ty," I said. "What I do doesn't make sense."
"It does make sense. The inorganic beings are still reeling you in,
like a fish hooked at the end of a line," he said. "They throw worthless
bait at you from time to time to keep you going. To arrange your dreams to
occur every four days without fail is worthless bait. But they didn't teach
you how to move your energy body."
"Why do you think they didn't?"
"Because when your energy body learns to move by itself, you'll be
thoroughly out of their reach. It was premature of me to believe that you
are free from them. You are relatively but not completely free. They are
still bidding for your awareness."
I felt a chill in my back. He had touched a sore spot in me. "Tell me
what to do, don Juan, and I'll do it," I said.
"Be impeccable. I have told you this dozens of times. To be impeccable
means to put your life on the line in order to back up your decisions, and
then to do quite a lot more than your best to realize those decisions. When
you are not deciding anything, you are merely playing roulette with your
life in a helter-skelter way."
Don Juan ended our conversation, urging me to ponder what he had said.
At the first opportunity I had, I put don Juan's suggestion about
moving my energy body to the test. When I found myself looking at my body
asleep, instead of struggling to walk toward it I simply willed myself to
move closer to the bed. Instantly, I was nearly touching my body. I saw my
face. In fact, I could see every pore in my skin. I cannot say that I liked
what I saw. My view of my own body was too detailed to be aesthetically
pleasing. Then something like a wind came into the room, totally disarranged
everything, and erased my view.
During subsequent dreams, I entirely corroborated that the only way the
energy body can move is to glide or soar. I discussed this with don Juan. He
seemed unusually satisfied with what I had done, which certainly surprised
me. I was accustomed to his cold reaction to anything I did in my dreaming
practices.
"Your energy body is used to moving only when something pulls it," he
said. "The inorganic beings have been pulling your energy body right and
left, and until now you have never moved it by yourself, with your own
volition. It doesn't seem like you've done much, moving the way you did, yet
I assure you that I was seriously considering ending your practices. For a
while, I believed you were not going to learn how to move on your own."
"Were you considering ending my dreaming practices because I am slow?"
"You're not slow. It takes sorcerers forever to learn to move the
energy body. I was going to end your dreaming practices because I have no
more time. There are other topics, more pressing than dreaming, on which you
can use your energy."
"Now that I've learned how to move my energy body by myself, what else
should I do, don Juan?"
"Continue moving. Moving your energy body has opened up a new area for
you, an area of extraordinary exploration."
He urged me again to come up with an idea to validate the faithfulness
of my dreams; that request did not seem as odd as it had the first time he
voiced it.
"As you know, to be transported by a scout is the real dreaming task of
the second gate," he explained. "It is a very serious matter, but not as
serious as forging and moving the energy body. Therefore, you have to make
sure, by some means of your own, whether you are actually seeing yourself
asleep or whether you are merely dreaming that you're seeing yourself
asleep. Your new extraordinary exploration hinges on really seeing yourself
asleep."
After some heavy pondering and wondering, I believed that I had come up
with the right plan. Having seen my ripped T-shirt gave me an idea for a
valid guide. I started from the assumption that, if I were actually
observing myself asleep, I would also be observing whether I had the same
sleeping attire I had gone to bed in, an attire that I had decided to change
radically every four days. I was confident that I was not going to have any
difficulty in remembering, in dreams, what I was wearing when I went to bed;
the discipline I had acquired through my dreaming practices made me think
that I had the ability to record things like this in my mind and remember
them in dreams.
I engaged my best efforts to follow this guide, but the results did not
pan out as I thought they would. I lacked the necessary control over my
dreaming attention, and I could not quite remember the details of my
sleeping attire. Yet something else was definitely at work; somehow I always
knew whether my dreams were ordinary dreams or not. The outstanding aspect
of the dreams that were not just ordinary dreams was that my body lay asleep
in bed while my consciousness observed it.
A notable feature of these dreams was my room. It was never like my
room in the daily world but an enormous empty hall with my bed at one end. I
used to soar over a considerable distance to be at the side of the bed where
my body lay. The moment I was next to it, a windlike force used to make me
hover over it, like a hummingbird. At times the room used to vanish;
disappear piece by piece until only my body and the bed were left. At other
times, I used to experience a complete loss of volition. My dreaming
attention seemed then to function independently of me. Either it was
completely absorbed by the first item it encountered in the room or it
seemed unable to decide what to do. In those instances, I had the sensation
that I was helplessly floating, going from item to item.
The voice of the dreaming emissary explained to me once that all the
elements of the dreams, which were not just commonplace dreams, were really
energy configurations different from those of our normal world. The
emissary's voice pointed out that, for example, the walls were liquid. It
urged me then to plunge into one of them.
Without thinking twice, I dived into a wall as if I were diving into a
huge lake. I did not feel the waterlike wall; what I felt was not a physical
sensation of plunging into a body of water either. It was more like the
thought of diving and the visual sensation of going through liquid matter. I
was going, head-first, into something that opened up, like water does, as I
kept moving downward.
The sensation of going down, headfirst, was so real that I began to
wonder how long or how deep or how far I was diving. From my point of view,
I spent an eternity in there. I saw clouds and rocklike masses of matter
suspended in a waterlike substance. There were some glowing, geometric
objects that resembled crystals, and blobs of the deepest primary colors I
had ever seen. There were also zones of intense light and others of pitch
blackness. Everything went by me, either slowly or at a fast speed. I had
the thought that I was viewing the cosmos. At the instant of that thought,
my speed increased so immensely that everything became blurred, and all of a
sudden, I found myself awake with my nose smack against the wall of my room.
Some hidden fear urged me to consult with don Juan. He listened to me,
hanging on every word.
"You need to do some drastic maneuvering at this point," he said. "The
dreaming emissary has no business interfering with your dreaming practices.
Or rather, you should not, under any conditions, permit it to do so."
"How can I stop it?"
"Perform a simple but difficult maneuver. Upon entering into dreaming,
voice out loud your desire not to have the dreaming emissary anymore."
"Does that mean, don Juan, that I will never hear it again?"
"Positively. You'll get rid of it forever."
"But is it advisable to get rid of it forever?"
"It most certainly is, at this point."
With those words, don Juan involved me in a most disturbing dilemma. I
did not want to put an end to my relationship with the emissary, but, at the
same time, I wanted to follow don Juan's advice. He noticed my hesitation.
"I know it's a very difficult affair," he conceded, "but if you don't
do it, the inorganic beings will always have a line on you. If you want to
avoid this, do what I said, and do it now."
During my next dreaming session, as I prepared myself to utter my
intent, the emissary's voice interrupted me. It said, "If you refrain from
stating your request, I promise you never to interfere with your dreaming
practices and talk to you only if you ask me direct questions."
I instantly accepted its proposition and sincerely felt that it was a
good deal. I was even relieved it had turned out this way. I was afraid,
however, that don Juan was going to be disappointed.
"It was a good maneuver," he remarked and laughed. "You were sincere;
you really intended to voice your request. To be sincere is all that was
required. There was, essentially, no need for you to eliminate the emissary.
What you wanted was to corner it into proposing an alternative way,
convenient to you. I am sure the emissary won't interfere anymore."
He was right. I continued my dreaming practices without any meddling
from the emissary. The remarkable consequence was that I began to have
dreams in which my dream rooms were my room in the daily world, with one
difference: in the dreams, my room was always so slanted, so distorted that
it looked like a giant cubist painting; obtuse and acute angles were the
rule instead of the normal right angles of walls, ceiling, and floor. In my
lopsided room, the very slant, created by the acute or obtuse angles, was a
device to display prominently some absurd, superfluous, but real detail; for
example, intricate lines in the hardwood floor, or weather discolorations in
the wall paint, or dust spots on the ceiling, or smudged fingerprints on the
edge of a door.
In those dreams, I unavoidably got lost in the waterlike universes of
the detail pointed out by the slant. During my entire dreaming practices,
the profusion of detail in my room was so immense and its pull so intense
that it instantly made me dive into it.
At the first free moment I had, I was at don Juan's place, consulting
him about this state. "I can't overcome my room," I said to him after I had
given him the details of my dreaming practices.
"What gives you the idea you have to overcome it?" he asked with a
grin.
"I feel that I have to move beyond my room, don Juan."
"But you are moving beyond your room. Perhaps you should ask yourself
whether you are caught again in interpretations. What do you think moving
means in this case?"
I told him walking from my room to the street had been such a haunting
dream for me that I felt a real need to do it again.
"But you are doing greater things than that," he protested. "You are
going to unbelievable regions. What else do you want?"
I tried to explain to him that I had a physical urge to move away from
the trap of detail. What upset me the most was my incapacity to free myself
from whatever caught my attention. To have a modicum of volition was the
bottom line for me.
A very long silence followed. I waited to hear more about the trap of
detail. After all, he had warned me about its dangers. "You are doing fine,"
he finally said. "Dreamers take a very long time to perfect their energy
bodies. And this is exactly what's at stake here: perfecting your energy
body."
Don Juan explained that the reason my energy body was compelled to
examine detail and get inextricably stuck in it was its inexperience, its
incompleteness. He said that sorcerers spend a lifetime consolidating the
energy body by letting it sponge up everything possible.
"Until the energy body is complete and mature, it is self-absorbed,"
don Juan went on. "It can't get free from the compulsion to be absorbed by
everything. But if one takes this into consideration, instead of fighting
the energy body, as you're doing now, one can lend it a hand."
"How can I do that, don Juan?"
"By directing its behavior, that is to say, by stalking it."
He explained that since everything related to the energy body depends
on the appropriate position of the assemblage point, and since dreaming is
nothing else but the means to displace it, stalking is, consequently, the
way to make the assemblage point stay put on the perfect position, in this
case, the position where the energy body can become consolidated and from
which it can finally emerge.
