their minds," don Juan went on. "If they lose
anything, they lose their dimple."

Don Juan and Genaro found that statement so hilar-
ious that they rolled on the floor laughing.

I asked don Juan to explain my experience with la
Catalina. And both of them again howled with laugh-
ter.

"Women are definitely more bizarre than men,"
don Juan finally said. "The fact that they have an
extra opening between their legs makes them fall prey
to strange influences. Strange, powerful forces pos-
sess them through that opening. That's the only way I
can understand their quirks."

He kept silent for a while, and I asked what he
meant by that.

"La Catalina came to us as a giant worm," he re-
plied.

Don Juan's expression when he said that, and Ge-
naro's explosion of laughter, took me into sheer mirth.
I laughed until I was nearly sick.

Don Juan said that la Catalina's skill was so extraor-
dinary that she could do anything she wanted in the
realm of the beast. Her unparalleled display had been
motivated by her affinity with me. The final result of
all that, he said, was that la Catalina pulled my assem-
blage point with her.

"What did you two do as worms?" Genaro asked
and slapped me on the back.

Don Juan seemed to be close to choking with laugh-
ter.

"That's why I've said that women are more bizarre
than men," he commented at last.

"I don't agree with you," Genaro said to don Juan.
"The nagual Julian didn't have an extra hole between
his legs and he was more weird than la Catalina. I
believe she learned the worm bit from him. He used
to do that to her."

Don Juan jumped up and down, like a child who is
trying to keep from wetting his pants.

When he had regained a measure of calm, don Juan
said that the nagual Julian had a knack for creating
and exploiting the most bizarre situations. He also
said that la Catalina had given me a superb example
of the shift below. She had let me see her as the being
whose form she had adopted by moving her assem-
blage point, and she had then helped me move mine to
the same position that gave her her monstrous appear-
ance.

"The other teacher that the nagual Julian had," don
Juan went on, "taught him how to get to specific spots
in that immensity of the area below. None of us could
follow him there, but all the members of his party did,
especially la Catalina and the woman seer who taught
her."

Don Juan further said that a shift below entailed a
view, not of another world proper, but of our same
world of everyday life seen from a different perspec-
tive. He added that in order for me to see another
world I had to perceive another great band of the Ea-
gle's emanations.

He then brought his explanation to an end. He said
that he had no time to elaborate on the subject of the
great bands of emanations, because we had to be on
our way. I wanted to stay a bit longer and keep on
talking, but he argued that he would need a good deal
of time to explain that topic and I would need fresh
concentration.


10
Great Bands
of Emanations


Days later, in his house in southern Mexico, don Juan
continued with his explanation. He took me to the big
room. It was early evening. The room was in dark-
ness. I wanted to light the gasoline lanterns, but don
Juan would not let me. He said that I had to let the
sound of his voice move my assemblage point so that
it would glow on the emanations of total concentration
and total recall.

He then told me that we were going to talk about
the great bands of emanations. He called it another
key discovery that the old seers made, but that, in
their aberration, they relegated to oblivion until it was
rescued by the new seers.

"The Eagle's emanations are always grouped in
clusters," he went on. "The old seers called those
clusters the great bands of emanations. They aren't
really bands, but the name stuck.

"For instance, there is an immeasurable cluster that
produces organic beings. The emanations of that or-
ganic band have a sort of fluffiness. They are transpar-
ent and have a unique light of their own, a peculiar
energy. They are aware, they jump. That's the reason
why all organic beings are filled with a peculiar con-
suming energy. The other bands are darker, less fluffy.
Some of them have no light at all, but a quality of
opaqueness."

"Do you mean, don Juan, that all organic beings
have the same kind of emanations inside their co-
coons?" I asked.

"No. I don't mean that. It isn't really that simple,
although organic beings belong to the same great
band. Think of it as an enormously wide band of lu-
minous filaments, luminous strings with no end. Or-
ganic beings are bubbles that grow around a group of
luminous filaments. Imagine that in this band of or-
ganic life some bubbles are formed around the lumi-
nous filaments in the center of the band, others are
formed close to the edges; the band is wide enough to
accommodate every kind of organic being with room
to spare. In such an arrangement, bubbles that are
close to the edges of the band miss altogether the em-
anations that are in the center of the band, which are
shared only by bubbles that are aligned with the cen-
ter. By the same token, bubbles in the center miss the
emanations from the edges.

"As you can understand, organic beings share the
emanations of one band; yet seers see that within that
organic band beings are as different as they can be."

"Are there many of these great bands?" I asked.

"As many as infinity itself," he replied. "Seers
have found out, however, that in the earth there are
only forty-eight such bands."

"What is the meaning of that, don Juan?"

"For seers it means that there are forty-eight types
of organizations on the earth, forty-eight types of clus-
ters or structures. Organic life is one of them."

"Does that mean that there are forty-seven types of
inorganic life?"

"No, not at all. The old seers counted seven bands
that produced inorganic bubbles of awareness. In
other words, there are forty bands that produce bub-
bles without awareness; those are bands that generate
only organization.

"Think of the great bands as being like trees. All of
them bear fruit; they produce containers filled with
emanations; yet only eight of those trees bear edible
fruit, that is, bubbles of awareness. Seven have sour
fruit, but edible nonetheless, and one has the most
juicy, luscious fruit there is."

He laughed and said that in his analogy he had taken
the point of view of the Eagle, for whom the most
delectable morsels are the organic bubbles of aware-
ness.

"What makes those eight bands produce aware-
ness?" I asked.

"The Eagle bestows awareness through its emana-
tions," he replied.

His answer made me argue with him. I told him that
to say that the Eagle bestows awareness through its
emanations is like what a religious man would say
about God, that God bestows life through love. It does
not mean anything.

"The two statements are not made from the same
point of view," he patiently said. "And yet I think
they mean the same thing. The difference is that seers
see how the Eagle bestows awareness through its em-
anations and religious men don't see how God bestows
life through his love."

He said that the way the Eagle bestows awareness
is by means of three giant bundles of emanations that
run through eight great bands. These bundles are quite
peculiar, because they make seers feel a hue. One
bundle gives the feeling of being beige-pink, some-
thing like the glow of pink-colored street lamps; an-
other gives the feeling of being peach, like buff neon
lights; and the third bundle gives the feeling of being
amber, like clear honey.

"So, it is a matter of seeing a hue when seers see
that the Eagle bestows awareness through its emana-
tions," he went on. "Religious men don't see God's
love, but if they would see it, they would know that it
is either pink, peach, or amber.

"Man, for example, is attached to the amber bun-
dle, but so are other beings."

I wanted to know which beings shared those ema-
nations with man.

"Details like that you will have to find out for your-
self through your own seeing,"' he said. "There is no
point in my telling you which ones; you will only be
making another inventory. Suffice it to say that finding
that out for yourself will be one of the most exciting
things you'll ever do."

"Do the pink and peach bundles also show in
man?" I asked.

"Never. Those bundles belong to other living
beings," he replied.

I was about to ask a question, but with a forceful
movement of his hand, he signaled me to stop. He
then became immersed in thought. We were envel-
oped in complete silence for a long time.

"I've told you that the glow of awareness in man
has different colors." he finally said. "What I didn't
tell you then, because we hadn't gotten to that point
yet, was that they are not colors but casts of amber."

He said that the amber bundle of awareness has an
infinitude of subtle variants, which always denote dif-
ferences in quality of awareness. Pink and pale-green
amber are the most common casts. Blue amber is
more unusual, but pure amber is by far the most rare.

"What determines the particular casts of amber?"

"Seers say that the amount of energy that one saves
and stores determines the cast. Countless numbers of
warriors have begun with an ordinary pink amber cast
and have finished with the purest of all ambers. Ge-
naro and Silvio Manuel are examples of that."

"What forms of life belong to the pink and the peach
bundles of awareness?" I asked.

"The three bundles with all their casts crisscross
the eight bands," he replied. "In the organic band, the
pink bundle belongs mainly to plants, the peach band
belongs to insects, and the amber band belongs to man
and other animals.

"The same situation is prevalent in the inorganic
bands. The three bundles of awareness produce spe-
cific kinds of inorganic beings in each of the seven
great bands."

I asked him to elaborate on the kinds of inorganic
beings that existed.

"That is another thing that you must see for your-
self," he said. "The seven bands and what they pro-
duce are indeed inaccessible to human reason, but not
to human seeing."

I told him that I could not quite grasp his explana-
tion of the great bands, because his description had
forced me to imagine them as independent bundles of
strings, or even as flat bands, like conveyor belts.

He explained that the great bands are neither flat
nor round, but indescribably clustered together, like a
pile of hay, which is held together in midair by the
force of the hand that pitched it. Thus, there is no
order to the emanations; to say that there is a central
part or that there are edges is misleading, but neces-
sary to understanding.

Continuing, he explained that inorganic beings pro-
duced by the seven other bands of awareness are char-
acterized by having a container that has no motion; it
is rather a formless receptacle with a low degree of
luminosity. It does not look like the cocoon of organic
beings. It lacks the tautness, the inflated quality that
makes organic beings look like luminous balls bursting
with energy.

Don Juan said that the only similarity between in-
organic and organic beings is that all of them have the
awareness-bestowing pink or peach or amber emana-
tions.

"Those emanations, under certain circumstances,"
he continued, "make possible the most fascinating
communication between the beings of those eight
great bands."

He said that usually the organic beings, with their
greater fields of energy, are the initiators of commu-
nication with inorganic beings, but a subtle and so-
phisticated follow-up is always the province of the
inorganic beings. Once the barrier is broken, inorganic
beings change and become what seers call allies. From
that moment inorganic beings can anticipate the seer's
most subtle thoughts or moods or fears.

"The old seers became mesmerized by such devo-
tion from their allies," he went on. "Stories are that
the old seers could make their allies do anything they
wanted. That was one of the reasons they believed in
their own invulnerability. They got fooled by their
self-importance. The allies have power only if the seer
who sees them is the paragon of impeccability; and
those old seers just weren't."

"Are there as many inorganic beings as there are
living organisms?" I asked.

He said that inorganic beings are not as plentiful as
organic ones, but that this is offset by the greater num-
ber of bands of inorganic awareness. Also, the differ-
ences among the inorganic beings themselves are
more vast than the differences among organisms, be-
cause organisms belong to only one band while inor-
ganic beings belong to seven bands.

"Besides, inorganic beings live infinitely longer
than organisms," he continued. "This matter is what
prompted the old seers to concentrate their seeing on
the allies, for reasons I will tell you about later on."

He said that the old seers also came to realize that
it is the high energy of organisms and the subsequent
high development of their awareness that make them
delectable morsels for the Eagle. In the old seers'
view, gluttony was the reason the Eagle produced as
many organisms as possible.

He explained next that the product of the other forty
great bands is not awareness at all, but a configuration
of inanimate energy. The old seers chose to call what-
ever is produced by those bands, vessels. While
cocoons and containers are fields of energetic
awareness, which accounts for their independent
luminosity, vessels are rigid receptacles that hold em-
anations without being fields of energetic awareness.
Their luminosity comes only from the energy of the
encased emanations.

"You must bear in mind that everything on the
earth is encased," he continued. "Whatever we per-
ceive is made up of portions of cocoons or vessels
with emanations. Ordinarily, we don't perceive the
containers of inorganic beings at all."

He looked at me, waiting for a sign of comprehen-
sion. When he realized I was not going to oblige him,
he continued explaining.

"The total world is made of the forty-eight bands,"
he said. "The world that our assemblage point assem-
bles for our normal perception is made up of two
bands; one is the organic band, the other is a band that
has only structure, but no awareness. The other forty-
six great bands are not part of the world we normally
perceive."

He paused again for pertinent questions. I had none.

"There are other complete worlds that our assem-
blage points can assemble," he went on. "The old
seers counted seven such worlds, one for each band
of awareness. I'll add that two of those worlds, be-
sides the world of everyday life, are easy to assemble;
the other five are something else."


When we again sat down to talk, don Juan immedi-
ately began to talk about my experience with la Cata-
lina. He said that a shift of the assemblage point to the
area below its customary position allows the seer a
detailed and narrow view of the world we know. So
detailed is that view that it seems to be an entirely
different world. It is a mesmerizing view that has a
tremendous appeal, especially for those seers who
have an adventurous but somehow indolent and lazy
spirit.

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

"The nagual Julian thought it was a great place for
cavorting, but that's all."

He said that a true change of worlds happens only
when the assemblage point moves into man's band,
deep enough to reach a crucial threshold, at which
stage the assemblage point can use another of the
great bands.

"How does it use it?" I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. "It's a matter of en-
ergy," he said. "The force of alignment hooks another
band, provided that the seer has enough energy. Our
normal energy allows our assemblage points to use the
force of alignment of one great band of emanations.
And we perceive the world we know. But if we have
a surplus of energy, we can use the force of alignment
of other great bands, and consequently we perceive
other worlds."

Don Juan abruptly changed the subject and began
to talk about plants.

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

"How big are their cocoons?" I asked.

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

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

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

"What about the inorganic beings?" I asked.
"Where do they have their assemblage points?"

"Some have it on the lower part of their contain-
ers," he said. "Those are thoroughly alien to man, but
akin to plants. Others have it anywhere on the upper
part of their containers. Those are close to man and
other organic creatures."

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

"You understand, of course," don Juan went on,
"that when they thought they were descending to the
depths, they were, in fact, pushing their assemblage
points to assemble other perceivable worlds with
those seven great bands.

"They taxed their awareness to the limit and assem-
bled worlds with five great bands that are accessible
to seers only if they undergo a dangerous transforma-
tion."

"But did the old seers succeed in assembling those
worlds?" I asked.

"They did," he said. "In their aberration they be-
lieved it was worth their while to break all the barriers
of perception, even if they had to become trees to do
that."


11
Stalking, Intent and
the Dreaming Position


The next day, in the early evening again, don Juan
came to the room where I was talking with Genaro.
He took me by the arm and walked me through the
house to the back patio. It was already fairly dark. We
started to walk around in the corridor that encircled
the patio.

As we walked, don Juan told me that he wanted to
warn me once again that it is very easy in the path of
knowledge to get lost in intricacies and morbidity. He
said that seers are up against great enemies that can
destroy their purpose, muddle their aims, and make
them weak; enemies created by the warriors' path it-
self together with the sense of indolence, laziness, and
self-importance that are integral parts of the daily
world.

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

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

Don Juan said that with these three sets, the new
seers accomplished a most extraordinary and difficult
feat. They succeeded in systematically making the as-
semblage point shift away from its customary posi-
tion. He acknowledged that the old seers had also
accomplished that feat, but by means of capricious,
idiosyncratic maneuvers.

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

He told me that he had taught me the mastery of
awareness in two ways, just as the new seers recom-
mend. In his teachings for the right side, which he had
done in normal awareness, he accomplished two
goals: he taught me the warriors' way, and he loos-
ened my assemblage point from its original position.
In his teachings for the left side, which he had done in
heightened awareness, he also accomplished two
goals: he had made my assemblage point shift to as
many positions as I was capable of sustaining, and he
had given me a long series of explanations.

Don Juan stopped talking and stared at me fixedly.
There was an awkward silence; then he started to talk
about stalking. He said that it had very humble and
fortuitous origins. It started from an observation the
new seers made that when warriors steadily behave in
ways not customary for them, the unused emanations
inside their cocoons begin to glow. And their assem-
blage points shift in a mild, harmonious, barely notice-
able fashion.

Stimulated by this observation, the new seers began
to practice the systematic control of their behavior.
They called this practice the art of stalking. Don Juan
remarked that the name, although objectionable, was
appropriate, because stalking entailed a specific kind
of behavior with people, behavior that could be cate-
gorized as surreptitious.

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

"Stalking is one of the two greatest accomplish-
ments of the new seers." he said. "The new seers
decided that it should be taught to a modern-day na-
gual when his assemblage point has moved quite deep
into the left side. The reason for this decision is that a
nagual must learn the principles of stalking without
the encumbrance of the human inventory. After all,
the nagual is the leader of a group, and to lead them
he has to act quickly without first having to think
about it.

"Other warriors can learn stalking in their normal
awareness, although it is advisable that they do it in
heightened awareness?not so much because of the
value of heightened awareness, but because it imbues
stalking with a mystery that it doesn't really have;
stalking is merely behavior with people."

He said that I could now understand that shifting
the assemblage point was the reason why the new
seers placed such a high value on the interaction with
petty tyrants. Petty tyrants forced seers to use the
principles of stalking and, in doing so, helped seers to
move their assemblage points.

I asked him if the old seers knew anything at all
about the principles of stalking.

'"Stalking belongs exclusively to the new seers," he
said, smiling. "They are the only seers who had to
deal with people. The old ones were so wrapped up in
their sense of power that they didn't even know that
people existed, until people started clobbering them
on the head. But you already know all this."

Don Juan said next that the mastery of intent to-
gether with the mastery of stalking are the new seers'
two masterpieces, which mark the arrival of the mod-
ern-day seers. He explained that in their efforts to gain
an advantage over their oppressors the new seers pur-
sued every possibility. They knew that <heir prede-
cessors had accomplished extraordinary feats by
manipulating a mysterious and miraculous force,
which they could only describe as power. The new
seers had very little information about that force, so
they were obliged to examine it systematically through
seeing. Their efforts were amply rewarded when they
discovered that the energy of alignment is that force.

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

At first they referred to those techniques as the mas-
tery of alignment. Then they realized that what was
involved was much more than alignment; what was
involved was the energy that comes out of the align-
ment of emanations. They called that energy will.

Will became the second basis. The new seers under-
stood it as a blind, impersonal, ceaseless burst of en-
ergy that makes us behave in the ways we do. Will
accounts for our perception of the world of ordinary
affairs, and indirectly, through the force of that per-
ception, it accounts for the placement of the assem-
blage point in its customary position.

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

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

"Silvio Manuel, Genaro, and Vicente were pushed
by the nagual Julian to learn those three aspects of the
seers' knowledge," he went on. "Genaro is the master
of handling awareness, Vicente is the master of stalk-
ing, and Silvio Manuel is the master of intent.

"We are now doing a final explanation of the mas-
tery of awareness; this is why Genaro is helping you."


Don Juan talked to the female apprentices for a long
time. The women listened with serious expressions on
their faces. I felt sure he was giving them detailed
instructions about difficult procedures, judging from
the women's fierce concentration.

I had been barred from their meeting, but I had
watched them as they talked in the front room of Ge-
naro's house. I sat at the kitchen table, waiting until
they were through.

Then the women got up to leave, but before they
did, they came to the kitchen with don Juan. He sat
down facing me while the women talked to me with
awkward formality. They actually embraced me. All
of them were unusually friendly, even talkative. They
said that they were going to join the male apprentices,
who had gone with Genaro hours earlier. Genaro was
going to show all of them his dreaming body.

As soon as the women left, don Juan quite abruptly
resumed his explanation. He said that as time passed
and the new seers established their practices, they re-
alized that under the prevailing conditions of life,
stalking only moved the assemblage points minimally.
For maximum effect, stalking needed an ideal setting;
it needed petty tyrants in positions of great authority
and power. It became increasingly difficult for the new
seers to place themselves in such situations; the task
of improvising them or seeking them out became an
unbearable burden.

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

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

"Why do the new seers command that dreaming has
to be taught in normal awareness?" I asked.

"Because dreaming is so dangerous and dreamers
so vulnerable," he said. "It is dangerous because it
has inconceivable power; it makes dreamers vulnera-
ble because it leaves them at the mercy of the incom-
prehensible force of alignment.

"The new seers realized that in our normal state of
awareness, we have countless defenses that can safe-
guard us against the force of unused emanations that
suddenly become aligned in dreaming."

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

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

He remarked that there is hardly a way of describing
the immensity of their knowledge about dreaming.
Very little of it, however, was of any use to the new
seers. So when the time of reconstruction came, the
new seers took for themselves only the bare essentials
of dreaming to aid them in seeing the Eagle's emana-
tions and to help them move their assemblage points.

He said that seers, old and new, understand dream-
ing as being the control of the natural shift that the
assemblage point undergoes in sleep. He stressed that
to control that shift does not mean in any way to direct
it, but to keep the assemblage point fixed at the posi-
tion where it naturally moves in sleep, a most difficult
maneuver that took the old seers enormous effort and
concentration to accomplish.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The old seers called that state the dreaming body,
because they controlled it to the extreme of creating a
temporary new body every time they woke up at a
new dreaming position.

"I have to make it clear to you that dreaming has a
terrible drawback," he went on. "It belongs to the old
seers. It's tainted with their mood. I've been very
careful in guiding you through it, but still there is no
way to make sure."

"What are you warning me about, don Juan?" I
asked.

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

He said that at first the new seers were hesitant to
use dreaming. It was their belief that dreaming, in-
stead of fortifying, made warriors weak, compulsive,
capricious. The old seers were all like that. In order
to offset the nefarious effect of dreaming, since they
had no other option but to use it, the new seers devel-
oped a complex and rich system of behavior called the
warriors' way, or the warriors' path.

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

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

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

I told him that we were back in the same position
we had been in in my normal state of awareness. I was
still convinced that impeccability or saving energy was
something so vague that it could be interpreted by
anyone in whatever whimsical way he wanted.

I wanted to say more to build my argument, but a
strange feeling overtook me. It was an actual physical
sensation that I was rushing through something. And
then I rebuffed my own argument. I knew without any
doubt whatsoever that don Juan was right. All that is
required is impeccability, energy, and that begins with
a single act that has to be deliberate, precise, and
sustained. If that act is repeated long enough, one ac-
quires a sense of unbending intent, which can be ap-
plied to anything else. If that is accomplished the road
is clear. One thing will lead to another until the warrior
realizes his full potential.

When I told don Juan what I had just realized, he
laughed with apparent delight and exclaimed that this
was indeed a godsent example of the strength that he
was talking about. He explained that my assemblage
point had shifted, and that it had been moved by so-
briety to a position that fostered understanding. It
could have as well been moved by capriciousness to a
position that only enhances self-importance, as had
been the case many times before.

"Let's talk now about the dreaming body."' he went
on. "The old seers concentrated all their efforts on
exploring and exploiting the dreaming body. And they
succeeded in using it as a more practical body, which
is tantamount to saying they recreated themselves in
increasingly weird ways."

Don Juan maintained that it is common knowledge
among the new seers that flocks of the old sorcerers
never came back after waking up at a dreaming posi-
tion of their liking. He said that chances are they all
died in those inconceivable worlds, or they may still
be alive today in who knows what kind of contorted
shape or manner.

He stopped and looked at me and broke into a great
laugh.

"You're dying to ask me what the old seers did with
the dreaming body, aren't you?" he asked, and urged
me with a movement of his chin to ask the question.

Don Juan stated that Genaro, being the indisputable
master of awareness, had shown me the dreaming
body many times while I was in a state of normal
awareness. The effect that Genaro was after with his
demonstrations was to make my assemblage point
move, not from a position of heightened awareness,
but from its normal setting.

Don Juan told me then, as if he were letting a secret
be known, that Genaro was waiting for us in some
fields near the house to show me his dreaming body.
He repeated over and over that I was now in the per-
fect state of awareness to see and understand what the
dreaming body really is. Then he had me get up, and
we walked through the front room to reach the door
to the outside. As I was about to open the door, I
noticed that someone was lying on the pile of floor
mats that the apprentices used as beds. I thought that
one of the apprentices must have returned to the
house while don Juan and I were talking in the
kitchen.

I went up to him, and then I realized that it was
Genaro. He was sound asleep, snoring peacefully,
lying face down.

"Wake him up," don Juan said to me. "We've got
to be going. He must be dead tired."

