"Drop it!" he said imperatively. "It's not helping anything. All you're
doing is distracting yourself from the purpose of dreaming, which is control
and power."
He lay down and covered his eyes with his hat and talked without
looking at me.
"I'm going to remind you of all the techniques you must practice, " he
said. "First you must focus your gaze on your hands as the starting point.
Then shift your gaze to other items and look at them in brief glances. Focus
your gaze on as many things as you can. Remember that if you only glance
briefly the images do not shift. Then go back to your hands.
"Every time you look at your hands you renew the power needed for
dreaming, so in the beginning don't look at too many things. Four items will
suffice every time. Later on, you may enlarge the scope until you can cover
all you want, but as soon as the images begin to shift and you feel you are
losing control go back to your hands.
"When you feel you can gaze at things indefinitely you will be ready
for a new technique. I'm going to teach you this new technique now, but I
expect you to put it to use only when you are ready."
He was quiet for about fifteen minutes. Finally he sat up and looked at
me.
"The next step in setting up dreaming is to learn to travel, " he said.
"The same way you have learned to look at your hands you can will yourself
to move, to go places. First you have to establish a place you want to go
to. Pick a well known spot-perhaps your school, or a park, or a friend's
house then, will yourself to go there.
"This technique is very difficult. You must perform two tasks: You must
will yourself to go to the specific locale; and then, when you have mastered
that technique, you have to learn to control the exact time of your
traveling."
As I wrote down his statements I had the feeling that I was really
nuts. I was actually taking down insane instructions, knocking myself out in
order to follow them. I experienced a surge of remorse and embarrassment.
"What are you doing to me, don Juan?" I asked, not really meaning it.
He seemed surprised. He stared at me for an instant and then smiled.
"You've been asking me the same question over and over. I'm not doing
anything to you. You are making yourself accessible to power; you're hunting
it and I'm just guiding you."
He tilted his head to the side and studied me. He held my chin with one
hand and the back of my head with the other and then moved my head back and
forth. The muscles of my neck were very tense and moving my head reduced the
tension.
Don Juan looked up to the sky for a moment and seemed to examine
something in it. "It's time to leave, " he said dryly and stood up. We
walked in an easterly direction until we came upon a patch of small trees in
a valley between two large hills. It was almost five p.m. by then. He
casually said that we might have to spend the night in that place. He
pointed to the trees and said that there was water around there.
He tensed his body and began sniffing the air like an animal.
I could see the muscles of his stomach contracting in very fast short
spasms as he blew and inhaled through his nose in rapid succession. He urged
me to do the same and find out by myself where the water was. I reluctantly
tried to imitate him. After five or six minutes of fast breathing I was
dizzy, but my nostrils had cleared out in an extraordinary way and I could
actually detect the smell of river willows. I could not tell where they
were, however.
Don Juan told me to rest for a few minutes and then he started me
sniffing again. The second round was more intense.
I could actually distinguish a whiff of river willow coming from my
right. We headed in that direction and found, a good quarter of a mile away,
a swamp like spot with stagnant water. We walked around it to a slightly
higher flat mesa. Above and around the mesa the chaparral was very thick.
"This place is crawling with mountain lions and other smaller cats, "
don Juan said casually, as if it were a commonplace observation. I ran to
his side and he broke out laughing.
"Usually I wouldn't come here at all, " he said. "But the crow pointed
out this direction. There must be something special about it."
"Do we really have to be here, don Juan?"
"We do. Otherwise I would avoid this place."
I had become extremely nervous. He told me to listen attentively to
what he had to say. "The only thing one can do in this place is hunt lions,
" he said. "So I'm going to teach you how to do that.
"There is a special way of constructing a trap for water rats that live
around water holes. They serve as bait. The sides of the cage are made to
collapse and very sharp spikes are put along the sides. The spikes are
hidden when the trap is up and they do not affect anything unless something
falls on the cage, in which case the sides collapse and the spikes pierce
whatever hits the trap."
I could not understand what he meant but he made a diagram on the
ground and showed me that if the side sticks of the cage were placed on
pivot like hollow spots on the frame, the cage would collapse onto either
side if something pushed its top.
The spikes were pointed sharp slivers of hard wood, which were placed
all around the frame and fixed to it.
Don Juan said that usually a heavy load of rocks was placed over a net
of sticks, which were connected to the cage and hung way above it. When the
mountain lion came upon the trap baited with the water rats, it would
usually try to break it by pawing it with all its might; then the slivers
would go through its paws and the cat, in a frenzy, would jump up,
unleashing an avalanche of rocks on top of him.
"Someday you might need to catch a mountain lion, " he said. "They have
special powers. They are terribly smart and the only way to catch them is by
fooling them with pain and with the smell of river willows."
With astounding speed and skill he assembled a trap and after a long
wait he caught three chubby squirrel like rodents.
He told me to pick a handful of willows from the edge of the swamp and
made me rub my clothes with them. He did the same. Then, quickly and
skillfully, he wove two simple carrying nets out of reeds, scooped up a
large clump of green plants and mud from the swamp, and carried it back to
the mesa, where he concealed himself. In the meantime the squirrel-like
rodents had begun to squeak very loudly.
Don Juan spoke to me from his hiding place and told me to use the other
carrying net, gather a good chunk of mud and plants, and climb to the lower
branches of a tree near the trap where the rodents were. Don Juan said that
he did not want to hurt the cat or the rodents, so he was going to hurl the
mud at the lion if it came to the trap. He told me to be on the alert and
hit the cat with my bundle after he had, in order to scare it away. He
recommended I should be extremely careful not to fall out of the tree. His
final instructions were to be so still that I would merge with the branches.
I could not see where don Juan was. The squealing of the rodents became
extremely loud and finally was so dark that I could hardly distinguish the
general features of the terrain. I heard a sudden and close sound of soft
steps and a muffled catlike exhalation, then a very soft growl and the
squirrel-like rodents ceased to squeak. It was right then that I saw the
dark mass of an animal right under the tree where I was.
Before I could even be sure that it was a mountain lion it charged
against the trap, but before it reached it something hit it and made it
recoil. I hurled my bundle, as don Juan had told me to do. I missed, yet it
made a very loud noise. At that instant don Juan let out a series of
penetrating yells that sent chills through my spine, and the cat, with
extraordinary agility, leaped to the mesa and disappeared.
Don Juan kept on making the penetrating noises a while longer and then
he told me to come down from the tree, pick up the cage with the squirrels,
run up to the mesa, and get to where he was as fast as I could.
In an incredibly short period of time I was standing next to don Juan.
He told me to imitate his yelling as close as possible in order to keep the
lion off while he dismantled the cage and
let the rodents free. I began to yell but could not produce the same
effect. My voice was raspy because of the excitation.
He said I had to abandon myself and yell with real feeling, because the
lion was still around. Suddenly I fully realized the situation. The lion was
real. I let out a magnificent series of
piercing yells. Don Juan roared with laughter.
He let me yell for a moment and then he said we had to leave the place
as quietly as possible, because the lion was no fool and was probably
retracing its steps back to where we were.
"He'll follow us for sure, " he said. "No matter how careful we are
we'll leave a trail as wide as the Pan American highway."
I walked very close to don Juan. From time to time he would stop for an
instant and listen. At one moment he began to run in the dark and I followed
him with my hands extended in front of my eyes to protect myself from the
branches.
We finally got to the base of the bluff where we had been earlier. Don
Juan said that if we succeeded in climbing to the top without being mauled
by the lion we were safe. He went up first to show me the way. We started to
climb in the dark. I did not know how, but I followed him with dead sure
steps.
When we were near the top I heard a peculiar animal cry. It was almost
like the mooing of a cow, except that it was a bit longer and coarser. "Up!
Up! "don Juan yelled.
I scrambled to the top in total darkness ahead of don Juan. When he
reached the flat top of the bluff I was already sitting catching my breath.
He rolled on the ground. I thought for a second that the exertion had been
too great for him, but he was laughing at my speedy climb.
We sat in complete silence for a couple of hours and then we started
back to my car.
Sunday, September 3, 1961
Don Juan was not in the house when I woke up. I worked over my notes
and had time to get some firewood from the surrounding chaparral before he
returned. I was eating when he walked into the house. He began to laugh at
what he called my routine of eating at noon, but he helped himself to my
sandwiches.
I told him that what had happened with the mountain lion was baffling
to me. In retrospect, it all seemed unreal. It was as if everything had been
staged for my benefit. The succession of events had been so rapid that I
really had not had time to be afraid. I had had enough time to act, but not
to deliberate upon my circumstances. In writing my notes the question of
whether I had really seen the mountain lion came to mind. The dry branch was
still fresh in my memory.
"It was a mountain lion, " don Juan said imperatively.
"Was it a real flesh and blood animal?"
"Of course."
I told him that my suspicions had been roused because of the easiness
of the total event. It was as if the lion had been waiting out there and had
been trained to do exactly what don Juan had planned.