Don Juan said that the moment the energy body can move on its own,
sorcerers assume that the optimum position of the assemblage point has been
reached. The next step is to stalk it, that is, to fixate it on that
position in order to complete the energy body. He remarked that the
procedure is simplicity itself. One intends to stalk it.
Silence and looks of expectation followed that statement. I expected
him to say more, and he expected me to have understood what he had said. I
had not.
"Let your energy body intend to reach the optimum dreaming position,"
he explained. "Then, let your energy body intend to stay at that position
and you will be stalking."
He paused and, with his eyes, urged me to consider his statement.
"Intending is the secret, but you already know that," he said. "Sorcerers
displace their assemblage points through intending and fixate them, equally,
through intending. And there is no technique for intending. One intends
through usage."
To have another of my wild assumptions about my worth as a sorcerer was
unavoidable at that point. I had boundless confidence that something was
going to put me on the right track to intend the fixation of my assemblage
point on the ideal spot. I had accomplished in the past all kinds of
successful maneuvers without knowing how I performed them. Don Juan himself
had marveled at my ability or my luck, and I was sure this was going to be
one of those instances. I was gravely mistaken. No matter what I did, or how
long I waited, I had no success whatsoever in fixing my assemblage point on
any spot, much less on the ideal one.
After months of serious but unsuccessful struggling, I gave up. "I
really believed I could do it," I said to don Juan, the moment I was in his
house. "I am afraid that nowadays I am more of an egomaniac than ever."
"Not really," he said with a smile. "What happens is that you are
caught in another of your routinary misinterpretations of terms. You want to
find the ideal spot, as if you were finding your lost car keys. Then you
want to tie your assemblage point, as if you were tying your shoes. The
ideal spot and the fixation of the assemblage point are metaphors. They have
nothing to do with the words used to describe them."
He asked me then to tell him the latest events of any dreaming
practices. The first thing I mentioned was that my urge to be absorbed by
detail had subsided notably. I said that perhaps because I moved in my
dreams, compulsively and incessantly, the movement might have been what
always managed to stop me before I plunged into the detail I was observing.
To be stopped in that fashion gave me the opportunity to examine the act of
being absorbed by detail. I came to the conclusion that inanimate matter
actually possesses an immobilizing force, which I saw as a beam of dull
light that kept me pinned down. For example, many times some minute mark on
the walls or in the wood lines of the hardwood floor of my room used to send
a line of light that transfixed me; from the moment my dreaming attention
was focused on that light, the whole dream rotated around that minute mark.
I saw it enlarged perhaps to the size of the cosmos. That view used to last
until I woke up, usually with my nose pressed against the wall or the wood
floor. My own observations were that, in the first place, the detail was
real, and, in the second place, I seemed to have been observing it while I
was asleep.
Don Juan smiled and said, "All this is happening to you because the
forging of your energy body was completed the moment it moved by itself. I
didn't tell you that, but I insinuated it. I wanted to know whether or not
you were capable of finding it out by yourself, which, of course, you did."
I had no idea what he meant. Don Juan scrutinized me in his usual
manner. His penetrating gaze scanned my body.
"What exactly did I find out by myself, don Juan?" I was forced to ask.
"You found out that your energy body had been completed," he answered.
"I didn't find out anything of the kind, I assure you."
"Yes, you did. It started some time ago, when you couldn't find a guide
to validate the realness of your dreams, but then something went to work for
you and let you know whether you were having a regular dream. That something
was your energy body. Now, you despair that you couldn't find the ideal spot
to fix your assemblage point. And I tell you that you did. The proof is
that, by moving around, your energy body curtailed its obsession with
detail."
I was nonplussed. I could not even ask one of my feeble questions.
"What comes next for you is a sorcerers' gem," don Juan went on. "You
are going to practice seeing energy, in your dreaming. You have fulfilled
the drill for the third gate of dreaming: moving your energy body by itself.
Now you are going to perform the real task: seeing energy with your energy
body.
"You have seen energy before," he went on, "many times, in fact. But
each of those times, seeing was a fluke. Now you are going to do it
deliberately.
"Dreamers have a rule of thumb," he continued. "If their energy body is
complete, they see energy every time they gaze at an item in the daily
world. In dreams, if they see the energy of an item, they know they are
dealing with a real world, no matter how distorted that world may appear to
their dreaming attention. If they can't see the energy of an item, they are
in an ordinary dream and not in a real world."
"What is a real world, don Juan?"
"A world that generates energy; the opposite of a phantom world of
projections, where nothing generates energy, like most of our dreams, where
nothing has an energetic effect."
Don Juan then gave me another definition of dreaming: a process by
which dreamers isolate dream conditions in which they can find
energy-generating elements. He must have noticed my bewilderment. He laughed
and gave another, even more convoluted definition: dreaming is the process
by which we intend to find adequate positions of the assemblage point,
positions that permit us to perceive energy-generating items in dreamlike
states.
He explained that the energy body is also capable of perceiving energy
that is quite different from the energy of our own world, as in the case of
items of the inorganic beings' realm, which the energy body perceives as
sizzling energy. He added that in our world nothing sizzles; everything here
wavers.
"From now on," he said, "the issue of your dreaming is going to be to
determine whether the items on which you focus your dreaming attention are
energy generating, mere phantom projections, or generators of foreign
energy."
Don Juan admitted that he had hoped I was going to come up with the
idea of seeing energy as the gauge to determine whether or not I was
observing my real body asleep. He laughed at my spurious device of putting
on elaborate sleeping attire, every four days. He said that I'd had, at my
fingertips, all the information necessary to deduce what was the real task
of the third gate of dreaming and to come up with the right idea but that my
interpretation system had forced me to seek contrived solutions that lacked
the simplicity and directness of sorcery.
9. THE NEW AREA OF EXPLORATION
Don Juan told me that in order to see in dreaming not only did I have
to intend seeing but I had to put my intent into loud words. For reasons he
refused to explain, he insisted that I had to speak up. He conceded that
there are other means to accomplish the same result, but he asserted that
voicing one's intent is the simplest and most direct way.
The first time I put into words my intent to see, I was dreaming of a
church bazaar. There were so many articles that I could not make up my mind
which one to gaze at. A giant, conspicuous vase in a corner made up my mind
for me. I gazed at it, voicing my intent to see. The vase remained in my
view for an instant, then it changed into another object.
I gazed at as many things as I could in that dream. After I voiced my
intent to see, every item I had chosen to gaze at vanished or turned into
something else, as had happened all along in my dreaming practices. My
dreaming attention was finally exhausted, and I woke up tremendously
frustrated, almost angry.
For months on end, I actually gazed at hundreds of items in my dreams
and deliberately voiced my intent to see, but nothing ever happened. Tired
of waiting, I finally had to ask don Juan about it.
"You need to have patience. You are learning to do something
extraordinary," he remarked. "You are learning to intend to see in your
dreams. Someday you will not have to voice your intent; you'll simply will
it, silently."
"I think I have not understood the function of whatever I am doing," I
said. "Nothing happens when I shout my intent to see. What does that mean?"
"It means that your dreams, so far, have been ordinary dreams; they
have been phantom projections; images that have life only in your dreaming
attention."
He wanted to know exactly what had happened to the items on which I had
focused my gaze. I said that they had vanished or changed shape or even
produced vortexes that eventually changed my dreams.
"It has been like that in all my daily dreaming practices," I said.
"The only thing out of the ordinary is that I am learning to yell in my
dreams, at the top of my voice."
My last statement threw don Juan into a genuine fit of belly laughter,
which I found disconcerting. I failed to find the humor of my statement or
the reason for his reaction.
"Someday you'll appreciate how funny all this is," he said as an answer
to my silent protest. "In the meantime, don't give up or get discouraged.
Keep on trying. Sooner or later, you'll hit the right note."
As usual, he was right. A couple of months later, I hit the jackpot. I
had a most unusual dream. It started with the appearance of a scout from the
inorganic beings' world. The scouts as well as the dreaming emissary had
been strangely absent from my dreams. I had not missed them or pondered
their disappearance. In fact, I was so at ease without them I had even
forgotten to ask don Juan about their absence.
In that dream, the scout had been, at first, a gigantic yellow topaz,
which I had found stuck in the back of a drawer. The moment I voiced my
intent to see, the topaz turned into a blob of sizzling energy. I feared
that I would be compelled to follow it, so I moved my gaze away from the
scout and focused it on an aquarium with tropical fish. I voiced my intent
to see and got a tremendous surprise. The aquarium emitted a low, greenish
glow and changed into a large surrealist portrait of a bejeweled woman. The
portrait emitted the same greenish glow when I voiced my intent to see.
As I gazed at that glow, the whole dream changed. I was walking then on
a street in a town that seemed familiar to me; it might have been Tucson. I
gazed at a display of women's clothes in a store window and spoke out loud
my intent to see. Instantly, a black mannequin, prominently displayed, began
to glow. I gazed next at a saleslady who came at that moment to rearrange
the window. She looked at me. After voicing my intent, I saw her glow. It
was so stupendous that I was afraid some detail in her splendorous glow
would trap me, but the woman moved inside the store before I had time to
focus my total attention on her. I certainly intended to follow her inside;
however, my dreaming attention was caught by a moving glow. It came to me
charging, filled with hatred. There was loathing in it and viciousness. I
jumped backward. The glow stopped its charge; a black substance swallowed
me, and I woke up.
These images were so vivid that I firmly believed I had seen energy and
my dream had been one of those conditions that don Juan had called
dreamlike, energy-generating. The idea that dreams can take place in the
consensual reality of our daily world intrigued me, just as the dream images
of the inorganic beings' realm had intrigued me.
"This time, you not only saw energy but crossed a dangerous boundary,"
don Juan said, after hearing my account.
He reiterated that the drill for the third gate of dreaming is to make
the energy body move on its own. In my last session, he said, I had
unwittingly superseded the effect of that drill and crossed into another
world.
