o get up and go to the door. I realized then that  I was
at  his house. Don  Juan was  sound asleep on a mat  on the floor. I had the
distinct impression that the three of  us  had fallen asleep after returning
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 realized 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 possible for me to do what
I was  doing. In  states of  heightened  awareness I  could  look  back  and
remember  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  remembered 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
anything, 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 forgotten 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, unemotional realizations.
     "For instance, the other day,"  he went on, "when you understood  about
la Gorda's and your self-importance, 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  selfimportance  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 realization, 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 arranged  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  realized 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 alignment
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 fallacious  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, everything 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 worried  about  what it  will do to you. You
shouldn't have eaten  two servings.  I suppose you're a little  more piggish
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 realization 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 explanation  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,  listening  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 pressure
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 pressure 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  awareness  always comes
from outside ourselves, that the  real  mystery  is not inside  us. Since by
nature the emanations 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 believe 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  sentient being,"  he
continued, "depends on  the degree to  which  it is capable  of letting  the
pressure of the emanations at large carry it."

     After a  long interruption, don Juan continued explaining. 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 conception," 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 rechanneling  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
recommended 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  inside, 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 replied.  "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  awareness, one
from each partner, that separate from their cocoons.
     "Sexual  intercourse is always  a bestowal of awareness even though the
bestowal may  not  be  consolidated," 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  sublime 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  lifebestowing  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 compelled 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  disregard for his magical nature that is wrong.
It's a mistake 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  awareness  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
midsection   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 escalated  to  unbearable
heights. I was sweating and panting. Don Juan came to  my side  and, with an
expression of almost  uncontrollable amusement, assured 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 eyebrows 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 heavily, 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  experience,  it begins to glow. In some instances,  the  glow of
this band of  emanations increases so  dramatically  that it fuses  with the
emanations from the outside. 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 enhancing 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  transforming  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 covers 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 everything 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 objects.  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 attention,
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-today
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 valuable 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 outlook 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  examine 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 realize 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 awareness. It has to do with  the unknown.
It comes about when unused emanations inside man's cocoon are utilized.
     "The reason I called the second attention specialized is that  in order
to utilize those  unused  emanations,  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 concentration needed to be  aware that one  is having  a
dream is  the  forerunner of the  second attention.  That concentration 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 conditions.
     "The great difficulty is that the entrance into the second attention is
utterly easy and its lure nearly irresistible."
     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 emanations
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  continued,  "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 single 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 emanations inside man's cocoon."
     Don Juan expressed his  awe  for  the  new seers' deliberate  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 retaining the life-force, without becoming  a
disembodied awareness  moving like a flicker of light up to the Eagle's beak
to be devoured."
     While listening to don  Juan's explanation I  had again completely lost
sight of everything  that surrounded me. Genaro apparently had gotten up and
left  us,  and was nowhere in sight. Strangely, I found myself  crouching on
the rock, with don Juan squatting by me holding me down by gently pushing on
my  shoulders. 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,  although 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 recommended 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 question: 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 nincompoop."
     "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
nincompoop.  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 usually  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  awareness makes us weak.
They had  been trying to reinforce 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 appeared  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 convoluted, 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
hanging around all day and had climbed onto the rock intending 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 following 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 talking 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  permanent pressure  that
the emanations at large  exert on  the ones  trapped inside the cocoon. This
pressure produces the first act of consciousness; it stops the motion 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 contradictions?" 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 blatant 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  sponsored 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 attention lakes  an inventory of the Eagle's emanations
inside 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 everything 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 emanations 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
commands 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 emanations at large and move with them.
Seers can see, for instance, the  light of the scarabs' emanations expanding
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 disregard  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 taking 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 species should be bountiful,
but that in actuality it is  very rare. The majority of human beings turn to
self-absorption.
     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 emanations inside their cocoons.
     Observing all this, seers arrived at a practical  conclusion.  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 agitation
inside their cocoons. The self-absorbed  individuals, 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  anything. 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 covered 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?" Genaro asked don Juan.
     "That won't make any difference," don Juan answered.
     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 Genaro. Both of them looked at me in amazement.
     I wanted to close the front door. The cold was making 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 kerosene 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, grinning 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  proposed 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-reflection  and allows
it the freedom to focus on something else.