He was unruffled by my barrage of skeptical remarks. He laughed at me.
"You're a funny fellow, " he said. "You saw and heard the cat. It was
right under the tree where you were. He didn't smell you and jump at you
because of the river willows. They kill any other smell, even for cats. You
had a batch of them in your lap."
I said that it was not that I doubted him, but that everything that had
happened that night was extremely foreign to the events of my everyday life.
For a while, as I was writing my notes, I even had had the feeling that don
Juan may have been playing the role of the lion. However, I had to discard
the idea because I had really seen the dark shape of a four legged animal
charging at the cage and then leaping to the mesa.
"Why do you make such a fuss?" he said. "It was just a big cat. There
must be thousands of cats in those mountains. Big deal. As usual, you are
focusing your attention on the wrong item. It makes no difference whatsoever
whether it was a lion or my pants. Your feelings at that moment were what
counted."
In my entire life I had never seen or heard a big wildcat on the prowl.
When I thought of it, I could not get over the fact that I had been only a
few feet away from one. Don Juan listened patiently while I went over the
entire experience.
"Why the awe for the big cat?" he asked with an inquisitive expression.
"You've been close to most of the animals that live around here and you've
never been so awed by them. Do you like cats?"
"No, I don't."
"Well, forget about it then. The lesson was not on how to hunt lions,
anyway."
"What was it about?"
"The little crow pointed out that specific spot to me, and at that spot
I saw the opportunity of making you understand how one acts while one is in
the mood of a warrior.
"Everything you did last night was done within a proper mood. You were
controlled and at the same time abandoned when you jumped down from the tree
to pick up the cage and run up to me. You were not paralyzed with fear. And
then, near the top of the bluff, when the lion let out a scream, you moved
very well. I'm sure you wouldn't believe what you did if you looked at the
bluff during the daytime. You had a degree of abandon, and at the same time
you had a degree of control over yourself. You did not let go and wet your
pants, and yet you let go and climbed that wall in complete darkness. You
could have missed the trail and killed yourself.
To climb that wall in darkness required that you had to hold on to
yourself and let go of yourself at the same time. That's what I call the
mood of a warrior."
I said that whatever I had done that night was the product of my fear
and not the result of any mood of control and abandon.
"I know that, " he said, smiling. "And I wanted to show you that you
can spur yourself beyond your limits if you are in the proper mood. A
warrior makes his own mood. You didn't know that. Fear got you into the mood
of a warrior, but now that you know about it, anything can serve to get you
into it." I wanted to argue with him, but my reasons were not clear. I felt
an inexplicable sense of annoyance.
"It's convenient to always act in such a mood, " he continued. "It cuts
through the crap and leaves one purified. It was a great feeling when you
reached the top of the bluff. Wasn't it?"
I told him that I understood what he meant, yet I felt it would be
idiotic to try to apply what he was teaching me to my everyday life.
"One needs the mood of a warrior for every single act, " he said.
"Otherwise one becomes distorted and ugly. There is no power in a life that
lacks this mood. Look at yourself. Everything offends and upsets you. You
whine and complain and feel that everyone is making you dance to their tune.
You are a leaf at the mercy of the wind. There is no power in your life.
What an ugly feeling that must be!
"A warrior, on the other hand, is a hunter. He calculates everything.
That's control. But once his . calculations are over, he acts. He lets go.
That's abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can
push him; no one can make him do things against himself or against his
better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive, and he survives in the best
of all possible fashions."
I liked his stance although I thought it was unrealistic. It seemed too
simplistic for the complex world in which I lived.
He laughed at my arguments and I insisted that the mood of a warrior
could not possibly help me overcome the feeling of being offended or
actually being injured by the actions of my fellow men, as in the
hypothetical case of being physically harassed by a cruel and malicious
person placed in a position of authority. He roared with laughter and
admitted the example was apropos.
"A warrior could be injured but not offended, " he said. "For a warrior
there is nothing offensive about the acts of his fellow men as long as he
himself is acting within the proper mood.
"The other night you were not offended by the lion. The fact that it
chased us did not anger you. I did not hear you cursing it, nor did I hear
you say that he had no right to follow us. It could have been a cruel and
malicious lion for all you know. But that was not a consideration while you
struggled to avoid it. The only thing that was pertinent was to survive. And
that you did very well.
"If you would have been alone and the lion had caught up with you and
mauled you to death, you would have never even considered complaining or
feeling offended by its acts. "The mood of a warrior is not so far-fetched
for yours or anybody's world. You need it in order to cut through all
the-guff."
I explained my way of reasoning. The lion and my fellow men were not on
a par, because I knew the intimate quirks of men while I knew nothing about
the lion. What offended me about my fellow men was that they acted
maliciously and knowingly.
"I know, I know, " don Juan said patiently. "To achieve the mood of a
warrior is not a simple matter. It is a revolution. To regard the lion and
the water rats and our fellow men as equals is a magnificent act of the
warrior's spirit. It takes power to do that."
A BATTLE OF POWER
Thursday, December 28, 1961
We started on a journey very early in the morning. We drove south and
then east to the mountains. Don Juan had brought gourds with food and water.
We ate in my car before we started walking.
"Stick close to me, " he said. "This is an unknown region to you and
there is no need to take chances. You are going in search of power and
everything you do counts. Watch the wind, especially towards the end of the
day. Watch when it changes directions, and shift your position so that I
always shield you from it."
"What are we going to do in these mountains, don Juan?"
"You're hunting power."
"I mean what are we going to do in particular?"
"There's no plan when it comes to hunting power. Hunting power or
hunting game is the same. A hunter hunts whatever presents itself to him.
Thus he must always be in a state of readiness.
"You know about the wind, and now you may hunt power in the wind by
yourself. But there are other things you don't know about which are, like
the wind, the center of power at certain times and at certain places.
"Power is a very peculiar affair, " he said. "It is impossible to pin
it down and say what it really is. It is a feeling that one has about
certain things. Power is personal. It belongs to oneself alone. My
benefactor, for instance, could make a person mortally ill by merely looking
at him. Women would wane away after he had set eyes on them. Yet he did not
make people sick all the time but only when his personal power was
involved."
"How did he choose who to make sick?"
"I don't know that. He didn't know it himself. Power is like that. It
commands you and yet it obeys you.
"A hunter of power entraps it and then stores it away as his personal
finding. Thus, personal power grows, and you may have the case of a warrior
who has so much personal power that he becomes a man of knowledge."
"How does one store power, don Juan?"
"That again is another feeling. It depends on what kind of a person the
warrior is. My benefactor was a man of violent nature. He stored power
through that feeling. Everything he did was strong and direct. He left me a
memory of something crushing through things. And everything that happened to
him took place in that manner."
I told him I could not understand how power was stored through a
feeling.
"There's no way to explain it, " he said after a long pause.
"You have to do it yourself."
He picked up the gourds with food and fastened them to his back. He
handed me a string with eight pieces of dry meat strung on it and made me
hang it from my neck.
"This is power food, " he said.
"What makes it power food, don Juan?"
"It is the meat of an animal that had power. A deer, a unique deer. My
personal power brought it to me. This meat will sustain us for weeks, months
if need be. Chew little bits of it at a time, and chew it thoroughly. Let
the power sink slowly into your body."
We began to walk. It was almost eleven a.m. Don Juan reminded me once
more of the procedure to follow.
"Watch the wind, " he said. "Don't let it trip you. And don't let it
make you tired. Chew your power food and hide from the wind behind my body.
The wind won't hurt me; we know each other very well." He led me to a trail
that went straight to the high mountains. The day was cloudy and it was
about to rain. I could see low rain clouds and fog up above in the mountains
descending into the area where we were.
We hiked in complete silence until about three o'clock in the
afternoon. Chewing the dry meat was indeed invigorating. And watching for
sudden changes in the direction of the wind became a mysterious affair, to
the point that my entire body seemed to sense changes before they actually
happened. I had the feeling that I could detect waves of wind as a sort of
pressure on my upper chest, on my bronchial tubes. Every time I was about to
feel a gust of wind my chest and throat would itch.
Don Juan stopped for a moment and looked around. He appeared to be
orienting himself and then he turned to the right. I noticed that he was
also chewing dry meat. I felt very fresh and was not tired at all. The task
of being aware of shifts in the wind had been so consuming that I had not
been aware of time.
We walked into a deep ravine and then up one side to a small plateau on
the sheer side of an enormous mountain. We were quite high, almost to the
top of the mountain. Don Juan climbed a huge rock at the end of the plateau
and helped me up to it. The rock was placed in such a way as to look like a
dome on top of precipitous walls. We slowly walked around it. Finally I had
to move around the rock on my seat, holding on to the surface with my heels
and hands.