"Your energy body moved," he said. "It journeyed, by itself. That kind
of journeying is beyond your abilities at this moment, and something
attacked you."
"What do you think it was, don Juan?"
"This is a predatorial universe. It could have been one of thousands of
things existing out there."
"Why do you think it attacked me?"
"For the same reason the inorganic beings attacked you: because you
made yourself available."
"Is it that clear-cut, don Juan?"
"Certainly. It's as clear-cut as what you would do if a strange-looking
spider crept across your desk while you were writing. You'd squash it, out
of fright, rather than admire it or examine it."
I was at a loss and searched for words to ask the proper question. I
wanted to ask him where my dream had taken place, or what world I was in in
that dream. But those questions did not make any sense; I could gather that
myself. Don Juan was very understanding.
"You want to know where your dreaming attention was focused, don't
you?" he asked with a grin.
This was exactly how I wanted to word my question. I reasoned that in
the dream under consideration, I must have been looking at some real object.
Just like what had happened when I saw in dreams the minute details on the
floor or the walls or the door of my room, details that I later had
corroborated, existed.
Don Juan said that in special dreams, like the one I'd had, our
dreaming attention focuses on the daily world, and that it moves instantly
from one real object to another in the world. What makes this movement
possible is that the assemblage point is on the proper dreaming position.
From that position, the assemblage point gives the dreaming attention such
fluidity that it can move in a split second over incredible distances, and
in doing so it produces a perception so fast, so fleeting that it resembles
an ordinary dream.
Don Juan explained that in my dream I had seen a real vase and then my
dreaming attention had moved over distances to see a real surrealist
painting of a bejeweled woman. The result, with the exception of seeing
energy, had been very close to an ordinary dream, in which items, when gazed
at, quickly turn into something else.
"I know how disturbing this is," he went on, definitely aware of my
bewilderment. "For some reason pertinent to the mind, to see energy in
dreaming is more upsetting than anything one can think of."
I remarked that I had seen energy in dreaming before, yet it had never
affected me like this.
"Now your energy body is complete and functioning," he said.
"Therefore, the implication that you see energy in your dream is that you
are perceiving a real world, through the veil of a dream. That's the
importance of the journey you took. It was real. It involved
energy-generating items that nearly ended your life."
"Was it that serious, don Juan?"
"You bet! The creature that attacked you was made of pure awareness and
was as deadly as anything can be. You saw its energy. I am sure that you
realize by now that unless we see in dreaming, we can't tell a real,
energy-generating thing from a phantom projection. So, even though you
battled the inorganic beings and indeed saw the scouts and the tunnels, your
energy body doesn't know for sure if they were real, meaning energy
generating. You are ninety-nine but not one hundred percent sure."
Don Juan insisted on talking about the journey I had taken. For
inexplicable reasons, I was reluctant to deal with that subject. What he was
saying produced an instantaneous reaction in me. I found myself trying to
come to grips with a deep, strange fear; it was dark and obsessive in a
nagging, visceral way.
"You definitely went into another layer of the onion," don Juan said,
finishing a statement to which I had not paid attention.
"What is this other layer of the onion, don Juan?"
"The world is like an onion, it has many skins. The world we know is
but one of them. Sometimes, we cross boundaries and enter into another skin:
another world, very much like this one, but not the same. And you entered
into one, all by yourself."
"How is this journey you're talking about possible, don Juan?"
"That is a meaningless question, because no one can answer it. In the
view of sorcerers, the universe is constructed in layers, which the energy
body can cross. Do you know where the old sorcerers are still existing to
this day? In another layer, in another skin of the onion."
"For me, the idea of a real, pragmatic journey, taken in dreams, is
very difficult to understand or to accept, don Juan."
"We have discussed this topic to exhaustion. I was convinced you
understood that the journey of the energy body depends exclusively on the
position of the assemblage point."
"You've told me that. And I have been mulling it over and over; still,
saying that the journey is in the position of the assemblage point doesn't
say anything to me."
"Your problem is your cynicism. I was just like you. Cynicism doesn't
allow us to make drastic changes in our understanding of the world. It also
forces us to feel that we are always right."
I understood his point to perfection, but I reminded him about my fight
against all that.
"I propose that you do one nonsensical thing that might turn the tide,"
he said. "Repeat to yourself incessantly that the hinge of sorcery is the
mystery of the assemblage point. If you repeat this to yourself long enough,
some unseen force takes over and makes the appropriate changes in you."
Don Juan did not give me any indication that he was being facetious. I
knew he meant every word of it. What bothered me was his insistence that I
repeat the formula ceaselessly to myself. I caught myself thinking that all
of it was asinine.
"Cut your cynical attitude," he snapped at me. "Repeat this in a bona
fide manner.
"The mystery of the assemblage point is everything in sorcery," he
continued, without looking at me. "Or rather, everything in sorcery rests on
the manipulation of the assemblage point. You know all this, but you have to
repeat it."
For an instant, as I heard his remarks, I thought I was going to die of
anguish. An incredible sense of physical sadness gripped my chest and made
me scream with pain. My stomach and diaphragm seemed to be pushing up,
moving into my chest cavity. The push was so intense that my awareness
changed levels, and I entered into my normal state. Whatever we had been
talking about became a vague thought about something that might have
happened but actually had not, according to the mundane reasoning of my
everyday-life consciousness.
The next time don Juan and I talked about dreaming, we discussed the
reasons I had been unable to proceed with my dreaming practices for months
on end. Don Juan warned me that to explain my situation he had to go in a
roundabout way. He pointed out, first, that there is an enormous difference
between the thoughts and deeds of the men of antiquity and those of modern
men. Then he pointed out that the men of ancient times had a very realistic
view of perception and awareness because their view stemmed from their
observations of the universe around them. Modern men, in contrast, have an
absurdly unrealistic view of perception and awareness because their view
stems from their observations of the social order and from their dealings
with it.
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.
"Because you are a modern man involved with the views and observations
of men of antiquity," he replied. "And none of those views and observations
are familiar to you. Now more than ever you need sobriety and aplomb. I am
trying to make a solid bridge, a bridge you can walk on, between the views
of men of ancient times and those of modern men."
He remarked that of all the transcendental observations of the men of
ancient times, the only one with which I was familiar, because it had
filtered down to our day, was the idea of selling our souls to the devil in
exchange for immortality, which he admitted sounded to him like something
coming straight out of the relationship of the old sorcerers with the
inorganic beings. He reminded me how the dreaming emissary had tried to
induce me to stay in its realm by offering me the possibility of maintaining
my individuality and self-awareness for nearly an eternity.
"As you know, succumbing to the lure of the inorganic beings is not
just an idea; it's real," don Juan went on. "But you haven't yet fully
realized the implication of that realness. Dreaming, likewise, is real; it
is an energy-generating condition. You hear my statements and you certainly
understand what I mean, but your awareness hasn't caught up with the total
implication of it yet."
Don Juan said that my rationality knew the import of a realization of
this nature, and during our last talk it had forced my awareness to change
levels. I ended up in my normal awareness before I could deal with the
nuances of my dream. My rationality had further protected itself by
suspending my dreaming practices.
"I assure you that I am fully aware of what an energy-generating
condition means," I said.
"And I assure you that you are not," he retorted. "If you were, you
would measure dreaming with greater care and deliberation. Since you believe
you are just dreaming, you take blind chances. Your faulty reasoning tells
you that no matter what happens, at a given moment the dream will be over
and you will wake up."
He was right. In spite of all the things I had witnessed in my dreaming
practices, somehow I still retained the general sense that all of it had
been a dream.
"I am talking to you about the views of men of antiquity and the views
of modern man," don Juan went on, "because your awareness, which is the
awareness of modern man, prefers to deal with an unfamiliar concept as if it
were an empty ideality.
"If I left it up to you, you'd regard dreaming as an idea. Of course.
I'm sure you take dreaming seriously, but you don't quite believe in the
reality of dreaming."
"I understand what you are saying, don Juan, but I don't understand why
you are saying it."
"I am saying all this because you are now, for the first time, in the
proper position to understand that dreaming is an energy-generating
condition. For the first time, you can understand now that ordinary dreams
are the honing devices used to train the assemblage point to reach the
position that creates this energy-generating condition we call dreaming."
He warned me that, since dreamers touch and enter real worlds of
all-inclusive effects, they ought to be in a permanent state of the most
intense and sustained alertness; any deviation from total alertness imperils
the dreamer in ways more than dreadful.
I began again, at this point, to experience a movement in my chest
cavity, exactly as I had felt the day my awareness changed levels by itself.
Don Juan forcibly shook me by the arm.
"Regard dreaming as something extremely dangerous!" he commanded me.
"And begin that now! Don't start any of your weird maneuvers."
His tone of voice was so urgent that I stopped whatever I was,
unconsciously, doing.
"What is going on with me, don Juan?" I asked.
"What's going on with you is that you can displace your assemblage
point quickly and easily," he said. "Yet that ease has the tendency to make
the displacement erratic. Bring your ease to order. And don't allow yourself
even a fraction of an inch leeway."
I could easily have argued that I did not know what he was talking
about, but I knew. I also knew I had only a few seconds to round up my
energy and change my attitude, and I did.
This was the end of our exchange that day. I went home, and for nearly
a year I faithfully and daily repeated what don Juan had asked me to say.
The results of my litany-like invocation were incredible. I was firmly
convinced that it had the same effect on my awareness that exercise has on
the muscles of the body. My assemblage point became more agile, which meant
that seeing energy in dreaming became the sole goal of my practices. My
skill at intending to see grew in proportion to my efforts. A moment came
when I was able just to intend seeing, without saying a word, and actually
experience the same result as when I voiced out loud my intent to see.