I gently shook Genaro. He slowly turned around,
made the sounds of someone waking up from a deep
slumber. He stretched his arms, and then he opened
his eyes. I screamed involuntarily and jumped back.

Genaro's eyes were not human eyes at all. They
were two points of intense amber light. The jolt of my
fright had been so intense that I became dizzy. Don
Juan tapped my back and restored my equilibrium.

Genaro stood up and smiled at me. His features
were rigid. He moved as if he were drunk or physically
impaired. He walked by me and headed directly for
the wall. I winced at the imminent crash, but he went
through the wall as if it were not there at all. He came
back into the room through the kitchen doorway. And
then, as I looked in true horror, Genaro walked on the
walls, with his body parallel to the ground, and on the
ceiling, with his head upside down.

I fell backwards as I tried to follow his movements.
From that position I didn't see Genaro anymore; in-
stead I was looking at a blob of light that moved on
the ceiling above me and on the walls, circling the
room. It was as if someone with a giant flashlight was
shining the beam on the ceiling and the walls. The
beam of light was finally turned off. It disappeared
from view by vanishing against a wall.

Don Juan remarked that my animal fright was al-
ways out of measure, that I had to struggle to bring it
under control, but that all in all, I had behaved very
well. I had seen Genaro's dreaming body as it really
is, a blob of light.

I asked him how he was so sure I had done that. He
replied that he had seen my assemblage point first
move toward its normal setting in order to compensate
for my fright, then move deeper into the left, beyond
the point where there are no doubts.

"At that position there is only one thing one can
see: blobs of energy," he went on. "But from
heightened awareness to that other point deeper into
the left side, it is only a short hop. The real feat is to
make the assemblage point shift from its normal set-
ting to the point of no doubt."

He added that we still had an appointment with Ge-
naro's dreaming body in the fields around the house,
while I was in normal awareness.


When we were back in Silvio Manuel's house, don
Juan said that Genaro's proficiency with the dreaming
body was a very minor affair compared with what the
old seers did with it.

"You'll see that very soon," he said with an omi-
nous tone, then laughed.

I questioned him about it with mounting fear, and
that only evoked more laughter. He finally stopped
and said that he was going to talk about the way the
new seers got to the dreaming body and the way they
used it.

"The old seers were after a perfect replica of the
body," he continued, "and they nearly succeeded in
getting one. The only thing they never could copy was
the eyes. Instead of eyes, the dreaming body has just
the glow of awareness. You never realized that before,
when Genaro used to show you his dreaming body.

"The new seers could not care less about a perfect
replica of the body; in fact, they are not even inter-
ested in copying the body at all. But they have kept
just the name dreaming body to mean a feeling, a
surge of energy that is transported by the movement
of the assemblage point to any place in this world, or
to any place in the seven worlds available to man."

Don Juan then outlined the procedure for getting to
the dreaming body. He said that it starts with an initial
act, which by the fact of being sustained breeds un-
bending intent. Unbending intent leads to internal si-
lence, and internal silence to the inner strength needed
to make the assemblage point shift in dreams to suit-
able positions.

He called this sequence the groundwork. The devel-
opment of control comes after the groundwork has
been completed; it consists of systematically main-
taining the dreaming position by doggedly holding on
to the vision of the dream. Steady practice results in a
great facility to hold new dreaming positions with new
dreams, not so much because one gains deliberate
control with practice, but because every time this con-
trol is exercised the inner strength gets fortified. For-
tified inner strength in turn makes the assemblage
point shift into dreaming positions, which are more
and more suitable to fostering sobriety; in other
words, dreams by themselves become more and more
manageable, even orderly.

"The development of dreamers is indirect," he
went on. "That's why the new seers believed we can
do dreaming by ourselves, alone. Since dreaming uses
a natural, built-in shift of the assemblage point, we
should need no one to help us.

"What we badly need is sobriety, and no one can
give it to us or help us get it except ourselves. Without
it, the shift of the assemblage point is chaotic, as our
ordinary dreams are chaotic.

"So, all in all, the procedure to get to the dreaming
body is impeccability in our daily life."

Don Juan explained that once sobriety is acquired
and the dreaming positions become increasingly
stronger, the next step is to wake up at any dreaming
position. He remarked that the maneuver, although
made to sound simple, was really a very complex af-
fair?so complex that it requires not only sobriety but
all the attributes of warriorship as well, especially in-
tent.

I asked him how intent helps seers wake up at a
dreaming position. He replied that intent, being the
most sophisticated control of the force of alignment,
is what maintains, through the dreamer's sobriety, the
alignment of whatever emanations have been lit up by
the movement of the assemblage point.

Don Juan said that there is one more formidable
pitfall of dreaming: the very strength of the dreaming
body. For example, it is very easy for the dreaming
body to gaze at the Eagle's emanations uninterrupt-
edly for long periods of time, but it is also very easy
in the end for the dreaming body to be totally con-
sumed by them. Seers who gazed at the Eagle's ema-
nations without their dreaming bodies died, and those
who gazed at them with their dreaming bodies burned
with the fire from within. The new seers solved the
problem by seeing in teams. While one seer gazed at
the emanations, others stood by ready to end the
seeing.

"How did the new seers see in teams?" I asked.

"They dreamed together, '" he replied. "As you
yourself know, it's perfectly possible for a group of
seers to activate the same unused emanations. And in
this case also, there are no known steps, it just hap-
pens; there is no technique to follow."

He added that in dreaming together, something in
us takes the lead and suddenly we find ourselves shar-
ing the same view with other dreamers. What happens
is that our human condition makes us focus the glow
of awareness automatically on the same emanations
that other human beings are using; we adjust the po-
sition of our assemblage points to fit the others around
us. We do that on the right side, in our ordinary per-
ception, and we also do it on the left side, while
dreaming together.


12
The Nagual Julian


There was a strange excitement in the house. All the
seers of don Juan's party seemed to be so elated that
they were actually absentminded, a thing that I had
never witnessed before. Their usual high level of en-
ergy appeared to have increased. I became very ap-
prehensive. I asked don Juan about it. He took me to
the back patio. We walked in silence for a moment.
He said that the time was getting closer for all of them
to leave. He was pressing his explanation in order to
finish it in time.

"How do you know that you are closer to leaving?"
I asked.

"It is an internal knowledge," he said. "You'll
know it someday yourself. You see, the nagual Julian
made my assemblage point shift countless times, just
as I have made yours shift. Then he left me the task of
realigning all those emanations which he had helped
me align through these shifts. That is the task that
every nagual is left to do.

"At any rate, the job of realigning all those emana-
tions paves the way for the peculiar maneuver of light-
ing up all the emanations inside the cocoon. I have
nearly done that. I am about to reach my maximum.
Since I am the nagual, once I do light up all the ema-
nations inside my cocoon we will all be gone in an
instant."

I felt I should be sad and weep, but something in me
was so overjoyed to hear that the nagual Juan Matus
was about to be free that I jumped and yelled with
sheer delight. I knew that sooner or later I would
reach another state of awareness and I would weep
with sadness. But that day I was filled with happiness
and optimism.

I told don Juan how I felt. He laughed and patted
my back.

"Remember what I've told you," he said. "Don't
count on emotional realizations. Let your assemblage
point move first, then years later have the realiza-
tion."

We walked to the big room and sat down to talk.
Don Juan hesitated for a moment. He looked out of
the window. From my chair I could see the patio. It
was early afternoon; a cloudy day. It looked like rain.
Thunderhead clouds were moving in from the west. I
liked cloudy days. Don Juan did not. He seemed rest-
less as he tried to find a more comfortable sitting po-
sition.

Don Juan began his elucidation by commenting that
the difficulty in remembering what takes place in
heightened awareness is due to the infinitude of posi-
tions that the assemblage point can adopt after being
loosened from its normal setting. Facility in remem-
bering everything that takes place in normal aware-
ness, on the other hand, has to do with the fixity of
the assemblage point on one spot, the spot where it
normally sets.

He told me that he commiserated with me. He sug-
gested that I accept the difficulty of recollecting and
acknowledge that I might fail in my task and never be
able to realign all the emanations that he had helped
me align.

"Think of it this way," he said, smiling. "You may
never be able to remember this very conversation that
we are having now, which at this moment seems to
you so commonplace, so taken for granted.

"This indeed is the mystery of awareness. Human
beings reek of that mystery; we reek of darkness, of
things which are inexplicable. To regard ourselves in
any other terms is madness. So don't demean the mys-
tery of man in you by feeling sorry for yourself or by
trying to rationalize it. Demean the stupidity of man
in you by understanding it. But don't apologize for
either; both are needed.

"One of the great maneuvers of stalkers is to pit the
mystery against the stupidity in each of us."

He explained that stalking practices are not some-
thing one can rejoice in; in fact, they are downright
objectionable. Knowing this, the new seers realize
that it would be against everybody's interest to dis-
cuss or practice the principles of stalking in normal
awareness.

I pointed out to him an incongruity. He had said
that there is no way for warriors to act in the world
while they are in heightened awareness, and he had
also said that stalking is simply behaving with people
in specific ways. The two statements contradicted
each other.

"By not teaching it in normal awareness I was re-
ferring only to teaching it to a nagual," he said. "The
purpose of stalking is twofold: first, to move the as-
semblage point as steadily and safely as possible, and
nothing can do the job as well as stalking: second, to
imprint its principles at such a deep level that the
human inventory is bypassed, as is the natural reac-
tion of refusing and judging something that may be
offensive to reason."

I told him that I sincerely doubted I could judge or
refuse anything like that. He laughed and said that I
could not be an exception, that I would react like
everyone else once I heard about the deeds of a master
stalker, such as his benefactor, the nagual Julian.

"I am not exaggerating when I tell you that the na-
gual Julian was the most extraordinary stalker I have
ever met," don Juan said. "You have already heard
about his stalking skills from everybody else. But I've
never told you what he did to me."

I wanted to make it clear to him that I had not heard
anything about the nagual Julian from anyone, but just
before I voiced my protest a strange feeling of uncer-
tainty swept over me. Don Juan seemed to know in-
stantly what I was feeling. He chuckled with delight.

"You can't remember, because will is not available
to you yet," he said. "You need a life of impeccability
and a great surplus of energy, and then will might
release those memories.

"I am going to tell you the story of how the nagual
Julian behaved with me when I first met him. If you
judge him and find his behavior objectionable while
you are in heightened awareness, think of how re-
volted you might be with him in normal awareness."

I protested that he was setting me up. He assured
me that all he wanted to do with his story was to
illustrate the manner in which stalkers operate and the
reasons why they do it.

"The nagual Julian was the last of the old-time
stalkers," he went on. "He was a stalker not so much
because of the circumstances of his life but because
that was the bent of his character."

Don Juan explained that the new seers saw that
there are two main groups of human beings: those who
care about others and those who do not. In between
these two extremes they saw an endless mixture of the
two. The nagual Julian belonged to the category of
men who do not care; don Juan classified himself as
belonging to the opposite category.

"But didn't you tell me that the nagual Julian was
generous, that he would give you the shirt off his
back?" I asked.

"He certainly was," don Juan replied. "Not only
was he generous; he was also utterly charming, win-
ning. He was always deeply and sincerely interested
in everybody around him. He was kind and open and
gave away everything he had to anyone who needed
it, or to anyone he happened to like. He was in turn
loved by everyone, because being a master stalker, he
conveyed to them his true feelings: he didn't give a
plugged nickel for any of them."

I did not say anything, but don Juan was aware of
my sense of disbelief or even distress at what he was
saying. He chuckled and shook his head from side to
side.

"That's stalking," he said. "You see, I haven't
even begun my story of the nagual Julian and you are
already annoyed."

He exploded into a giant laugh as I tried to explain
what I was feeling.

"The nagual Julian didn't care about anyone," he
continued. "That's why he could help people. And he
did; he gave them the shirt off his back, because he
didn't give a fig about them."

"Do you mean, don Juan, that the only ones who
help their fellow men are those who don't give a damn
about them?" I asked, truly miffed.

"That's what stalkers say," he said with a beaming
smile. "The nagual Julian, for instance, was a fabu-
lous curer. He helped thousands and thousands of
people, but he never took credit for it. He let people
believe that a woman seer of his party was the curer.

"Now, if he had been a man who cared for his fel-
low men, he would've demanded acknowledgment.
Those who care for others care for themselves and
demand recognition where recognition is due."

Don Juan said that he, since he belonged to the
category of those who care for their fellow men, had
never helped anyone: he felt awkward with generos-
ity; he could not even conceive being loved as the
nagual Julian was, and he would certainly feel stupid
giving anyone the shirt off his back.

"I care so much for my fellow man," he continued,
"that I don't do anything for him. I wouldn't know
what to do. And I would always have the nagging
sense that I was imposing my will on him with my
gifts.

"Naturally, I have overcome all these feelings with
the warriors' way. Any warrior can be successful with
people, as the nagual Julian was, provided he moves
his assemblage point to a position where it is immater-
ial whether people like him, dislike him, or ignore him.
But that's not the same."

Don Juan said that when he first became aware of
the stalkers' principles, as I was then doing, he was as
distressed as he could be. The nagual Elias, who was
very much like don Juan, explained to him that stalk-
ers like the nagual Julian are natural leaders of people.
They can help people do anything.

"The nagual Elias said that these warriors can help
people to get cured," don Juan went on, "or they can
help them to get ill. They can help them to find happi-
ness or they can help them to find sorrow. I suggested
to the nagual Elias that instead of saying that these
warriors help people, we should say that they affect
people. He said that they don't just affect people, but
that they actively herd them around."

Don Juan chuckled and looked at me fixedly. There
was a mischievous glint in his eyes.

"Strange, isn't it?" he asked. "The way stalkers
arranged what they see about people?"

Then don Juan started his story about the nagual
Julian. He said that the nagual Julian spent many,
many years waiting for an apprentice nagual. He stum-
bled on don Juan one day while returning home after
a short visit with acquaintances in a nearby village.
He was, in fact, thinking about an apprentice nagual
as he walked on the road when he heard a loud gun-
shot and saw people scrambling in every direction. He
ran with them into the bushes by the side of the road
and only came out from his hiding place at the sight of
a group of people gathered around someone wounded,
lying on the ground.

The wounded person was, of course, don Juan, who
had been shot by the tyrannical foreman. The nagual
Julian saw instantly that don Juan was a special man
whose cocoon was divided into four sections instead
of two; he also realized that don Juan was badly
wounded. He knew that he had no time to waste. His
wish had been fulfilled, but he had to work fast, before
anyone sensed what was going on. He held his head
and cried, "They've shot my son!"

He was traveling with one of the female seers of his
party, a husky Indian woman, who always officiated
publicly as his mean shrewish wife. They were an ex-
cellent team of stalkers. He cued the woman seer, and
she also started weeping and wailing for their son, who
was unconscious and bleeding to death. The nagual
Julian begged the onlookers not to call the authorities
but rather to help him move his son to his house in the
city, which was some distance away. He offered
money to some strong young men if they would carry
his wounded, dying son.

The men carried don Juan to the nagual Julian's
house. The nagual was very generous with them and
paid them handsomely. The men were so touched by
the grieving couple, who had cried all the way to the
house, that they refused to take the money, but the
nagual Julian insisted that they take it to give his son
luck.

For a few days, don Juan did not know what to think
about the kind couple who had taken him into their
home. He said that to him, the nagual Julian appeared
as an almost senile old man. He was not an Indian,
but was married to a young, irascible, fat Indian wife,
who was as physically strong as she was ill-tempered.
Don Juan thought that she was definitely a curer, judg-
ing by the way she treated his wound and by the quan-
tities of medicinal plants stashed away in the room
where they had put him.

The woman also dominated the old man and made
him tend to don Juan's wound every day. They had
made a bed for don Juan out of a thick floor mat, and
the old man had a terrible time kneeling down to reach
him. Don Juan had to fight not to laugh at the comical
sight of the frail old man trying his best to bend his
knees. Don Juan said that while the old man washed
his wound, he would mumble incessantly; he had a
vacant look in his eyes; his hands shook, and his body
trembled from head to toe.

When he was down on his knees, he could never get
up by himself. He would call his wife, yelling in a
raspy voice, filled with contained anger. The wife
would come into the room and both of them would get
into a horrible argument. Often she would walk out,
leaving the old man to get up by himself.

Don Juan assured me that he had never felt so sorry
for anyone as he felt for that poor, kind old man. Many
times he wanted to rise and help him up, but he could
hardly move himself. Once the old man spent half an
hour cursing and yelling, as he puffed and crawled like
a slug, before he dragged himself to the door and pain-
fully lifted himself up to a standing position.

He explained to don Juan that his poor health was
due to advanced age, broken bones that had not
mended properly, and rheumatism. Don Juan said that
the old man raised his eyes toward heaven and con-
fessed to don Juan that he was the most wretched man
on earth; he had come to the curer for help and had
ended up marrying her and becoming a slave.

"I asked the old man why he didn't leave," don
Juan continued. "The old man's eyes widened with
fear. He choked on his own saliva trying to hush me
and then he went rigid and fell down like a log on the
floor, next to my bed, trying to make me stop talking.
'You don't know what you're saying; you don't know
what you're saying. Nobody can run away from this
place, ' the old man kept on repeating with a wild
expression in his eyes.

"And I believed him. I was convinced that he was
more miserable, more wretched than I had ever been
myself. And with every day that passed I became
more and more uncomfortable in that house. The food
was great and the woman was always out curing peo-
ple, so I was left with the old man. We talked a lot
about my life. I liked to talk to him. I told him that I
had no money to pay him for his kindness, but that I
would do anything to help him. He told me that he was
beyond help, that he was ready to die, but that if I
really meant what I said, he would appreciate it if I
would marry his wife after he died.

"Right then I knew the old man was nuts. And right
then I also knew that I had to run away as soon as
possible."

Don Juan said that when he was well enough to walk
around unaided, his benefactor gave him a chilling
demonstration of his ability as a stalker. Without any
warning or preamble he put don Juan face to face with
an inorganic living being. Sensing that don Juan was
planning to run away, he seized the opportunity to
scare him with an ally that was somehow able to look
like a monstrous man.

"The sight of that ally nearly drove me insane," don
Juan continued. "I couldn't believe my eyes, and yet
the monster was right in front of me. And the frail old
man was next to me whimpering and begging the mon-
ster to spare his life. You see, my benefactor was like
the old seers; he could dole out his fear, a piece at a
time, and the ally was reacting to it. I didn't know
that. All I could see with my very own eyes was a
horrendous creature advancing on us, ready to tear us
apart, limb from limb.

"The moment the ally lurched onto us, hissing like
a serpent, I passed out cold. When I came to my
senses again, the old man told me that he had made a
deal with the creature."

He explained to don Juan that the man had agreed
to let both of them live, provided don Juan enter the
man's service. Don Juan apprehensively asked what
was involved in the service. The old man replied that
it would be slavery, but pointed out that don Juan's
life had nearly ended a few days back when he had
been shot. Had not he and his wife come along to stop
the bleeding, don Juan would surely have died, so
there was really very little to bargain with, or to bar-
gain for. The monstrous man knew that and had him
over a barrel. The old man told don Juan to stop vac-
illating and accept the deal, because if he refused, the
monstrous man, who was listening behind the door,
would burst in and kill them both on the spot and be
done with it.

"I had enough nerve to ask the frail old man, who
was shaking like a leaf, how the man would kill us,"
don Juan went on. "He said that the monster planned
to break all the bones in our bodies, starting with our
feet, as we screamed in unspeakable agony, and that
it would take at least five days for us to die.

"I accepted that man's conditions instantly. The old
man, with tears in his eyes, congratulated me and said
that the deal wasn't really that bad. We were going to
be more prisoners than slaves of the monstrous man,
but we would eat at least twice a day; and since we
had life, we could work for our freedom; we could
plot, connive, and fight our way out of that hell."

Don Juan smiled and then broke into laughter. He
had known beforehand how I would feel about the
nagual Julian.

"I told you you'd be upset," he said.

"I really don't understand, don Juan," I said.
"What was the point of putting on such an elaborate
masquerade?"

"The point is very simple," he said, still smiling.
"This is another method of teaching, a very good one.
it requires tremendous imagination and tremendous
control on the part of the teacher. My method of
teaching is closer to what you consider teaching. It
requires a tremendous amount of words. I go to the
extremes of talking. The nagual Julian went to the
extremes of stalking."

Don Juan said that there were two methods of
teaching among the seers. He was familiar with both
of them. He preferred the one that called for explain-
ing everything and letting the other person know the
course of action beforehand. It was a system that fos-
tered freedom, choice, and understanding. His bene-
factor's method, on the other hand, was more
coercive and did not allow for choice or understand-
ing. Its great advantage was that it forced warriors to
live the seers' concepts directly with no intermediary
elucidation.

Don Juan explained that everything his benefactor
did to him was a masterpiece of strategy. Every one
of the nagual Julian's words and actions was deliber-
ately selected to cause a particular effect. His art was
to provide his words and actions with the most suit-
able context, so that they would have the necessary
impact.

"That's the stalkers' method," don Juan went on.
"It fosters not understanding but total realization. For
instance, it took me a lifetime to understand what he
had done to me by making me face the ally, although
I realized all that without any explanation as I lived
that experience.

"I've told you that Genaro, for example, doesn't
understand what he does, but his realization of what
he is doing is as keen as it can be. That's because his
assemblage point was moved by the stalkers'
method."

He said that if the assemblage point is forced out of
its customary setting by the method of explaining
everything, as in my case, there is always the need for
someone else not only to help in the actual dislodging
of the assemblage point, but in dispensing the expla-
nations of what is going on. But if the assemblage
point is moved by the stalkers' method, as in his own
case, or Genaro's, there is only a need for the initial
catalytic act that yanks the point from its location.

Don Juan said that when the nagual Julian made him
face the monstrous-looking ally his assemblage point
moved under the impact of fear. So intense a fright as
that caused by the confrontation, coupled with his
weak physical condition, was ideal for dislodging his
assemblage point.

In order to offset the injurious effects of fright, its
impact had to be cushioned, but not minimized. Ex-
plaining what was happening would have minimized
fear. What the nagual Julian wanted was to make sure
that he could use that initial catalytic fright as many
times as he needed it, but he also wanted to make sure
that he could cushion its devastating impact; that was
the reason for his masquerade. The more elaborate
and dramatic his stories were, the greater their cush-
ioning effect. If he, himself, seemed to be in the same
boat with don Juan, the fright would not be as intense
as if don Juan were alone.

"With his penchant for drama," don Juan went on,
"my benefactor was able to move my assemblage
point enough to imbue me right away with an over-
powering feeling for the two basic qualities of war-
riors: sustained effort and unbending intent. I knew
that in order to be free again someday, I would have
to work in an orderly and steady fashion and in coop-
eration with the frail old man, who in my opinion
needed my help as much as I needed his. I knew be-
yond a shadow of a doubt that that was what I wanted
to do more than anything else in life."


I did not get to talk to don Juan again until two days
later. We were in Oaxaca, strolling in the main square,
in the early morning. There were children walking to
school, people going to church, a few men sitting on
the benches, and taxi drivers waiting for tourists from
the main hotel.

"It goes without saying that the most difficult thing
in the warriors' path is to make the assemblage point
move," don Juan said. "That movement is the com-
pletion of the warriors' quest. To go on from there is
another quest; it is the seers' quest proper."

He repeated that in the warriors' way, the shift of
the assemblage point is everything. The old seers ab-
solutely failed to realize this truth. They thought the
movement of the point was like a marker that deter-
mined their positions on a scale of worth. They never
conceived that it was that very position which deter-
mined what they perceived.