I was soaked in perspiration and had to dry my hands repeatedly. From
the other side I could see a very large shallow cave near the top of the
mountain. It looked like a hall that had been carved out of the rock. It was
sandstone which had been weathered into a sort of balcony with two pillars.
Don Juan said that we were going to camp there, that it was a very safe
place because it was too shallow to be a den for lions or any other
predators, too open to be a nest for rats, and too windy for insects. He
laughed and said that it was an ideal place for men, since no other living
creatures could stand it.
He climbed up to it like a mountain goat. I marveled at his stupendous
agility.
I slowly dragged myself down the rock on my seat and then tried to run
up the side of the mountain in order to reach the ledge. The last few yards
completely exhausted me. I kiddingly asked don Juan how old he really was. I
thought that in order to reach the ledge the way he had done it one had to
be extremely fit and young.
"I'm as young as I want to be, " he said. "This again is a matter of
personal power. If you store power your body can perform unbelievable feats.
On the other hand, if you dissipate power you'll be a fat old man in no time
at all."
The length of the ledge was oriented along an east-west line. The open
side of the balcony-like formation was to the south.
I walked to the west end. The view was superb. The rain had
circumvented us. It looked like a sheet of transparent material hung over
the low land. Don Juan said that we had enough time to build a shelter. He
told me to make a pile of as many rocks as I could carry onto the ledge
while he gathered some branches for a roof.
In an hour he had built a wall about a foot thick on the east end of
the ledge. It was about two feet long and three feet high. He wove and tied
some bundles of branches he had collected and made a roof, securing it onto
two long poles that ended in forks. There was another pole of the same
length that was affixed to the roof itself and which supported it on the
opposite side of the wall. The structure looked like a high table with three
legs.
Don Juan sat cross-legged under it, on the very edge of the balcony. He
told me to sit next to him, to his right. We remained quiet for a while. Don
Juan broke the silence. He said in a whisper that we had to act as if
nothing was out of the ordinary. I asked if there was something in
particular that I should do. He said that I should get busy writing and do
it in such a way that it would be as if I were at my desk with no worries in
the world except writing. At a given moment he was going to nudge me and
then I should look where he was pointing with his eyes.
He warned me that no matter what I saw I should not utter a single
word. Only he could talk with impunity because he was known to all the
powers in those mountains. I followed his instructions and wrote for over an
hour. I became immersed in my task. Suddenly I felt a soft tap on my arm and
saw don Juan's eyes and head move to point out a bank of fog about two
hundred yards away which was descending from the top of the mountain. Don
Juan whispered in my ear with a tone barely audible even at that close
range.
"Move your eyes back and forth along the bank of fog, " he said. "But
don't look at it directly. Blink your eyes and don't focus them on the fog.
When you see a green spot on the bank of fog, point it out to me with your
eyes."
I moved my eyes from left to right along the bank of fog that was
slowly coming down to us. Perhaps half an hour went by. It was getting dark.
The fog moved extremely slowly. At one moment I had the sudden feeling that
I had detected a faint glow to my right. At first I thought that I had seen
a patch of green shrubbery through the fog. When I looked at it directly I
did not notice anything, but when I looked without focusing I could detect a
vague greenish area.
I pointed it out to don Juan. He squinted his eyes and stared at it.
"Focus your eyes on that spot, " he whispered in my ear. "Look without
blinking until you see."
I wanted to ask what I was supposed to see but he glared at me as if to
remind me that I should not talk. I stared again. The bit of fog that had
come down from above hung as if it were a piece of solid matter. It was
lined up right at the spot where I had noticed the green tint. As my eyes
became tired again and I squinted, I saw at first the bit of fog
superimposed on the fog bank, and then I saw a thin strip of fog in between
that looked like a thin unsupported structure, a bridge joining the mountain
above me and the bank of fog in front of me. For a moment I thought I could
see the transparent fog, which was being blown down from the top of the
mountain, going by the bridge without disturbing it. It was as if the bridge
were actually solid. At one instant the mirage became so complete that I
could actually distinguish the darkness of the part under the bridge proper,
as opposed to the light sandstone color of its side.
I stared at the bridge, dumbfounded. And then I either lifted myself to
its level, or the bridge lowered itself to mine. Suddenly I was looking at a
straight beam in front of me. It was an immensely long, solid beam, narrow
and without railings, but wide enough to walk on. Don Juan shook me by the
arm vigorously. I felt my head bobbing up and down and then I noticed that
my eyes itched terribly. I rubbed them quite unconsciously. Don Juan kept on
shaking me until I opened my eyes again. He poured some water from his gourd
into the hollow of his hand and sprinkled my face with it. The sensation was
very unpleasant. The coldness of the water was so extreme that the drops
felt like sores on my skin. I noticed then that my body was very warm.
I was feverish.
Don Juan hurriedly gave me some water to drink and then splashed water
on my ears and neck.
I heard a very loud, eerie and-prolonged bird cry. Don Juan listened
attentively for an instant and then pushed the rocks of the wall with his
foot and collapsed the roof. He threw the roof into the shrubs and tossed
all the rocks, one by one, over the side.
He whispered in my ear, "Drink some water and chew your dry meat. We
cannot stay here. That cry was not a bird." We climbed down the ledge and
began to walk in an easterly direction. In no time at all it was so dark
that it was as if there were a curtain in front of my eyes. The fog was like
an impenetrable barrier. I had never realized how crippling the fog was at
night. I could not conceive how don Juan walked. I held oh to his arm as if
I were blind.
Somehow I had the feeling I was walking on the edge of a precipice. My
legs refused to move on. My reason trusted don Juan and I was rationally
willing to go on, but my body was not, and don Juan had to drag me in total
darkness.
He must have known the terrain to ultimate perfection. He stopped at a
certain point and made me sit down. I did not dare let go of his arm. My
body felt, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I was sitting on a barren dome
like mountain and if I moved an inch to my right I would fall beyond the
tolerance point into an abysm. I was absolutely sure I was sitting on a
curved mountainside, because my body moved unconsciously to the right. I
thought it did so in order to keep its verticality, so I tried to compensate
by leaning to the left against don Juan, as far as I could.
Don Juan suddenly moved away from me and without the support of his
body I fell on the ground. Touching the ground restored my sense of
equilibrium. I was lying on a flat area. I began to reconnoiter my immediate
surroundings by touch.
I recognized dry leaves and twigs. There was a sudden flash of
lightning that illuminated the whole area and tremendous thunder. I saw don
Juan standing to my left. I saw huge trees and a cave a few feet behind him.
Don Juan told me to get into the hole. I crawled into it and sat down
with my back against the rock.
I felt don Juan leaning over to whisper that I had to be totally
silent. There were three flashes of lightning, one after the other.
In a glance I saw don Juan sitting cross legged to my left. The cave
was a concave formation big enough for two or three persons to sit in. The
hole seemed to have been carved at the bottom of a boulder. I felt that it
had indeed been wise of me to have crawled into it, because if I had been
walking I would have knocked my head against the rock.
The brilliancy of the lightning gave me an idea of how thick the bank
of fog was. I noticed the trunks of enormous trees as dark silhouettes
against the opaque light gray mass of the fog.
Don Juan whispered that the fog and the lightning were in cahoots with
each other and I had to keep an exhausting vigil because I was engaged in a
battle of power. At that moment a stupendous flash of lightning rendered the
whole scenery phantasmagorical. The fog was like a white filter that frosted
the light of the electrical discharge and diffused it uniformly; the fog was
like a dense whitish substance hanging between the tall trees, but right in
front of me at the ground level the fog was thinning out. I plainly
distinguished the features of the terrain. We were in a pine forest. Very
tall trees surrounded us. They were so extremely big that I could have sworn
we were in the redwoods if I had not previously known our whereabouts.
There was a barrage of lightning that lasted several minutes. Each
flash made the features I had already observed more discernible. Right in
front of me I saw a definite trail. There was no vegetation on it. It seemed
to end in an area clear of trees.
There were so many flashes of lightning that I could not keep track of
where they were coming from. The scenery, however, had been so profusely
illuminated that I felt much more at ease. My fears and uncertainties had
vanished as soon as there had been enough light to lift the heavy curtain of
darkness. So when there was a long pause between the flashes of lightning I
was no longer disoriented by the blackness around me.
Don Juan whispered that I had probably done enough watching, and that I
had to focus my attention on the sound of thunder. I realized to my
amazement that I had not paid any attention to thunder at all, in spite of
the fact that it had really been tremendous. Don Juan added that I should
follow the sound and look in the direction where I thought it came from.
There were no longer barrages of lightning and thunder but only
sporadic flashes of intense light and sound. The thunder seemed to always
come from my right. The fog was lifting and I, already being accustomed to
the pitch black, could distinguish masses of vegetation. The lightning and
thunder continued and suddenly the whole right side opened up and I could
see the sky.
The electrical storm seemed to be moving towards my right. There was
another flash of lightning and I saw a distant mountain to my extreme right.