Don Juan congratulated me on my accomplishment. I, naturally, assumed
he was being facetious. He assured me that he meant it, but beseeched me to
continue shouting, at least whenever I was at a loss. His request did not
seem odd to me. On my own, I had been yelling in my dreams at the top of my
voice every time I deemed it necessary.
I discovered that the energy of our world wavers. It scintillates. Not
only living beings but everything in our world glimmers with an inner light
of its own. Don Juan explained that the energy of our world consists of
layers of shimmering hues.
The top layer is whitish; another, immediately adjacent to it, is
chartreuse; and another one, more distant yet, is amber.
I found all those hues, or rather I saw glimmers of them whenever items
that I encountered in my dreamlike states changed shapes. However, a whitish
glow was always the initial impact of seeing anything that generated energy.
"Are there only three different hues?" I asked don Juan. "There is an
endless number of them," he replied, "but for the purposes of a beginning
order, you should be concerned with those three. Later on, you can get as
sophisticated as you want and isolate dozens of hues, if you are able to do
it.
"The whitish layer is the hue of the present position of mankind's
assemblage point," don Juan continued. "Let's say that it is a modern hue.
Sorcerers believe that everything man does nowadays is tinted with that
whitish glow. At another time, the position of mankind's assemblage point
made the hue of the ruling energy in the world chartreuse; and at another
time, more distant yet, it made it amber. The color of sorcerers' energy is
amber, which means that they are energetically associated with the men who
existed in a distant past."
"Do you think, don Juan, that the present whitish hue will change
someday?"
"If man is capable of evolving. The grand task of sorcerers is to bring
forth the idea that, in order to evolve, man must first free his awareness
from its bindings to the social order. Once awareness is free, intent will
redirect it into a new evolutionary path."
"Do you think sorcerers will succeed in that task?"
"They have already succeeded. They themselves are the proof. To
convince others of the value and import of evolving is another matter."
The other kind of energy I found present in our world but alien to it
was the scouts' energy, the energy don Juan had called sizzling. I
encountered scores of items in my dreams that, once I saw them, turned into
blobs of energy that seemed to be frying, bubbling with some heatlike inner
activity.
"Bear in mind that not every scout you are going to find belongs to the
realm of inorganic beings," don Juan remarked. "Every scout you have found
so far, except for the blue scout, has been from that realm, but that was
because the inorganic beings were catering to you. They were directing the
show. Now you are on your own. Some of the scouts you will encounter are
going to be not from the inorganic beings' realm but from other, even more
distant levels of awareness."
"Are the scouts aware of themselves?" I asked.
"Most certainly," he replied.
"Then why don't they make contact with us when we are awake?"
"They do. But our great misfortune is to have our consciousness so
fully engaged that we don't have time to pay attention. In our sleep,
however, the two-way- traffic trapdoor opens: we dream. And in our dreams,
we make contact."
"Is there any way to tell whether the scouts are from a level besides
the inorganic beings' world?"
"The greater their sizzling, the farther they come from. It sounds
simplistic, but you have to let your energy body tell you what is what. I
assure you, it'll make very fine distinctions and unerring judgments when
faced with alien energy."
He was right again. Without much ado, my energy body distinguished two
general types of alien energy. The first was the scouts from the inorganic
beings' realm. Their energy fizzled mildly. There was no sound to it, but it
had all the overt appearance of effervescence, or of water that is starting
to boil.
The energy of the second general type of scouts gave me the impression
of considerably more power. Those scouts seemed to be just about to burn.
They vibrated from within as if they were filled with pressurized gas.
My encounters with the alien energy were always fleeting because I paid
total attention to what don Juan recommended. He said, "Unless you know
exactly what you are doing and what you want out of alien energy, you have
to be content with a brief glance. Anything beyond a glance is as dangerous
and as stupid as petting a rattlesnake."
"Why is it dangerous, don Juan?" I asked.
"Scouts are always very aggressive and extremely daring," he said.
"They have to be that way in order to prevail in their explorations.
Sustaining our dreaming attention on them is tantamount to soliciting their
awareness to focus on us. Once they focus their attention on us, we are
compelled to go with them. And that, of course, is the danger. We may end up
in worlds beyond our energetic possibilities."
Don Juan explained that there are many more types of scouts than the
two I had classified, but that at my present level of energy I could only
focus on three. He described the first two types as the easiest to spot.
Their disguises in our dreams are so outlandish, he said, that they
immediately attract our dreaming attention. He depicted the scouts of the
third type as the most dangerous, in terms of aggressiveness and power, and
because they hide behind subtle disguises.
"One of the strangest things dreamers find, which you yourself will
find presently," don Juan continued, "is this third type of scout. So far,
you have found samples of only the first two types, but that's because you
haven't looked in the right place."
"And what is the right place, don Juan?"
"You have again fallen prey to words; this time the culprit word is
'items,' which you have taken to mean only things, objects. Well, the most
ferocious scout hides behind people in our dreams. A formidable surprise was
in store for me, in my dreaming, when I focused my gaze on the dream image
of my mother. After I voiced my intent to see, she turned into a ferocious,
frightening bubble of sizzling energy."
Don Juan paused to let his statements sink in. I felt stupid for being
disturbed at the possibility of finding a scout behind the dream image of my
mother.
"It's annoying that they are always associated with the dream images of
our parents or close friends," he went on. "Perhaps that's why we often feel
ill at ease when we dream of them." His grin gave me the impression that he
was enjoying my turmoil. "A rule of thumb for dreamers is to assume that the
third type of scout is present whenever they feel perturbed by their parents
or friends in a dream. Sound advice is to avoid those dream images. They are
sheer poison."
"Where does the blue scout stand in relation to the other scouts?" I
asked.
"Blue energy doesn't sizzle," he replied. "It is like ours; it wavers,
but it is blue instead of white. Blue energy doesn't exist in a natural
state in our world.
"And this brings us to something we've never talked about. What color
were the scouts you've seen so far?"
Until the moment he mentioned it, I had never thought about this. I
told don Juan that the scouts I had seen were either pink or reddish. And he
said that the deadly scouts of the third type were bright orange.
I found out myself that the third type of scout is outright scary.
Every time I found one of them, it was behind the dream images of my
parents, especially of my mother. Seeing it always reminded me of the blob
of energy that had attacked me in my first deliberate seeing dream. Every
time I found it, the alien exploring energy actually seemed about to jump on
me. My energy body used to react with horror even before I saw it.
During our next discussion of dreaming, I queried don Juan about the
total absence of inorganic beings in my dreaming practices. "Why don't they
show up anymore?" I asked.
"They only show themselves at the beginning," he explained. "After
their scouts take us to their world, there is no necessity for the inorganic
beings' projections. If we want to see the inorganic beings, a scout takes
us there. For no one, and I mean no one, can journey by himself to their
realm."
"Why is that so, don Juan?"
"Their world is sealed. No one can enter or leave without the consent
of the inorganic beings. The only thing you can do by yourself once you are
inside is, of course, voice your intent to stay. To say it out loud means to
set in motion currents of energy that are irreversible. In olden times,
words were incredibly powerful. Now they are not. In the inorganic beings'
realm, they haven't lost their power."
Don Juan laughed and said that he had no business saying anything about
the inorganic beings' world because I really knew more about it than he and
all his companions combined.
"There is one last issue related to that world that we haven't
discussed," he said. He paused for a long while, as if searching for the
appropriate words. "In the final analysis," he began, "my aversion to the
old sorcerers' activities is very personal. As a nagual, I detest what they
did. They cowardly sought refuge in the inorganic beings' world. They argued
that in a predatorial universe, poised to rip us apart, the only possible
haven for us is in that realm."
"Why did they believe that?" I asked.
"Because it's true," he said. "Since the inorganic beings can't lie,
the sales pitch of the dreaming emissary is all true. That world can give us
shelter and prolong our awareness for nearly an eternity."
"The emissary's sales pitch, even if it's the truth, has no appeal to
me," I said.
"Do you mean you will chance a road that might rip you apart?" he asked
with a note of bewilderment in his voice.
I assured don Juan that I did not want the inorganic beings' world no
matter what advantages it offered. My statement seemed to please him to no
end. "You are ready then for one final statement about that world. The most
dreadful statement I can make," he said, and tried smile but did not quite
make it.
Don Juan searched in my eyes, I suppose for a glimmer agreement or
comprehension. He was silent for a moment.
"The energy necessary to move the assemblage points of sorcerers comes
from the realm of inorganic beings," he said, as if he were hurrying to get
it over with.
My heart nearly stopped. I felt a vertigo and had to stomp my feet on
the ground not to faint.
"This is the truth," don Juan went on, "and the legacy of the old
sorcerers to us. They have us pinned down to this day. This is the reason I
don't like them. I resent having to dip into one source alone. Personally, I
refuse to do it. And I have tried to steer you away from it. But with no
success, because something pulls you to that world, like a magnet."
I understood don Juan better than I could have thought. Journeying to
that world had always meant to me, at an energetic level, a boost of dark
energy. I had even thought of it in those terms, long before don Juan voiced
his statement.
"What can we do about it?" I asked.
"We can't have dealings with them," he answered, "and yet we can't stay
away from them. My solution has been to take their energy but not give in to
their influence. This is known as the ultimate stalking. It is done by
sustaining the unbending intent of freedom, even though no sorcerer knows
what freedom really is."
"Can you explain to me, don Juan, why sorcerers have to take energy
from the realm of inorganic beings?"
"There is no other viable energy for sorcerers. In order to maneuver
the assemblage point in the manner they do, sorcerers need an inordinate
amount of energy."
I reminded him of his own statement: that a redeployment of energy is
necessary in order to do dreaming.
"That is correct," he replied. "To start dreaming sorcerers need to
redefine their premises and save their energy, but that redefining is valid
only to have the necessary energy to set up dreaming. To fly into other
realms, to see energy, to forge the energy body, et cetera, et cetera, is
another matter. For those maneuvers, sorcerers need loads of dark, alien
energy."