"The stalkers' method," don Juan went on, "in the
hands of a master stalker like the nagual Julian, ac-
counts for stupendous shifts of the assemblage point.
These are very solid changes; you see, by buttressing
the apprentice, the stalker-teacher gets the appren-
tice's full cooperation and full participation. To get
anybody's full cooperation and full participation is
about the most important outcome of the stalkers'
method; and the nagual Julian was the best at getting
both of them."

Don Juan said that there was no way for him to
describe the turmoil that he went through as he found
out, little by little, about the richness and the complex-
ity of the nagual Julian's personality and life. As long
as don Juan faced a scared, frail old man who seemed
helpless, he was fairly at ease, comfortable. But one
day, soon after they had made the deal with what don
Juan thought of as a monstrous-looking man, his com-
fort was shot to pieces when the nagual Julian gave
don Juan another unnerving demonstration of his
stalking skills.

Although don Juan was quite well by then, the na-
gual Julian still slept in the same room with him in
order to nurse him. When he woke up that day, he
announced to don Juan that their captor was gone for
a couple of days, which meant that he did not have to
act like an old man. He confided to don Juan that he
only pretended to be old in order to fool the mon-
strous-looking man.

Without giving don Juan time to think, he jumped
up from his mat with incredible agility; he bent over
and dunked his head in a pot of water and kept it there
for a while. When he straightened up, his hair was jet
black, the gray hair had washed away, and don Juan
was looking at a man he had never seen before, a man
perhaps in his late thirties. He flexed his muscles,
breathed deeply, and stretched every part of his body
as if he had been too long inside a constricting cage.

"When I saw the nagual Julian as a young man, I
thought that he was indeed the devil," don Juan went
on. "I closed my eyes and knew that my end was near.
The nagual Julian laughed until he was crying."

Don Juan said that the nagual Julian then put him at
ease by making him shift back and forth between the
right side and the left side awareness.

"For two days the young man pranced around the
house," don Juan continued. "He told me stories
about his life and jokes that sent me reeling around the
room with laughter. But what was even more astound-
ing was the way his wife had changed. She was ac-
tually thin and beautiful. I thought she was a
completely different woman. I raved about how com-
plete her change was and how beautiful she looked.
The young man said that when their captor was away
she was actually another woman."

Don Juan laughed and said that his devilish benefac-
tor was telling the truth. The woman was really an-
other seer of the nagual's party.

Don Juan asked the young man why they pretended
to be what they were not. The young man looked at
don Juan, his eyes filled with tears, and said that the
mysteries of the world are indeed unfathomable. He
and his young wife had been caught by inexplicable
forces and had to protect themselves with that pre-
tense. The reason why he carried on the way he did,
as a feeble old man, was that their captor was always
peeking in through cracks in the doors. He begged don
Juan to forgive him for having fooled him.

Don Juan asked who that monstrous-looking man
was. With a deep sigh, the young man confessed that
he could not even guess. He told don Juan that al-
though he himself was an educated man, a famous
actor from the theater in Mexico City, he was at a loss
for explanations. All he knew was that he had come to
be treated for the consumption that he had suffered
from for many years. He was near death when his
relatives brought him to meet the curer. She helped
him to get well, and he fell madly in love with the
beautiful young Indian and married her. His plans
were to take her to the capital so they could get rich
with her curing ability.

Before they started on the trip to Mexico City, she
warned him that they had to disguise themselves in
order to escape a sorcerer. She explained to him that
her mother had also been a curer, and had been taught
curing by that master sorcerer, who had demanded
that she, the daughter, stay with him for life. The
young man said that he had refused to ask his wife
about that relationship. He only wanted to free her, so
he disguised himself as an old man and disguised her
as a fat woman.

Their story did not end happily. The horrible man
caught them and kept them as prisoners. They did not
dare to take off their disguise in front of that nightmar-
ish man, and in his presence they carried on as if they
hated each other; but in reality, they pined for each
other and lived only for the short times when that man
was away.

Don Juan said that the young man embraced him
and told him that the room where don Juan was sleep-
ing was the only safe place in the house. Would he
please go out and be on the lockout while he made
love to his wife?

"The house shook with their passion," don Juan
went on, "while I sat by the door feeling guilty for
listening and scared to death that the man would come
back any minute. And sure enough, I heard him com-
ing into the house. I banged on the door, and when
they didn't answer, I walked in. The young woman
was asleep naked and the young man was nowhere in
sight. I had never seen a beautiful naked woman in my
life. I was still very weak. I heard the monstrous man
rattling outside. My embarrassment and my fear were
so great that I passed out."

The story about the nagual Julian's doings annoyed
me no end. I told don Juan that I had failed to under-
stand the value of the nagual Julian's stalking skills.
Don Juan listened to me without making a single com-
ment and let me ramble on and on.

When we finally sat down on a bench, I was very
tired. I did not know what to say when he asked me
why his account of the nagual Julian's method of
teaching had upset me so much.

"I can't shake off the feeling that he was a pranks-
ter," I finally said.

"Pranksters don't teach anything deliberately with
their pranks," don Juan retorted. "The nagual Julian
played dramas, magical dramas that required a move-
ment of the assemblage point."

"He seems like a very selfish person to me," I in-
sisted.

"He seems like that to you because you are judg-
ing," he replied. "You are being a moralist. I went
through all that myself. If you feel the way you do on
hearing about the nagual Julian, think of the way I
must have felt myself living in his house for years. I
judged him, I feared him, and I envied him, in that
order.

"I also loved him, but my envy was greater than my
love. I envied his ease, his mysterious capacity to be
young or old at will; I envied his flair and above all his
influence on whoever happened to be around. It would
drive me up the walls to hear him engage people in the
most interesting conversation. He always had some-
thing to say; I never did, and I always felt incompe-
tent, left out."

Don Juan's revelations made me feel ill at ease. I
wished that he would change the subject, for I did not
want to hear that he was like me. In my opinion, he
was indeed unequaled. He obviously knew how I felt.
He laughed and patted my back.

"What I am trying to do with the story of my envy,"
he went on, "is to point out to you something of great
importance, that the position of the assemblage point
dictates how we behave and how we feel.

"My great flaw at that time was that I could not
understand this principle. I was raw. I lived through
self-importance, just as you do, because that was
where my assemblage point was lodged. You see, I
hadn't learned yet that the way to move that point is
to establish new habits, to will it to move. When it did
move, it was as if I had just discovered that the only
way to deal with peerless warriors like my benefactor
is not to have self-importance, so that one can cele-
brate them unbiasedly."

He said that realizations are of two kinds. One is
just pep talk, great outbursts of emotion and nothing
more. The other is the product of a shift of the assem-
blage point; it is not coupled with an emotional out-
burst but with action. The emotional realizations come
years later after warriors have solidified, by usage, the
new position of their assemblage points.

"The nagual Julian tirelessly guided all of us to that
kind of shift," don Juan went on. "He got from all of
us total cooperation and total participation in his big-
ger-than-life dramas. For instance, with his drama of
the young man and his wife and their captor he had
my undivided attention and concern. To me the story
of the old man who was young was very consistent. I
had seen the monstrous-looking man with my very
own eyes, which meant that the young man got my
undying affiliation."

Don Juan said that the nagual Julian was a magician,
a conjurer who could handle the force of will to a
degree that would be incomprehensible to the average
man. His dramas included magical characters sum-
moned by the force of intent, like the inorganic being
that could adopt a grotesque human form.

"The nagual Julian's power was so impeccable,"
don Juan went on, "that he could force anyone's as-
semblage point to shift and align emanations that
would make him perceive whatever the nagual Julian
wanted. For example, he could look very old or very
young for his age, depending on what he wanted to
accomplish. And all anyone who knew the nagual
could say about his age was that it fluctuated. During
the thirty-two years that I knew him he was at times
not much older than you are now, and at other times
he was so wretchedly old that he could not even
walk."

Don Juan said that under his benefactor's guidance
his assemblage point moved unnoticeably and yet pro-
foundly. For instance, out of nowhere one day he re-
alized that he had a fear that on the one hand made no
sense to him at all, and on the other made all the sense
in the world.

"My fear was that through stupidity I would lose
my chance to be free and I would repeat my father's
life.

"There was nothing wrong with my father's life,
mind you. He lived and died no better and no worse
than most men; the important point is that my assem-
blage point had moved and I realized one day that my
father's life and death hadn't amounted to a hill of
beans, either to others or to himself.

"My benefactor told me that my father and mother
had lived and died just to have me, and that their own
parents had done the same for them. He said that war-
riors were different in that they shift their assemblage
points enough to realize the tremendous price that has
been paid for their lives. This shift gives them the
respect and awe that their parents never felt for life in
general, or for being alive in particular."

Don Juan said that not only was the nagual Julian
successful in guiding his apprentices to move their as-
semblage points, but that he enjoyed himself tremen-
dously while doing it.

"He certainly entertained himself immensely with
me," don Juan went on. "When the other seers of my
party began to come, years later, even I looked for-
ward to the preposterous situations that he created
and developed with each one of them.

"When the nagual Julian left the world, delight went
away with him and never came back. Genaro delights
us sometimes, but no one can take the nagual Julian's
place. His dramas were always bigger than life. I as-
sure you we didn't know what enjoyment was until we
saw what he did when some of those dramas backfired
on him."

Don Juan rose from his favorite bench. He turned
to me. His eyes were brilliant and peaceful.

"If you are ever so dumb as to fail in your task,"
he said, "you must have at least enough energy to
move your assemblage point in order to come to this
bench. Sit down here for an instant, free of thoughts
and desires; I will try to come here from wherever I
am and collect you. I promise you that I will try."

He then broke into a great laugh, as if the scope of
his promise was too ludicrous to be believed.

"These words should be said in the late afternoon,"
he said, still laughing. "Never in the morning. The
morning makes one feel optimistic and such words
lose their meaning."


13
The Earth's Boost


"Let's walk on the road to Oaxaca," don Juan said to
me. "Genaro is waiting for us somewhere along the
way."

His request took me by surprise. I had been waiting
all day for him to continue his explanation. We left his
house and walked in silence through the town to the
unpaved highway. We walked leisurely for a long
time. Suddenly don Juan began to talk.

"I've been telling you all along about the great find-
ings that the old seers made," he said. "Just as they
found out that organic life is not the only life present
on earth, they also discovered that the earth itself is a
living being."

He waited a moment before continuing. He smiled
at me as if inviting me to make a comment. I could not
think of anything to say.

"The old seers saw that the earth has a cocoon," he
went on. "They saw that there is a ball encasing the
earth, a luminous cocoon that entraps the Eagle's em-
anations. The earth is a gigantic sentient being sub-
jected to the same forces we are."

He explained that the old seers, on discovering this,
became immediately interested in the practical uses of
that knowledge. The result of their interest was that
the most elaborate categories of their sorcery had to
do with the earth. They considered the earth to be the
ultimate source of everything we are.

Don Juan reaffirmed that the old seers were not mis-
taken in this respect, because the earth is indeed our
ultimate source.

He didn't say anything else until we met Genaro
about a mile up the road. He was waiting for us, sitting
on a rock by the side of the road.

He greeted me with great warmth. He said to me
that we should climb up to the top of some small rug-
ged mountains covered with hardy vegetation.

"The three of us are going to sit against a rock,"
don Juan said to me, "and look at the sunlight as it is
reflected on the eastern mountains. When the sun goes
down behind the western peaks, the earth may let you
see alignment."

When we reached the top of a mountain, we sat
down, as don Juan had said, with our backs against a
rock. Don Juan made me sit in between the two of
them.

I asked him what he was planning to do. His cryptic
statements and his long silences were ominous. I felt
terribly apprehensive.

He didn't answer me. He kept on talking as if I had
not spoken at all.

"it was the old seers who, on discovering that per-
ception is alignment," he said, "stumbled onto some-
thing monumental. The sad part is that their
aberrations again kept them from knowing what they
had accomplished."

He pointed at the mountain range east of the small
valley where the town is located.

"There is enough glitter in those mountains to jolt
your assemblage point," he said to me. "Just before
the sun goes down behind the western peaks, you will
have a few moments to catch all the glitter you need.
The magic key that opens the earth's doors is made of
internal silence plus anything that shines."

"What exactly should I do, don Juan?" I asked.

Both of them examined me. I thought I saw in their
eyes a mixture of curiosity and revulsion.

"Just cut off the internal dialogue," don Juan said
to me.

I had an intense pang of anxiety and doubt; I had no
confidence that I could do it at will. After an initial
moment of nagging frustration, I resigned my self just
to relax.

I looked around. I noticed that we were high enough
to look down into the long, narrow valley. More than
half of it was in the late-afternoon shadows. The sun
was still shining on the foothills of the eastern range
of mountains, on the other side of the valley; the sun-
light made the eroded mountains look ocher, while the
more distant bluish peaks had acquired a purple tone.

"You do realize that you've done this before, don't
you?" don Juan said to me in a whisper.

I told him that I had not realized anything.

"We've sat here before on other occasions," he
insisted, "but that doesn't matter, because this occa-
sion is the one that will count.

"Today, with the help of Genaro, you are going to
find the key that unlocks everything. You won't be
able to use it as yet, but you'll know what it is and
where it is. Seers pay the heaviest prices to know that.
You, yourself, have been paying your dues all these
years."

He explained that what he called the key to every-
thing was the firsthand knowledge that the earth is a
sentient being and as such can give warriors a tremen-
dous boost; it is an impulse that comes from the
awareness of the earth itself at the instant in which the
emanations inside warriors' cocoons are aligned with
the appropriate emanations inside the earth's cocoon.
Since both the earth and man are sentient beings, their
emanations coincide, or rather, the earth has all the
emanations present in man and all the emanations that
are present in all sentient beings, organic and inor-
ganic for that matter. When a moment of alignment
takes place, sentient beings use that alignment in a
limited way and perceive their world. Warriors can
use that alignment either to perceive, like everyone
else, or as a boost that allows them to enter unimagin-
able worlds.

"I've been waiting for you to ask me the only mean-
ingful question you can ask, but you never ask it," he
continued. "You are hooked on asking about whether
the mystery of it all is inside us. You came close
enough, though.

"The unknown is not really inside the cocoon of
man in the emanations untouched by awareness, and
yet it is there, in a manner of speaking. This is the
point you haven't understood. When I told you that
we can assemble seven worlds besides the one we
know, you took it as being an internal affair, because
your total bias is to believe that you are only imagining
everything you do with us. Therefore, you have never
asked me where the unknown really is. For years I
have circled with my hand to point to everything
around us and I have told you that the unknown is
there. You never made the connection."

Genaro began to laugh, then coughed and stood up.
"He still hasn't made the connection," he said to don
Juan.

I admitted to them that if there was a connection to
be made, I had failed to make it.

Don Juan restated over and over that the portion of
emanations inside man's cocoon is in there only for
awareness, and that awareness is matching that por-
tion of emanations with the same portion of emana-
tions at large. They are called emanations at large
because they are immense; and to say that outside
man's cocoon is the unknowable is to say that within
the earth's cocoon is the unknowable. However, in-
side the earth's cocoon is also the unknown, and in-
side man's cocoon the unknown is the emanations
untouched by awareness. When the glow of awareness
touches them, they become active and can be aligned
with the corresponding emanations at large. Once that
happens the unknown is perceived and becomes the
known.

"I'm too dumb, don Juan. You have to break it into
smaller pieces for me," I said.

"Genaro is going to break it up for you," don Juan
retorted.

Genaro stood up and started doing the same gait of
power that he had done before, when he circled an
enormous flat rock in a corn field by his house, while
don Juan had watched in fascination. This time don
Juan whispered in my ear that I should try to hear
Genaro's movements, especially the movements of his
thighs as they went up against his chest every time he
stepped.

I followed Genaro's movements with my eyes. In a
few seconds I felt that some part of me had gotten
trapped in Genaro's legs. The movement of his thighs
would not let me go. I felt as if I were walking with
him. I was even out of breath. Then I realized that I
was actually following Genaro. I was in fact walking
with him, away from the place where we had been
sitting.

I did not see don Juan, just Genaro walking ahead
of me in the same strange manner. We walked for
hours and hours. My fatigue was so intense that I got
a terrible headache, and suddenly I got sick. Genaro
stopped walking and came to my side. There was an
intense glare around us, and the light was reflected in
Genaro's features. His eyes glowed.

"Don't look at Genaro!" a voice ordered me in my
ear. "Look around!"

I obeyed. I thought I was in hell! The shock of
seeing the surroundings was so great that I screamed
in terror, but there was no sound to my voice. Around
me was the most vivid picture of all the descriptions
of hell in my Catholic upbringing. I was seeing a red-
dish world, hot and oppressive, dark and cavernous,
with no sky, no light but the malignant reflections of
reddish lights that kept on moving around us, at great
speed.

Genaro started to walk again, and something pulled
me with him. The force that was making me follow
Genaro also kept me from looking around. My aware-
ness was glued to Genaro's movements.

I saw Genaro plop down as if he were utterly ex-
hausted. The instant he touched the ground and
stretched himself to rest, something was released in
me and I was able again to look around. Don Juan was
watching me inquisitively. I was standing up facing
him. We were at the same place where we had sat
down, a wide rocky ledge on top of a small mountain.
Genaro was panting and wheezing, and so was I. I was
covered with perspiration. My hair was dripping wet.
My clothes were soaked, as if I had been dunked in a
river.

"My God, what's going on!" I exclaimed in utter
seriousness and concern.

The exclamation sounded so silly that don Juan and
Genaro started to laugh.

"We're trying to make you understand alignment,"
Genaro said.

Don Juan gently helped me to sit down. He sat by
me.

"Do you remember what happened?" he asked me.

I told him that I did and he insisted that I tell him
exactly what I had seen. His request was incongruous
with what he had told me, that the only value of my
experiences was the movement of my assemblage
point and not the content of my visions.

He explained that Genaro had tried to help me be-
fore in very much the same fashion as he had just
done, but that I could never remember anything. He
said that Genaro had guided my assemblage point this
time, as he had done before, to assemble a world with
another of the great bands of emanations.

There was a long silence. I was numb, shocked, yet
my awareness was as keen as it had ever been. I
thought I had finally understood what alignment was.
Something inside me, which I had been activating
without knowing how, gave me the certainty that I had
comprehended a great truth.

"I think you're beginning to gather your own mo-
mentum," don Juan said to me. "Let's go home.
You've had enough for one day."

"Oh, come on," Genaro said. "He's stronger than
a bull. He's got to be pushed a little further."

"No!" don Juan said emphatically. "We've got to
save his strength. He's only got so much of it."

Genaro insisted that we stay. He looked at me and
winked.

"Look," he said to me, pointing to the eastern
range of mountains. "The sun has hardly moved an
inch over those mountains and yet you plodded in hell
for hours and hours. Don't you find that overwhelm-
ing?"

"Don't scare him unnecessarily!" don Juan pro-
tested almost vehemently.

It was then that I saw their maneuvers. At that mo-
ment the voice of seeing told me that don Juan and
Genaro were a team of superb stalkers playing with
me. It was don Juan who always pushed me beyond
my limits, but he always let Genaro be the heavy. That
day at Genaro's house, when I reached a dangerous
state of hysterical fright as Genaro questioned don
Juan whether I should be pushed, and don Juan as-
sured me that Genaro was enjoying himself at my ex-
pense, Genaro was actually worrying about me.

My seeing was so shocking to me that I began to
laugh. Both don Juan and Genaro looked at me with
surprise. Then don Juan seemed to realize at once
what was going through my mind. He told Genaro,
and both of them laughed like children.

"You're coming of age," don Juan said to me.
"Right on time; you're neither too stupid nor too
bright. Just like me. You're not like me in your aber-
rations. There you are more like the nagual Julian,
except that he was brilliant."

He stood up and stretched his back. He looked at
me with the most piercing, ferocious eyes I had ever
seen. I stood up.

"A nagual never lets anyone know that he is in
charge," he said to me. "A nagual comes and goes
without leaving a trace. That freedom is what makes
him a nagual."

His eyes glared for an instant, and then they were
covered by a cloud of mellowness, kindness, human-
ness, and they were again don Juan's eyes.

I could hardly keep my balance. I was swooning
helplessly. Genaro jumped to my side and helped me
to sit down. Both of them sat down flanking me.

"You are going to catch a boost from the earth,"
don Juan said to me in one ear.

"Think about the nagual's eyes," Genaro said to
me in the other.

"The boost will come at the moment you see the
glitter on the top of that mountain," don Juan said and
pointed to the highest peak on the eastern range.

"You'll never see the nagual's eyes again," Genaro
whispered.

"Go with the boost wherever it takes you," don
Juan said.

"If you think of the nagual's eyes, you'll realize that
there are two sides to a coin," Genaro whispered.

I wanted to think about what both of them were
saying, but my thoughts did not obey me. Something
was pressing down on me. I felt I was shrinking. I had
a sensation of nausea. I saw the evening shadows ad-
vancing rapidly up the sides of those eastern moun-
tains. I had the feeling that I was running after them.

"Here we go," Genaro said in my ear.

"Watch the big peak, watch the glitter," don Juan
said in my other ear.

There was indeed a point of intense brilliance where
don Juan had pointed, on the highest peak of the
range. I watched the last ray of sunlight being reflected
on it. I felt a hole in the pit of my stomach, just as if I
were on a roller coaster.

I felt, rather than heard, a faraway earthquake rum-
ble which abruptly overtook me. The seismic waves
were so loud and so enormous that they lost all mean-
ing for me. I was an insignificant microbe being
twisted and twirled.

The motion slowed down by degrees. There was one
more jolt before everything came to a halt. I tried to
look around. I had no point of reference. I seemed to
be planted, like a tree. Above me there was a white,
shiny, inconceivably big dome. Its presence made me
feel elated. I flew toward it, or rather I was ejected
like a projectile. I had the sensation of being comfort-
able, nurtured, secure; the closer I got to the dome,
the more intense those feelings became. They finally
overwhelmed me and I lost all sense of myself.

The next thing I knew, I was rocking slowly in the
air like a leaf that falls. I felt exhausted. A suction
force started to pull me. I went through a dark hole
and then I was with don Juan and Genaro.


The next day don Juan, Genaro, and I went to Oax-
aca. While don Juan and I strolled around the main
square, in the later afternoon, he suddenly started to
talk about what we had done the day before. He asked
me if I had understood what he was referring to when
he said that the old seers had stumbled onto something
monumental.

I told him that I did, but that I couldn't explain it in
words.

"And what do you think was the main thing we
wanted you to find out on top of that mountain?" he
asked.

"Alignment," a voice said in my ear, at the same
time I said it myself.

I turned around in a reflex action and bumped into
Genaro, who was just behind me, walking in my
tracks. The speed of my movement startled him. He
broke into a giggle and then embraced me.

We sat down. Don Juan said that there were very
few things that he could say about the boost I had
gotten from the earth, that warriors are always alone
in such cases, and true realizations come much later,
after years of struggle.

I told don Juan that my problem in understanding
was magnified by the fact that he and Genaro were
doing all the work. I was simply a passive subject who
could only react to their maneuvers. I could not for
the life of me initiate any action, because I did not
know what a proper action should be, nor did I know
how to initiate it.

"That's precisely the point," don Juan said. "You
are not supposed to know yet. You are going to be left
behind, by yourself, to reorganize on your own every-
thing we are doing to you now. This is the task every
nagual has to face.

"The nagual Julian did the same thing to me, much
more ruthlessly than the way we do it to you. He knew
what he was doing; he was a brilliant nagual who was
able to reorganize in a few years everything the nagual
Ellas had taught him. He did, in no time at all, some-
thing that would take a lifetime for you or for me. The
difference was that all the nagual Julian ever needed
was a slight insinuation; his awareness would take it
from there and open the only door there is."

"What do you mean, don Juan, by the only door
there is?"