The light illuminated the back ground, silhouetting the bulky mass of the
mountain. I saw trees on top of it; they looked like neat black cutouts
superimposed on the brilliantly white sky. I even saw cumulus clouds over
the mountains.
The fog had cleared completely around us. There was a steady wind and I
could hear the rustling of leaves in the big trees to my left. The
electrical storm was too distant to illuminate the trees, but their dark
masses remained discernible.
The light of the storm allowed me to establish, however, that there was
a range of distant mountains to my right and that the forest was limited to
the left side. It seemed that I was
looking down into a dark valley, which I could not see at all.
The range over which the electrical storm was taking place was on the
opposite side of the valley.
Then it began to rain. I pressed back against the rock as far as I
could. My hat served as a good protection. I was sitting with my knees to my
chest and only my calves and shoes got wet. It rained for a long time. The
rain was lukewarm. I felt it on my feet. And then I fell asleep.
The noises of birds woke me up. I looked around for don Juan. He was
not there; ordinarily I would have wondered whether he had left me there
alone, but the shock of seeing the surroundings nearly paralyzed me.
I stood up. My legs were soaking wet, the brim of my hat was soggy and
there was still some water in it that spilled over me. I was not in a cave
at all, but under some thick bushes. I experienced a moment of unparalleled
confusion. I was standing on a flat piece of land between two small dirt
hills covered with bushes. There were no trees to my left and no valley to
my right. Right in front of me, where I had seen the path in the forest,
there was a gigantic bush.
I refused to believe what I was witnessing. The incongruency of my two
versions of reality made me grapple for any kind of explanation. It occurred
to me that it was perfectly possible that I had slept so soundly that don
Juan might have "carried me on his back to another place without waking me.
I examined the spot where I had been sleeping. The ground there was
dry, and so was the ground on the spot next to it, where don Juan had been.
I called him a couple of times and then had an attack of anxiety and
bellowed his name as loud as I could. He came out from behind some bushes. I
immediately became aware that he knew what was going on. His smile was so
mischievous that I ended up smiling myself.
I did not want to waste any time in playing games with him. I blurted
out what was the matter with me. I explained as carefully as possible every
detail of my night long hallucinations. He listened without interrupting. He
could not, however, keep a serious face and started to laugh a couple of
times, but he regained his composure right away.
I asked for his comments three or four times; he only shook his head as
if the whole affair was also incomprehensible to him. When I ended my
account he looked at me and said, "You look awful. Maybe you need to go to
the bushes." He cackled for a moment and then added that I should take off
my clothes and wring them out so they would dry.
The sunlight was brilliant. There were very few clouds. It was a windy
brisk day. Don Juan walked away, telling me that he was going to look for
some plants and that I should compose myself and eat something and not call
him until I was calm and strong.
My clothes were really wet. I sat down in the sun to dry. I felt that
the only way for me to relax was to get out my notebook and write. I ate
while I worked on my notes. After a couple of hours I was more relaxed and I
called don Juan. He answered from a place near the top of the mountain. He
told me to gather the gourds and climb up to where he was. When I reached
the spot, I found him sitting on a smooth rock. He opened the gourds and
served himself some food. He handed me two big pieces of meat.
I did not know where to begin. There were so many things I wanted to
ask. He seemed to be aware of my mood and laughed with sheer delight.
"How do you feel?" he asked in a facetious tone.
I did not want to say anything. I was still upset. Don Juan urged me to
sit down on the flat slab. He said that the stone was a power object and
that I would be renewed after being there for a while.
"Sit down, " he commanded me dryly. He did not smile. His eyes were
piercing. I automatically sat down.
He said that I was being careless with power by acting morosely, and
that I had to put an end to it or power would turn against both of us and we
would never leave those desolate hills alive.
After a moment's pause he casually asked, "How is your dreaming?" I
explained to him how difficult it had become for me to give myself the
command to look at my hands. At first it had been relatively easy, perhaps
because of the newness of the concept. I had had no trouble at all in
reminding myself that I had to look at my hands. But the excitation had worn
off and some nights I could not do it at all.
"You must wear a headband to sleep, " he said. "Getting a headband is a
tricky maneuver. I cannot give you one, because you yourself have to make it
from scratch. But you cannot make one until you have had a vision of it in
dreaming. See what I mean? The headband has to be made according to the
specific vision. And it must have a strip across it that fits
tightly on top of the head. Or it may very well be like a tight cap.
Dreaming is easier when one wears a power object on top of the head. You
could wear your hat or put on a cowl, like a friar, and go to sleep, but
those items would only cause intense dreams, not dreaming."
He was silent for a moment and then proceeded to tell me in a fast
barrage of words that the vision of the headband did not have to occur only
in "dreaming" but could happen in states of wakefulness and as a result of
any far-fetched and totally unrelated event, such as watching the flight of
birds, the movement of water, the clouds, and so on.
"A hunter of power watches everything, " he went on. "And everything
tells him some secret."
"But how can one be sure that things are telling secrets?" I asked.
I thought he may have had a specific formula that allowed him to make
"correct" interpretations.
"The only way to be sure is by following all the instructions I have
been giving you, starting from the first day you came to see me, " he said.
"In order to have power one must live with power."
He smiled benevolently. He seemed to have lost his fierceness; he even
nudged me lightly on the arm.
"Eat your power food, " he urged me.
I began to chew some dry meat and at that moment I had the sudden
realization that perhaps the dry meat contained a psychotropic substance,
hence the hallucinations. For a moment I felt almost relieved. If he had put
something in the meat my mirages were perfectly understandable. I asked him
to tell me if there was anything at all in the "power meat."
He laughed but did not answer me directly. I insisted, assuring him
that I was not angry or even annoyed, but that I had to know so I could
explain the events of the previous night to my own satisfaction. I urged
him, coaxed him, and finally begged him to tell me the truth.
"You are quite cracked, " he said, shaking his head in a gesture of
disbelief. "You have an insidious tendency. You persist in trying to explain
everything to your satisfaction. There is nothing in the meat except power.
The power was not put there by me or by any other man but by power itself.
It is the dry meat of a deer and that deer was a gift to me in the same way
a certain rabbit was a gift to you not too long ago. Neither you nor I put
anything in the rabbit. I didn't ask you to dry the rabbit's meat, because
that act required more power than you had. However, I did tell you to eat
the meat. You didn't eat much of it, because of your own stupidity.
"What happened to you last night was neither a joke nor a prank. You
had an encounter with power. The fog, the darkness, the lightning, the
thunder and the rain were all part of a great battle of power. You had the
luck of a fool. A warrior would give anything to have such a battle."
My argument was that the whole event could not be a battle of power
because it had not been real.
"And what is real?" don Juan asked me very calmly.
"This, what we're looking at is real, " I said, pointing to the
surroundings.
"But so was the bridge you saw last night, and so was the forest and
everything else."
"But if they were real where are they now?"
"They are here. If you had enough power you could call them back. Right
now you cannot do that because you think it is very helpful to keep on
doubting and nagging. It isn't, my
friend. It isn't. There are worlds upon worlds, right here in front of
us. And they are nothing to laugh at. Last night if I hadn't grabbed your
arm you would have walked on that bridge whether you wanted to or not. And
earlier I had to protect you from the wind that was seeking you out."
"What would have happened if you hadn't protected me?"
"Since you don't have enough power, the wind would have made you lose
your way and perhaps even killed you by pushing you into a ravine. But the
fog was the real thing last night.
Two things could have happened to you in the fog. You could have walked
across the bridge to the other side, or you could have fallen to your
death." Either would have depended on power. One thing, however, would have
been for sure. If I had not protected you, you would have had to walk on
that bridge regardless of anything. That is the nature of power. As I told
you before, it commands you and yet it is at your command. Last night, for
instance, the power would have forced you to walk across the bridge and then
it would have been at your command to sustain you while you were walking. I
stopped you because I know you don't have the means to use power, and
without power the bridge would have collapsed."
"Did you see the bridge yourself, don Juan?"
"No. I just saw power. It may have been anything. Power for you, this
time, was a bridge. I don't know why a bridge. We are most mysterious
creatures."
"Have you ever seen a bridge in the fog, don Juan?"
"Never. But that's because I'm not like you. I saw other things. My
battles of power are very different than yours."
"What did you see, don Juan? Can you tell me?"
"I saw my enemies during my first battle of power in the fog. You have
no enemies. You don't hate people. I did at that time. I indulged in hating
people. I don't do that any more. I have vanquished my hate, but at that
time my hate nearly destroyed me. "Your battle of power, on the other hand,
was neat. It didn't consume you. You are consuming yourself now with your
own crappy thoughts and doubts. That's your way of indulging yourself."
"The fog was impeccable with you. You have an affinity with it. It gave
you a stupendous bridge, and that bridge will be there in the fog from now
on. It will reveal itself to you over and over, until someday you will have
to cross it.