     "The unknown is forever present," he continued, "but it is  outside the
possibility of our  normal awareness. The unknown is the superfluous part of
the  average 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  unknown, 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; unfortunately, 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 presumably 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  knowledge  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-- especially by the practices."
     "How did the new seers know about those practices?" 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 create  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 Toltecs 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  speculated  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, unguents,  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 anything 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 organic 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 discovery 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 definition of life and being
alive.  I talked about  reproduction, 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 metabolism."
     "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 continued, "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 toughens the
cocoon to the point of making it inflexible. Under those circumstances there
is no possible interaction."
     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
instances.  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 primitive  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 yesterday."
     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  counterpoint,  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  practices  of  the  old
seers. He said that another of their great findings had to do  with the next
category  of secret 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 conclusions. 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 succumbing to my own devices.
     He went on explaining that the ancient Toltecs, although 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 fluidity. 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  believed 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 techniques 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   motion   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 submerging 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  practice.  I  asked  the same  thing  of  my
benefactor.  I  think  everybody  asks  for  one  at  a  certain moment.  My
benefactor 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 comment," 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 afternoon and arrived there
in the early morning.  I looked  for Genaro. He  was  not  there. The  house
seemed deserted.
     "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
mountains.  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  Pablito,
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 realization, 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 continued 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 purposes.
     "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 questions, he reminded me
that  in  the  past  I  had  utilized  the  water of  a similar  stream  and
accomplished extraordinary  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 surface 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
disarranged 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 focusing on any part of our reflections.
     "Gaze fixedly  without  staring!"  he repeatedly ordered 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 contradiction 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
newcomer.  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 realization was not a thought either. I had a moment
of  tremendous anxiety and then something  incomprehensible 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,
because 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
automatically 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 powerful 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 believed 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 replied.
     "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 level of
ours and  the other  seven levels  below;  or to be  transported  in essence
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 showing 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 procedures, 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 extremely 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 ancient 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  abandon 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  surface. They took that
to be the  means whereby  creatures  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. Entities 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 reflection 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 circumstances, he stressed, should I lift
my head to look at him.
     After a  moment I noticed that the mirror was reflecting  more than the
reflection of our faces and the  round  shape. Its  surface had become dark.
Spots of an intense 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 underneath the mirror.  It was like a suction force
that created 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
stoopedover 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
forearms. When  he let go it tilled to his  side. I quickly reached for  his
hands but  there was nothing underneath. 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 rubbery
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 melancholy.  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 solitude.
     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 sometimes
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 focusing 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 riddle,
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 actually 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 fearsome-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  creatures, 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 backtrack,  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 genuine 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 energy, 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 ally'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 impeccability, that is, freed energy. There were indeed some among
the  ancient seers who were  saved by their allies, but that had had nothing
to  do  with  the allies'  power to  fend off anything; rather,  it  was the
impeccability 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 staggering 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 unusable. 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 energy."
     "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 rationality."
     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
ancient 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 number 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, especially 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 master 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 thoroughly 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 partial 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  confidential 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 afternoon. 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 renewal.  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 amenable confluence of energies occurs.
The Sonoran desert was such a place for him.
     On entering  into heightened awareness,  I  had  noticed that there was
another person hiding in the semidarkness 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  contorted  his face as if  he
were  surprised or  terrified.  And  instantly the  frightening shape  of  a
strange man appeared 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
ferocity. As he grabbed my forearms, I felt ajolt of something  quite like a
discharge of an electric current.
     I was speechless, caught in  a terror I could not dispel.  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
midpoint 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 midpoint, 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 amorphous  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 threshold 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 emanations and  are in essence bubbles
of  luminescent energy; 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  emanations outside our cocoons, which are called
emanations at large, exert on those inside our cocoons. That awareness gives
rise to  perception, which happens  when the emanations  inside our  cocoons
align themselves 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 located 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 dealing with petty tyrants
helps seers accomplish a sophisticated  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
continued his explanation. He told me that in order to discuss 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 benefactor, 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 attention 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 duration 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  portion of  man's band  of
awareness,  but a very  small piece  of  the  total spectrum  of  emanations
present  inside 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