"But how do they take it from the inorganic beings' world?"
"By the mere act of going to that world. All the sorcerers of our line
have to do this. However, none of us is idiotic enough to do what you've
done. But this is because none of us has your proclivities."
Don Juan sent me home to ponder what he had revealed to me. I had
endless questions, but he did not want to hear any of them.
"All the questions you have, you can answer yourself," he said as he
waved good-bye to me.
10. STALKING THE STALKERS
At home, I soon realized that it was impossible for me to answer any of
my questions. In fact, I could not even formulate them. Perhaps that was
because the boundary of the second attention had begun to collapse on me;
this was when I met Florinda Grau and Carol Tiggs in the world of everyday
life. The confusion of not knowing them at all yet knowing them so
intimately that I would have died for them at the drop of a hat was most
deleterious to me. I had met Taisha Abelar a few years before, and I was
just beginning to get used to the confounded feeling of knowing her without
having the vaguest idea of how. To add two more people to my overloaded
system proved too much for me. I got ill out of fatigue and had to seek don
Juan's aid. I went to the town in southern Mexico where he and his
companions lived.
Don Juan and his fellow sorcerers laughed uproariously at the mere
mention of my turmoils. Don Juan explained to me that they were not really
laughing at me but at themselves. My cognitive problems reminded them of the
ones they had had when the boundary of the second attention had collapsed on
them, just as it had on me. Their awareness, like mine, had not been
prepared for it, he said.
"Every sorcerer goes through the same agony," don Juan went on.
"Awareness is an endless area of exploration for sorcerers and man in
general. In order to enhance awareness, there is no risk we should not run,
no means we should refuse. Bear in mind, however, that only in soundness of
mind can awareness be enhanced."
Don Juan reiterated, then, that his time was coming to an end and that
I had to use my resources wisely to cover as much ground as I could before
he left. Talk like that used to throw me into states of profound depression.
But as the time of his departure approached, I had begun to react with more
resignation. I no longer felt depressed, but I still panicked.
Nothing else was said after that. The next day, at his request, I drove
don Juan to Mexico City. We arrived around noon and went directly to the
hotel del Prado, in the Paseo Alameda, the place he usually lodged when he
was in the city. Don Juan had an appointment with a lawyer that day, at four
in the afternoon. Since we had plenty of time, we went to have lunch in the
famous Cafe Tacuba, a restaurant in the heart of downtown where it was
purported that real meals were served.
Don Juan was not hungry. He ordered only two sweet tamales, while I
gorged myself on a sumptuous feast. He laughed at me and made signs of
silent despair at my healthy appetite.
"I'm going to propose a line of action for you," he said in a curt tone
when we had finished our lunch. "It's the last task of the third gate of
dreaming, and it consists of stalking the stalkers, a most mysterious
maneuver. To stalk the stalkers means to deliberately draw energy from the
inorganic beings' realm in order to perform a sorcery feat."
"What kind of sorcery feat, don Juan?"
"A journey, a journey that uses awareness as an element of the
environment," he explained. "In the world of daily life, water is an element
of the environment that we use for traveling. Imagine awareness being a
similar element that can be used for traveling. Through the medium of
awareness, scouts from all over the universe come to us, and vice versa; via
awareness, sorcerers go to the ends of the universe."
There had been certain concepts, among the hosts of concepts don Juan
had made me aware of in the course of his teachings, that attracted my full
interest without any coaxing. This was one.
"The idea that awareness is a physical element is revolutionary," I
said in awe.
"I didn't say it's a physical element," he corrected me. "It's an
energetic element. You have to make that distinction. For sorcerers who see,
awareness is a glow. They can hitch their energy body to that glow and go
with it."
"What's the difference between a physical and an energetic element?" I
asked.
"The difference is that physical elements are part of our
interpretation system, but energetic elements are not. Energetic elements,
like awareness, exist in our universe. But we, as average people, perceive
only the physical elements because we were taught to do so. Sorcerers
perceive the energetic elements for the same reason: they were taught to do
so."
Don Juan explained that the use of awareness as an energetic element of
our environment is the essence of sorcery, that in terms of practicalities,
the trajectory of sorcery is, first, to free the existing energy in us by
impeccably following the sorcerers' path; second, to use that energy to
develop the energy body by means of dreaming; and, third, to use awareness
as an element of the environment in order to enter with the energy body and
all our physicality into other worlds.
"There are two kinds of energy journeys into other worlds," he went on.
"One is when awareness picks up the sorcerer's energy body and takes it
wherever it may, and the other is when the sorcerer decides, in full
consciousness, to use the avenue of awareness to make a journey. You've done
the first kind of journeying. It takes an enormous discipline to do the
second."
After a long silence, don Juan stated that in the life of sorcerers
there are issues that require masterful handling, and that dealing with
awareness, as an energetic element open to the energy body, is the most
important, vital, and dangerous of those issues.
I had no comment. I was suddenly on pins and needles, hanging on every
one of his words.
"By yourself, you don't have enough energy to perform the last task of
the third gate of dreaming," he went on, "but you and Carol Tiggs together
can certainly do what I have in mind."
He paused, deliberately egging me on with his silence to ask what he
had in mind. I did. His laughter only increased the ominous mood.
"I want you two to break the boundaries of the normal world and, using
awareness as an energetic element, enter into another," he said. "This
breaking and entering amounts to stalking the stalkers. Using awareness as
an element of the environment bypasses the influence of the inorganic
beings, but it still uses their energy."
He did not want to give me any more information, in order not to
influence me, he said. His belief was that the less I knew beforehand the
better off I would be. I disagreed, but he assured me that, in a pinch, my
energy body was perfectly capable of taking care of itself.
We went from the restaurant to the lawyer's office. Don Juan quickly
concluded his business, and we were, in no time at all, in a taxi on our way
to the airport. Don Juan informed me that Carol Tiggs was arriving on a
flight from Los Angeles, and that she was coming to Mexico City exclusively
to fulfill this last dreaming task with me.
"The valley of Mexico is a superb place to perform the kind of sorcery
feat you are after," he commented. "You haven't told me yet what the exact
steps to follow are," I said.
He didn't answer me. We did not speak any more, but while we waited for
the plane to land, he explained the procedure I had to follow. I had to go
to Carol's room at the Regis Hotel, across the street from our hotel, and,
after getting into a state of total inner silence, with her I had to slip
gently into dreaming, voicing our intent to go to the realm of the inorganic
beings.
I interrupted to remind him that I always had to wait for a scout to
show up before I could manifest out loud my intent to go to the inorganic
beings' world.
Don Juan chuckled and said, "You haven't dreamt with Carol Tiggs yet.
You'll find out that it's a treat. Sorceresses don't need any props. They
just go to that world whenever they want to; for them, there is a scout on
permanent call."
I could not bring myself to believe that a sorceress would be able to
do what he was asserting. I thought I had a degree of expertise in handling
the inorganic beings' world. When I mentioned to him what was going through
my mind, he retorted that I had no expertise whatsoever when it came to what
sorceresses are capable of.
"Why do you think I had Carol Tiggs with me to pull you bodily out of
that world?" he asked. "Do you think it was because she's beautiful?"
"Why was it, don Juan?"
"Because I couldn't do it myself; and for her, it was nothing. She has
a knack for that world."
"Is she an exceptional case, don Juan?"
"Women in general have a natural bent for that realm; sorceresses are,
of course, the champions, but Carol Tiggs is better than anyone I know
because she, as the nagual woman, has superb energy."
I thought I had caught don Juan in a serious contradiction. He had told
me that the inorganic beings were not interested at all in women. Now he was
asserting the opposite.
"No. I'm not asserting the opposite," he remarked when I confronted
him. "I've said to you that the inorganic beings don't pursue females; they
only go after males. But I've also said to you that the inorganic beings are
female, and that the entire universe is female to a large degree. So draw
your own conclusions."
Since I had no way to draw any conclusions, Don Juan explained to me
that sorceresses, in theory, come and go as they please in that world
because of their enhanced awareness and their femaleness.
"Do you know this for a fact?" I asked.
"The women of my party have never done that," he confessed, "not
because they can't but because I dissuaded them. The women of your party, on
the other hand, do it like changing skirts."
I felt a vacuum in my stomach. I really did not know anything about the
women of my party. Don Juan consoled me, saying that my circumstances were
different from his, as was my role as a nagual. He assured me that I did not
have it in me to dissuade any of the women of my party, even if I stood on
my head.
As the taxi drove us to her hotel, Carol delighted don Juan and me with
her impersonations of people we knew. I tried to be serious and questioned
her about our task. She mumbled some apologies for not being able to answer
me with the seriousness I deserved. Don Juan laughed uproariously when she
mimicked my solemn tone of voice.
After registering Carol at the hotel, the three of us meandered around
downtown, looking for secondhand bookstores. We ate a light dinner at the
Sanborn's restaurant in the House of Tiles. About ten o'clock, we walked to
the Regis Hotel. We went directly to the elevator. My fear had sharpened my
capacity to perceive details. The hotel building was old and massive. The
furniture in the lobby had obviously seen better days. Yet there was still,
all around us, something left of an old glory that had a definite appeal. I
could easily understand why Carol liked that hotel so much.
Before we got into the elevator, my anxiety mounted to such heights
that I had to ask don Juan for last- minute instructions. "Tell me again how
we are going to proceed," I begged.
Don Juan pulled us to the huge, ancient stuffed chairs in the lobby and
patiently explained to us that, once we were in the world of the inorganic
beings, we had to voice our intent to transfer our normal awareness to our
energy bodies. He suggested that Carol and I voice our intent together,
although that part was not really important. What was important, he said,
was that each of us intend the transfer of the total awareness of our daily
world to our energy body.
"How do we do this transference of awareness?" I asked.