"I strongly recommend that from this day on you don't walk into foggy
doing is distracting yourself from the purpose of dreaming, which is control
and power."
He lay down and covered his eyes with his hat and talked without
looking at me.
"I'm going to remind you of all the techniques you must practice, " he
said. "First you must focus your gaze on your hands as the starting point.
Then shift your gaze to other items and look at them in brief glances. Focus
your gaze on as many things as you can. Remember that if you only glance
briefly the images do not shift. Then go back to your hands.
"Every time you look at your hands you renew the power needed for
dreaming, so in the beginning don't look at too many things. Four items will
suffice every time. Later on, you may enlarge the scope until you can cover
all you want, but as soon as the images begin to shift and you feel you are
losing control go back to your hands.
"When you feel you can gaze at things indefinitely you will be ready
for a new technique. I'm going to teach you this new technique now, but I
expect you to put it to use only when you are ready."
He was quiet for about fifteen minutes. Finally he sat up and looked at
me.
"The next step in setting up dreaming is to learn to travel, " he said.
"The same way you have learned to look at your hands you can will yourself
to move, to go places. First you have to establish a place you want to go
to. Pick a well known spot-perhaps your school, or a park, or a friend's
house then, will yourself to go there.
"This technique is very difficult. You must perform two tasks: You must
will yourself to go to the specific locale; and then, when you have mastered
that technique, you have to learn to control the exact time of your
traveling."
As I wrote down his statements I had the feeling that I was really
nuts. I was actually taking down insane instructions, knocking myself out in
order to follow them. I experienced a surge of remorse and embarrassment.
"What are you doing to me, don Juan?" I asked, not really meaning it.
He seemed surprised. He stared at me for an instant and then smiled.
"You've been asking me the same question over and over. I'm not doing
anything to you. You are making yourself accessible to power; you're hunting
it and I'm just guiding you."
He tilted his head to the side and studied me. He held my chin with one
hand and the back of my head with the other and then moved my head back and
forth. The muscles of my neck were very tense and moving my head reduced the
tension.
Don Juan looked up to the sky for a moment and seemed to examine
something in it. "It's time to leave, " he said dryly and stood up. We
walked in an easterly direction until we came upon a patch of small trees in
a valley between two large hills. It was almost five p.m. by then. He
casually said that we might have to spend the night in that place. He
pointed to the trees and said that there was water around there.
He tensed his body and began sniffing the air like an animal.
I could see the muscles of his stomach contracting in very fast short
spasms as he blew and inhaled through his nose in rapid succession. He urged
me to do the same and find out by myself where the water was. I reluctantly
tried to imitate him. After five or six minutes of fast breathing I was
dizzy, but my nostrils had cleared out in an extraordinary way and I could
actually detect the smell of river willows. I could not tell where they
were, however.
Don Juan told me to rest for a few minutes and then he started me
sniffing again. The second round was more intense.
I could actually distinguish a whiff of river willow coming from my
right. We headed in that direction and found, a good quarter of a mile away,
a swamp like spot with stagnant water. We walked around it to a slightly
higher flat mesa. Above and around the mesa the chaparral was very thick.
"This place is crawling with mountain lions and other smaller cats, "
don Juan said casually, as if it were a commonplace observation. I ran to
his side and he broke out laughing.
"Usually I wouldn't come here at all, " he said. "But the crow pointed
out this direction. There must be something special about it."
"Do we really have to be here, don Juan?"
"We do. Otherwise I would avoid this place."
I had become extremely nervous. He told me to listen attentively to
what he had to say. "The only thing one can do in this place is hunt lions,
" he said. "So I'm going to teach you how to do that.
"There is a special way of constructing a trap for water rats that live
around water holes. They serve as bait. The sides of the cage are made to
collapse and very sharp spikes are put along the sides. The spikes are
hidden when the trap is up and they do not affect anything unless something
falls on the cage, in which case the sides collapse and the spikes pierce
whatever hits the trap."
I could not understand what he meant but he made a diagram on the
ground and showed me that if the side sticks of the cage were placed on
pivot like hollow spots on the frame, the cage would collapse onto either
side if something pushed its top.
The spikes were pointed sharp slivers of hard wood, which were placed
all around the frame and fixed to it.
Don Juan said that usually a heavy load of rocks was placed over a net
of sticks, which were connected to the cage and hung way above it. When the
mountain lion came upon the trap baited with the water rats, it would
usually try to break it by pawing it with all its might; then the slivers
would go through its paws and the cat, in a frenzy, would jump up,
unleashing an avalanche of rocks on top of him.
"Someday you might need to catch a mountain lion, " he said. "They have
special powers. They are terribly smart and the only way to catch them is by
fooling them with pain and with the smell of river willows."
With astounding speed and skill he assembled a trap and after a long
wait he caught three chubby squirrel like rodents.
He told me to pick a handful of willows from the edge of the swamp and
made me rub my clothes with them. He did the same. Then, quickly and
skillfully, he wove two simple carrying nets out of reeds, scooped up a
large clump of green plants and mud from the swamp, and carried it back to
the mesa, where he concealed himself. In the meantime the squirrel-like
rodents had begun to squeak very loudly.
Don Juan spoke to me from his hiding place and told me to use the other
carrying net, gather a good chunk of mud and plants, and climb to the lower
branches of a tree near the trap where the rodents were. Don Juan said that
he did not want to hurt the cat or the rodents, so he was going to hurl the
mud at the lion if it came to the trap. He told me to be on the alert and
hit the cat with my bundle after he had, in order to scare it away. He
recommended I should be extremely careful not to fall out of the tree. His
final instructions were to be so still that I would merge with the branches.
I could not see where don Juan was. The squealing of the rodents became
extremely loud and finally was so dark that I could hardly distinguish the
general features of the terrain. I heard a sudden and close sound of soft
steps and a muffled catlike exhalation, then a very soft growl and the
squirrel-like rodents ceased to squeak. It was right then that I saw the
dark mass of an animal right under the tree where I was.
Before I could even be sure that it was a mountain lion it charged
against the trap, but before it reached it something hit it and made it
recoil. I hurled my bundle, as don Juan had told me to do. I missed, yet it
made a very loud noise. At that instant don Juan let out a series of
penetrating yells that sent chills through my spine, and the cat, with
extraordinary agility, leaped to the mesa and disappeared.
Don Juan kept on making the penetrating noises a while longer and then
he told me to come down from the tree, pick up the cage with the squirrels,
run up to the mesa, and get to where he was as fast as I could.
In an incredibly short period of time I was standing next to don Juan.
He told me to imitate his yelling as close as possible in order to keep the
lion off while he dismantled the cage and
let the rodents free. I began to yell but could not produce the same
effect. My voice was raspy because of the excitation.
He said I had to abandon myself and yell with real feeling, because the
lion was still around. Suddenly I fully realized the situation. The lion was
real. I let out a magnificent series of
piercing yells. Don Juan roared with laughter.
He let me yell for a moment and then he said we had to leave the place
as quietly as possible, because the lion was no fool and was probably
retracing its steps back to where we were.
"He'll follow us for sure, " he said. "No matter how careful we are
we'll leave a trail as wide as the Pan American highway."
I walked very close to don Juan. From time to time he would stop for an
instant and listen. At one moment he began to run in the dark and I followed
him with my hands extended in front of my eyes to protect myself from the
branches.
We finally got to the base of the bluff where we had been earlier. Don
Juan said that if we succeeded in climbing to the top without being mauled
by the lion we were safe. He went up first to show me the way. We started to
climb in the dark. I did not know how, but I followed him with dead sure
steps.
When we were near the top I heard a peculiar animal cry. It was almost
like the mooing of a cow, except that it was a bit longer and coarser. "Up!
Up! "don Juan yelled.
I scrambled to the top in total darkness ahead of don Juan. When he
reached the flat top of the bluff I was already sitting catching my breath.
He rolled on the ground. I thought for a second that the exertion had been
too great for him, but he was laughing at my speedy climb.
We sat in complete silence for a couple of hours and then we started
back to my car.
Sunday, September 3, 1961
Don Juan was not in the house when I woke up. I worked over my notes
and had time to get some firewood from the surrounding chaparral before he
returned. I was eating when he walked into the house. He began to laugh at
what he called my routine of eating at noon, but he helped himself to my
sandwiches.
I told him that what had happened with the mountain lion was baffling
to me. In retrospect, it all seemed unreal. It was as if everything had been
staged for my benefit. The succession of events had been so rapid that I
really had not had time to be afraid. I had had enough time to act, but not
to deliberate upon my circumstances. In writing my notes the question of
whether I had really seen the mountain lion came to mind. The dry branch was
still fresh in my memory.
"It was a mountain lion, " don Juan said imperatively.
"Was it a real flesh and blood animal?"
"Of course."
I told him that my suspicions had been roused because of the easiness
of the total event. It was as if the lion had been waiting out there and had
been trained to do exactly what don Juan had planned.