"I mean that when man's assemblage point moves
beyond a crucial limit, the results are always the same
for every man. The techniques to make it move may
be as different as they can be, but the results are al-
ways the same, meaning that the assemblage point
assembles other worlds, aided by the boost from the
earth."

"Is the boost from the earth the same for every
man, don Juan?"

"Of course. The difficulty for the average man is
the internal dialogue. Only when a state of total si-
lence is attained can one use the boost. You will cor-
roborate that truth the day you try to use that boost
by yourself."

"I wouldn't recommend that you try it," Genaro
said sincerely. "It takes years to become an impecca-
ble warrior. In order to withstand the impact of the
earth's boost you must be better than you are now."

"The speed of that boost will dissolve everything
about you," don Juan said. "Under its impact we be-
come nothing. Speed and the sense of individual exis-
tence don't go together. Yesterday on the mountain,
Genaro and I supported you and served as your an-
chors; otherwise you wouldn't have returned. You'd
be like some men who purposely used that boost and
went into the unknown and are still roaming in some
incomprehensible immensity."

I wanted him to elaborate on that, but he refused.
He changed the subject abruptly.

"There's one thing you haven't understood yet
about the earth's being a sentient being," he said.
"And Genaro, this awful Genaro, wants to push you
until you understand."

Both of them laughed. Genaro playfully shoved me
and winked at me as he mouthed the words, "I am
awful."

"Genaro is a terrible taskmaster, mean and ruth-
less," don Juan continued. "He doesn't give a hoot
about your fears and pushes you mercilessly. If it
wasn't for me. . ."

He was a perfect picture of a good, thoughtful old
gentleman. He lowered his eyes and sighed. The two
of them broke into roaring laughter.

When they had quieted down, don Juan said that
Genaro wanted to show me what I had not understood
yet, that the supreme awareness of the earth is what
makes it possible for us to change into other great
bands of emanations.

"We living beings are perceivers," he said. "And
we perceive because some emanations inside man's
cocoon become aligned with some emanations out-
side. Alignment, therefore, is the secret passageway,
and the earth's boost is the key.

"Genaro wants you to watch the moment of align-
ment. Watch him!"

Genaro stood up like a showman and took a bow,
then showed us that he had nothing up his sleeves or
inside the legs of his pants. He took his shoes off and
shook them to show that there was nothing concealed
there either.

Don Juan was laughing with total abandon. Genaro
moved his hands up and down. The movement created
an immediate fixation in me. I sensed that the three of
us suddenly got up and walked away from the square,
the two of them flanking me.

As we continued walking, I lost my peripheral vi-
sion. I did not distinguish any more houses or streets.
I did not notice any mountains or any vegetation
either. At one moment I realized that I had lost sight
of don Juan and Genaro; instead I saw two luminous
bundles moving up and down beside me.

I felt an instantaneous panic, which I immediately
controlled. I had the unusual but well-known sensa-
tion that I was myself and yet I was not. I was aware,
however, of everything around me by means of a
strange and at the same time most familiar capacity.
The sight of the world came to me all at once. All of
me saw; the entirety of what I in my normal con-
sciousness call my body was capable of sensing as if
it were an enormous eye that detected everything.
What I first detected, after seeing the two blobs of
light, was a sharp violet-purple world made out of
something that looked like colored panels and cano-
pies. Flat, screenlike panels of irregular concentric
circles were everywhere.

I felt a great pressure all over me, and then I heard
a voice in my ear. I was seeing. The voice said that
the pressure was due to the act of moving. I was mov-
ing together with don Juan and Genaro. I felt a faint
jolt, as if I had broken a paper barrier, and I found
myself facing a luminescent world. Light radiated
from everyplace, but without being glaring. It was as
if the sun were about to erupt from behind some white
diaphanous clouds. I was looking down into the source
of light. It was a beautiful sight. There were no land-
masses, just fluffy white clouds and light. And we
were walking on the clouds.

Then something imprisoned me again. I moved at
the same pace as the two blobs of light by my sides.
Gradually they began to lose their brilliance, then be-
came opaque, and finally they were don Juan and Ge-
naro. We were walking on a deserted side street away
from the main square. Then we turned back.

"Genaro just helped you to align your emanations
with those emanations at large that belong to another
band," don Juan said to me. "Alignment has to be a
very peaceful, unnoticeable act. No flying away, no
great fuss."

He said that the sobriety needed to let the assem-
blage point assemble other worlds is something that
cannot be improvised. Sobriety has to mature and be-
come a force in itself before warriors can break the
barrier of perception with impunity.

We were coming closer to the main square. Genaro
had not said a word. He walked in silence, as if ab-
sorbed in thought. Just before we came into the
square, don Juan said that Genaro wanted to show me
one more thing: that the position of the assemblage
point is everything, and that the world it makes us
perceive is so real that it does not leave room for
anything except realness.

"Genaro will let his assemblage point assemble an-
other world just for your benefit," don Juan said to
me. "And then you'll realize that as he perceives it,
the force of his perception will leave room for nothing
else."

Genaro walked ahead of us, and don Juan ordered
me to roll my eyes in a counterclockwise direction
while I looked at Genaro, to avoid being dragged with
him. I obeyed him. Genaro was five or six feet away
from me. Suddenly his shape became diffuse and in
one instant he was gone like a puff of air.

I thought of the science fiction movies I had seen
and wondered whether we are subliminally aware of
our possibilities.

"Genaro is separated from us at this moment by the
force of perception," don Juan said quietly. "When
the assemblage point assembles a world, that world is
total. This is the marvel that the old seers stumbled
upon and never realized what it was: the awareness of
the earth can give us a boost to align other great bands
of emanations, and the force of that new alignment
makes the world vanish.

"Every time the old seers made a new alignment
they believed they had descended to the depths'
or ascended to the heavens above. They never knew
that the world disappears like a puff of air when a new
total alignment makes us perceive another total
world."


14
The Rolling Force


Don Juan was about to start his explanation of the
mastery of awareness, but he changed his mind and
stood up. We had been sitting in the big room, observ-
ing a moment of quiet.

"I want you to try seeing the Eagle's emanations,"
he said. "For that you must first move your assem-
blage point until you see the cocoon of man."

We walked from the house to the center of town.
We sat down on art empty, worn park bench in front
of the church, it was early afternoon; a sunny, windy
day with lots of people milling around.

He repeated, as if he were trying to drill it into me,
that alignment is a unique force because it either helps
the assemblage point shift, or it keeps it glued to its
customary position. The aspect of alignment that
keeps the point stationary, he said, is will; and the
aspect that makes it shift is intent. He remarked that
one of the most haunting mysteries is how will, the
impersonal force of alignment, changes into intent, the
personalized force, which is at the service of each
individual.

"The strangest part of this mystery is that the
change is so easy to accomplish," he went on. "But
what is not so easy is to convince ourselves that it is
possible. There, right there, is our safety catch. We
have to be convinced. And none of us wants to be."

He told me then that I was in my keenest state of
awareness, and that it was possible for me to infend
my assemblage point to shift deeper into my left side,
to a dreaming position. He said that warriors should
never attempt seeing unless they are aided by dream-
ing. I argued that to fall asleep in public was not one
of my fortes. He clarified his statement, saying that to
move the assemblage point away from its natural set-
ting and to keep it fixed at a new location is to be
asleep; with practice, seers learn to be asleep and yet
behave as if nothing is happening to them.

After a moment's pause he added that for purposes
of seeing the cocoon of man, one has to gaze at people
from behind, as they walk away. It is useless to gaze
at people face to face, because the front of the egglike
cocoon of man has a protective shield, which seers
call the front plate, it is an almost impregnable, un-
yielding shield that protects us throughout our lives
against the onslaught of a peculiar force that stems
from the emanations themselves.

He also told me not to be surprised if my body was
stiff, as though it were frozen; he said that I was going
to feel very much like someone standing in the middle
of a room looking at the street through a window, and
that speed was of the essence, as people were going to
move extremely fast by my seeing window. He told
me then to relax my muscles, shut off my internal
dialogue, and let my assemblage point drift away
under the spell of inner silence. He urged me to smack
myself gently but firmly on my right side, between my
hipbone and my ribcage.

I did that three times and I was sound asleep. It was
a most peculiar state of sleep. My body was dormant,
but I was perfectly aware of everything that was tak-
ing place. I could hear don Juan talking to me and I
could follow every one of his statements as if I were
awake, yet I could not move my body at all.

Don Juan said that a man was going to walk by my
seeing window and that I should try to see him. I
unsuccessfully attempted to move my head and then a
shiny egglike shape appeared, it was resplendent. I
was awed by the sight and before I could recover from
my surprise, it was gone. It floated away, bobbing up
and down.

Everything had been so sudden and fast that it made
me feel frustrated and impatient. I felt that I was be-
ginning to wake up. Don Juan talked to me again and
urged me to relax. He said that I had no right and no
time to be impatient. Suddenly, another luminous
being appeared and moved away. It seemed to be
made of a white fluorescent shag.

Don Juan whispered in my ear that if I wanted to,
my eyes were capable of slowing down everything
they focused on. Then he warned me that another man
was coming. I realized at that instant that there were
two voices. The one I had just heard was the same
one that had admonished me to be patient. That was
don Juan's. The other, the one that told me to use my
eyes to slow down movement, was the voice of seeing.

That afternoon, I saw ten luminous beings in slow
motion. The voice of seeing guided me to witness in
them everything don Juan had told me about the glow
of awareness. There was a vertical band with a
stronger amber glow on the right side of those egglike
luminous creatures, perhaps one-tenth of the total vol-
ume of the cocoon. The voice said that that was man's
band of awareness. The voice pointed out a dot on
man's band, a dot with an intense shine; it was high
on the oblong shapes, almost on the crest of them, on
the surface of the cocoon; the voice said that it was
the assemblage point.

When I saw each luminous creature in profile, from
the point of view of its body, its egglike shape was like
a gigantic asymmetrical yoyo that was standing edge-
wise, or like an almost round pot that was resting on
its side with its lid on. The part that looked like a lid
was the front plate; it was perhaps one-fifth the thick-
ness of the total cocoon.

I would have gone on seeing those creatures, but
don Juan said that I should now gaze at people face to
face and sustain my gaze until I had broken the barrier
and I was seeing the emanations.

I followed his command. Almost instantaneously, I
saw a most brilliant array of live, compelling fibers of
light. It was a dazzling sight that immediately shat-
tered my balance. I fell down on the cement walk on
my side. From there, I saw the compelling fibers of
light multiply themselves. They burst open and myri-
ads of other fibers came out of them. But the fibers,
compelling as they were, somehow did not interfere
with my ordinary view. There were scores of people
going into church. I was no longer seeing them. There
were quite a few women and men just around the
bench. I wanted to focus my eyes on them, but instead
I noticed how one of those fibers of light bulged sud-
denly. It became like a ball of fire that was perhaps
seven feet in diameter, it rolled on me. My first im-
pulse was to roll out of its way. Before I could even
move a muscle the ball had hit me. I felt it as clearly
as if someone had punched me gently in the stomach.
An instant later another ball of fire hit me, this time
with considerably more strength, and then don Juan
whacked me really hard on the cheek with his open
hand. I jumped up involuntarily and lost sight of the
fibers of light and the balloons that were hitting me.


Don Juan said that I had successfully endured my
first brief encounter with the Eagle's emanations, but
that a couple of shoves from the tumbler had danger-
ously opened up my gap. He added that the balls that
had hit me were called the rolling force, or the tum-
bler.

We had returned to his house, although I did not
remember how or when. ! had spent hours in a sort of
semisleeping state. Don Juan and the other seers of
his group had given me large amounts of water to
drink. They had also submerged me in an ice-cold tub
of water for short periods of time.

"Were those fibers I saw the Eagle's emanations?"
I asked don Juan.

"Yes. But you didn't really see them," he replied.
"No sooner had you begun to see than the tumbler
stopped you. If you had remained a moment longer it
would have blasted you."

"What exactly is the tumbler?" I asked.

"It is a force from the Eagle's emanations," he said.
"A ceaseless force that strikes us every instant of our
lives, it is lethal when seen, but otherwise we are
oblivious to it, in our ordinary lives, because we have
protective shields. We have consuming interests that
engage all our awareness. We are permanently wor-
ried about our station, our possessions. These shields,
however, do not keep the tumbler away, they simply
keep us from seeing it directly, protecting us in this
way from getting hurt by the fright of seeing the balls
of fire hitting us. Shields are a great help and a great
hindrance to us. They pacify us and at the same time
fool us. They give us a false sense of security."

He warned me that a moment would come in my life
when I would be without any shields, uninterruptedly
at the mercy of the tumbler. He said that it is an oblig-
atory stage in the life of a warrior, known as losing the
human form.

I asked him to explain to me once and for all what
the human form is and what it means to lose it.

He replied that seers describe the human form as
the compelling force of alignment of the emanations
lit by the glow of awareness on the precise spot on
which normally man's assemblage point is fixated. It
is the force that makes us into persons. Thus, to be a
person is to be compelled to affiliate with that force of
alignment and consequently to be affiliated with the
precise spot where it originates.

By reason of their activities, at a given moment the
assemblage points of warriors drift toward the left. It
is a permanent move, which results in an uncommon
sense of aloofness, or control, or even abandon. That
drift of the assemblage point entails a new alignment
of emanations. It is the beginning of a series of greater
shifts. Seers very aptly called this initial shift losing
the human form, because it marks an inexorable
movement of the assemblage point away from its orig-
inal setting, resulting in the irreversible loss of our
affiliation to the force that makes us persons.

He asked me then to describe all the details I could
remember about the balls of fire. I told him that I had
seen them so briefly I was not sure I could describe
them in detail.

He pointed out that seeing is a euphemism for mov-
ing the assemblage point, and that if I moved mine a
fraction more to the left I would have a clear picture
of the balls of fire, a picture which I could interpret
then as having remembered them.

I tried to have a clear picture, but I couldn't, so I
described what I remembered.

He listened attentively and then urged me to recall
if they were balls or circles of fire. I told him I didn't
remember.

He explained that those balls of fire are of crucial
importance to human beings because they are the
expression of a force that pertains to all details of life
and death, something that the new seers call the roll-
ing force.

I asked him to clarify what he meant by all the de-
tails of life and death.

"The rolling force is the means through which the
Eagle distributes life and awareness for safekeeping,"
he said. "But it also is the force that, let's say, collects
the rent. It makes all living beings die. What you saw
today was called by the ancient seers the tumbler."

He said that seers describe it as an eternal line of
iridescent rings, or balls of fire, that roll onto living
beings ceaselessly. Luminous organic beings meet the
rolling force head on, until the day when the force
proves to be too much for them and the creatures
finally collapse. The old seers were mesmerized by
seeing how the tumbler then tumbles them into the
beak of the Eagle to be devoured. That was the reason
they called it the tumbler.

"You said that it is a mesmerizing sight. Have you
yourself seen it rolling human beings?" I asked.

"Certainly I've seen it," he replied, and after a
pause he added, "You and I saw it only a short while
ago in Mexico City."

His assertion was so farfetched that I felt obliged to
tell him that this time he was wrong. He laughed and
reminded me that on that occasion, while both of us
were sitting on a bench in the Alameda Park in Mexico
City, we had witnessed the death of a man. He said
that I had recorded the event in my everyday-life
memory as well as in my left-side emanations.

As don Juan spoke to me I had the sensation of
something inside me becoming lucid by degrees, and I
could visualize with uncanny clarity the whole scene
in the park. The man was lying on the grass with three
policemen standing by him to keep onlookers away. I
distinctly remembered don Juan hitting me on my
back to make me change levels of awareness. And
then I saw. My seeing was imperfect. I was unable to
shake off the sight of the world of everyday life. What
I ended up with was a composite of filaments of the
most gorgeous colors superimposed on the buildings
and the traffic. The filaments were actually lines of
colored light that came from above. They had inner
life; they were bright and bursting with energy.

When I looked at the dying man, I saw what don
Juan was talking about; something that was at once
like circles of fire, or iridescent tumbleweeds, was
rolling everywhere I focused my eyes. The circles
were rolling on people, on don Juan, on me. I felt them
in my stomach and became ill.

Don Juan told me to focus my eyes on the dying
man. I saw him at one moment curling up, just as a
sowbug curls itself up upon being touched. The incan-
descent circles pushed him away, as if they were cast-
ing him aside, out of their majestic, inalterable path.

I had not liked the feeling. The circles of fire had
not scared me; they were not awesome, or sinister. I
did not feel morbid or somber. The circles rather had
nauseated me. I'd felt them in the pit of my stomach.
It was a revulsion that I'd felt that day.

Remembering them conjured up again the total feel-
ing of discomfort I had experienced on that occasion.
As I got ill, don Juan laughed until he was out of
breath.

"You're such an exaggerated fellow." he said.
"The rolling force is not that bad. It's lovely, in fact.
The new seers recommend that we open ourselves to
it. The old seers also opened themselves to it, but for
reasons and purposes guided mostly by self-impor-
tance and obsession.

"The new seers, on the other hand, make friends
with it. They become familiar with that force by han-
dling it without any self-importance. The result is stag-
gering in its consequences."

He said that a shift of the assemblage point is all
that is needed to open oneself to the rolling force. He
added that if the force is seen in a deliberate manner,
there is minimal danger. A situation that is extremely
dangerous, however, is an involuntary shift of the as-
semblage point owing, perhaps, to physical fatigue,
emotional exhaustion, disease, or simply a minor emo-
tional or physical crisis, such as being frightened or
being drunk.

"When the assemblage point shifts involuntarily,
the rolling force cracks the cocoon," he went on.
"I've talked many times about a gap that man has
below his navel. It's not really below the navel itself,
but in the cocoon, at the height of the navel. The gap
is more like a dent, a natural flaw in the otherwise
smooth cocoon. It is there where the tumbler hits us
ceaselessly and where the cocoon cracks."

He went on to explain that if it is a minor shift of
the assemblage point, the crack is very small, the co-
coon quickly repairs itself, and people experience
what everybody has at one time or another: blotches
of color and contorted shapes, which remain even if
the eyes are closed.

If the shift is considerable, the crack also is exten-
sive and it takes time for the cocoon to repair itself, as
in the case of warriors who purposely use power
plants to elicit that shift or people who take drugs and
unwittingly do the same. In these cases men feel numb
and cold; they have difficulty talking or even thinking;
it is as if they have been frozen from inside.

Don Juan said that in cases in which the assemblage
point shifts drastically because of the effects of trauma
or of a mortal disease, the rolling force produces a
crack the length of the cocoon; the cocoon collapses
and curls in on itself, and the individual dies.

"Can a voluntary shift also produce a gap of that
nature?" I asked.

"Sometimes," he replied. "We're really frail. As
the tumbler hits us over and over, death comes to us
through the gap. Death is the rolling force. When it
finds weakness in the gap of a luminous being it auto-
matically cracks it open and makes it collapse."

"Does every living being have a gap?" I asked.

"Of course," he replied. "If it didn't have one it
wouldn't die. The gaps are different, however, in size
and configuration. Man's gap is a bowl-like depression
the size of a fist, a very frail vulnerable configuration.
The gaps of other organic creatures are very much like
man's; some are stronger than ours and others are
weaker. But the gap of inorganic beings is really dif-
ferent. It's more like a long thread, a hair of luminos-
ity; consequently, inorganic beings are infinitely more
durable than we are.

"There is something hauntingly appealing about the
long life of those creatures, and the old seers could
not resist being carried away by that appeal."

He said that the same force can produce two effects
that are diametrically opposed. The old seers were
imprisoned by the rolling force, and the new seers are
rewarded for their toils with the gift of freedom. By
becoming familiar with the rolling force through the
mastery of intent, the new seers, at a given moment,
open their own cocoons and the force floods them
rather than rolling them up like a curled-up sowbug.
The final result is their total and instantaneous disin-
tegration.

I asked him a lot of questions about the survival of
awareness after the luminous being is consumed by
the fire from within. He did not answer. He simply
chuckled, shrugged his shoulders, and went on to say
that the old seers' obsession with the tumbler blinded
them to the other side of that force. The new seers,
with their usual thoroughness in refusing tradition,
went to the other extreme. They were at first totally
averse to focusing their seeing on the tumbler; they
argued that they needed to understand the force of the
emanations at large in its aspect of life-giver and en-
hancer of awareness.

"They realized that it is infinitely easier to destroy
something," don Juan went on, "than it is to build it
and maintain it. To roll life away is nothing compared
to giving it and nourishing it. Of course, the new seers
were wrong on this count, but in due course they cor-
rected their mistake."

"How were they wrong, don Juan?"

"It's an error to isolate anything for seeing. At the
beginning, the new seers did exactly the opposite from
what their predecessors did. They focused with equal
attention on the other side of the tumbler. What hap-
pened to them was as terrible as, if not worse than,
what happened to the old seers. They died stupid
deaths, just as the average man does. They didn't have
the mystery or the malignancy of the ancient seers,
nor had they the quest for freedom of the seers of
today.

"Those first new seers served everybody. Because
they were focusing their seeing on the life-giving side
of the emanations, they were filled with love and kind-
ness. But that didn't keep them from being tumbled.
They were vulnerable, just as were the old seers who
were filled with morbidity."

He said that for the modern-day new seers, to be
left stranded after a life of discipline and toil, just like
men who have never had a purposeful moment in their
lives, was intolerable.

Don Juan said that these new seers realized, after
they had readopted their tradition, that the old seers'
knowledge of the rolling force had been complete; at
one point the old seers had concluded that there were,
in effect, two different aspects of the same force. The
tumbling aspect relates exclusively to destruction and
death. The circular aspect, on the other hand, is what
maintains life and awareness, fulfillment and purpose.
They had chosen, however, to deal exclusively with
the tumbling aspect.

"Gazing in teams, the new seers were able to see
the separation between the tumbling and the circular
aspects," he explained. "They saw that both forces
are fused, but are not the same. The circular force
comes to us just before the tumbling force; they are so
close to each other that they seem the same.

"The reason it's called the circular force is that it
comes in rings, threadlike hoops of iridescence?a
very delicate affair indeed. And just like the tumbling
force, it strikes all living beings ceaselessly, but for a
different purpose. It strikes them to give them
strength, direction, awareness; to give them life.

"What the new seers discovered is that the balance
of the two forces in every living being is a very deli-
cate one," he continued, "if at any given time an
individual feels that the tumbling force strikes harder
than the circular one, that means the balance is upset;
the tumbling force strikes harder and harder from then
on, until it cracks the living being's gap and makes it
die."

He added that out of what I had called balls of fire
comes an iridescent hoop exactly the size of living
beings, whether men, trees, microbes, or allies.

"Are there different-size circles?" I asked.

"Don't take me so literally," he protested. "There
are no circles to speak of, just a circular force that
gives seers, who are dreaming it, the feeling of rings.
And there are no different sizes either. It's one indi-
visible force that fits all living beings, organic and in-
organic."

"Why did the old seers focus on the tumbling as-
pect?" I asked.

"Because they believed that their lives depended on
seeing it," he replied. "They were sure that their
seeing was going to give them answers to age-old
questions. You see, they figured that if they unraveled
the secrets of the rolling force they would be invulner-
able and immortal. The sad part is that in one way or
another, they did unravel the secrets and yet they
were neither invulnerable nor immortal.

"The new seers changed it all by realizing that there
is no way to aspire to immortality as long as man has
a cocoon."

Don Juan explained that the old seers apparently
never realized that the human cocoon is a receptacle
and cannot sustain the onslaught of the rolling force
forever. In spite of all the knowledge that they had
accumulated, they were in the end certainly no better,
and perhaps much worse, off than the average man.

"In what way were they left worse off than the av-
erage man?" I asked.