"Transferring awareness is purely a matter of voicing our intent and
having the necessary amount of energy," he said. "Carol knows all this.
She's done it before. She entered physically into the inorganic beings'
world when she pulled you out of it, remember? Her energy will do the trick.
It'll tip the scales."
"What does it mean to tip the scales? I am in limbo, don Juan."
Don Juan explained that to tip the scales meant to add one's total
physical mass to the energy body. He said that using awareness as a medium
to make the journey into another world is not the result of applying any
techniques but the corollary of intending and having enough energy. The bulk
of energy from Carol Tiggs added to mine, or the bulk of my energy added to
Carol's, was going to make us into one single entity, energetically capable
of pulling our physicality and placing it on the energy body in order to
make that journey.
"What exactly do we have to do in order to enter into that other
world?" Carol asked. Her question scared me half to death; I thought she
knew what was going on.
"Your total physical mass has to be added to your energy body," don
Juan replied, looking into her eyes. "The great difficulty of this maneuver
is to discipline the energy body, a thing the two of you have already done.
Lack of discipline is the only reason the two of you may fail in performing
this feat of ultimate stalking. Sometimes, as a fluke, an average person
ends up performing it and entering into another world. But this is
immediately explained away as insanity or hallucination."
I would have given anything in the world for don Juan to continue
talking. But he put us in the elevator, and we went up to the second floor,
to Carol's room, despite my protests and my rational need to know. Deep
down, however, my turmoil was not so much that I needed to know; the bottom
line was my fear. Somehow, this sorcerers' maneuver was more frightening to
me than anything I had done so far.
Don Juan's parting words to us were "Forget the self and you will fear
nothing." His grin and the nodding of his head were invitations to ponder
the statement.
Carol laughed and began to clown, imitating don Juan's voice as he gave
us his cryptic instructions. Her lisping added quite a bit of color to what
don Juan had said. Sometimes I found her lisping adorable. Most of the time,
I detested it. Fortunately, that night her lisping was hardly noticeable.
We went to her room and sat down on the edge of the bed. My last
conscious thought was that the bed was a relic from the beginning of the
century. Before I had time to utter a single word, I found myself in a
strange-looking bed. Carol was with me. She half sat up at the same time I
did. We were naked, each covered with a thin blanket.
"What's going on?" she asked in a feeble voice.
"Are you awake?" I asked inanely.
"Of course I am awake," she said in an impatient tone.
"Do you remember where we were?" I asked. There was a long silence, as
she obviously tried to put her thoughts in order. "I think I am real, but
you are not," she finally said. "I know where I was before this. And you
want to trick me."
I thought she was doing the same thing herself. She knew what was going
on and was testing me or pulling my leg. Don Juan had told me that her
demons and mine were caginess and distrust. I was having a grand sample of
that.
"I refuse to be part of any shit where you are in control," she said.
She looked at me with venom in her eyes. "I am talking to you, whoever you
are."
She took one of the blankets we had been covered with and wrapped
herself with it. "I am going to lie here and go back to where I came from,"
she said, with an air of finality. "You and the nagual go and play with each
other."
"You have to stop this nonsense," I said forcefully. "We are in another
world."
She didn't pay any attention and turned her back to me like an annoyed,
pampered child. I did not want to waste my dreaming attention in futile
discussions of realness. I began to examine my surroundings. The only light
in the room was moonlight shining through the window directly in front of
us. We were in a small room, on a high bed. I noticed that the bed was
primitively constructed. Four thick posts had been planted in the ground,
and the bed frame was a lattice, made of long poles attached to the posts.
The bed had a thick mattress, or rather a compact mattress. There were no
sheets or pillows. Filled burlap sacks were stacked up against the walls.
Two sacks by the foot of the bed, staggered one on top of the other, served
as a stepladder to climb onto it.
Looking for a light switch, I became aware that the high bed was in a
corner, against the wall. Our heads were to the wall; I was on the outside
of the bed and Carol on the inside. When I sat on the edge of the bed, I
realized that it was perhaps over three feet above the ground.
Carol sat up suddenly and said with a heavy lisp, "This is disgusting!
The nagual certainly didn't tell me I was going to end up like this."
"I didn't know it either," I said. I wanted to say more and start a
conversation, but my anxiety had grown to extravagant proportions.
"You shut up," she snapped at me, her voice cracking with anger. "You
don't exist. You're a ghost. Disappear! Disappear!"
Her lisping was actually cute and distracted me from my obsessive fear.
I shook her by the shoulders. She yelled, not so much in pain as in surprise
or annoyance.
"I'm not a ghost," I said. "We made the journey because we joined our
energy."
Carol Tiggs was famous among us for her speed in adapting to any
situation. In no time at all she was convinced of the realness of our
predicament and began to look for her clothes in the semidarkness. I
marveled at the fact that she was not afraid. She became busy, reasoning out
loud where she might have put her clothes had she gone to bed in that room.
"Do you see any chair?" she asked.
I faintly saw a stack of three sacks that might have served as a table
or high bench. She got out of the bed, went to it, and found her clothes and
mine, neatly folded, the way she always handled garments. She handed my
clothes to me; they were my clothes, but not the ones I had been wearing a
few minutes before, in Carol's room at the Regis Hotel.
"These are not my clothes," she lisped. "And yet they are mine. How
strange!"
We dressed in silence. I wanted to tell her that I was about to burst
with anxiety. I also wanted to comment on the speed of our journey, but, in
the time I had taken to dress, the thought of our journey had become very
vague. I could hardly remember where we had been before waking up in that
room. It was as if I had dreamt the hotel room. I made a supreme effort to
recollect, to push away the vagueness that had begun to envelop me. I
succeeded in dispelling the fog, but that act exhausted all my energy. I
ended up panting and sweating.
"Something nearly, nearly got me," Carol said. I looked at her. She,
like me, was covered with perspiration. "It nearly got you too. What do you
think it is?"
"The position of the assemblage point," I said with absolute certainty.
She did not agree with me. "It's the inorganic beings collecting their
dues," she said shivering. "The nagual told me it was going to be horrible,
but I never imagined anything this horrible."
I was in total agreement with her; we were in a horrifying mess, yet I
could not conceive what the horror of that situation was. Carol and I were
not novices; we had seen and done endless things, some of them outright
terrifying. But there was something in that dream room that chilled me
beyond belief.
"We are dreaming, aren't we?" Carol asked.
Without hesitation, I reassured her that we were, although I would have
given anything to have don Juan there to reassure me of the same thing.
"Why am I so frightened?" she asked me, as if I were capable of
rationally explaining it.
Before I could formulate a thought about it, she answered her question
herself. She said that what frightened her was to realize, at a body level,
that perceiving is an all-inclusive act when the assemblage point has been
immobilized on one position. She reminded me that don Juan had told us that
the power our daily world has over us is a result of the fact that our
assemblage point is immobile on its habitual position. This immobility is
what makes our perception of the world so inclusive and overpowering that we
cannot escape from it. Carol also reminded me about another thing the nagual
had said: that if we want to break this totally inclusive force, all we have
to do is dispel the fog, that is to say, displace the assemblage point by
intending its displacement.
I had never really understood what don Juan meant until the moment I
had to bring my assemblage point to another position, in order to dispel
that world's fog, which had begun to swallow me.
Carol and I, without saying another word, went to the window and looked
out. We were in the country. The moonlight revealed some low, dark shapes of
dwelling structures. By all indications, we were in the utility or supply
room of a farm or a big country house.
"Do you remember going to bed here?" Carol asked.
"I almost do," I said and meant it. I told her I had to fight to keep
the image of her hotel room in my mind, as a point of reference.
"I have to do the same," she said in a frightened whisper. "I know that
if we let go of that memory, we are goners."
Then she asked me if I wanted us to leave that shack and venture
outside. I did not. My apprehension was so acute that I was unable to voice
my words. I could only give her a signal with my head.
"You are so very right not to want to go out," she said. "I have the
feeling that if we leave this shack, we'll never make it back."
I was going to open the door and just look outside, but she stopped me.
"Don't do that," she said. "You might let the outside in."
The thought that crossed my mind at that instant was that we had been
placed inside a frail cage. Anything, such as opening the door, might upset
the precarious balance of that cage. At the moment I had that thought, both
of us had the same urge. We took off our clothes as if our lives depended on
that; we then jumped into the high bed without using the two sack steps,
only to jump down from it in the next instant.
It was evident that Carol and I had the same realization at the same
time. She confirmed my assumption when she said, "Anything that we use
belonging to this world can only weaken us. If I stand here naked and away
from the bed and away from the window, I don't have any problem remembering
where I came from. But if I lie in that bed or wear those clothes or look
out the window, I am done for."
We stood in the center of the room for a long time, huddled together. A
weird suspicion began to fester in my mind. "How are we going to return to
our world?" I asked, expecting her to know.
"The reentry into our world is automatic if we don't let the fog set
in," she said with the air of a foremost authority, which was her trademark.
And she was right. Carol and I woke up, at the same time, in the bed of
her room in the Regis Hotel. It was so obvious we were back in the world of
daily life that we didn't ask questions or make comments about it. The
sunlight was nearly blinding.
"How did we get back?" Carol asked. "Or rather, when did we get back?"
I had no idea what to say or what to think. I was too numb to
speculate, which was all I could have done.
"Do you think that we just returned?" Carol insisted. "Or maybe we've
been asleep here all night. Look! We're naked. When did we take our clothes
off?"
"We took them off in that other world," I said and surprised myself
with the sound of my voice.
My answer seemed to stump Carol. She looked uncomprehendingly at me and
then at her own naked body.
We sat there without moving for an endless time. Both of us seemed to
be deprived of volition. But then, quite abruptly, we had the same thought
at exactly the same time. We got dressed in record time, ran out of the
room, went down two flights of stairs, crossed the street, and rushed into
don Juan's hotel.