He was unruffled by my barrage of skeptical remarks. He laughed at me.
"You're a funny fellow, " he said. "You saw and heard the cat. It was
right under the tree where you were. He didn't smell you and jump at you
because of the river willows. They kill any other smell, even for cats. You
had a batch of them in your lap."
I said that it was not that I doubted him, but that everything that had
happened that night was extremely foreign to the events of my everyday life.
For a while, as I was writing my notes, I even had had the feeling that don
Juan may have been playing the role of the lion. However, I had to discard
the idea because I had really seen the dark shape of a four legged animal
charging at the cage and then leaping to the mesa.
"Why do you make such a fuss?" he said. "It was just a big cat. There
must be thousands of cats in those mountains. Big deal. As usual, you are
focusing your attention on the wrong item. It makes no difference whatsoever
whether it was a lion or my pants. Your feelings at that moment were what
counted."
In my entire life I had never seen or heard a big wildcat on the prowl.
When I thought of it, I could not get over the fact that I had been only a
few feet away from one. Don Juan listened patiently while I went over the
entire experience.
"Why the awe for the big cat?" he asked with an inquisitive expression.
"You've been close to most of the animals that live around here and you've
never been so awed by them. Do you like cats?"
"No, I don't."
"Well, forget about it then. The lesson was not on how to hunt lions,
anyway."
"What was it about?"
"The little crow pointed out that specific spot to me, and at that spot
I saw the opportunity of making you understand how one acts while one is in
the mood of a warrior.
"Everything you did last night was done within a proper mood. You were
controlled and at the same time abandoned when you jumped down from the tree
to pick up the cage and run up to me. You were not paralyzed with fear. And
then, near the top of the bluff, when the lion let out a scream, you moved
very well. I'm sure you wouldn't believe what you did if you looked at the
bluff during the daytime. You had a degree of abandon, and at the same time
you had a degree of control over yourself. You did not let go and wet your
pants, and yet you let go and climbed that wall in complete darkness. You
could have missed the trail and killed yourself.
To climb that wall in darkness required that you had to hold on to
yourself and let go of yourself at the same time. That's what I call the
mood of a warrior."
I said that whatever I had done that night was the product of my fear
and not the result of any mood of control and abandon.
"I know that, " he said, smiling. "And I wanted to show you that you
can spur yourself beyond your limits if you are in the proper mood. A
warrior makes his own mood. You didn't know that. Fear got you into the mood
of a warrior, but now that you know about it, anything can serve to get you
into it." I wanted to argue with him, but my reasons were not clear. I felt
an inexplicable sense of annoyance.
"It's convenient to always act in such a mood, " he continued. "It cuts
through the crap and leaves one purified. It was a great feeling when you
reached the top of the bluff. Wasn't it?"
I told him that I understood what he meant, yet I felt it would be
idiotic to try to apply what he was teaching me to my everyday life.
"One needs the mood of a warrior for every single act, " he said.
"Otherwise one becomes distorted and ugly. There is no power in a life that
lacks this mood. Look at yourself. Everything offends and upsets you. You
whine and complain and feel that everyone is making you dance to their tune.
You are a leaf at the mercy of the wind. There is no power in your life.
What an ugly feeling that must be!
"A warrior, on the other hand, is a hunter. He calculates everything.
That's control. But once his . calculations are over, he acts. He lets go.
That's abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can
push him; no one can make him do things against himself or against his
better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive, and he survives in the best
of all possible fashions."
I liked his stance although I thought it was unrealistic. It seemed too
simplistic for the complex world in which I lived.
He laughed at my arguments and I insisted that the mood of a warrior
could not possibly help me overcome the feeling of being offended or
actually being injured by the actions of my fellow men, as in the
hypothetical case of being physically harassed by a cruel and malicious
person placed in a position of authority. He roared with laughter and
admitted the example was apropos.
"A warrior could be injured but not offended, " he said. "For a warrior
there is nothing offensive about the acts of his fellow men as long as he
himself is acting within the proper mood.
"The other night you were not offended by the lion. The fact that it
chased us did not anger you. I did not hear you cursing it, nor did I hear
you say that he had no right to follow us. It could have been a cruel and
malicious lion for all you know. But that was not a consideration while you
struggled to avoid it. The only thing that was pertinent was to survive. And
that you did very well.
"If you would have been alone and the lion had caught up with you and
mauled you to death, you would have never even considered complaining or
feeling offended by its acts. "The mood of a warrior is not so far-fetched
for yours or anybody's world. You need it in order to cut through all
the-guff."
I explained my way of reasoning. The lion and my fellow men were not on
a par, because I knew the intimate quirks of men while I knew nothing about
the lion. What offended me about my fellow men was that they acted
maliciously and knowingly.
"I know, I know, " don Juan said patiently. "To achieve the mood of a
warrior is not a simple matter. It is a revolution. To regard the lion and
the water rats and our fellow men as equals is a magnificent act of the
warrior's spirit. It takes power to do that."
A BATTLE OF POWER
Thursday, December 28, 1961
We started on a journey very early in the morning. We drove south and
then east to the mountains. Don Juan had brought gourds with food and water.
We ate in my car before we started walking.
"Stick close to me, " he said. "This is an unknown region to you and
there is no need to take chances. You are going in search of power and
everything you do counts. Watch the wind, especially towards the end of the
day. Watch when it changes directions, and shift your position so that I
always shield you from it."
"What are we going to do in these mountains, don Juan?"
"You're hunting power."
"I mean what are we going to do in particular?"
"There's no plan when it comes to hunting power. Hunting power or
hunting game is the same. A hunter hunts whatever presents itself to him.
Thus he must always be in a state of readiness.
"You know about the wind, and now you may hunt power in the wind by
yourself. But there are other things you don't know about which are, like
the wind, the center of power at certain times and at certain places.
"Power is a very peculiar affair, " he said. "It is impossible to pin
it down and say what it really is. It is a feeling that one has about
certain things. Power is personal. It belongs to oneself alone. My
benefactor, for instance, could make a person mortally ill by merely looking
at him. Women would wane away after he had set eyes on them. Yet he did not
make people sick all the time but only when his personal power was
involved."
"How did he choose who to make sick?"
"I don't know that. He didn't know it himself. Power is like that. It
commands you and yet it obeys you.
"A hunter of power entraps it and then stores it away as his personal
finding. Thus, personal power grows, and you may have the case of a warrior
who has so much personal power that he becomes a man of knowledge."
"How does one store power, don Juan?"
"That again is another feeling. It depends on what kind of a person the
warrior is. My benefactor was a man of violent nature. He stored power
through that feeling. Everything he did was strong and direct. He left me a
memory of something crushing through things. And everything that happened to
him took place in that manner."
I told him I could not understand how power was stored through a
feeling.
"There's no way to explain it, " he said after a long pause.
"You have to do it yourself."
He picked up the gourds with food and fastened them to his back. He
handed me a string with eight pieces of dry meat strung on it and made me
hang it from my neck.
"This is power food, " he said.
"What makes it power food, don Juan?"
"It is the meat of an animal that had power. A deer, a unique deer. My
personal power brought it to me. This meat will sustain us for weeks, months
if need be. Chew little bits of it at a time, and chew it thoroughly. Let
the power sink slowly into your body."
We began to walk. It was almost eleven a.m. Don Juan reminded me once
more of the procedure to follow.
"Watch the wind, " he said. "Don't let it trip you. And don't let it
make you tired. Chew your power food and hide from the wind behind my body.
The wind won't hurt me; we know each other very well." He led me to a trail
that went straight to the high mountains. The day was cloudy and it was
about to rain. I could see low rain clouds and fog up above in the mountains
descending into the area where we were.
We hiked in complete silence until about three o'clock in the
afternoon. Chewing the dry meat was indeed invigorating. And watching for
sudden changes in the direction of the wind became a mysterious affair, to
the point that my entire body seemed to sense changes before they actually
happened. I had the feeling that I could detect waves of wind as a sort of
pressure on my upper chest, on my bronchial tubes. Every time I was about to
feel a gust of wind my chest and throat would itch.
Don Juan stopped for a moment and looked around. He appeared to be
orienting himself and then he turned to the right. I noticed that he was
also chewing dry meat. I felt very fresh and was not tired at all. The task
of being aware of shifts in the wind had been so consuming that I had not
been aware of time.
We walked into a deep ravine and then up one side to a small plateau on
the sheer side of an enormous mountain. We were quite high, almost to the
top of the mountain. Don Juan climbed a huge rock at the end of the plateau
and helped me up to it. The rock was placed in such a way as to look like a
dome on top of precipitous walls. We slowly walked around it. Finally I had
to move around the rock on my seat, holding on to the surface with my heels
and hands.
I was soaked in perspiration and had to dry my hands repeatedly. From
the other side I could see a very large shallow cave near the top of the
mountain. It looked like a hall that had been carved out of the rock. It was
sandstone which had been weathered into a sort of balcony with two pillars.