"Their tremendous knowledge forced them to take
it for granted that their choices were infallible," he
said. "So they chose to live at any cost."

Don Juan looked at me and smiled. With his theat-
rical pause he was telling me something I could not
fathom.

"They chose to live," he repeated. "Just as they
chose to become trees in order to assemble worlds
with those nearly unreachable great bands."

"What do you mean by that, don Juan?"

"I mean that they used the rolling force to shift their
assemblage points to unimaginable dreaming posi-
tions, instead of letting it roll them to the beak of the
Eagle to be devoured."


15
The Death Defiers


I arrived at Genaro's house around 2: 00 p. m. Don Juan
and I became involved in conversation, and then don
Juan made me shift into heightened awareness.

"Here we are again, the three of us, just as we were
the day we went to that flat rock," don Juan said.
"And tonight we're going to make another trip to that
area.

"You have enough knowledge now to draw very
serious conclusions about that place and its effects on
awareness."

"What is it with that place, don Juan?"

"Tonight you're going to find out some gruesome
facts that the old seers collected about the rolling
force; and you're going to see what I meant when I
told you that the old seers chose to live at any cost."

Don Juan turned to Genaro, who was about to fall
asleep. He nudged him.

"Wouldn't you say, Genaro, that the old seers-were
dreadful men?" don Juan asked.

"Absolutely," Genaro said in a crisp tone and then
seemed to succumb to fatigue.

He began to nod noticeably. In an instant he was
sound asleep, his head resting on his chest with his
chin tucked in. He snored.

I wanted to laugh out loud. But then I noticed that
Genaro was staring at me, as if he were sleeping with
his eyes open.

"They were such dreadful men that they even de-
fied death," Genaro added between snores.

"Aren't you curious to know how those gruesome
men defied death?" don Juan asked me.

He seemed to be urging me to ask for an example of
their gruesomeness. He paused and looked at me with
what I thought was a glint of expectation in his eyes.

"You're waiting for me to ask for an example,
aren't you?" I said.

"This is a great moment," he said, patting me on
the back and laughing. "My benefactor had me on the
edge of my seat at this point. I asked him to give me
an example, and he did; now i'm going to give you
one whether you ask for it or not."

"What are you going to do?" I asked, so frightened
that my stomach was tied in knots and my voice
cracked.

It took quite a while for don Juan to stop laughing.
Every time he started to speak, he'd get an attack of
coughing laughter.

"As Genaro told you, the old seers were dreadful
men," he said, rubbing his eyes. "There was some-
thing they tried to avoid at all costs: they didn't want
to die. You may say that the average man doesn't
want to die either, but the advantage that the old seers
had over the average man was that they had the con-
centration and the discipline to intend things away;
and they actually intended death away."

He paused and looked at me with raised eyebrows.
He said that I was falling behind, that I was not asking
my usual questions. I remarked that it was plain to me
that he was leading me to ask if the old seers had
succeeded in intending death away, but he himself had
already told me that their knowledge about the tum-
bled had not saved them from dying.

"They succeeded in intending death away," he
said, pronouncing his words with extra care. "But
they still had to die."

"How did they intend death away?" I asked.

"They observed their allies," he said, "and seeing
that they were living beings with a much greater resi-
lience to the rolling force, the seers patterned them-
selves on their allies."

The old seers realized, don Juan explained, that
only organic beings have a gap that resembles a bowl.
Its size and shape and its brittleness make it the ideal
configuration to hasten the cracking and collapsing of
the luminous shell under the onslaughts of the tum-
bling force. The allies, on the other hand, who have
only a line for a gap, present such a small surface to
the rolling force as to be practically immortal. Their
cocoons can sustain the onslaughts of the tumbler in-
definitely. because hairline gaps offer no ideal config-
uration to it.

"The old seers developed the most bizarre tech-
niques for closing their gaps," don Juan continued.
"They were essentially correct in assuming that a
hairline gap is more durable than a bowl-like one."

"Are those techniques still in existence?" I asked.

"No, they are not," he said. "But some of the seers
who practiced them are."

For reasons unknown to me, his statement caused a
reaction of sheer terror in me. My breathing was al-
tered instantly, and I couldn't control its rapid pace.

"They're still alive to this day, isn't that so, Ge-
naro?" don Juan asked.

"Absolutely," Genaro muttered from an apparent
state of deep sleep.

I asked don Juan if he knew the reason for my being
so frightened. He reminded me about a previous oc-
casion in that very room when they had asked me if I
had noticed the weird creatures that had come in the
moment Genaro opened the door.

"That day your assemblage point went very deep
into the left side and assembled a frightening world,"
he went on. "But I have already said that to you; what
you don't remember is that you went directly to a very
remote world and scared yourself pissless there."

Don Juan turned to Genaro, who was snoring peace-
fully with his legs stretched out in front of him.

"Wasn't he scared pissless, Genaro?" he asked.

"Absolutely pissless," Genaro muttered, and don
Juan laughed.

"I want you to know that we don't blame you for
being scared," don Juan continued. "We, ourselves,
are revolted by some of the actions of the old seers.
I'm sure that you have realized by now that what you
can't remember about that night is that you saw the
old seers who are still alive."

I wanted to protest that I had realized nothing, but
I could not voice my words. I had to clear my throat
over and over before I could articulate a word. Genaro
had stood up and was gently patting my upper back,
by my neck, as if I were choking.

"You have a frog in your throat," he said.

I thanked him in a high squeaky voice.

"No, I think you have a chicken there," he added
and sat down to sleep.

Don Juan said that the new seers had rebelled
against all the bizarre practices of the old seers and
declared them not only useless but injurious to our
total being. They even went so far as to ban those
techniques from whatever was taught to new warriors;
and for generations there was no mention of those
practices at all.

It was in the early part of the eighteenth century
that the nagual Sebastian, a member of don Juan's
direct line of naguals, rediscovered the existence of
those techniques.

"How did he rediscover them?" I asked.

"He was a superb stalker, and because of his im-
peccability he got a chance to learn marvels," don
Juan replied.

He said that one day as the nagual Sebastian was
about to start his daily routines?he was the sexton at
the cathedral in the city where he lived?he found a
middle-aged Indian man who seemed to be in a quan-
dary at the door of the church.

The nagual Sebastian went to the man's side and
asked him if he needed help. "I need a bit of energy
to close my gap," the man said to him in a loud clear
voice. "Would you give me some of your energy?"

Don Juan said that according to the story, the na-
gual Sebastian was dumbfounded. He did not know
what the man was talking about. He offered to take
the Indian to see the parish priest. The man lost his
patience and angrily accused the nagual Sebastian of
stalling. "I need your energy because you're a na-
gual," he said. "Let's go quietly."

The nagual Sebastian succumbed to the magnetic
power of the stranger and meekly went with him into
the mountains. He was gone for many days. When he
came back he not only had a new outlook about the
ancient seers, but detailed knowledge of their tech-
niques. The stranger was an ancient Toltec. One of
the last survivors.

"The nagual Sebastian found out marvels about the
old seers," don Juan went on. "He was the one who
first knew how grotesque and aberrant they really
were. Before him, that knowledge was only hearsay.

"One night my benefactor and the nagual Elias gave
me a sample of those aberrations. They really showed
it to Genaro and me together, so it's only proper that
we both show you the same sample."

I wanted to talk in order to stall; I needed time to
calm down, to think things out. But before I could say
anything, don Juan and Genaro were practically drag-
ging me out of the house. They headed for the same
eroded hills we had visited before.

We stopped at the bottom of a large barren hill. Don
Juan pointed toward some distant mountains to the
south, and said that between the place where we stood
and a natural cut in one of those mountains, a cut that
looked like an open mouth, there were at least seven
sites where the ancient seers had focused all the power
of their awareness.

Don Juan said that those seers had not only been
knowledgeable and daring but downright successful.
He added that his benefactor had showed him and
Genaro a site where the old seers, driven by their love
for life, had buried themselves alive and actually in-
tended the rolling force away.

"There is nothing that would catch the eye in those
places," he went on. "The old seers were careful not
to leave marks. It is just a landscape. One has to see
to know where those places are."

He said that he did not want to walk to the faraway
sites, but would take me to the one that was nearest.
I insisted on knowing what we were after. He said that
we were going to see the buried seers, and that for that
we had to stay until it got dark under the cover of
some green bushes. He pointed them out; they were
perhaps half a mile away, up a steep slope.

We reached the patch of bushes and sat down as
comfortably as we could. He began then to explain in
a very low voice that in order to get energy from the
earth, ancient seers used to bury themselves for pe-
riods of time, depending on what they wanted to ac-
complish. The more difficult their task, the longer
their burial period.

Don Juan stood up and in a melodramatic way
showed me a spot a few yards from where we were.

"Two old seers are buried there," he said. "They
buried themselves about two thousand years ago to
escape death, not in the spirit of running away from it
but in the spirit of defy ing it."

Don Juan asked Genaro to show me the exact spot
where the old seers were buried. I turned to look at
Genaro and realized that he was sitting by my side
sound asleep again. But to my utter amazement, he
jumped up and barked like a dog and ran on all fours
to the spot don Juan was pointing out. There he ran
around the place in a perfect mime of a small dog.

I found his performance hilarious. Don Juan was
nearly on the ground laughing.

"Genaro has shown you something extraordinary,"
don Juan said, after Genaro had returned to where we
were and had gone back to sleep. "He has shown you
something about the assemblage point and dreaming.
He's dreaming now, but he can act as if he were fully
awake and he can hear everything you say. From that
position he can do more than if he were awake."

He was silent for a moment as if assessing what to
say next. Genaro snored rhythmically.

Don Juan remarked how easy it was for him to find
flaws with what the old seers had done, yet, in all
fairness, he never tired of repeating how wonderful
their accomplishments were. He said that they under-
stood the earth to perfection. Not only did they dis-
cover and use the boost from the earth, but they also
discovered that if they remained buried, their assem-
blage points aligned emanations that were ordinarily
inaccessible, and that such an alignment engaged the
earth's strange, inexplicable capacity to deflect the
ceaseless strikes of the rolling force. Consequently,
they developed the most astounding and complex
techniques for burying themselves for extremely long
periods of time without any detriment to themselves.
In their fight against death, they learned how to elon-
gate those periods to cover millennia.

It was a cloudy day, and night fell quickly. In no
time at all, everything was in darkness. Don Juan
stood up and guided me and the sleepwalker Genaro
to an enormous flat oval rock that had caught my eye
the moment we got to that place. It was similar to the
flat rock we had visited before, but bigger. It occurred
to me that the rock, enormous as it was, had deliber-
ately been placed there.

"This is another site," don Juan said. "This huge
rock was placed here as a trap, to attract people. Soon
you'll know why."

I felt a shiver run through my body. I thought I was
going to faint. I knew that I was definitely overreacting
and wanted to say something about it, but don Juan
kept on talking in a hoarse whisper. He said that Ge-
naro, since he was dreaming, had enough control over
his assemblage point to move it until he could reach
the specific emanations that would wake up whatever
was around that rock. He recommended that I try to
move my assemblage point, and follow Genaro's. He
said that I could do it, first by setting up my unbending
intent to move it, and second by letting the context of
the situation dictate where it should move.

After a moment's thought he whispered in my ear
not to worry about procedures, because most of the
really unusual things that happen to seers, or to the
average man for that matter, happen by themselves,
with only the intervention of intent.

He was silent for a moment and then added that the
danger for me was going to be the buried seers' inevi-
table attempt to scare me to death. He exhorted me to
keep myself calm and not to succumb to fear, but
follow Genaro's movements.

I fought desperately not to be sick. Don Juan patted
me on the back and said that I was an old pro at
playing an innocent bystander. He assured me that I
was not consciously refusing to let my assemblage
point move, but that every human being does it auto-
matically.

"Something is going to scare the living daylights out
of you," he whispered. "Don't give up, because if you
do, you'll die and the old vultures around here are
going to feast on your energy."

"Let's get out of here," I pleaded. "I really don't
give a damn about getting an example of the old seers'
grotesqueness."

"It's too late," Genaro said, fully awake now,
standing by my side. "Even if we try to get away, the
two seers and their allies on the other spot will cut you
down. They have already made a circle around us.
There are as many as sixteen awarenesses focused on
you right now."

"Who are they?" I whispered in Genaro's ear.

"The four seers and their court," he replied.
"They've been aware of us since we got here."

I wanted to turn tail and run for dear life, but don
Juan held my arm and pointed to the sky. I noticed
that a remarkable change in visibility had taken place.
Instead of the pitch-black darkness that had prevailed,
there was a pleasant dawn twilight. I made a quick
assessment of the cardinal points. The sky was defi-
nitely lighter toward the east.

I felt a strange pressure around my head. My ears
were buzzing. I felt cold and feverish at the same time.
I was scared as I had never been before, but what
bothered me was a nagging sensation of defeat, of
being a coward. I felt nauseated and miserable.

Don Juan whispered in my ear. He said that I had
to be on the alert, that the onslaught of the old seers
would be felt by all three of us at any moment.

"You can grab on to me if you want to," Genaro
said in a fast whisper as if something were prodding
him.

I hesitated for an instant. I did not want don Juan to
believe that I was so scared I needed to hold on to
Genaro.

"Here they come!" Genaro said in a loud whisper.

The world turned upside down instantaneously for
me when something gripped me by my left ankle. I felt
the coldness of death on my entire body. I knew I had
stepped on an iron clamp, maybe a bear trap. That all
flashed through my mind before I let out a piercing
scream, as intense as my fright.

Don Juan and Genaro laughed out loud. They were
flanking me no more than three feet away, but I was
so terrified I did not even notice them.

"Sing! Sing for dear life!" I heard don Juan ordering
me under his breath.

I tried to pull my foot loose. I felt then a sting, as if
needles were piercing my skin. Don Juan insisted over
and over that I sing. He and Genaro started to sing a
popular song. Genaro spoke the lyrics as he looked at
me from hardly two inches away. They sang off-key
in raspy voices, getting so completely out of breath
and so high out of the range of their voices that I ended
up laughing.

"Sing, or you're going to perish," don Juan said to
me.

"Let's make a trio," Genaro said, "We'll sing a
bolero."

I joined them in an off-key trio. We sang for quite a
while at the top of our voices, like drunkards. I felt
that the iron grip on my leg was gradually letting go of
me. I had not dared to look down at my ankle. At one
moment I did and I realized then that there was no
trap clutching me. A dark, headlike shape was biting
me!

Only a supreme effort kept me from fainting. I felt I
was getting sick and automatically tried to bend over,
but somebody with superhuman strength grabbed me
painlessly by the elbows and the nape of my neck and
did not let me move. I got sick all over my clothes.

My revulsion was so complete that I began to fall in
a faint. Don Juan sprinkled my face with some water
from the small gourd he always carried when we went
into the mountains. The water slid under my collar.
The coldness restored my physical balance, but it did
not affect the force that was holding me by my elbows
and neck.

"I think you are going too far with your fright," don
Juan said loudly and in such a matter-of-fact tone that
he created an immediate feeling of order.

"Let's sing again," he added. "Let's sing a song
with substance?I don't want any more boleros."

I silently thanked him for his sobriety and for his
grand style. I was so moved as I heard them singing
"La Valentina" that I began to weep.


"Because of my passion, they say
that ill fortune is on my way.
It doesn't matter
that it might be the devil himself.
I do know how to die

Valentina, Valentina.
I throw my self in your way.
If I am going to die tomorrow,
why not, once and for all, today?"


All of my being staggered under the impact of that
inconceivable juxtaposition of values. Never had a
song meant so much to me. As I heard them sing those
lyrics, which I ordinarily considered reeking with
cheap sentimentalism, I thought I understood the
ethos of the warrior. Don Juan had drilled into me that
warriors live with death at their side, and from the
knowledge that death is with them they draw the cour-
age to face anything. Don Juan had said that the worst
that could happen to us is that we have to die, and
since that is already our unalterable fate, we are free;
those who have lost everything no longer have any-
thing to fear.

I walked to don Juan and Genaro and embraced
them to express my boundless gratitude and admira-
tion for them.

Then I realized that nothing was holding me any
longer. Without a word don Juan took my arm and
guided me to sit on the flat rock.

"The show is just about to begin now," Genaro said
in a jovial tone as he tried to find a comfortable posi-
tion to sit. "You've just paid your admission ticket.
It's all over your chest."

He looked at me, and both of them began to laugh.

"Don't sit too close to me," Genaro said. "I don't
appreciate pukers. But don't go too far, either. The
old seers are not yet through with their tricks."

I moved as close to them as politeness permitted. I
was concerned about my slate for an instant, and then
all my qualms became nonsense, for I noticed that
some people were coming toward us. I could not make
out their shapes clearly but I distinguished a mass of
human figures moving in the semidarkness. They did
not carry lanterns or flashlights with them, which at
that hour they would still have needed. Somehow that
detail worried me. I did not want to focus on it and I
deliberately began to think rationally. I figured that we
must have attracted attention with our loud singing
and they were coming to investigate. Don Juan tapped
me on the shoulder. He pointed with a movement of
his chin to the men in front of the group of others.

"Those four are the old seers," he said. "The rest
are their allies."

Before I could remark that they were just local peas-
ants, I heard a swishing sound right behind me. I
quickly turned around in a state of total alarm. My
movement was so sudden that don Juan's warning
came too late.

"Don't turn around!" I heard him yell.

His words were only background; they did not mean
anything to me. On turning around, I saw that three
grotesquely deformed men had climbed up on the rock
right behind me; they were crawling toward me, with
their mouths open in a nightmarish grimace and their
arms outstretched to grab me.

I intended to scream at the top of my lungs, but what
came out was an agonizing croak, as if something were
obstructing my windpipe. I automatically rolled out of
their reach and onto the ground.

As I stood up, don Juan jumped to my side, at the
very same moment that a horde of men, led by those
don Juan had pointed out, descended on me like vul-
tures. They were actually squeaking like bats or rats.
I yelled in terror. This time I was able to let out a
piercing cry.

Don Juan, as nimbly as an athlete in top form,
pulled me out of their clutches onto the rock. He told
me in a stern voice not to turn around to look, no
matter how scared I was. He said that the allies cannot
push at all, but that they certainly could scare me and
make me fall to the ground. On the ground, however,
the allies could hold anybody down. If I were to fall
on the ground by the place where the seers were bur-
ied, I would be at their mercy. They would rip me
apart while their allies held me. He added that he had
not told me all that before because he had hoped I
would be forced to see and understand it by myself.
His decision had nearly cost me my life.

The sensation that the grotesque men were just be-
hind me was nearly unbearable. Don Juan forcefully
ordered me to keep calm and focus my attention on
four men at the head of a crowd of perhaps ten or
twelve. The instant I focused my eyes on them, as if
on cue, they all advanced to the edge of the flat rock.
They stopped there and began hissing like serpents.
They walked back and forth. Their movement seemed
to be synchronized. It was so consistent and orderly
that it seemed to be mechanical. It was as if they were
following a repetitive pattern, aimed at mesmerizing
me.

"Don't gaze at them, dear," Genaro said to me as
if he were talking to a child.

The laughter that followed was as hysterical as my
fear. I laughed so hard that the sound reverberated on
the surrounding hills.

The men stopped at once and seemed to be per-
plexed. I could distinguish the shapes of their heads
bobbing up and down as if they were talking, deliber-
ating among themselves. Then one of them jumped
onto the rock.

"Watch out! That one is a seer!" Genaro ex-
claimed.

"What are we going to do?" I shouted.

"We could start singing again," don Juan replied
matter-of-factly.

My fear reached its apex then. I began to jump up
and down and to roar like an animal. The man jumped
down to the ground.

"Don't pay any more attention to those clowns,"
don Juan said. "Let's talk as usual."

He said that we had gone there for my enlighten-
ment, and that I was failing miserably. I had to reor-
ganize myself. The first thing to do was to realize that
my assemblage point had moved and was now making
obscure emanations glow. To carry the feelings from
my usual state of awareness into the world I had as-
sembled was indeed a travesty, for fear is only preva-
lent among the emanations of daily life.

I told him that if my assemblage point had shifted as
he was saying it had, I had news for him. My fear was
infinitely greater and more devastating than anything
I had ever experienced in my daily life.

"You're wrong," he said. "Your first attention is
confused and doesn't want to give up control, that's
all. I have the feeling that you could walk right up to
those creatures and face them and they wouldn't do a
thing to you."

I insisted that I was definitely in no condition to test
such a preposterous thing as that.

He laughed at me. He said that sooner or later I had
to cure myself of my madness, and that to take the
initiative and face up to those four seers was infinitely
less preposterous than the idea that I was seeing them
at all. He said that to him madness was to be con-
fronted by men who had been buried for two thousand
years and were still alive, and not to think that that
was the epitome of preposterousness.

I heard everything he said with clarity, but I was
not really paying attention to him. I was terrified of
the men around the rock. They seemed to be preparing
to jump us, to jump me really. They were fixed on me.
My right arm began to shake as if I were stricken by
some muscular disorder. Then I became aware that
the light in the sky had changed. I had not noticed
before that it was already dawn. The strange thing was
that an uncontrollable urge made me stand up and run
to the group of men.

I had at that moment two completely different feel-
ings about the same event. The minor one was of sheer
terror. The other, the major one, was of total indiffer-
ence. I could not have cared less.

When I reached the group I realized that don Juan
was right; they were not really men. Only four of them
had any resemblance to men, but they were not men
either; they were strange creatures with huge yellow
eyes. The others were just shapes that were propelled
by the four that resembled men.

I felt extraordinarily sad for those creatures with
yellow eyes. I tried to touch them, but I could not find
them. Some sort of wind scooped them away.

I looked for don Juan and Genaro. They were not
there. It was pitch-black again. I called out their
names over and over again. I thrashed around in dark-
ness for a few minutes. Don Juan came to my side and
startled me. I did not see Genaro.

"Let's go home," he said. "We have a long walk."


Don Juan commented on how well I had performed
at the site of the buried seers, especially during the
last part of our encounter with them. He said that a
shift of the assemblage point is marked by a change in
light. In the daytime, light becomes very dark; at
night, darkness becomes twilight. He added that I had
performed two shifts by myself, aided only by animal
fright. The only thing he found objectionable was my
indulging in fear, especially after I had realized that
warriors have nothing to fear.

"How do you know I had realized that?" I asked.

"Because you were free. When fear disappears all
the ties that bind us dissolve," he said. "An ally was
gripping your foot because it was attracted by your
animal terror."

I told him how sorry I was for not being able to
uphold my realizations.

"Don't concern yourself with that." He laughed.
"You know that such realizations are a dime a dozen;
they don't amount to anything in the life of warriors,
because they are canceled out as the assemblage point
shifts.

"What Genaro and I wanted to do was to make you
shift very deeply. This time Genaro was there simply
to entice the old seers. He did it once already, and you
went so far into the left side that it will take quite a
while for you to remember it. Your fright tonight was
just as intense as it was that first time when the seers
and their allies followed you to this very room, but
your sturdy first attention wouldn't let you be aware
of them."

"Explain to me what happened at the site of the
seers," I asked.

"The allies came out to see you," he replied.
"Since they have very low energy, they always need
the help of men. The four seers have collected twelve
allies.

"The countryside in Mexico and also certain cities
are dangerous. What happened to you can happen to
any man or woman. If they bump into that tomb, they
may even see the seers and their allies, if they are
pliable enough to let their fear make their assemblage
points shift; but one thing is for sure: they can die of
fright."

"But do you honestly believe that those Toltec
seers are still alive?" I asked.

He laughed and shook his head in disbelief.

"It's time for you to shift that assemblage point of
yours just a bit," he said. "I can't talk to you when
you are in your idiot's stage."