Inexplicably and excessively out of breath, since we had not really
exerted ourselves physically, we took turns explaining to him what we had
done. He confirmed our conjectures. "What you two did was about the most
dangerous thing one can imagine," he said.
He addressed Carol and told her that our attempt had been both a total
success and a fiasco. We had succeeded in transferring our awareness of the
daily world to our energy bodies, thus making the journey with all our
physicality, but we had failed in avoiding the influence of the inorganic
beings. He said that ordinarily dreamers experience the whole maneuver as a
series of slow transitions, and that they have to voice their intent to use
awareness as an element. In our case, all those steps were dispensed with.
Because of the intervention of the inorganic beings, the two of us had
actually been hurled into a deadly world with a most terrifying speed.
"It wasn't your combined energy that made your journey possible," he
continued. "Something else did that. It even selected adequate clothes for
you."
"Do you mean, nagual, that the clothes and the bed and the room
happened only because we were being run by the inorganic beings?" Carol
asked.
"You bet your life," he replied. "Ordinarily, dreamers are merely
voyeurs. The way your journey turned out, you two got a ringside seat and
lived the old sorcerers' damnation. What happened to them was precisely what
happened to you. The inorganic beings took them to worlds from which they
could not return. I should have known, but it didn't even enter my mind,
that the inorganic beings would take over and try to set up the same trap
for you two."
"Do you mean they wanted to keep us there?" Carol asked.
"If you had gotten outside that shack, you'd now be meandering
hopelessly in that world," don Juan said.
He explained that since we entered into that world with all our
physicality, the fixation of our assemblage points on the position
preselected by the inorganic beings was so overpowering that it created a
sort of fog that obliterated any memory of the world we came from. He added
that the natural consequence of such an immobility, as in the case of the
sorcerers of antiquity, is that the dreamer's assemblage point cannot return
to its habitual position.
"Think about this," he urged us. "Perhaps this is exactly what is
happening to all of us in the world of daily life. We are here, and the
fixation of our assemblage point is so overpowering that it has made us
forget where we came from, and what our purpose was for coming here."
Don Juan did not want to say any more about our journey. I felt that he
was sparing us further discomfort and fear. He took us to eat a late lunch.
By the time we reached the restaurant, a couple of blocks down Francisco
Madero Avenue, it was six o'clock in the afternoon. Carol and I had slept,
if that is what we did, about eighteen hours.
Only don Juan was hungry. Carol remarked with a touch of anger that he
was eating like a pig. Quite a few heads turned in our direction on hearing
don Juan's laughter.
It was a warm night. The sky was clear. There was a soft, caressing
breeze as we sat down on a bench in the Paseo Alameda.
"There is a question that's burning me," Carol said to don Juan. "We
didn't use awareness as a medium for traveling, right?"
"That's true," don Juan said and sighed deeply. "The task was to sneak
by the inorganic beings, not be run by them."
"What's going to happen now?" she asked.
"You are going to postpone stalking the stalkers until you two are
stronger," he said. "Or perhaps you'll never accomplish it. It doesn't
really matter; if one thing doesn't work, another will. Sorcery is an
endless challenge."
He explained to us again, as if he were trying to fix his explanation
in our minds, that in order to use awareness as an element of the
environment, dreamers first have to make a journey to the inorganic beings'
realm. Then they have to use that journey as a springboard, and, while they
are in possession of the necessary dark energy, they have to intend to be
hurled through the medium of awareness into another world.
"The failure of your trip was that you didn't have time to use
awareness as an element for traveling," he went on. "Before you even got to
the inorganic beings' world, you two were already in another world."
"What do you recommend we do?" Carol asked. "I recommend that you see
as little of each other as possible," he said. "I'm sure the inorganic
beings will not pass up the opportunity to get you two, especially if you
join forces."
So Carol Tiggs and I deliberately stayed away from each other from then
on. The prospect that we might inadvertently elicit a similar journey was
too great a risk for us. Don Juan encouraged our decision by repeating over
and over that we had enough combined energy to tempt the inorganic beings to
lure us again.
Don Juan brought my dreaming practices back to seeing energy in
energy-generating dreamlike states. In the course of time, I saw everything
that presented itself to me. I entered in this manner into a most peculiar
state: I became incapable of rendering intelligently what I saw. My
sensation was always that I had reached states of perception for which I had
no lexicon.
Don Juan explained my incomprehensible and indescribable visions as my
energy body using awareness as an element not for journeying, because I
never had enough energy, but for entering into the energy fields of
inanimate matter or of living beings.
11. THE TENANT
There were no more dreaming practices for me, as I was accustomed to
having them. The next time I saw don Juan, he put me under the guidance of
two women of his party: Florinda and Zuleica, his two closest cohorts. Their
instruction was not at all about the gates of dreaming but about different
ways to use the energy body, and it did not last long enough to be
influential. They gave me the impression that they were more interested in
checking me out than in teaching me anything.
"There is nothing else I can teach you about dreaming," don Juan said
when I questioned him about this state of affairs. "My time on this earth is
up. But Florinda will stay. She's the one who will direct, not only you but
all my other apprentices."
"Will she continue my dreaming practices?"
"I don't know that, and neither does she. It's all up to the spirit.
The real player. We are not players ourselves. We are mere pawns in its
hands. Following the commands of the spirit, I have to tell you what the
fourth gate of dreaming is, although I can't guide you anymore."
"What's the point of whetting my appetite? I'd rather not know."
"The spirit is not leaving that up to me or to you. I have to outline
the fourth gate of dreaming for you, whether I like it or not."
Don Juan explained that, at the fourth gate of dreaming, the energy
body travels to specific, concrete places and that there are three ways of
using the fourth gate: one, to travel to concrete places in this world; two,
to travel to concrete places out of this world; and, three, to travel to
places that exist only in the intent of others. He stated that the last one
is the most difficult and dangerous of the three and was, by far, the old
sorcerers' predilection.
"What do you want me to do with this knowledge?" I asked.
"Nothing for the moment. File it away until you need it."
"Do you mean that I can cross the fourth gate by myself, without help?"
"Whether or not you can do that is up to the spirit."
He abruptly dropped the subject, but he did not leave me with the
sensation that I should try to reach and cross the fourth gate by myself.
Don Juan then made one last appointment with me to give me, he said, a
sorcerers' send-off: the concluding touch of my dreaming practices. He told
me to meet him in the small town in southern Mexico where he and his
sorcerer companions lived.
I arrived there in the late afternoon. Don Juan and I sat in the patio
of his house on some uncomfortable wicker chairs fitted with thick, oversize
pillows. Don Juan laughed and winked at me. The chairs were a gift from one
of the women members of his party, and we simply had to sit as if nothing
was bothering us, especially him. The chairs had been bought for him in
Phoenix, Arizona, and with great difficulty brought into Mexico.
Don Juan asked me to read to him a poem by Dylan Thomas, which he said
had the most pertinent meaning for me at that point in time.
I have longed to move away
From the hissing of the spent lie
And the old terrors' continual cry
Growing more terrible as the day
Goes over the hill into the deep sea. . . .
I have longed to move away but am afraid;
Some life, yet unspent, might explode
Out of the old lie burning on the ground,
And, crackling into the air, leave me half-blind.
Don Juan stood up and said that he was going for a walk in the plaza,
in the center of town. He asked me to come along. I immediately assumed that
the poem had evoked a negative response in him and he needed to dispel it.
We reached the square plaza without having said a word. We walked
around it a couple of times, still not talking. There were quite a number of
people, milling around the stores on the streets facing the east and north
sides of the park. All the streets around the plaza were unevenly paved. The
houses were massive, one-story adobe buildings, with tiled roofs,
whitewashed walls, and blue or brown painted doors. On a side street, a
block away from the plaza, the high walls of the enormous colonial church,
which looked like a Moorish mosque, loomed ominously over the roof of the
only hotel in town. On the south side, there were two restaurants, which
inexplicably coexisted side by side, doing good business, serving
practically the same menu at the same prices.
I broke the silence and asked don Juan whether he also found it odd
that both restaurants were just about the same.
"Everything is possible in this town," he replied.
The way he said it made me feel uneasy.
"Why are you so nervous?" he asked, with a serious expression. "Do you
know something you're not telling me?"
"Why am I nervous? That's a laugh. I am always nervous around you, don
Juan. Sometimes more so than others."
He seemed to be making a serious effort not to laugh. "Naguals are not
really the most friendly beings on earth," he said in a tone of apology. "I
learned this the hard way, being pitted against my teacher, the terrible
nagual Julian. His mere presence used to scare the daylights out of me. And
when he used to zero in on me, I always thought my life wasn't worth a plug
nickel."
"Unquestionably, don Juan, you have the same effect on me."
He laughed openly. "No, no. You are definitely exaggerating. I'm an
angel in comparison."
"You may be an angel in comparison, except that I don't have the nagual
Julian to compare you with."
He laughed for a moment, then became serious again.
"I don't know why, but I definitely feel scared," I explained.
"Do you feel you have reason to be scared?" he asked and stopped
walking to peer at me.
His tone of voice and his raised eyebrows gave me the impression he
suspected that I knew something I was not revealing to him. He was clearly
expecting a disclosure on my part.
"Your insistence makes me wonder," I said. "Are you sure you are not
the one who has something up his sleeve?"
"I do have something up my sleeve," he admitted and grinned. "But
that's not the issue. The issue is that there is something in this town
awaiting you. And you don't quite know what it is or you do know what it is
but don't dare to tell me, or you don't know anything about it at all."
"What's waiting for me here?"
Instead of answering me, don Juan briskly resumed his walking, and we
kept going around the plaza in complete silence. We circled it quite a few
times, looking for a place to sit. Then, a group of young women got up from
a bench and left.