Don Juan said that we were going to camp there, that it was a very safe
place because it was too shallow to be a den for lions or any other
predators, too open to be a nest for rats, and too windy for insects. He
laughed and said that it was an ideal place for men, since no other living
creatures could stand it.
He climbed up to it like a mountain goat. I marveled at his stupendous
agility.
I slowly dragged myself down the rock on my seat and then tried to run
up the side of the mountain in order to reach the ledge. The last few yards
completely exhausted me. I kiddingly asked don Juan how old he really was. I
thought that in order to reach the ledge the way he had done it one had to
be extremely fit and young.
"I'm as young as I want to be, " he said. "This again is a matter of
personal power. If you store power your body can perform unbelievable feats.
On the other hand, if you dissipate power you'll be a fat old man in no time
at all."
The length of the ledge was oriented along an east-west line. The open
side of the balcony-like formation was to the south.
I walked to the west end. The view was superb. The rain had
circumvented us. It looked like a sheet of transparent material hung over
the low land. Don Juan said that we had enough time to build a shelter. He
told me to make a pile of as many rocks as I could carry onto the ledge
while he gathered some branches for a roof.
In an hour he had built a wall about a foot thick on the east end of
the ledge. It was about two feet long and three feet high. He wove and tied
some bundles of branches he had collected and made a roof, securing it onto
two long poles that ended in forks. There was another pole of the same
length that was affixed to the roof itself and which supported it on the
opposite side of the wall. The structure looked like a high table with three
legs.
Don Juan sat cross-legged under it, on the very edge of the balcony. He
told me to sit next to him, to his right. We remained quiet for a while. Don
Juan broke the silence. He said in a whisper that we had to act as if
nothing was out of the ordinary. I asked if there was something in
particular that I should do. He said that I should get busy writing and do
it in such a way that it would be as if I were at my desk with no worries in
the world except writing. At a given moment he was going to nudge me and
then I should look where he was pointing with his eyes.
He warned me that no matter what I saw I should not utter a single
word. Only he could talk with impunity because he was known to all the
powers in those mountains. I followed his instructions and wrote for over an
hour. I became immersed in my task. Suddenly I felt a soft tap on my arm and
saw don Juan's eyes and head move to point out a bank of fog about two
hundred yards away which was descending from the top of the mountain. Don
Juan whispered in my ear with a tone barely audible even at that close
range.
"Move your eyes back and forth along the bank of fog, " he said. "But
don't look at it directly. Blink your eyes and don't focus them on the fog.
When you see a green spot on the bank of fog, point it out to me with your
eyes."
I moved my eyes from left to right along the bank of fog that was
slowly coming down to us. Perhaps half an hour went by. It was getting dark.
The fog moved extremely slowly. At one moment I had the sudden feeling that
I had detected a faint glow to my right. At first I thought that I had seen
a patch of green shrubbery through the fog. When I looked at it directly I
did not notice anything, but when I looked without focusing I could detect a
vague greenish area.
I pointed it out to don Juan. He squinted his eyes and stared at it.
"Focus your eyes on that spot, " he whispered in my ear. "Look without
blinking until you see."
I wanted to ask what I was supposed to see but he glared at me as if to
remind me that I should not talk. I stared again. The bit of fog that had
come down from above hung as if it were a piece of solid matter. It was
lined up right at the spot where I had noticed the green tint. As my eyes
became tired again and I squinted, I saw at first the bit of fog
superimposed on the fog bank, and then I saw a thin strip of fog in between
that looked like a thin unsupported structure, a bridge joining the mountain
above me and the bank of fog in front of me. For a moment I thought I could
see the transparent fog, which was being blown down from the top of the
mountain, going by the bridge without disturbing it. It was as if the bridge
were actually solid. At one instant the mirage became so complete that I
could actually distinguish the darkness of the part under the bridge proper,
as opposed to the light sandstone color of its side.
I stared at the bridge, dumbfounded. And then I either lifted myself to
its level, or the bridge lowered itself to mine. Suddenly I was looking at a
straight beam in front of me. It was an immensely long, solid beam, narrow
and without railings, but wide enough to walk on. Don Juan shook me by the
arm vigorously. I felt my head bobbing up and down and then I noticed that
my eyes itched terribly. I rubbed them quite unconsciously. Don Juan kept on
shaking me until I opened my eyes again. He poured some water from his gourd
into the hollow of his hand and sprinkled my face with it. The sensation was
very unpleasant. The coldness of the water was so extreme that the drops
felt like sores on my skin. I noticed then that my body was very warm.
I was feverish.
Don Juan hurriedly gave me some water to drink and then splashed water
on my ears and neck.
I heard a very loud, eerie and-prolonged bird cry. Don Juan listened
attentively for an instant and then pushed the rocks of the wall with his
foot and collapsed the roof. He threw the roof into the shrubs and tossed
all the rocks, one by one, over the side.
He whispered in my ear, "Drink some water and chew your dry meat. We
cannot stay here. That cry was not a bird." We climbed down the ledge and
began to walk in an easterly direction. In no time at all it was so dark
that it was as if there were a curtain in front of my eyes. The fog was like
an impenetrable barrier. I had never realized how crippling the fog was at
night. I could not conceive how don Juan walked. I held oh to his arm as if
I were blind.
Somehow I had the feeling I was walking on the edge of a precipice. My
legs refused to move on. My reason trusted don Juan and I was rationally
willing to go on, but my body was not, and don Juan had to drag me in total
darkness.
He must have known the terrain to ultimate perfection. He stopped at a
certain point and made me sit down. I did not dare let go of his arm. My
body felt, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I was sitting on a barren dome
like mountain and if I moved an inch to my right I would fall beyond the
tolerance point into an abysm. I was absolutely sure I was sitting on a
curved mountainside, because my body moved unconsciously to the right. I
thought it did so in order to keep its verticality, so I tried to compensate
by leaning to the left against don Juan, as far as I could.
Don Juan suddenly moved away from me and without the support of his
body I fell on the ground. Touching the ground restored my sense of
equilibrium. I was lying on a flat area. I began to reconnoiter my immediate
surroundings by touch.
I recognized dry leaves and twigs. There was a sudden flash of
lightning that illuminated the whole area and tremendous thunder. I saw don
Juan standing to my left. I saw huge trees and a cave a few feet behind him.
Don Juan told me to get into the hole. I crawled into it and sat down
with my back against the rock.
I felt don Juan leaning over to whisper that I had to be totally
silent. There were three flashes of lightning, one after the other.
In a glance I saw don Juan sitting cross legged to my left. The cave
was a concave formation big enough for two or three persons to sit in. The
hole seemed to have been carved at the bottom of a boulder. I felt that it
had indeed been wise of me to have crawled into it, because if I had been
walking I would have knocked my head against the rock.
The brilliancy of the lightning gave me an idea of how thick the bank
of fog was. I noticed the trunks of enormous trees as dark silhouettes
against the opaque light gray mass of the fog.
Don Juan whispered that the fog and the lightning were in cahoots with
each other and I had to keep an exhausting vigil because I was engaged in a
battle of power. At that moment a stupendous flash of lightning rendered the
whole scenery phantasmagorical. The fog was like a white filter that frosted
the light of the electrical discharge and diffused it uniformly; the fog was
like a dense whitish substance hanging between the tall trees, but right in
front of me at the ground level the fog was thinning out. I plainly
distinguished the features of the terrain. We were in a pine forest. Very
tall trees surrounded us. They were so extremely big that I could have sworn
we were in the redwoods if I had not previously known our whereabouts.
There was a barrage of lightning that lasted several minutes. Each
flash made the features I had already observed more discernible. Right in
front of me I saw a definite trail. There was no vegetation on it. It seemed
to end in an area clear of trees.
There were so many flashes of lightning that I could not keep track of
where they were coming from. The scenery, however, had been so profusely
illuminated that I felt much more at ease. My fears and uncertainties had
vanished as soon as there had been enough light to lift the heavy curtain of
darkness. So when there was a long pause between the flashes of lightning I
was no longer disoriented by the blackness around me.
Don Juan whispered that I had probably done enough watching, and that I
had to focus my attention on the sound of thunder. I realized to my
amazement that I had not paid any attention to thunder at all, in spite of
the fact that it had really been tremendous. Don Juan added that I should
follow the sound and look in the direction where I thought it came from.
There were no longer barrages of lightning and thunder but only
sporadic flashes of intense light and sound. The thunder seemed to always
come from my right. The fog was lifting and I, already being accustomed to
the pitch black, could distinguish masses of vegetation. The lightning and
thunder continued and suddenly the whole right side opened up and I could
see the sky.
The electrical storm seemed to be moving towards my right. There was
another flash of lightning and I saw a distant mountain to my extreme right.