He smacked me with the palm of his hand on three
spots: right on the crest of my right hipbone, on the
center of my back below my shoulder blades, and on
the upper part of my right pectoral muscle.

My ears immediately began to buzz. A trickle of
blood ran out of my right nostril, and something inside
me became unplugged. It was as if some flow of en-
ergy had been blocked and suddenly began to move
again.

"What were those seers and their allies after?" I
asked.

"Nothing," he replied. "We were the ones who
were after them. The seers, of course, had already
noticed your field of energy the first time you saw
them; when you came back, they were set to feast on
you."

"You claim that they are alive, don Juan," I said.
"You must mean that they are alive as allies are alive,
is that so?"

"That's exactly right," he said. "They cannot pos-
sibly be alive as you and I are. That would be prepos-
terous."

He went on to explain that the ancient seers' con-
cern with death made them look into the most bizarre
possibilities. The ones who opted for the allies' pat-
tern had in mind, doubtless, a desire for a haven. And
they found it, at a fixed position in one of the seven
bands of inorganic awareness. The seers felt that they
were relatively safe there. After all, they were sepa-
rated from the daily world by a nearly insurmountable
barrier, the barrier of perception set by the assem-
blage point.

"When the four seers saw that you could shift your
assemblage point they took off like bats out of hell,"
he said and laughed.

"Do you mean that I assembled one of the seven
worlds?" I asked.

"No, you didn't," he replied. "But you have done
it before, when the seers and their allies chased you.
That day you went all the way to their world. The
problem is that you love to act stupid, so you can't
remember it at all.

"I'm sure that it is the nagual's presence," he con-
tinued, "that sometimes makes people act dumb.
When the nagual Julian was still around, I was dumber
than I am now. I am convinced that when I'm no
longer here, you'll be capable of remembering every-
thing."

Don Juan explained that since he needed to show
me the death defiers, he and Genaro had lured them to
the outskirts of our world. What I had done at first
was a deep lateral shift, which allowed me to see them
as people, but at the end I had correctly made the shift
that allowed me to see the death defiers and their allies
as they are.


Very early the next morning, at Silvio Manuel's
house, don Juan called me to the big room to discuss
the events of the previous night. I felt exhausted and
wanted to rest, to sleep, but don Juan was pressed for
time. He immediately started his explanation. He said
that the old seers had found out a way to utilize the
rolling force and be propelled by it. Instead of suc-
cumbing to the onslaughts of the tumbler they rode
with it and let it move their assemblage points to the
confines of human possibilities.

Don Juan expressed unbiased admiration for such
an accomplishment. He admitted that nothing else
could give the assemblage point the boost that the
tumbler gives.

I asked him about the difference between the earth's
boost and the tumbler's boost. He explained that the
earth's boost is the force of alignment of only the
amber emanations, it is a boost that heightens aware-
ness to unthinkable degrees. To the new seers it is a
blast of unlimited consciousness, which they call total
freedom.

He said that the tumbler's boost, on the other hand,
is the force of death. Under the impact of the tumbler,
the assemblage point moves to new, unpredictable po-
sitions. Thus, the old seers were always alone in their
journeys, although the enterprise they were involved
in was always communal. The company of other seers
on their journeys was fortuitous and usually meant
struggle for supremacy.

I confessed to don Juan that the concerns of the old
seers, whatever they may have been, were worse than
morbid horror tales to me. He laughed uproariously.
He seemed to be enjoying himself.

"You have to admit, no matter how disgusted you
feel, that those devils were very daring," he went on.
"I never liked them myself, as you know, but I can't
help admiring them. Their love for life is truly beyond
me."

"How can that be love for life, don Juan? It's some-
thing nauseating," I said.

"What else could push a man to those extremes if it
is not love for life?" he asked. "They loved life so
intensely that they were not willing to give it up.
That's the way I have seen it. My benefactor saw
something else. He believed that they were afraid to
die, which is not the same as loving life. I say that they
were afraid to die because they loved life and because
they had seen marvels, and not because they were
greedy little monsters. No. They were aberrant be-
cause nobody ever challenged them and they were
spoiled like rotten children, but their daring was im-
peccable and so was their courage.

"Would you venture into the unknown out of greed?
No way. Greed works only in the world of ordinary
affairs. To venture into that terrifying loneliness one
must have something greater than greed. Love, one
needs love for life, for intrigue, for mystery. One
needs unquenching curiosity and guts galore. So don't
give me this nonsense about your being revolted. It's
embarrassing!"

Don Juan's eyes were shining with contained laugh-
ter. He was putting me in my place, but he was laugh-
ing at it.


Don Juan left me alone in the room for perhaps an
hour. I wanted to organize my thoughts and feelings.
I had no way to do that. I knew without any doubt that
my assemblage point was at a position where reason-
ing does not prevail, yet I was moved by reasonable
concerns. Don Juan had said that technically, as soon
as the assemblage point shifts, we are asleep. I won-
dered, for instance, if I was sound asleep from the
stand of an onlooker, just as Genaro had been asleep
to me.

I asked don Juan about it as soon as he returned.

"You are absolutely asleep without having to be
stretched out," he replied. "If people in a normal state
of awareness saw you now, you would appear to them
to be a bit dizzy, even drunk."

He explained that during normal sleep, the shift of
the assemblage point runs along either edge of man's
band. Such shifts are always coupled with slumber.
Shifts that are induced by practice occur along the
midsection of man's band and are not coupled with
slumber, yet a dreamer is asleep.

"Right at this juncture is where the new and the old
seers made their separate bids for power," he went
on. "The old seers wanted a replica of the body, but
with more physical strength, so they made their as-
semblage points slide along the right edge of man's
band. The deeper they moved along the right edge the
more bizarre their dreaming body became. You, your-
self, witnessed last night the monstrous result of a
deep shift along the right edge."

He said that the new seers were completely differ-
ent, that they maintain their assemblage points along
the midsection of man's band. If the shift is a shallow
one, like the shift into heightened awareness, the
dreamer is almost like anyone else in the street, ex-
cept for a slight vulnerability to emotions, such as fear
and doubt. But at a certain degree of depth, the
dreamer who is shifting along the midsection becomes
a blob of light. A blob of light is the dreaming body of
the new seers.

He also said that such an impersonal dreaming body
is more conducive to understanding and examination,
which are the basis of all the new seers do. The in-
tensely humanized dreaming body of the old seers
drove them to look for answers that were equally per-
sonal, humanized.

Don Juan suddenly seemed to be groping for words.

"There is another death defier," he said curtly, "so
unlike the four you've seen that he's indistinguishable
from the average man in the street. He's accomplished
this unique feat by being able to open and close his
gap whenever he wants."

He played with his fingers almost nervously.

"The ancient seer that the nagual Sebastian found
in 1723 is that death defier," he went on. "We count
that day as the beginning of our line, the second begin-
ning. That death defier, who's been on the earth for
hundreds of years, has changed the lives of every na-
gual he met, some more profoundly than others. And
he has met every single nagual of our line since that
day in 1723."

Don Juan looked fixedly at me. I got strangely em-
barrassed. I thought my embarrassment was the result
of a dilemma. I had very serious doubts about the
content of the story, and at the same time I had the
most disconcerting trust that everything he had said
was true. I expressed my quandary to him.

"The problem of rational disbelief is not yours
alone," don Juan said. "My benefactor was at first
plagued by the same question. Of course, later on he
remembered everything. But it took him a long time
to do so. When I met him he had already recollected
everything, so I never witnessed his doubts. I only
heard about them.

"The weird part is that people who have never set
eyes on the man have less difficulty accepting that he's
one of the original seers. My benefactor said that his
quandaries stemmed from the fact that the shock of
meeting such a creature had lumped together a num-
ber of emanations. It takes time for those emanations
to separate themselves."

Don Juan went on to explain that as my assemblage
point kept on shifting, a moment would come when it
would hit the proper combination of emanations; at
that moment the proof of the existence of that man
would become overwhelmingly evident to me.

I felt compelled to talk again about my ambivalence.

"We're deviating from our subject," he said. "It
may seem that I'm trying to convince you of the exis-
tence of that man; and what I meant to talk about is
the fact that the old seer knows how to handle the
rolling force. Whether or not you believe that he exists
is not important. Someday you'll know for a fact that
he certainly succeeded in closing his gap. The energy
that he borrows from the nagual every generation he
uses exclusively to close his gap."

"How did he succeed in closing it?" I asked.

"There is no way of knowing that," he replied.
"I've talked to two other naguals who saw that man
face to face, the nagual Julian and the nagual Elias.
Neither of them knew how. The man never revealed
how he closes that opening, which I suppose begins to
expand after a time. The nagual Sebastian said that
when he first saw the old seer, the man was very
weak, actually dying. But my benefactor found him
prancing vigorously, like a young man."

Don Juan said that the nagual Sebastian nicknamed
that nameless man "the tenant," for they struck an
arrangement by which the man was given energy,
lodging so to speak, and he paid rent in the form of
favors and knowledge.

"Did anybody ever get hurt in the exchange?" I
asked.

"None of the naguals who exchanged energy with
him was injured," he replied. "The man's commit-
ment was that he'd only take a bit of superfluous en-
ergy from the nagual in exchange for gifts, for
extraordinary abilities. For instance, the nagual Julian
got the gait of power. With it, he could activate or
make dormant the emanations inside his cocoon in
order to look young or old at will."

Don Juan explained that the death defiers in general
went as far as rendering dormant all the emanations
inside their cocoons, except those that matched the
emanations of the allies. In this fashion they were able
to imitate the allies in some form.

Each of the death defiers we had encountered at the
rock, don Juan said, had been able to move his assem-
blage point to a precise spot on his cocoon in order to
emphasize the emanations shared with the allies and
to interact with them. But they were all unable to
move it back to its usual position and interact with
people. The tenant, on the other hand, is capable of
shifting his assemblage point to assemble the everyday
world as if nothing had ever happened.

Don Juan also said that his benefactor was con-
vinced?and he fully agreed with him?that what
takes place during the borrowing of energy is that the
old sorcerer moves the nagual's assemblage point to
emphasize the ally's emanations inside the nagual's
cocoon. He then uses the great jolt of energy produced
by those emanations that suddenly become aligned
after being so deeply dormant.

He said that the energy locked within us, in the
dormant emanations, has a tremendous force and an
incalculable scope. We can only vaguely assess the
scope of that tremendous force, if we consider that the
energy involved in perceiving and acting in the world
of everyday life is a product of the alignment of hardly
one-tenth of the emanations encased in man's cocoon.

"What happens at the moment of death is that all
that energy is released at once," he continued. "Liv-
ing beings at that moment become flooded by the most
inconceivable force. It is not the rolling force that has
cracked their gaps, because that force never enters
inside the cocoon; it only makes it collapse. What
floods them is the force of all the emanations that are
suddenly aligned after being dormant for a lifetime.
There is no outlet for such a giant force except to
escape through the gap."

He added that the old sorcerer has found a way to
tap that energy. By aligning a limited and very specific
spectrum of the dormant emanations inside the na-
gual's cocoon, the old seer taps a limited but gigantic
jolt.

"How do you think he takes that energy into his
own body?" I asked.

"By cracking the nagual's gap," he replied. "He
moves the nagual's assemblage point until the gap
opens a little. When the energy of newly aligned ema-
nations is released through that opening, he takes it
into his own gap."

"Why is that old seer doing what he's doing?" I
asked.

"My opinion is that he's caught in a circle he can't
break," he replied. "We got into an agreement with
him. He's doing his best to keep it, and so are we. We
can't judge him, yet we have to know that his path
doesn't lead to freedom. He knows that, and he also
knows he can't change it; he's trapped in a situation
of his own making. The only thing he can do is to
prolong his ally-like existence as long as he possibly
can."


16
The Mold of Man


Right after lunch, don Juan and I sat down to talk. He
started without any preamble. He announced that we
had come to the end of his explanation. He said that
he had discussed with me, in painstaking detail, all the
truths about awareness that the old seers had discov-
ered. He stressed that I now knew the order in which
the new seers had arranged them. In the last sessions
of his explanation, he said, he had given me a detailed
account of the two forces that aid our assemblage
points to move: the earth's boost and the rolling force.
He had also explained the three techniques worked
out by the new seers?stalking, intent, and dreaming
?and their effects on the movement of the assem-
blage point.

"Now, the only thing left for you to do before the
explanation of the mastery of awareness is com-
pleted," he went on, "is to break the barrier of per-
ception by yourself. You must move your assemblage
point, unaided by anyone, and align another great
band of emanations.

"Not to do this will turn everything you've learned
and done with me into merely talk, just words. And
words are fairly cheap."

He explained that when the assemblage point is
moving away from its customary position and reaches
a certain depth, it breaks a barrier that momentarily
disrupts its capacity to align emanations. We experi-
ence it as a moment of perceptual blankness. The old
seers called that moment the wall of fog, because a
bank of fog appears whenever the alignment of ema-
nations falters.

He said that there were three ways of dealing with
it. It could be taken abstractly as a barrier of percep-
tion; it could be felt as the act of piercing a tight paper
screen with the entire body; or it could be seen as a
wall of fog.

In the course of my apprenticeship with don Juan,
he had guided me countless times to see the barrier of
perception. At first I had liked the idea of a wall of
fog. Don Juan had warned me that the old seers had
also preferred to see it that way. He had said that there
is great comfort and ease in seeing it as a wall of fog,
but that there is also the grave danger of turning some-
thing incomprehensible into something somber and
foreboding; hence, his recommendation was to keep
incomprehensible things incomprehensible rather than
making them part of the inventory of the first atten-
tion.

After a short-lived feeling of comfort in seeing the
wall of fog I had to agree with don Juan that it was
better to keep the transition period as an incompre-
hensible abstraction, but by then it was impossible for
me to break the fixation of my awareness. Every time
I was placed in a position to break the barrier of per-
ception I saw the wall of fog.

On one occasion, in the past, I had complained to
don Juan and Genaro that although I wanted to see it
as something else, I couldn't change it. Don Juan had
commented that that was understandable, because I
was morbid and somber, that he and I were very dif-
ferent in this respect. He was lighthearted and practi-
cal and he did not worship the human inventory. I, on
the other hand, was unwilling to throw my inventory
out the window and consequently I was heavy, sinis-
ter, and impractical. I had been shocked and saddened
by his harsh criticism and became very gloomy. Don
Juan and Genaro had laughed until tears rolled down
their cheeks.

Genaro had added that on top of all that I was vin-
dictive and had a tendency to get fat. They had
laughed so hard I finally felt obliged to join them.

Don Juan had told me then that exercises of assem-
bling other worlds allowed the assemblage point to
gain experience in shifting. I had always wondered,
however, how to get the initial boost to dislodge my
assemblage point from its usual position. When I'd
questioned him about it in the past he'd pointed out
that since alignment is the force that is involved in
everything, intent is what makes the assemblage point
move.

I asked him again about it.

"You're in a position now to answer that question
yourself," he replied. "The mastery of awareness is
what gives the assemblage point its boost. After all,
there is really very little to us human beings; we are,
in essence, an assemblage point fixed at a certain po-
sition. Our enemy and at the same time our friend is
our internal dialogue, our inventory. Be a warrior;
shut off your internal dialogue; make your inventory
and then throw it away. The new seers make accurate
inventories and then laugh at them. Without the inven-
tory the assemblage point becomes free."

Don Juan reminded me that he had talked a great
deal about one of the most sturdy aspects of our inven-
tory: our idea of God. That aspect, he said, was like a
powerful glue that bound the assemblage point to its
original position. If I were going to assemble another
true world with another great band of emanations, I
had to take an obligatory step in order to release all
ties from my assemblage point.

"That step is to see the mold of man," he said.
"You must do that today unaided."

"What's the mold of man?" I asked.

"I've helped you see it many times," he replied.
"You know what I'm talking about."

I refrained from saying that I did not know what he
was talking about. If he said that I had seen the mold
of man, I must have done that, although I did not have
the foggiest idea what it was like.

He knew what was going through my mind. He gave
me a knowing smile and slowly shook his head from
side to side.

"The mold of man is a huge cluster of emanations
in the great band of organic life," he said. "It is called
the mold of man because the cluster appears only in-
side the cocoon of man.

"The mold of man is the portion of the Eagle's em-
anations that seers can see directly without any danger
to themselves."

There was a long pause before he spoke again.

"To break the barrier of perception is the last task
of the mastery of awareness," he said. "In order to
move your assemblage point to that position you must
gather enough energy. Make a journey of recovery.
Remember what you've done!"

I tried unsuccessfully to recall what was the mold of
man. I felt an excruciating frustration that soon turned
into real anger. I was furious with myself, with don
Juan, with everybody.

Don Juan was untouched by my fury. He said mat-
ter-of-factly that anger was a natural reaction to the
hesitation of the assemblage point to move on com-
mand.

"It will be a long time before you can apply the
principle that your command is the Eagle's com-
mand," he said. "That's the essence of the mastery of
intent. In the meantime, make a command now not to
fret, not even at the worst moments of doubt. It will
be a slow process until that command is heard and
obeyed as if it were the Eagle's command."

He also said that there was an unmeasurable area of
awareness in between the customary position of the
assemblage point and the position where there are no
more doubts, which is almost the place where the bar-
rier of perception makes its appearance. In that un-
measurable area, warriors fall prey to every
conceivable misdeed. He warned me to be on the
lockout and not lose confidence, for I would unavoid-
ably be struck at one time or another by gripping feel-
ings of defeat.

"The new seers recommend a very simple act when
impatience, or despair, or anger, or sadness comes
their way," he continued. "They recommend that
warriors roll their eyes. Any direction will do; I prefer
to roll mine clockwise.

"The movement of the eyes makes the assemblage
point shift momentarily. In that movement, you will
find relief. This is in lieu of true mastery of intent."'

I complained that there was not enough time for him
to tell me more about intent.

"It will all come back to you someday," he assured
me. "One thing will trigger another. One key word
and all of it will tumble out of you as if the door of an
overstuffed closet had given way."

He went back then to discussing the mold of man.
He said that to see it on my own, unaided by anyone,
was an important step, because all of us have certain
ideas that must be broken before we are free; the seer
who travels into the unknown to see the unknowable
must be in an impeccable state of being.

He winked at me and said that to be in an impecca-
ble state of being is to be free of rational assumptions
and rational fears. He added that both my rational
assumptions and my rational fears were preventing me
at that moment from realigning the emanations that
would make me remember seeing the mold of man.
He urged me to relax and move my eyes in order to
make my assemblage point shift. He repeated over
and over that it was really important to remember
having seen the mold before I see it again. And since
he was pressed for time there was no room for my
usual slowness.

I moved my eyes as he suggested. Almost immedi-
ately I forgot my discomfort and then a sudden flash
of memory came to me and I remembered that I had
seen the mold of man. It had happened years earlier
on an occasion that had been quite memorable to me,
because from the point of view of my Catholic up-
bringing, don Juan had made the most sacrilegious
statements I had ever heard.

It had all started as a casual conversation while we
hiked in the foothills of the Sonoran desert. He was
explaining to me the implications of what he was doing
to me with his teachings. We had stopped to rest and
had sat down on some large boulders. He had contin-
ued explaining his teaching procedure, and this had
encouraged me to try for the hundredth time to give
him an account of how I felt about it. It was evident
that he did not want to hear about it anymore. He
made me change levels of awareness and told me that
if I would see the mold of man, I might understand
everything he was doing and thus save us both years
of toil.

He gave me a detailed explanation of what the mold
of man was. He did not talk about it in terms of the
Eagle's emanations, but in terms of a pattern of energy
that serves to stamp the qualities of humanness on an
amorphous blob of biological matter. At least, I under-
stood it that way, especially after he further described
the mold of man using a mechanical analogy. He said
that it was like a gigantic die that stamps out human
beings endlessly as if they were coming to it on a
mass-production conveyor belt. He vividly mimed the
process by bringing the palms of his hands together
with great force, as if the die molded a human being
each time its two halves were clapped.

He also said that every species has a mold of its
own, and every individual of every species molded by
the process shows characteristics particular to its own
kind.

He began then an extremely disturbing elucidation
about the mold of man. He said that the old seers as
well as the mystics of our world have one thing in
common?they have been able to see the mold of man
but not understand what it is. Mystics, throughout the
centuries, have given us moving accounts of their ex-
periences. But these accounts, however beautiful, are
flawed by the gross and despairing mistake of believ-
ing the mold of man to be an omnipotent, omniscient
creator; and so is the interpretation of the old seers,
who called the mold of man a friendly spirit, a protec-
tor of man.

He said that the new seers are the only ones who
have the sobriety to see the mold of man and under-
stand what it is. What they have come to realize is that
the mold of man is not a creator, but the pattern of
every human attribute we can think of and some we
cannot even conceive. The mold is our God because
we are what it stamps us with and not because it has
created us from nothing and made us in its image and
likeness. Don Juan said that in his opinion to fall on
our knees in the presence of the mold of man reeks of
arrogance and human self-centeredness.

As I heard don Juan's explanation I got terribly wor-
ried. Even though I had never considered my self to be
a practicing Catholic, I was shocked by his blasphe-
mous implications. I had been politely listening to
him, yet I had been yearning for a pause in his barrage
of sacrilegious judgments in order to change the sub-
ject. But he went on drumming his point in a merciless
way. I finally interrupted him and told him that I be-
lieved that God exists.

He retorted that my belief was based on faith and,
as such, was a secondhand conviction that did not
amount to anything; my belief in the existence of God
was, like everyone else's, based on hearsay and not
on the act of seeing, he said.

He assured me that even if I was able to see, I was
bound to make the same misjudgment that mystics
have made. Anyone who sees the mold of man auto-
matically assumes that it is God.

He called the mystical experience a chance seeing,
a one-shot affair that has no significance whatsoever
because it is the result of a random movement of the
assemblage point. He asserted that the new seers are
indeed the only ones who can pass a fair judgment on
this matter, because they have ruled out chance
seeings and are capable of seeing the mold of man as
often as they please.

They have seen, therefore, that what we call God is
a static prototype of humanness without any power.
For the mold of man cannot under any circumstances
help us by intervening in our behalf, or punish our
wrongdoings, or reward us in any way. We are simply
the product of its stamp; we are its impression. The
mold of man is exactly what its name tells us it is, a
pattern, a form, a cast that groups together a particular
bunch of fiberlike elements, which we call man.

What he had said put me in a state of great distress.
But he seemed unconcerned with my genuine turmoil.
He kept on needling me with what he called the unfor-
givable crime of the chance seers, which makes us
focus our irreplaceable energy on something that has
no power whatsoever to do anything. The more he
talked, the greater my annoyance. When I became so
annoyed that I was about to shout at him, he had me
change into yet a deeper state of heightened aware-
ness. He hit me on my right side, between my hipbone
and my rib cage. That blow sent me soaring into a
radiant light, into a diaphanous source of the most
peaceful and exquisite beatitude. That light was a
haven, an oasis in the blackness around me.

From my subjective point of view, I saw that light
for an immeasurable length of time. The splendor of
the sight was beyond anything I can say, and yet I
could not figure out what it was that made it so beau-
tiful. Then the idea came to me that its beauty grew
out of a sense of harmony, a sense of peace and rest,
of having arrived, of being safe at long last. I felt my-
self inhaling and exhaling in quietude and relief. What
a gorgeous sense of plenitude! I knew beyond a
shadow of doubt that I had come face to face with
God, the source of everything. And I knew that God
loved me. God was love and forgiveness. The light
bathed me, and I felt clean, delivered. I wept uncon-
trollably, mainly for myself. The sight of that resplen-
dent light made me feel unworthy, villainous.