"For years now, I have been describing to you the aberrant practices of
the sorcerers of ancient Mexico," don Juan said as he sat down on the bench
and gestured for me to sit by him.
With the fervor of someone who has never said it before, he began to
tell me again what he had told me many times, that those sorcerers, guided
by extremely selfish interests, put all their efforts into perfecting
practices that pushed them further and further away from sobriety or mental
balance, and that they were finally exterminated when their complex edifices
of beliefs and practices became so cumbersome that they could no longer
support them.
"The sorcerers of antiquity, of course, lived and proliferated in this
area," he said, watching my reaction. "Here in this town. This town was
built on the actual foundations of one of their towns. Here in this area,
the sorcerers of antiquity carried on all their dealings."
"Do you know this for a fact, don Juan?"
"I do, and so will you, very soon."
My mounting anxiety was forcing me to do something I detested: to focus
on myself. Don Juan, sensing my frustration, egged me on.
"Very soon, we'll know whether or not you're really like the old
sorcerers or like the new ones," he said.
"You are driving me nuts with all this strange and ominous talk," I
protested.
Being with don Juan for thirteen years had conditioned me, above
everything else, to conceive of panic as something that was just around the
corner at all times, ready to be released.
Don Juan seemed to vacillate. I noticed his furtive glances in the
direction of the church. He was even distracted. When I talked to him, he
was not listening. I had to repeat my question. "Are you waiting for
someone?"
"Yes, I am," he said. "Most certainly I am. I was just sensing the
surroundings. You caught me in the act of scanning the area with my energy
body."
"What did you sense, don Juan?"
"My energy body senses that everything is in place. The play is on
tonight. You are the main protagonist. I am a character actor with a small
but meaningful role. I exit in the first act."
"What in the world are you talking about?"
He did not answer me. He smiled knowingly. "I'm preparing the ground,"
he said. "Warming you up, so to speak, harping on the idea that modern-day
sorcerers have learned a hard lesson. They have realized that only if they
remain totally detached can they have the energy to be free. Theirs is a
peculiar type of detachment, which is born not out of fear or indolence but
out of conviction."
Don Juan paused and stood up, stretched his arms in front of him, to
his sides, and then behind him. "Do the same," he advised me. "It relaxes
the body, and you have to be very relaxed to face what's coming to you
tonight." He smiled broadly. "Either total detachment or utter indulging is
coming to you tonight. It is a choice that every nagual in my line has to
make." He sat down again and took a deep breath. What he had said seemed to
have taken all his energy.
"I think I can understand detachment and indulging," he went on,
"because I had the privilege of knowing two naguals: my benefactor, the
nagual Julian, and his benefactor, the nagual Elias. I witnessed the
difference between the two. The nagual Elias was detached to the point that
he could put aside a gift of power. The nagual Julian was also detached, but
not enough to put aside such a gift."
"Judging by the way you're talking," I said, "I would say that you are
going to spring some sort of test on me tonight. Is that true?"
"I don't have the power to spring tests of any sort on you, but the
spirit does." He said this with a grin, then added, "I am merely its agent."
"What is the spirit going to do to me, don Juan?"
"All I can say is that tonight you're going to get a lesson in
dreaming, the way lessons in dreaming used to be, but you are not going to
get that lesson from me. Someone else is going to be your teacher and guide
you tonight."
"Who is going to be my teacher and guide?"
"A visitor, who might be a horrendous surprise to you or no surprise at
all."
"And what's the lesson in dreaming I am going to get?"
"It's a lesson about the fourth gate of dreaming. And it is in two
parts. The first part I'll explain to you presently. The second part nobody
can explain to you, because it is something that pertains only to you. All
the naguals of my line got this two-part lesson, but no two of those lessons
were alike; they were tailored to fit those naguals' personal bents of
character."
"Your explanation doesn't help me at all, don Juan. I am getting more
and more nervous."
We remained quiet for a long moment. I was shaken up and fidgety and
did not know what else to say without actually nagging.
"As you already know, for modern-day sorcerers to perceive energy
directly is a matter of personal attainment," don Juan said. "We maneuver
the assemblage point through self-discipline. For the old sorcerers, the
displacement of the assemblage point was a consequence of their subjugation
to others, their teachers, who accomplished those displacements through dark
operations and gave them to their disciples as gifts of power.
"It's possible for someone with greater energy than ours to do anything
to us," he went on. For example, the nagual Julian could have turned me into
anything he wanted, a fiend or a saint. But he was an impeccable nagual and
let me be myself. The old sorcerers were not that impeccable, and, by means
of their ceaseless efforts to gain control over others, they created a
situation of darkness and terror that was passed on from teacher to
disciple."
He stood up and swept his gaze all around us. "As you can see, this
town isn't much," he continued, "but it has a unique fascination for the
warriors of my line. Here lies the source of what we are and the source of
what we don't want to be.
"Since I am at the end of my time, I must pass on to you certain ideas,
recount to you certain stories, put you in touch with certain beings, right
here in this town, exactly as my benefactor did with me."
Don Juan said that he was reiterating something I already was familiar
with, that whatever he was and everything he knew were a legacy from his
teacher, the nagual Julian. He in turn inherited everything from his
teacher, the nagual Elias. The nagual Elias from the nagual Rosendo; he from
the nagual Lujan; the nagual Lujan from the nagual Santisteban; and the
nagual Santisteban from the nagual Sebastian.
He told me again, in a very formal tone, something he had explained to
me many times before, that there were eight naguals before the nagual
Sebastian, but that they were quite different. They had a different attitude
toward sorcery, a different concept of it, although they were still directly
related to his sorcery lineage.
"You must recollect now, and repeat to me, everything I've told you
about the nagual Sebastian," he demanded.
His request seemed odd to me, but I repeated everything I had been told
by him or by any of his companions about the nagual Sebastian and the
mythical old sorcerer, the death defier, known to them as the tenant.
"You know that the death defier makes us gifts of power every
generation," don Juan said. "And the specific nature of those gifts of power
is what changed the course of our lineage."
He explained that the tenant, being a sorcerer from the old school, had
learned from his teachers all the intricacies of shifting his assemblage
point. Since he had perhaps thousands of years of strange life and
awareness-ample time to perfect anything - he knew now how to reach and hold
hundreds, if not thousands, of positions of the assemblage point. His gifts
were like both maps for shifting the assemblage point to specific spots and
manuals on how to immobilize it on any of those positions and thus acquire
cohesion.
Don Juan was at the peak of his raconteur's form. I had never seen him
more dramatic. If I had not known him better, I would have sworn that his
voice had the deep and worried inflection of someone gripped by fear or
preoccupation. His gestures gave me the impression of a good actor
portraying nervousness and concern to perfection.
Don Juan peered at me, and, in the tone and manner of someone making a
painful revelation, he said that, for instance, the nagual Lujan received
from the tenant a gift of fifty positions. He shook his head rhythmically,
as if he were silently asking me to consider what he had just said. I kept
quiet.
"Fifty positions!" he exclaimed in wonder. "For a gift, one or, at the
most, two positions of the assemblage point should be more than adequate."
He shrugged his shoulders, gesturing bewilderment. "I was told that the
tenant liked the nagual Lujan immensely," he continued. "They struck up such
a close friendship that they were practically inseparable. I was told that
the nagual Lujan and the tenant used to stroll into the church over there
every morning for early mass."
"Right here, in this town?" I asked, in total surprise.
"Right here," he replied. "Possibly they sat down on this very spot, on
another bench, over a hundred years ago."
"The nagual Lujan and the tenant really walked in this plaza?" I asked
again, unable to overcome my surprise.
"You bet!" he exclaimed. "I brought you here tonight because the poem
you were reading to me cued me that it was time for you to meet the tenant."
Panic overtook me with the speed of wildfire. I had to breathe through
my mouth for a moment.
"We have been discussing the strange accomplishments of the sorcerers
of ancient times," don Juan continued. "But it's always hard when one has to
talk exclusively in idealities, without any firsthand knowledge. I can
repeat to you from now until doomsday something that is crystal clear to me
but impossible for you to understand or believe, because you don't have any
practical knowledge of it."
He stood up and gazed at me from head to toe. "Let's go to church," he
said. "The tenant likes the church and its surroundings. I'm positive this
is the moment to go there."
Very few times in the course of my association with don Juan had I felt
such apprehension. I was numb. My entire body trembled when I stood up. My
stomach was tied in knots, yet I followed him without a word when he headed
for the church, my knees wobbling and sagging involuntarily every time I
took a step. By the time we had walked the short block from the plaza to the
limestone steps of the church portico, I was about to faint. Don Juan put
his arm around my shoulders to prop me up.
"There's the tenant," he said as casually as if he had just spotted an
old friend.
I looked in the direction he was pointing and saw a group of five women
and three men at the far end of the portico. My fast and panicked glance did
not register anything unusual about those people. I couldn't even tell
whether they were going into the church or coming out of it. I noticed,
though, that they seemed to be congregated there accidentally. They were not
together. By the time don Juan and I reached the small door, cut out in the
church's massive wooden portals, three women had entered the church. The
three men and the other two women were walking away. I experienced a moment
of confusion and looked at don Juan for directions. He pointed with a
movement of his chin to the holy water font.
"We must observe the rules and cross ourselves," he whispered.
"Where's the tenant?" I asked, also in a whisper. Don Juan dipped the
tips of his fingers in the basin and made the sign of the cross. With an
imperative gesture of the chin, he urged me to do the same.
"Was the tenant one of the three men who left?" I whispered nearly in
his ear.
"No," he whispered back. "The tenant is one of the three women who
stayed. The one in the back row."
At that moment, a woman in the back row turned her head toward me,
smiled, and nodded at me.
I reached the door in one jump and ran out.
Don Juan ran after me. With incredible agility, he overtook me and held
me by the arm.
"Where are you going?" he asked, his face and body contorting with
laughter.
He held me firmly by the arm