The light illuminated the back ground, silhouetting the bulky mass of the
mountain. I saw trees on top of it; they looked like neat black cutouts
superimposed on the brilliantly white sky. I even saw cumulus clouds over
the mountains.
The fog had cleared completely around us. There was a steady wind and I
could hear the rustling of leaves in the big trees to my left. The
electrical storm was too distant to illuminate the trees, but their dark
masses remained discernible.
The light of the storm allowed me to establish, however, that there was
a range of distant mountains to my right and that the forest was limited to
the left side. It seemed that I was
looking down into a dark valley, which I could not see at all.
The range over which the electrical storm was taking place was on the
opposite side of the valley.
Then it began to rain. I pressed back against the rock as far as I
could. My hat served as a good protection. I was sitting with my knees to my
chest and only my calves and shoes got wet. It rained for a long time. The
rain was lukewarm. I felt it on my feet. And then I fell asleep.
The noises of birds woke me up. I looked around for don Juan. He was
not there; ordinarily I would have wondered whether he had left me there
alone, but the shock of seeing the surroundings nearly paralyzed me.
I stood up. My legs were soaking wet, the brim of my hat was soggy and
there was still some water in it that spilled over me. I was not in a cave
at all, but under some thick bushes. I experienced a moment of unparalleled
confusion. I was standing on a flat piece of land between two small dirt
hills covered with bushes. There were no trees to my left and no valley to
my right. Right in front of me, where I had seen the path in the forest,
there was a gigantic bush.
I refused to believe what I was witnessing. The incongruency of my two
versions of reality made me grapple for any kind of explanation. It occurred
to me that it was perfectly possible that I had slept so soundly that don
Juan might have "carried me on his back to another place without waking me.
I examined the spot where I had been sleeping. The ground there was
dry, and so was the ground on the spot next to it, where don Juan had been.
I called him a couple of times and then had an attack of anxiety and
bellowed his name as loud as I could. He came out from behind some bushes. I
immediately became aware that he knew what was going on. His smile was so
mischievous that I ended up smiling myself.
I did not want to waste any time in playing games with him. I blurted
out what was the matter with me. I explained as carefully as possible every
detail of my night long hallucinations. He listened without interrupting. He
could not, however, keep a serious face and started to laugh a couple of
times, but he regained his composure right away.
I asked for his comments three or four times; he only shook his head as
if the whole affair was also incomprehensible to him. When I ended my
account he looked at me and said, "You look awful. Maybe you need to go to
the bushes." He cackled for a moment and then added that I should take off
my clothes and wring them out so they would dry.
The sunlight was brilliant. There were very few clouds. It was a windy
brisk day. Don Juan walked away, telling me that he was going to look for
some plants and that I should compose myself and eat something and not call
him until I was calm and strong.
My clothes were really wet. I sat down in the sun to dry. I felt that
the only way for me to relax was to get out my notebook and write. I ate
while I worked on my notes. After a couple of hours I was more relaxed and I
called don Juan. He answered from a place near the top of the mountain. He
told me to gather the gourds and climb up to where he was. When I reached
the spot, I found him sitting on a smooth rock. He opened the gourds and
served himself some food. He handed me two big pieces of meat.
I did not know where to begin. There were so many things I wanted to
ask. He seemed to be aware of my mood and laughed with sheer delight.
"How do you feel?" he asked in a facetious tone.
I did not want to say anything. I was still upset. Don Juan urged me to
sit down on the flat slab. He said that the stone was a power object and
that I would be renewed after being there for a while.
"Sit down, " he commanded me dryly. He did not smile. His eyes were
piercing. I automatically sat down.
He said that I was being careless with power by acting morosely, and
that I had to put an end to it or power would turn against both of us and we
would never leave those desolate hills alive.
After a moment's pause he casually asked, "How is your dreaming?" I
explained to him how difficult it had become for me to give myself the
command to look at my hands. At first it had been relatively easy, perhaps
because of the newness of the concept. I had had no trouble at all in
reminding myself that I had to look at my hands. But the excitation had worn
off and some nights I could not do it at all.
"You must wear a headband to sleep, " he said. "Getting a headband is a
tricky maneuver. I cannot give you one, because you yourself have to make it
from scratch. But you cannot make one until you have had a vision of it in
dreaming. See what I mean? The headband has to be made according to the
specific vision. And it must have a strip across it that fits
tightly on top of the head. Or it may very well be like a tight cap.
Dreaming is easier when one wears a power object on top of the head. You
could wear your hat or put on a cowl, like a friar, and go to sleep, but
those items would only cause intense dreams, not dreaming."
He was silent for a moment and then proceeded to tell me in a fast
barrage of words that the vision of the headband did not have to occur only
in "dreaming" but could happen in states of wakefulness and as a result of
any far-fetched and totally unrelated event, such as watching the flight of
birds, the movement of water, the clouds, and so on.
"A hunter of power watches everything, " he went on. "And everything
tells him some secret."
"But how can one be sure that things are telling secrets?" I asked.
I thought he may have had a specific formula that allowed him to make
"correct" interpretations.
"The only way to be sure is by following all the instructions I have
been giving you, starting from the first day you came to see me, " he said.
"In order to have power one must live with power."
He smiled benevolently. He seemed to have lost his fierceness; he even
nudged me lightly on the arm.
"Eat your power food, " he urged me.
I began to chew some dry meat and at that moment I had the sudden
realization that perhaps the dry meat contained a psychotropic substance,
hence the hallucinations. For a moment I felt almost relieved. If he had put
something in the meat my mirages were perfectly understandable. I asked him
to tell me if there was anything at all in the "power meat."
He laughed but did not answer me directly. I insisted, assuring him
that I was not angry or even annoyed, but that I had to know so I could
explain the events of the previous night to my own satisfaction. I urged
him, coaxed him, and finally begged him to tell me the truth.
"You are quite cracked, " he said, shaking his head in a gesture of
disbelief. "You have an insidious tendency. You persist in trying to explain
everything to your satisfaction. There is nothing in the meat except power.
The power was not put there by me or by any other man but by power itself.
It is the dry meat of a deer and that deer was a gift to me in the same way
a certain rabbit was a gift to you not too long ago. Neither you nor I put
anything in the rabbit. I didn't ask you to dry the rabbit's meat, because
that act required more power than you had. However, I did tell you to eat
the meat. You didn't eat much of it, because of your own stupidity.
"What happened to you last night was neither a joke nor a prank. You
had an encounter with power. The fog, the darkness, the lightning, the
thunder and the rain were all part of a great battle of power. You had the
luck of a fool. A warrior would give anything to have such a battle."
My argument was that the whole event could not be a battle of power
because it had not been real.
"And what is real?" don Juan asked me very calmly.
"This, what we're looking at is real, " I said, pointing to the
surroundings.
"But so was the bridge you saw last night, and so was the forest and
everything else."
"But if they were real where are they now?"
"They are here. If you had enough power you could call them back. Right
now you cannot do that because you think it is very helpful to keep on
doubting and nagging. It isn't, my
friend. It isn't. There are worlds upon worlds, right here in front of
us. And they are nothing to laugh at. Last night if I hadn't grabbed your
arm you would have walked on that bridge whether you wanted to or not. And
earlier I had to protect you from the wind that was seeking you out."
"What would have happened if you hadn't protected me?"
"Since you don't have enough power, the wind would have made you lose
your way and perhaps even killed you by pushing you into a ravine. But the
fog was the real thing last night.
Two things could have happened to you in the fog. You could have walked
across the bridge to the other side, or you could have fallen to your
death." Either would have depended on power. One thing, however, would have
been for sure. If I had not protected you, you would have had to walk on
that bridge regardless of anything. That is the nature of power. As I told
you before, it commands you and yet it is at your command. Last night, for
instance, the power would have forced you to walk across the bridge and then
it would have been at your command to sustain you while you were walking. I
stopped you because I know you don't have the means to use power, and
without power the bridge would have collapsed."
"Did you see the bridge yourself, don Juan?"
"No. I just saw power. It may have been anything. Power for you, this
time, was a bridge. I don't know why a bridge. We are most mysterious
creatures."
"Have you ever seen a bridge in the fog, don Juan?"
"Never. But that's because I'm not like you. I saw other things. My
battles of power are very different than yours."
"What did you see, don Juan? Can you tell me?"
"I saw my enemies during my first battle of power in the fog. You have
no enemies. You don't hate people. I did at that time. I indulged in hating
people. I don't do that any more. I have vanquished my hate, but at that
time my hate nearly destroyed me. "Your battle of power, on the other hand,
was neat. It didn't consume you. You are consuming yourself now with your
own crappy thoughts and doubts. That's your way of indulging yourself."
"The fog was impeccable with you. You have an affinity with it. It gave
you a stupendous bridge, and that bridge will be there in the fog from now
on. It will reveal itself to you over and over, until someday you will have
to cross it.
"I strongly recommend that from this day on you don't walk into foggy