Suddenly, I heard don Juan's voice in my ear. He
said that I had to go beyond the mold, that the mold
was merely a stage, a stopover that brought temporary
peace and serenity to those who journey into the un-
known, but that it was sterile, static. It was at the
same time a flat reflected image in a mirror and the
mirror itself. And the image was man's image.

I passionately resented what don Juan was saying; I
rebelled against his blasphemous, sacrilegious words.
I wanted to tell him off, but I could not break the
binding power of my seeing. I was caught in it. Don
Juan seemed to know exactly how I felt and what I
wanted to tell him.

"You can't tell the nagual off," he said in my ear.
"It is the nagual who's enabling you to see. It is the
nagual's technique, the nagual's power. The nagual is
the guide."

It was at that point that I realized something about
the voice in my ear. It was not don Juan's, although it
sounded very much like his voice. Also, the voice was
right. The instigator of that seeing was the nagual Juan
Matus. It was his technique and his power that was
making me see God. He said it was not God, but the
mold of man; I knew that he was right. Yet I could not
admit that, not out of annoyance or stubbornness, but
simply out of a sense of ultimate loyalty to and love
for the divinity that was in front of me.

As I gazed into the light with all the passion I was
capable of, the light seemed to condense and I saw a
man. A shiny man that exuded charisma, love, under-
standing, sincerity, truth. A man that was the sum
total of all that is good.

The fervor I felt on seeing that man was well beyond
anything I had ever felt in my life. I did fall on my
knees. I wanted to worship God personified, but don
Juan intervened and whacked me on my left upper
chest, close to my clavicle, and I lost sight of God.

I was left with a tantalizing feeling, a mixture of
remorse, elation, certainties, and doubts. Don Juan
made fun of me. He called me pious and careless and
said I would make a great priest; now I could even
pass for a spiritual leader who had had a chance seeing
of God. He urged me, in ajocular way, to start preach-
ing and describe what I had seen to everyone.

In a very casual but seemingly interested manner he
made a statement that was part question, part asser-
tion.

"And the man?" he asked. "You can't forget that
God is a male."

The immensity of something indefinable began to
dawn on me as I entered into a state of great clarity.

"Very cozy, eh?" don Juan added, smiling. "God
is a male. What a relief"

After recounting to don Juan what I had remem-
bered, I asked him about something that had just
struck me as being terribly odd. To see the mold of
man, I had obviously gone through a shift of my as-
semblage point. The recollection of the feelings and
realizations I had had then was so vivid that it gave
me a sense of utter futility. Everything I had done and
felt at that time I was feeling now. I asked him how it
was possible that having had such a clear comprehen-
sion, I could have forgotten it so completely. It was as
if nothing of what had happened to me had mattered,
for I always had to start from point one regardless of
how much I might have advanced in the past.

"That's only an emotional impression," he said. "A
total misapprehension. Whatever you did years ago is
solidly enclosed in some unused emanations. That day
when I made you see the mold of man, for instance, I
had a true misapprehension myself. I thought that if
you saw it, you would be able to understand it. It was
a true misunderstanding on my part."

Don Juan explained that he had always regarded
himself as being very slow to understand. He had
never had any chance of testing his belief, because he
did not have a point of reference. When I came along
and he became a teacher, which was something totally
new to him, he realized that there is no way to speed
up understanding and that to dislodge the assemblage
point is not enough. He had thought that it would be
sufficient. Soon he became aware that since the as-
semblage point normally shifts during dreams, some-
times to extraordinarily distant positions, whenever
we undergo an induced shift we are all experts at im-
mediately compensating for it. We rebalance our-
selves constantly and activity goes on as if nothing has
happened to us.

He remarked that the value of the new seers' con-
clusions does not become evident until one tries to
move someone else's assemblage point. The new
seers said that what counts in this respect is the effort
to reinforce the stability of the assemblage point in its
new position. They considered this to be the only
teaching procedure worth discussing. And they knew
that it is a long process that has to be carried out little
by little at a snail's pace.

Don Juan said then that he had used power plants at
the beginning of my apprenticeship in accordance with
a recommendation of the new seers. They knew by
experience and by seeing that power plants shake the
assemblage point way out of its normal setting. The
effect of power plants on the assemblage point is in
principle very much like that of dreams: dreams make
it move; but power plants manage the shift on a
greater and more engulfing scale. A teacher then uses
the disorienting effects of such a shift to reinforce the
notion that the perception of the world is never final.

I remembered then that I had seen the mold of man
five more times over the years. With each new time I
had become less passionate about it. I could never get
over the fact, however, that I always saw God as a
male. At the end it stopped being God for me and
became the mold of man, not because of what don
Juan had said, but because the position of a male God
became untenable. I could then understand don Juan's
statements about it. They had not been blasphemous
or sacrilegious in the least; he had not made them from
within the context of the daily world. He was right in
saying that the new seers have an edge in being capa-
ble of seeing the mold of man as often as they want.
But what was more important to me was that they had
sobriety in order to examine what they saw.

I asked him why it was that I always saw the mold
of man as a male. He said that it was because my
assemblage point did not have the stability then to
remain completely glued to its new position and
shifted laterally in man's band. It was the same case
as seeing the barrier of perception as a wall of fog.
What made the assemblage point move laterally was a
nearly unavoidable desire, or necessity, to render the
incomprehensible in terms of what is most familiar to
us: a barrier is a wall and the mold of man cannot be
anything else but a man. He thought that if I were a
woman I would see the mold as a woman.

Don Juan stood up then and said that it was time for
us to take a stroll in town, that I should see the mold
of man among people. We walked in silence to the
square, but before we got there I had an uncontainable
surge of energy and ran down the street to the out-
skirts of town. I came to a bridge, and right there, as
if it had been waiting for me, I saw the mold of man
as a resplendent, warm, amber light.

I fell on my knees, not so much out of piety, but as
physical reaction to awe. The sight of the mold of man
was more astonishing than ever. I felt, without any
arrogance, that I had gone through an enormous
change since the first time I had seen it. However, all
the things I had seen and learned had only given me a
greater, more profound appreciation for the miracle
that I had in front of my eyes.

The mold of man was superimposed on the bridge
at first, then I refocused my eyes and saw that the
mold of man extended up and down into infinity; the
bridge was but a meager shell, a tiny sketch superim-
posed on the eternal. And so were the minute figures
of people who moved around me, looking at me with
unabashed curiosity. But I was beyond their touch,
although at that moment I was as vulnerable as I could
be. The mold of man had no power to protect me or
spare me, yet I loved it with a passion that knew no
limits.

I thought that I understood then something that don
Juan had told me repeatedly, that real affection cannot
be an investment. I would have gladly remained the
servant of the mold of man, not for what it could give
me, for it has nothing to give, but for the sheer affec-
tion I felt for it.

I had the sensation of something pulling me away,
and before I disappeared from its presence I shouted
a promise to the mold of man, but a great force
whisked me away before I could finish staling what I
meant. I was suddenly kneeling at the bridge while a
group of peasants looked at me and laughed.

Don Juan got to my side and helped me up and
walked me back to the house.


"There are two ways of seeing the mold of man,"
don Juan began as soon as we sat down. "You can see
it as a man or you can see it as a light. That depends
on the shift of the assemblage point. If the shift is
lateral, the mold is a human being; if the shift is in the
midsection of man's band, the mold is a light. The only
value of what you've done today is that your assem-
blage point shifted in the midsection."

He said that the position where one sees the mold
of man is very close to that where the dreaming body
and the barrier of perception appear. That was the
reason the new seers recommend that the mold of man
be seen and understood.

"Are you sure you understand what the mold of
man really is?" he asked with a smile.

"I assure you, don Juan, that I'm perfectly aware
of what the mold of man is," I said.

"I heard you shouting inanities to the mold of man
when I got to the bridge," he said with a most mali-
cious smile.

I told him that I had felt like a worthless servant
worshiping a worthless master, and yet I was moved
out of sheer affection to promise undying love.

He found it all hilarious and laughed until he was
choking.

"The promise of a worthless servant to a worthless
master is worthless," he said and choked again with
laughter.

I did not feel like defending my position. My affec-
tion for the mold of man was offered freely without
thought of recompense. It did not matter to me that
my promise was worthless.


17
The Journey
of the Dreaming Body


Don Juan told me that the two of us were going to
drive to the city of Oaxaca for the last time. He made
it very clear that we would never be there together
again. Perhaps his feeling might return to the place, he
said, but never again the totality of himself.

In Oaxaca, don Juan spent hours looking at mun-
dane, trivial things, the faded color of walls, the shape
of distant mountains, the pattern on cracked cement,
the faces of people. Then we went to the square and
sat on his favorite bench, which was unoccupied, as it
always was when he wanted it.

During our long walk in the city, I had tried my best
to work myself into a mood of sadness and morose-
ness, but I just could not do it. There was something
festive about his departure. He explained it as the un-
restrainable vigor of total freedom.

"Freedom is like a contagious disease," he said. "It
is transmitted; its carrier is an impeccable nagual.
People might not appreciate that, and that's because
they don't want to be free. Freedom is frightening.
Remember that. But not for us. I've groomed myself
nearly all my life for this moment. And so will you."

He repeated over and over that at the stage where I
was, no rational assumptions should interfere with my
actions. He said that the dreaming body and the bar-
rier of perception are positions of the assemblage
point, and that that knowledge is as vital to seers as
knowing how to read and write is to modern man.
Both are accomplishments attained after years of
practice.

"It is very important that you remember, right now,
the time when your assemblage point reached that po-
sition and it created your dreaming body," he said
with tremendous urgency.

Then he smiled and remarked that time was ex-
tremely short; he said that the recollection of the main
journey of my dreaming body would put my assem-
blage point in a position to break the barrier of percep-
tion in order to assemble another world.

"The dreaming body is known by different names,"
he said after a long pause. "The name I like the best
is, the other. That term belongs to the old seers, to-
gether with the mood. I don't particularly care for
their mood, but I have to admit that I like their term
The other. It's mysterious and forbidden. Just like the
old seers, it gives me the feeling of darkness, of shad-
ows. The old seers said that the other always comes
shrouded in wind."

Over the years don Juan and other members of his
party had tried to make me aware that we can be in
two places at once, that we can experience a sort of
perceptual dualism.

As don Juan spoke, I began to remember something
so deeply forgotten that at first it was as if I had only
heard about it. Then, step by step, I realized that I
had lived that experience myself.

I had been in two places at once. It happened one
night in the mountains of northern Mexico. I had been
collecting plants with don Juan all day. We had
stopped for the night and I had nearly fallen asleep
from fatigue when suddenly there was a gust of wind
and don Genaro sprang up from the darkness right in
front of me and nearly scared me to death.

My first thought was one of suspicion. I believed
that don Genaro had been hiding in the bushes all day,
waiting for darkness to set in before making his terri-
fying appearance. As I looked at him prancing around,
I noticed that there was something truly odd about him
that night. Something palpable, real, and yet some-
thing I could not pinpoint.

He joked with me and horsed around, performing
acts that defied my reason. Don Juan laughed like an
idiot at my dismay. When he judged that the time was
right, he made me shift into heightened awareness and
for a moment I was able to see don Juan and don
Genaro as two blobs of light. Genaro was not the flesh-
and-blood don Genaro that I knew in my state of nor-
mal awareness but his dreaming body. I could tell,
because I saw him as a ball of fire that was above the
ground. He was not rooted as don Juan was. It was as
if Genaro, the blob of light, were on the verge of taking
off, already up in the air, a couple of feet off the
ground, ready to zoom away.

Another thing I had done that night, which suddenly
became clear to me as I recollected the event, was
that I knew automatically that I had to move my eyes
in order to make my assemblage point shift. I could,
with my intent, align the emanations that made me see
Genaro as a blob of light, or I could align the emana-
tions that made me see him as merely odd, unknown,
strange.

When I saw Genaro as odd, his eyes had a malevo-
lent glare, like the eyes of a beast in the darkness. But
they were eyes, nonetheless. I did not see them as
points of amber light.

That night don Juan said that Genaro was going to
help my assemblage point shift very deeply, that I
should imitate him and follow everything he did. Ge-
naro stuck out his rear end and then thrust his pelvis
forward with great force. I thought it was an obscene
gesture. He repeated it over and over again, moving
around as if he were dancing.

Don Juan nudged me on the arm, urging me to imi-
tate Genaro, and I did. Both of us sort of romped
around, performing that grotesque movement. After a
while, I had the feeling that my body was executing
the movement on its own, without what seemed to be
the real me. The separation between my body and the
real me became even more pronounced, and then at a
given instant I was looking at some ludicrous scene
where two men were making lewd gestures at each
other.

I watched in fascination and realized that I was one
of the two men. The moment I became aware of it I
felt something pulling me and I found myself again
thrusting my pelvis backward and forward in unison
with Genaro. Almost immediately, I noticed that an-
other man standing next to don Juan was watching us.
The wind was blowing around him. I could see his hair
being ruffled. He was naked and seemed embarrassed.
The wind gathered around him as if protecting him, or
perhaps the opposite, as if trying to blow him away.

I was slow to realize that I was the other man. When
I did, I got the shock of my life. An imponderable
physical force pulled me apart as if I were made out
of fibers, and I was again looking at a man that was
me, romping around with Genaro, gaping at me while
I looked. And at the same time, I was looking at a
naked man that was me, gaping at me while I made
lewd gestures with Genaro. The shock was so great
that I broke the rhythm of my movements and fell
down.

The next thing I knew, don Juan was helping me to
stand up. Genaro and the other me, the naked one,
had disappeared.

I had also remembered that don Juan had refused to
discuss the event. He did not explain it except to say
that Genaro was an expert in creating his double, or
the other, and that I had had long interactions with
Genaro's double in states of normal awareness with-
out ever detecting it.

"That night, as he has done hundreds of times be-
fore, Genaro made your assemblage point shift very
deep into your left side," don Juan commented after I
had recounted to him everything I had remembered.
"His power was such that he dragged your assem-
blage point to the position where the dreaming body
appears. You saw your dreaming body watching you.
And his dancing did the trick."

I asked him to explain to me how Genaro's lewd
movement could have produced such a drastic effect.

"You're a prude," he said. "Genaro used your im-
mediate displeasure and embarrassment at having to
perform a lewd gesture. Since he was in his dreaming
body, he had the power to see the Eagle's emanations;
from that advantage it was a cinch to make your as-
semblage point move."

He said that whatever Genaro had helped me to do
that night was minor, that Genaro had moved my as-
semblage point and made it produce a dreaming body
many, many times, but that those events were not
what he wanted me to remember.

"I want you to realign the proper emanations and
remember the time when you really woke up in a
dreaming position,"' he said.

A strange surge of energy seemed to explode in-
side me and I knew what he wanted me to remem-
ber. I could not, however, focus my memory on
the complete event. I could only recall a fragment
of it.

I remembered that one morning, don Juan, don Ge-
naro. and I had sat on that very same bench while I
was in a state of normal awareness. Don Genaro had
said, all of a sudden, that he was going to make his
body leave the bench without getting up. The state-
ment was completely out of the context of what we
had been discussing. I was accustomed to don Juan's
orderly, didactic words and actions. I turned to don
Juan, expecting a clue, but he remained impassive,
looking straight ahead as if don Genaro and I were not
there at all.

Don Genaro nudged me to attract my attention, and
then I witnessed a most disturbing sight. I actually saw
Genaro on the other side of the square. He was
beckoning me to come. But I also saw don Genaro
sitting next to me, looking straight ahead, just as don
Juan was.

I wanted to say something, to express my awe, but
I found myself dumbstruck, imprisoned by some force
around me that did not let me talk. I again looked at
Genaro across the park. He was still there, motioning
to me with a gesture of his head to join him.

My emotional distress mounted by the second. My
stomach was getting upset, and finally I had tunnel
vision, a tunnel that led directly to Genaro on the
other side of the square. And then a great curiosity, or
a great fear, which seemed to be the same thing at that
moment, pulled me to where he was. I actually soared
through the air and got to where he was. He made me
turn around and pointed to the three people who were
sitting on a bench in a static position, as if time had
been suspended.

I felt a terrible discomfort, an internal itching, as if
the soft organs in the cavity of my body were on fire,
and then I was back on the bench, but Genaro was
gone. He waved goodbye to me from across the
square and disappeared among the people going to the
market.

Don Juan became very animated. He kept on look-
ing at me. He stood up and walked around me. He sat
down again and could not keep a straight face as he
talked to me.

I realized why he was acting that way. I had entered
into a state of heightened awareness without being
helped by don Juan. Genaro had succeeded in making
my assemblage point move by itself.

I laughed involuntarily upon seeing my writing pad,
which don Juan solemnly put inside his pocket. He
said that he was going to use my state of heightened
awareness to show me that there is no end to the mys-
tery of man and to the mystery of the world.

I focused all my concentration on his words. How-
ever, don Juan said something I did not understand. I
asked him to repeat what he had said. He began talk-
ing very softly. I thought he had lowered his voice so
as not to be overheard by other people. I listened care-
fully, but I could not understand a word of what he
was saying; he was either speaking in a language for-
eign to me or it was mumbo jumbo. The strange part
of it was that something had caught my undivided at-
tention, either the rhythm of his voice or the fact that
I had forced myself to understand. I had the feeling
that my mind was different from usual, although I
could not figure out what the difference was. I had a
hard time thinking, reasoning out what was taking
place.

Don Juan talked to me very softly in my ear. He
said that since I had entered into heightened aware-
ness without any help from him my assemblage point
was very loose, and that I could let it shift into the left
side by relaxing, by falling half asleep on that bench.
He assured me that he was watching over me, that I
had nothing to fear. He urged me to relax, to let my
assemblage point move.

I instantly felt the heaviness of being deeply asleep.
At one moment, I became aware that I was having a
dream. I saw a house that I had seen before. I was
approaching it as if I were walking on the street. There
were other houses, but I could not pay any attention
to them. Something had fixed my awareness on the
particular house I was seeing. It was a big modern
stucco house with a front lawn.

When I got closer to that house, I had a feeling of
familiarity with it, as if I had dreamed of it before. I
walked on a gravel path to the front door; it was open
and I walked inside. There was a dark hall and a large
living room to the right, furnished with a dark-red
couch and matching armchairs set in a corner. I was
definitely having tunnel vision; I could see only what
was in front of my eyes.

A young woman was standing by the couch as if she
had just stood up as I came in. She was lean and tall,
exquisitely dressed in a tailored green suit. She was
perhaps in her late twenties. She had dark-brown hair,
burning brown eyes that seemed to smile, and a
pointed, finely chiseled nose. Her complexion was fair
but had been tanned to a gorgeous brown. I found her
ravishingly beautiful. She seemed to be an American.
She nodded at me, smiling, and extended her hands
with the palms down as if she were helping me up.

I clasped her hands in a most awkward movement.
I scared myself and tried to back away, but she held
me firmly and yet so gently. Her hands were long and
beautiful. She spoke to me in Spanish with a faint
trace of an accent. She begged me to relax, to feel her
hands, to concentrate my attention on her face and to
follow the movement of her mouth. I wanted to ask
her who she was, but I could not utter a word.

Then I heard don Juan's voice in my ear. He said,
"Oh, there you are," as if he had just found me. I was
sitting on the park bench with him. But I could also
hear the young woman's voice. She said, "Come and
sit with me." I did just that and began a most incredi-
ble shifting of points of view. I was alternately with
don Juan and with that young woman. I could see both
of them as clearly as anything.

Don Juan asked me if I liked her, if I found her
appealing and soothing. I could not speak, but some-
how I conveyed to him the feeling that I did like that
lady immensely. I thought, without any overt reason,
that she was a paragon of kindness, that she was indis-
pensable to what don Juan was doing with me.

Don Juan spoke in my ear again and said that if I
liked her that much I should wake up in her house,
that my feeling of warmth and affection for her would
guide me. I felt giggly and reckless. A sensation of
overwhelming excitation rippled through my body. I
felt as if the excitation were actually disintegrating me.
I did not care what happened to me. I gladly plunged
into a blackness, black beyond words, and then I
found myself in the young woman's house. I was sit-
ting with her on the couch.

After an instant of sheer animal panic, I realized
that somehow I was not complete. Something was
missing in me. I did not, however, find the situation
threatening. The thought crossed my mind that I was
dreaming and that I was presently going to wake up
on the park bench in Oaxaca with don Juan, where I
really was, where I really belonged.

The young woman helped me to get up and took me
to a bathroom where a large tub was filled with water.
I realized then that I was stark naked. She gently made
me get into the tub and held my head up while I half
floated in it.

After a while she helped me out of the tub. I felt
weak and flimsy. I lay down on the living-room couch
and she came close to me. I could hear the beating of
her heart and the pressure of blood rushing through
her body. Her eyes were like two radiant sources of
something that was not light, or heat, but curiously in
between the two. I knew that I was seeing the force of
life projecting out of her body through her eyes. Her
whole body was like a live furnace; it glowed.

I felt a weird tremor that agitated my whole being.
It was as if my nerves were exposed and someone was
plucking them. The sensation was agonizing. Then I
either fainted or fell asleep.

When I woke up, someone was putting face towels
soaked in cold water on my face and the back of my
neck. I saw the young woman sitting by my head on
the bed where I was lying. She had a pail of water on
a night table. Don Juan was standing at the foot of the
bed with my clothes draped over his arm.

I was fully awake then. I sat up. They had covered
me with a blanket.

"How's the traveler?" don Juan asked, smiling.
"Are you in one piece now?"

That was all I could remember. I narrated this epi-
sode to don Juan, and as I talked, I recalled another
fragment. I remembered that don Juan had taunted
and teased me about finding me naked in the lady's
bed. I had gotten terribly irritated at his remarks. I
had put on my clothes and stomped out of the house
in a fury.

Don Juan had caught up with me on the front lawn.
In a very serious tone he had remarked that I was my
ugly stupid self again, that I had put myself together
by being embarrassed, which had proved to him that
there was still no end to my self-importance. But he
had added in a conciliatory tone that that was not
important at the moment; what was significant was the
fact that I had moved my assemblage point very
deeply into the left side and consequently I had trav-
eled an enormous distance.

He had spoken of wonders and mysteries, but I had
not been able to listen to him, for I had been caught in
the crossfire between fear and self-importance. I was
actually fuming. I was certain that don Juan had hyp-
notized me in the park and had then taken me to that
lady's house, and that the two of them had done terri-
ble things to me.

My fury was interrupted. Something out there in the
street was so horrifying, so shocking to me, that my
anger stopped instantaneously. But before my
thoughts became fully rearranged, don Juan hit me on
my back and nothing of what had just taken place
remained. I found myself back in my blissful every-
day-life stupidity, happily listening to don Juan, wor-
rying about whether or not he liked me.

As I was telling don Juan about the new fragment
that I had just remembered I realized that one of his
methods for handling my emotional turmoil was to
make me shift into normal awareness.

"The only thing that soothes those who journey into
the unknown is oblivion," he said. "What a relief to
be in the ordinary world!

"That day, you accomplished a marvelous feat. The
sober thing for me to do was not to let you focus on it
at all. Just as you began to really panic I made you
shift into normal awareness; I moved your assemblage
point beyond the position where there are no more
doubts. There are two such positions for warriors. In
one you have no more doubts because you know
everything. In the other, which is normal awareness,
you have no doubts because you don't know anything.

"It was too soon then for you to know what had
really happened. But I think the right time to know is
now. Looking at that street, you were about to find
out where your dreaming position had been. You trav-
eled an enormous distance that day."

Don Juan scrutinized me with a mixture of glee and
sadness. I was trying my best to keep under control
the strange agitation I was feeling. I sensed that some-
thing terribly important to me was lost inside my mem-
ory, or, as don Juan would have put it, inside some
unused emanations that at one time had been aligned.

My struggle to keep calm proved to be the wrong
thing to do. All at once, my knees wobbled and ner-
vous spasms ran through my midsection. I mumbled,
unable to voice a question. I had to swallow hard and
breathe deeply before I regained my calmness.

"When we first sat down here to talk, I said that no
rational assumptions should interfere with the actions
of a seer," he continued in a stern tone. "I knew that
in order to reclaim what you've done, you'd have to
dispense with rationality, but you'd have to do it in
.the level of awareness you are in now."

He explained that I had to understand that rational-
ity is a condition of alignment, merely the result of the
position of the assemblage point. He emphasized that
I had to understand this when I was in a state of great
vulnerability, as I was at that moment. To understand
it when my assemblage point had reached the position
where there are no doubts was useless, because reali-
zations of that nature are commonplace in that posi-
tion. It was equally useless to understand it in a state
of normal awareness; in that state, such realizations
are emotional outbursts that are valid only for as long
as the emotion lasts.

"I've said that you traveled a great distance that
day," he said calmly. "And I said that because I know
it. I was there, remember?"

I was sweating profusely out of nervousness and
anxiety.

"You traveled because you woke up at a distant
dreaming position," he continued. "When Genaro
pulled you across the plaza, right here from this
bench, he paved the way for your assemblage point to
move from normal awareness all the way to the posi-
tion where the dreaming body appears. Your dream-
ing body actually flew over an incredible distance in
the blink of an eyelid. Yet that's not the important
part. The mystery is in the dreaming position. If it is
strong enough to pull you, you can go to the ends of
this world or beyond it, just as the old seers did. They
disappeared from this world because they woke up at
a dreaming position beyond the limits of the known.
Your dreaming position that day was in this world,
but quite a distance from the city of Oaxaca."

"How does ajourney like that take place?" I asked.

"There is no way of knowing how it is done," he
said. "Strong emotion, or unbending intent, or great
interest serves as a guide; then the assemblage point
gets powerfully fixed at the dreaming position, long
enough to drag there all the emanations that are inside
the cocoon."

Don Juan said then that he had made me see count-
less times over the years of our association, either in
states of normal awareness or in states of heightened
awareness; I had seen countless things that I was now
beginning to understand in a more coherent fashion.
This coherence was not logical or rational, but it clar-
ified, nonetheless, in whatever strange way, every-
thing I had done, everything that was done to me, and
everything I had seen in all those years with him. He
said that now I needed to have one last clarification:
the coherent but irrational realization that everything
in the world we have learned to perceive is inextrica-
bly tied to the position where the assemblage point is
located, if the assemblage point is displaced from that
position, the world will cease to be what it is to us.

Don Juan stated that a displacement of the assem-
blage point beyond the midline of the cocoon of man
makes the entire world we know vanish from our view
in one instant, as if it had been erased?for the stabil-
ity, the substantiality, that seems to belong to our per-
ceivable world is just the force of alignment. Certain
emanations are routinely aligned because of the fixa-
tion of the assemblage point on one specific spot; that
is all there is to our world.

"The soundness of the world is not the mirage," he
continued, "the mirage is the fixation of the assem-
blage point on any spot. When seers shift their assem-
blage points, they are not confronted with an illusion,
they are confronted with another world; that new
world is as real as the one we are watching now, but
the new fixation of their assemblage points, which pro-
duces that new world, is as much of a mirage as the
old fixation.

"Take yourself, for example; you are now in a state
of heightened awareness. Whatever you are capable
of doing in such a state is not an illusion; it is as real
as the world you will face tomorrow in your daily life,
and yet tomorrow the world you are witnessing now
won't exist. It exists only when your assemblage point
moves to the particular spot where you are now."

He added that the task warriors are faced with, after
they finish their training, is one of integration. In the
course of training, warriors, especially nagual men,
are made to shift to as many individual spots as pos-
sible. He said that in my case I had moved to countless
positions that I would have to integrate someday into
a coherent whole.

"For instance, if you would shift your assemblage
point to a specific position, you'd remember who that
lady is," he continued with a strange smile. "Your
assemblage point has been at that spot hundreds of
times. It should be the easiest thing for you to inte-
grate it."

As though my recollection depended on his sugges-
tion, I began to have vague memories, feelings of
sorts. There was a feeling of boundless affection that
seemed to attract me; a most pleasant sweetness filled
the air, exactly as if someone had just come up from
behind me and poured that scent over me. I even
turned around. And then I remembered. She was
Carol, the nagual woman' I had been with her only the
day before. How could I have forgotten her?

I had an indescribable moment in which I think all
the feelings of my psychological repertory ran through
my mind. Was it possible, I asked myself, that I had
woken up in her house in Tucson, Arizona, two thou-
sand miles away? And are each of the instances of
heightened awareness so isolated that one cannot re-
member them?

Don Juan came to my side and put his arm on my
shoulder. He said that he knew exactly how I felt. His
benefactor had made him go through a similar experi-
ence. And just as he himself was now trying to do with
me, his benefactor had tried to do with him: soothe
with words. He had appreciated his benefactor's at-
tempt, but he doubted then as he doubted now that
there is a way to soothe anyone who realizes the jour-
ney of the dreaming body.

There was no doubt in my mind now. Something in
me had traveled the distance between the cities of
Oaxaca, Mexico, and Tucson, Arizona. I felt a strange
relief, as if I had been purged of guilt at long last.

During the years I had spent with don Juan, I had
had lapses of continuity in my memory. My being in
Tucson with him on that day was one of those lapses.
I remembered not being able to recall how I had gotten
to Tucson. I did not pay any attention to it, however.
I thought the lapse was the result of my activities with
don Juan. He was always very careful not to arouse
my rational suspicions in states of normal awareness,
but if suspicions were unavoidable he always curtly
explained them away by suggesting that the nature of
our activities fostered serious disparities of memory.

I told don Juan that since both of us had ended up
that day in the same place, I wondered whether it was
possible for two or more people to wake up at the
same dreaming position.

"Of course," he said. "That's the way the old Tol-
tec sorcerers took off into the unknown in packs. They
followed one another. There is no way of knowing
how one follows someone else. It's just done. The
dreaming body just does it. The presence of another
dreamer spurs it to do it. That day you pulled me with
you. And I followed because I wanted to be with
you."

I had so many questions to ask him, but every one
of them seemed superfluous.

"How is it possible that I didn't remember the na-
gual woman?" I muttered, and a horrible anguish and
longing gripped me. I was trying not to feel sad any-
more, but suddenly sadness ripped through me like
pain.

"You still don't remember her," he said. "Only
when your assemblage point shifts can you recollect
her. She is like a phantom to you, and so are you to
her. You've seen her once while you were in normal
awareness, but she's never seen you in her normal
awareness. To her you are as much a personage as she
is to you. With the difference that you may wake up
someday and integrate it all. You may have enough
time to do that, but she won't. Her time here is short."

I felt like protesting a terrible injustice. I mentally
prepared a barrage of objections, but I never voiced
them. Don Juan's smile was beaming. His eyes shone
with sheer glee and mischief. I had the sensation that
he was waiting for my statements, because he knew
what I was going to say. And that sensation stopped
me, or rather I did not say anything because my as-
semblage point had again moved by itself. And I knew
then that the nagual woman could not be pitied for not
having time, nor could I rejoice for having it.

Don Juan was reading me like a book. He urged me
to finish my realization and voice the reason for not
feeling sorry or for not rejoicing. I felt for an instant
that I knew why. But then I lost the thread.

"The excitation of having time is equal to the exci-
tation of not having it," he said. "It's all the same."

"To feel sad is not the same as feeling sorry " I
said. "And I feel terribly sad."

"Who cares about sadness?" he said. "Think only
of the mysteries; mystery is all that matters. We are
living beings; we have to die and relinquish our aware-
ness. But if we could change just a tinge of that, what
mysteries must await us! What mysteries!"


18
Breaking the
Barrier of Perception


In the late afternoon, still in Oaxaca, don Juan and I
strolled around the square leisurely. As we ap-
proached his favorite bench the people who were sit-
ting there got up and left. We hurried over to it and
sat down.

"We've come to the end of my explanation of
awareness," he said. "And today, you are going to
assemble another world by yourself and leave all
doubts aside forever.

"There must be no mislake about what you are
going to do. Today, from the vantage point of
heightened awareness, you are going to make your
assemblage point move and in one instant you are
going to align the emanations of another world.

"In a few days, when Genaro and I meet you on a
mountaintop, you are going to do the same from the
disadvantage of normal awareness. You will have to
align the emanations of another world on a moment's
notice; if you don't you will die the death of an aver-
age man who falls from a precipice."

He was alluding to an act that he would have me
perform as the last of his teachings for the right side:
the act of jumping from a mountaintop into an abyss.

Don Juan stated that warriors ended their training
when they were capable of breaking the barrier of
perception, unaided, starting from a normal state of
awareness. The nagual led warriors to that threshold,
but success was up to the individual. The nagual
merely tested them by continually pushing them to
fend for themselves.

"The only force that can temporarily cancel out
alignment is alignment," he continued. "You will
have to cancel the alignment that keeps you perceiving
the world of daily affairs. By inlending a new position
for your assemblage point and by intending to keep it
fixed there long enough, you will assemble another
world and escape this one.

"The old seers are still defying death, to this day,
by doing just that, intending their assemblage points
to remain fixed on positions that place them in any of
the seven worlds."

"What will happen if I succeed in aligning another
world?" I asked.

"You will go to it," he replied. "As Genaro did,
one night in this very place when he was showing you
the mystery of alignment."

"Where will I be, don Juan?"

"In another world, of course. Where else?"

"What about the people around me, and the build-
ings, and the mountains, and everything else?"

"You'll be separated from all that by the very bar-
rier that you have broken: the barrier of perception.
And just like the seers who have buried themselves to
defy death, you won't be in this world."

There was a battle raging inside me as I heard his
statements. Some part of me clamored that don Juan's
position was untenable, while another part knew be-
yond any question that he was right.

I asked him what would happen if I moved my as-
semblage point while I was in the street, in the middle
of traffic in Los Angeles.

"Los Angeles will vanish, like a puff of air," he
replied with a serious expression. "But you will re-
main.

"That is the mystery I've been trying to explain to
you. You've experienced it, but you haven't under-
stood it yet, and today you will."

He said that I could not as yet use the boost of the
earth to shift into another great band of emanations,
but that since I had an imperative need to shift, that
need was going to serve me as a launcher.

Don Juan looked up at the sky. He stretched his
arms above his head as if he had been sitting for too
long and was pushing physical weariness out of his
body. He commanded me to turn off my internal dia-
logue and enter into inner silence. Then he stood up
and began to walk away from the square; he signaled
me to follow him. He took a deserted side street. I
recognized it as being the same street where Genaro
had given me his demonstration of alignment. The mo-
ment I recollected that, I found myself walking with
don Juan in a place that by then was very familiar to
me: a deserted plain with yellow dunes of what
seemed to be sulfur.

I recalled then that don Juan had made me perceive
that world hundreds of times. I also recalled that be-
yond the desolate landscape of the dunes there was
another world shining with an exquisite, uniform, pure
white light.

When don Juan and I entered into it this time, I
sensed that the light, which came from every direc-
tion, was not an invigorating light, but was so soothing
that it gave me the feeling that it was sacred.

As that sacred light bathed me a rational thought
exploded in my inner silence. I thought it was quite
possible that mystics and saints had made this journey
of the assemblage point. They had seen God in the
mold of man. They had seen hell in the sulfur dunes.
And then they had seen the glory of heaven in the
diaphanous light.

My rational thought burned out almost immediately
under the onslaughts of what I was perceiving. My
awareness was taken by a multitude of shapes, figures
of men, women, and children of all ages, and other
incomprehensible apparitions gleaming with a blinding
white light.

I saw don Juan, walking by my side, staring at me
and not at the apparitions, but the next instant I saw
him as a ball of luminosity, bobbing up and down a
few feet away from me. The ball made an abrupt and
frightening movement and came closer to me and I
saw inside it.

Don Juan was working his glow of awareness for my
benefit. The glow suddenly shone on four or five
threadlike filaments on his left side. It remained fixed
there. All my concentration was on it; something
pulled me slowly as if through a tube and I saw the
allies?three dark, long, rigid figures agitated by a
tremor, like leaves in a breeze. They were against an
almost fluorescent pink background. The moment I
focused my eyes on them, they came to where I was,
not walking or gliding or flying, but by pulling them-
selves along some fibers of whiteness that came out of
me. The whiteness was not a light or a glow but lines
that seemed to be drawn with heavy powder chalk.
They disintegrated quickly, yet not quickly enough.
The allies were on me before the lines faded away.

They crowded me. I became annoyed, and the allies
immediately moved away as if I had chastised them. I
felt sorry for them, and my feeling pulled them back
instantly. And they again came and rubbed themselves
against me. I saw then something I had seen in the
mirror at the stream. The allies had no inner glow.
They had no inner mobility. There was no life in them.
And yet they were obviously alive. They were strange
grotesque shapes that resembled zippered-up sleeping
bags. The thin line in the middle of their elongated
shapes made them look as if they had been sewed up.

They were not pleasing figures. The sensation that
they were totally alien to me made me feel uncomfort-
able, impatient. I saw that the three allies were moving
as if they were jumping up and down; there was a faint
glow inside them. The glow grew in intensity until, in
at least one of the allies, it was quite brilliant.

The instant I saw that, I was facing a black world. I
do not mean that it was dark as night is dark. It was
rather that everything around me was pitch-black. I
looked up at the sky and I could not find light any-
where. The sky was also black and literally covered
with lines and irregular circles of various degrees of
blackness. The sky looked like a black piece of wood
where the grain showed in relief.

I looked down at the ground. It was fluffy. It seemed
to be made of flakes of agar-agar; they were not dull
flakes, but they were not shiny either. It was some-
thing in between, which I had never seen in my life:
black agar-agar.

I heard then the voice of seeing. It said that my
assemblage point had assembled a total world with
other great bands of emanations: a black world.

I wanted to absorb every word I was hearing; in
order to do that I had to split my concentration. The
voice stopped; my eyes became focused again. I was
standing with don Juan just a few blocks away from
the square.

I instantly felt that I had no time to rest, that it
would be useless to indulge in being shocked. I rallied
all my strength and asked don Juan if I had done what
he had expected.

"You did exactly what you were expected to do,"
he said reassuringly. "Let's go back to the square and
stroll around it one more time, for the last time in this
world."

I refused to think about don Juan's leaving, so I
asked him about the black world. I had vague recollec-
tions of having seen it before.

"It's the easiest world to assemble," he said. "And
of all you've experienced, only the black world is
worth considering. It is the only true alignment of an-
other great band you have ever made. Everything else
has been a lateral shift along man's band, but still
within the same great band. The wall of fog, the plain
with yellow dunes, the world of the apparitions?all
are lateral alignments that our assemblage points make
as they approach a crucial position."

He explained as we walked back to the square that
one of the strange qualities of the black world is that
it does not have the same emanations that account for
time in our world. They are different emanations that
produce a different result. Seers that journey into the
black world feel that they have been in it for an eter-
nity, but in our world that turns out to be an instant.

"The black world is a dreadful world because it ages
the body," he said emphatically.

I asked him to clarify his statements. He slowed
down his pace and looked at me. He reminded me that
Genaro, in his direct way, had tried to point that out
to me once, when he told me that we had plodded in
hell for an eternity while not even a minute had passed
in the world we know.

Don Juan remarked that in his youth he had become
obsessed with the black world. He had wondered, in
front of his benefactor, about what would happen to
him if he went into it and stayed there for a while. But
as his benefactor was not given to explanations, he
had simply plunged don Juan into the black world to
let him find out for himself.

"The nagual Julian's power was so extraordinary,"
don Juan continued, "that it took me days to come
back from that black world."

"You mean it took you days to return your assem-
blage point to its normal position, don't you?" I
asked.

"Yes. I mean that," he said.

He explained that in the few days that he was lost
in the black world he aged at least ten years, if not
more. The emanations inside his cocoon felt the strain
of years of solitary struggle.

Silvio Manuel was a totally different case. The na-
gual Julian also plunged him into the unknown, but
Silvio Manuel assembled another world with another
set of bands, a world also without the emanations of
time but one which has the opposite effect on seers.
He disappeared for seven years and yet he felt he had
been gone only a moment.

"To assemble other worlds is not only a matter of
practice, but a matter of intent," he continued. "And
it isn't merely an exercise of bouncing out of those
worlds, like being pulled by a rubber band. You see, a
seer has to be daring. Once you break the barrier of
perception, you don't have to come back to the same
place in the world. See what I mean?"

It slowly dawned on me what he was saying. I had
an almost invincible desire to laugh at such a prepos-
terous idea, but before the idea coalesced into a cer-
tainty, don Juan spoke to me and disrupted what I was
about to remember.

He said that for warriors the danger of assembling
other worlds is that those worlds are as possessive as
our world. The force of alignment is such that once
the assemblage point breaks away from its normal po-
sition, it becomes fixed at other positions, by other
alignments. And warriors run the risk of getting
stranded in inconceivable aloneness.

The inquisitive, rational part of me commented that
I had seen him in the black world as a ball of luminos-
ity. It was possible, therefore, to be in that world with
people.

"Only if people follow you around by moving their
own assemblage points when you move yours," he
replied. "I shifted mine in order to be with you; oth-
erwise you would have been there alone with the al-
lies."

We stopped walking, and don Juan said that it was
time for me to go.

"I want you to bypass all lateral shifts," he said,
"and go directly to the next total world: the black
world. In a couple of days you'll have to do the same
thing by yourself. You won't have time to piddle
around. You'll have to do it in order to escape death."

He said that breaking the barrier of perception is the
culmination of everything seers do. From the moment
that barrier is broken, man and his fate take on a dif-
ferent meaning for warriors. Because of the transcen-
dental importance of breaking that barrier, the new
seers use the act of breaking it as a final test. The test
consists of jumping from a mountaintop into an abyss
while in a state of normal awareness. If the warrior
jumping into the abyss does not erase the daily world
and assemble another one before he reaches bottom,
he dies.

"What you are going to do is to make this world
vanish," he went on, "but you are going to remain
somewhat yourself. This is the ultimate bastion of
awareness, the one the new seers count on. They
know that after they burn with consciousness, they
somewhat retain the sense of being themselves."

He smiled and pointed to a street that we could see
from where we were standing?the street where Ge-
naro had shown me the mysteries of alignment.

"That street, like any other, leads to eternity," he
said. "All you have to do is follow it in total silence.
It's time. Go now! Go!"

He turned around and walked away from me. Ge-
naro was waiting for him at the corner. Genaro waved
at me and then made a gesture of urging me to come
on. Don Juan kept on walking without turning to look.
Genaro joined him. I started to follow them, but I
knew that it was wrong. Instead, I went in the opposite
direction. The street was dark, lonely, and bleak. I did
not indulge in feelings of failure or inadequacy. I
walked in inner silence. My assemblage point was
moving at great speed. I saw the three allies. The line
of their middle made them look as if they were smiling
sideways. I felt that I was being frivolous. And then a
windlike force blew the world away.


Epilogue


A couple of days later, all the nagual's party and all
the apprentices got together on the flat mountaintop
don Juan had told me about.

Don Juan said that each of the apprentices had al-
ready said goodbye to everybody, and that all of us
were in a state of awareness that admitted no senti-
mentalism. For us, he said, there was only action. We
were warriors in a state of total war.

Everyone, with the exception of don Juan, Genaro,
Pablito, Nestor, and me, moved a short distance away
from the flat mountaintop, in order to allow Pablito,
Nestor, and me privacy to enter into a state of normal
awareness.

But before we did, don Juan took us by the arms
and walked us around the flat top.

"In a moment, you're going to infend the movement
of your assemblage points," he said. "And no one will
help you. You are now alone. You must remember
then that intent begins with a command.

"The old seers used to say that if warriors are going
to have an internal dialogue, they should have the
proper dialogue. For the old seers that meant a dia-
logue about sorcery and the enhancement of their self-
reflection. For the new seers, it doesn't mean dia-
logue, but the detached manipulation of intent through
sober commands."

He said over and over again that the manipulation
of intent begins with a command given to oneself; the
command is then repeated until it becomes the Eagle's
command, and then the assemblage point shifts, ac-
cordingly, the moment warriors reach inner silence.

The fact that such a maneuver is possible, he said,
is something of the most singular importance to seers,
old and new alike, but for reasons diametrically op-
posed. Knowing about it allowed the old seers to
move their assemblage point to inconceivable dream-
ing positions in the incommensurable unknown; for
the new seers it means refusing to be food, it means
escaping the Eagle by moving their assemblage points
to a particular dreaming position called total freedom.

He explained that the old seers discovered that it is
possible to move the assemblage point to the limit of
the known and keep it fixed there in a state of prime
heightened awareness. From that position, they saw
the feasibility of slowly shifting their assemblage
points permanently to other positions beyond that
limit?a stupendous feat fraught with daring but lack-
ing sobriety, for they could never retract the move-
ment of their assemblage points, or perhaps they
never wanted to.

Don Juan said that adventurous men, faced with the
choice of dying in the world of ordinary affairs or
dying in unknown worlds, will unavoidably choose the
latter, and that the new seers, realizing that their pre-
decessors had chosen merely to change the locale of
their death, came to understand the futility of it all;
the futility of struggling to control their fellow men,
the futility of assembling other worlds, and, above all,
the futility of self-importance.

One of the most fortunate decisions that the new
seers made, he said, was never to allow their assem-
blage points to move permanently to any position
other than heightened awareness. From that position,
they actually resolved their dilemma of futility and
found out that the solution is not simply to choose an
alternate world in which to die, but to choose total
consciousness, total freedom.

Don Juan commented that by choosing total free-
dom, the new seers unwittingly continued in the tra-
dition of their predecessors and became the
quintessence of the death defiers.

He explained that the new seers discovered that if
the assemblage point is made to shift constantly to the
confines of the unknown, but is made to return to a
position at the limit of the known, then when it is
suddenly released it moves like lightning across the
entire cocoon of man, aligning all the emanations in-
side the cocoon at once.

"The new seers burn with the force of alignment,"
don Juan went on, "with the force of will, which they
have turned into the force of intent through a life of
impeccability. Intent is the alignment of all the amber
emanations of awareness, so it is correct to say that
total freedom means total awareness."

"Is that what all of you are going to do, don Juan?"
I asked.

"We most certainly will, if we have sufficient en-
ergy," he replied. "Freedom is the Eagle's gift to
man. Unfortunately, very few men understand that all
we need, in order to accept such a magnificent gift, is
to have sufficient energy.

"If that's all we need, then, by all means, we must
become misers of energy."

After that, don Juan made us enter into a state of
normal awareness. At dusk, Pablito, Nestor, and I
jumped into the abyss. And don Juan and the nagual's
party burned with the fire from within. They entered
into total awareness, for they had sufficient energy to
accept the mind-boggling gift of freedom.

Pablito, Nestor, and I didn't die at the bottom of
that gorge?and neither did the other apprentices who
had jumped at an earlier time?because we never
reached it; all of us, under the impact of such a tre-
mendous and incomprehensible act as jumping to our
deaths, moved our assemblage points and assembled
other worlds.

We know now that we were left to remember
heightened awareness and to regain the totality of our-
selves. And we also know that the more we remem-
ber, the more intense our elation, our wondering, but
also the greater our doubts, our turmoil.

So far, it is as if we were left only to be tantalized
by the most far-reaching questions about the nature
and the fate of man, until the time when we may have
sufficient energy not only to verify everything don
Juan taught us, but also to accept the Eagle's gift our-
selves.